Wednesday, 1st April, 1925.

The House met at a quarter before four of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.

Read 3^a , and passed, and sent to the Commons.

Read 3^a , and passed, and sent to the Commons.

Read 3^a , and passed, and sent to the Commons.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, in asking the indulgence of your Lordships for the first time for the very few minutes which it will take me to explain the reason of the Motion standing in my name on the Paper, let me say at once that it is not my intention to attach any blame for what has happened in the past to this person or that; neither do I intend to refer to the past except so far as it may be necessary to do so in order to ascertain the present situation and how that situation was arrived at. It is with the future that I am concerned, and it is in regard to the future that my Motion has been framed. There may be exceptions but, generally speaking, I think no one will be found to deny that the people of this country desire, and will always insist upon, the preservation of our sea power. But, as will be obvious to your Lordships, no amount of actual power at sea, however great, will be of any avail unless we can use that power to the full and in the proper direction. And the sole object of my Motion to-day is to ascertain, if possible from the Government itself, the exact nature and extent of any limitations at present existing upon our rights to use in future our power at sea.

This is a matter of immense practical importance. No man can doubt that for one moment who considers the events of the late war. In 1914 we had a supreme Navy, unmatched in strength, skill and resources. It is certain that had that Navy been used throughout in accordance with the long-standing laws and traditions of this country in the matter of sea power, the war would have been one of months rather than of years. It is impossible to estimate the value of the life and treasure that would have been saved. But it is common knowledge now that our power at sea was not, in fact, so used, at least until the war had already lasted for well over three years and the results were deplorable and far-reaching not only for England but for the whole world. I trust that in speaking of our power to use our Navy in war time I shall not be misunderstood. I do not refer to our right to use the Navy against an enemy's Navy; that right, of course, we always possessed to the full and it was most admirably exercised. My point is that the military value of overwhelming force at sea does not consist only, or even chiefly, in its power to overwhelm the corresponding naval forces of the enemy. It consists far more in its power to refuse the enemy all those sea-borne supplies for his armies and populations without which neither those armies nor those populations can continue their resistance for long.

In peace time no one denies the enormous economic importance of seaborne trade. The oversea trade of a country is everywhere regarded as an index of its prosperity, and if in peace times a modern State must have access to the sea, in war time under modern conditions that access becomes an absolute economic necessity for her, especially if the war is in any degree prolonged. The reason for this is simple. No country contains within its borders, not all the countries of Europe taken together contain within their borders, enough even of the physical materials required to enable them to carry on the operations of modern warfare for more than a very short time. They must replenish their supplies from overseas. The power, therefore, of cutting off those essential supplies from overseas is the true and final power of an overwhelming Navy and is the chief military reason for its existence. To secure the great road of the sea for its own people and to refuse it to its enemies—that, and not the fighting of great naval actions, is the primary and essential function of a Fleet. If, in order to fulfil that function, fighting becomes necessary, fighting must, of course, be done. But if a Navy can fulfil that function completely without fighting so much the better for that Navy and for the country to which it belongs.

The number of Fleet actions fought by England during the Napoleonic Wars was very small and the actual destruction of ships and men effected in those actions was slight; but the pressure of the Navy upon the trade of Europe destroyed the power

even of the Emperor Napoleon, and Europe in these days is far more dependent upon the sea for its supplies than it ever was a hundred years ago. The extent to which Germany depended, in 1914, upon the sea for anything but a war of the shortest duration was admitted beforehand by her own leaders.

"It will be necessary"—

said General Bernhardi, in his "Germany and the Next War,"

"to take further steps to secure the importation from abroad of supplies necessary to us, since out communications will be completely cut off by the English"

That was what Germany was expecting at our hands at the time of the declaration of war in August, 1914.

This naval function of cutting off the enemy's sea-borne supplies differs from all other forms of fighting chiefly in this, that it sheds no blood, it destroys no property and is earned out always, not in the heat and confusion of battle but in the calmest deliberation, under the direction of legally constituted Courts—namely, the Prize Courts of the captor's country. It is surely impossible to conceive a more humane operation of war. It is with that operation of war, and with the right of this country to exercise those powers, that my Motion is concerned.

If your Lordships will look at the words of the Motion itself, you will see that it refers to the "full rights of this country as a belligerent to act at sea upon seaborne trade in time of war," and I should like to explain what I intend by that expression. I am no lawyer and I speak in the presence of the most distinguished lawyers in the land; but I think they will support me at least in these two general propositions—firstly, that the decisions and judgments of those Prize Courts to which I have just referred, especially the decisions and judgments of our English Prize Courts, have always been, and still are, accepted with the greatest respect and substantially without question by all civilised countries; and secondly, that the law which those Courts administer is not the domestic law of their own country but that great body of doctrine known as International Law or the common law of nations.

According to the accepted doctrine of that law, as it stood before the year 1856, the rights of a properly commissioned naval force at sea to act upon sea-borne trade in war time were substantially as follows: So far as property belonging to the enemy was concerned that might be captured upon the high seas, wherever it was found. If it were found in an enemy ship, then both ship and property would be condemned as good prize and confiscated to the Crown, but if the enemy property were found in a neutral ship, then the property alone was confiscated and the neutral ship was set free, with payment in full to her owners of freight and demurrage. In this way the neutral shipowner sustained no loss from his venture. The sole legal duty of the neutral was to observe neutrality, and the only conditions in which the Prize Court would hold him to have broken neutrality were three, namely:—he might not break blockade; he might not engage with other belligerents in what was called unaccustomed trade, and he might not carry to the other belligerent goods which, in all the circumstances of the case, a Prize Court would on the evidence hold to be contraband; that is to say, goods actually consigned to an enemy port and of such a character as to be of direct military assistance to the belligerent.

Those, broadly speaking, were the rights of a belligerent at sea and the obligations of a neutral up to the year 1856, and on that clear and simple basis we fought the Emperor Napoleon and faced a situation in which, for over three years, from 1809 to 1812, we had not a single friendly port in the whole of Europe. But we maintained our position, and what Napoleon himself thought of its strength he explained to Lord Amherst, at St. Helena, on July 1, 1817, when he said:—

"As long as you keep the command of the sea, yon only need Ambassadors to get what you want. For you are able to blockade the whole of Europe. And I know the effect of your blockades. You put a country in the situation of a body soaked in oil, which can no longer breathe."

It is perfectly true that in 1856, in circumstances which have never yet been explained, a document called the Declaration of Paris appeared upon the diplomatic horizon and was signed on behalf of this country. This Declaration contained four articles of which only one, the second, is of any importance to the matter in hand. This said that "the neutral flag covers enemy's merchandise with the exception of contraband of war."

Whether this Declaration ever became entitled to the dignity of being called a Treaty is doubtful, and it is still more doubtful whether it ever, in fact, came to form part of the common law of nations as administered by the Prize Courts, and there are two reasons for those doubts. One is the fact that on the same day as the Declaration itself was signed all the contracting Powers also equally formally agreed "to maintain the indivisibility of the four principles mentioned in the Declaration" and that indivisibility has never, in fact, been maintained in war time by one of them. The second reason is the fact that the United States of America have never to this day agreed to the Declaration at all. Then came the long negotiations begun at The Hague on April 3, 1906, which ended in the Declaration of London of 1909. That Declaration enormously weakened the rights of belligerents at sea, and at the same time greatly increased the uncertainties and difficulties to neutrals. It was signed on behalf of England on February 26, 1909, but, luckily for this country, a new Court, to be called the International Prize Court, was required to administer its doctrine, and this necessitated an Act of Parliament. A convenient vehicle was found in the already existing Naval Prize Bill into which, in 1910, new clauses were inserted setting up the proposed new International Court. This Bill was passed in another place, but was rejected by your Lordships' House on December 12, 1911. The result was, of course, that the whole thing fell to pieces, and all the countries who had subscribed to it upon grounds of high humanitarian principle, abandoned it with one accord so soon as it was seen that England would have nothing to do with it.

It is very difficult to avoid the conclusion that all these long negotiations were but one further instance of the determination of the military Powers of Europe to lessen, if they could, that very economic power of England at sea to which my Motion refers. In any case the practical result of all this, and the point which I would venture to ask your Lordships especially to notice, is this. In August, 1914, so far as strict law was concerned, no limitation existed upon our full belligerent rights at sea, except those contained in Article 2 of the Declaration of Paris, 1856, and whether or not that Article would, in fact, have been enforced by the Prize Courts is, as I have said, doubtful, but nothing else at that time existed, either in law or in Treaty, to prevent us, had we chosen to do so, from exercising our full belligerent rights at sea—to which I have already referred.

But this course was not adopted. On August 20, 1914, by Order in Council, the Declaration of London, with five quite unimportant modifications, was adopted, and there then followed a long series of Proclamations and Orders in Council altering and re-altering long lists of contraband articles, taking new ground, claiming new rights, imposing new duties upon all concerned; and to enable all these new arrangements to be carried into effect an entirely new machinery was set up in place of the old and tried machinery of the Prize Court. A series of Committees, which finally became crystallised into a body called the Contraband Claims Committee, were set up inside the Foreign Office, and it was this new and hitherto unheard-of body, not a judicial body but a Departmental body, which decided from day to day, upon a procedure of its own, what trade was to be allowed to run unchecked at sea.

It is not necessary to deal in detail with the effect of this course of action, because in the end each step in turn was denounced by its own authors. Thus the Reprisals Order of March 11, 1915, which destroyed the Declaration of Paris, was itself destroyed by the Maritime Rights Order of July 7, 1916, which also expressly denounced and abolished the Declaration of London and, in effect, brought us back at long last to at least the assertion of the old and settled doctrine in these matters. To quote the actual words of the Foreign Office explanation at the time, we must in future confine ourselves

"simply to applying the historical and admitted rules of the Law of Nations."

As a matter of fact, it was not until many months after July, 1916, that these historical and admitted rules were actually enforced, but from the moment that they were actually enforced, about four or five months before the Armistice, the effect was immediate and the resistance of Germany collapsed.

All these Orders in Council were entirely illegal, as was declared by the Privy Council in their judgment in the case of the "Zamorra." We are thus left at the present moment with no coherence or settled principles anywhere, and the result of this lack of coherence during the time under review was that while enemy trade and property were steadily exempted from capture as such, neutral trade and property was continuously and unlawfully interfered with, and the situation so created, while assisting the enemy on every hand, roused very real and justifiable resentment in America. It is interesting to observe now that the only justification ever suggested for this course of action was the necessity of avoiding disputes with America. If that were the object, it was certainly not achieved, as was amply shown by the long official correspondence with America which has since been published. That correspondence shows throughout that the complaint which America made against our proceedings in respect of her trade at sea in the earlier part of the war was that those proceedings were unlawful, and it also shows beyond doubt that if we had been content from the first merely to enforce against neutrals our ancient and undoubted belligerent rights at sea, America would have acquiesced in that enforcement.

Unhappily, this correspondence also shows that we ourselves, while engaged in trade on a large scale with Scandinavian neutrals under licence from the Contraband Committee, we were endeavouring to prevent America from con ducting a similar trade. The result of this was that while our friends, the neutrals, were thus unlawfully antagonised German trade flourished. Of this there can be no doubt whatever for the figures of the whole trade of Scandinavia during the war have been published, and published by no less an authority than Rear-Admiral Consett, in his book called "The Triumph of Unarmed Forces.' As your Lordships are aware, Admiral Consett was our own naval representative in Scandinavia from 1912 until 1919, and in 1920 was appointed Naval Adviser to the Supreme Council in Paris. The testimony of such an officer must be regarded as unimpeachable; in any case, not one of his facts or figures has so far been questioned.

I will not weary your Lordships by quoting more than three figures which will suffice to show the state of affairs. I. will take one commodity only, cotton, which, as I need not point out, necessarily came to Scandinavia from overseas and was of essential use to Germany in the manufacture of explosives. Sweden alone before the war, in 1913, was sending to Germany and Austria 236 tons of cotton. In 1914 Sweden was sending them 4,600 tons and in 1915 no less then 76,000 tons, and of this enormous quantity over 10,000 tons was supplied directly to Sweden by the United Kingdom and the British Empire. That is only one instance, but I think it is a sufficiently striking one, and I am perfectly satisfied that if any of your Lordships will examine the figures of Admiral Consett in further detail they will be found to show that from 1914 until 1917 Germany was being steadily supplied from overseas with all the essentials for war.

Your Lordships will observe the state of affairs. There was our Fleet, the finest and most efficient force at sea the world had ever seen. No merchant ship could get by that Fleet; every merchant ship was in its power. There also were the Prize Courts of this country ready and able to consider evidence and to apply the law in every case of capture brought before them. The whole machinery required for enforcing our undisputed rights at sea was there, and in the end every one of those rights had, in fact, to be enforced under the hard presure of events, but for over three and a half years of actual fighting, to the great injury not only of this country but of the whole world, the full belligerent rights of this country at sea were not enforced. On the contrary, they were deliberately set aside; and why? Simply from lack of belief in the old tried and well settled principles of (he law of war at sea.

I am prepared to believe that, sooner or later, the late war had to come, that it was inevitable, that it was forced upon us; but I do not believe for one moment that it need have lasted, as it did, for four years, with a loss of over five million men killed ashore. On the contrary, I believe that the surest, and indeed the only, way to have enduring peace in Europe for the future lies in the preservation by England of an overwhelming Fleet and a plain declaration by England to the world of the principles she intends to observe at sea in war time in the future. These last, as I have tried to show, are at the present time a matter of complete uncertainty. The Declaration of Paris was, in effect destroyed by the Reprisals Order of March 11, 1915. Is that still in force? The Reprisals Order was superseded by the Maritime Rights Order of July 7, 1916. Is that still in force? We do not yet know the answer to either of these questions.

Upon a subject of such importance and complexity opinions may well differ as to what principles should be considered to be sound, but I suggest that in such a matter, involving, as it does, the whole future peace and steadiness of Europe uncertainty and incoherence cannot in any case be right. They, at all events, can hardly now be adopted as the established policy of England, and, if not, then it is surely not unreasonable to ask His Majesty's Government to tell us our actual position in the matter at this moment. That, and only that, is what my Motion asks the Government to do, and to that end I hope and trust your Lordships will support it. I beg to move.

Moved, That having regard to the information now available as to the actual working of the sea blockade of Germany during the late war, this House requests His Majesty's Government to make a statement as to the effect of any Treaty, Declaration, or other diplomatic instrument now affecting the full rights of this country as a belligerent to act at sea upon sea-borne trade in time of war.—( Lord Redesdale.)

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Article 203 of the Treaty of Versailles is in common form, and part of the importance of my Question, as will appear when I come to what has taken place in the Council of the League of Nations at Geneva, is that it is in a common form applicable not only in this Treaty, but in the Treaties also with Bulgaria, Hungary and Austria. I think I ought to read the words of Article 203 in order to make the terms of my Question entirely intelligible:

"All the military, naval and air clauses contained in the present Treaty, for the execution of which a time-limit is prescribed, shall be executed by Germany under the control of Inter-Allied Commissions specially appointed for this purpose by the principal Allied and Associated Powers."

Your Lordships will see, therefore, that the powers given and to be exercised under the control of the Inter-Allied Commission are carefully safeguarded and limited—namely, to the execution of the military, naval and air clauses for which a time limit is prescribed.

The first object of my Question is to ascertain whether any of the complaints which have been made and are being formulated, as I understand, against Germany for not having fulfilled her obligations of disarmament, came within those terms and were they obligations for which a time limit was prescribed. I have noticed, and I think I may state it as common ground, that so far as naval and air matters are concerned no complaint is being made. The complaint is really limited to military questions. I may be wrong about that, but at least military questions are really the difficulties involved.

Let me call your Lordships' attention to Article 213 which is to be found not only in the Treaty with Germany but in the Treaty with Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria. It is in these terms—

"So long as the present Treaty remains in force, Germany undertakes to give every facility for any investigation which the Council of the League of Nations, acting if need be by a majority vote, may consider necessary."

Therefore, it is clearly contemplated that a time will come when the jurisdiction of control or supervision passes from the Allied control bodies to the Council of the League of Nations. That is a very important factor indeed, for two reasons. First of all, every one would allow, I think, the authority of an impartial body appointed by the League of Nations, and if that body found that certain obligations had not been complied with, would be satisfied that Germany or any other country might be regarded as being in default. Secondly, there is no doubt that the maintenance of these Allied Controls is not only a considerable expense to the countries involved, but is, naturally, a cause of considerable irritation. There can be no doubt that, while human nature is constituted as it is, control of the defeated by the military Allies on the other side is sure to raise friction and trouble.

That being the case, last June, when I was a delegate to the Council of the League in succession to the noble Viscount, I brought this matter before the Council on behalf of Great Britain and on instructions from Great Britain. I said that the time had come, in the opinion of Great Britain, when, at any rate in regard to Bulgaria, Austria and Hungary, the control should no longer be in the hands of the Allies; that those, countries should be no longer submitted either to the expense or irritation of it; and that the Council itself should institute a supervising body. When I brought that forward a resolution based upon it was proposed by the French delegates, and in the result the Council adopted the view that it ought to provide for a supervising body. The question, of course, arose as to how that supervising body should be constituted. There was one point with which I need not trouble your Lordships. There was a legal point which was referred to a commission of jurists who issued a report which we immediately accepted and adopted; the question being who were entitled to sit upon the Council when a matter of this kind was dealt with. But the more important matter was referred to the military and naval advisers of the Council of the League.

Your Lordships are aware that under the Covenant of the League a permanent body of military, naval and air advisers is constituted, which, at the will of the Council, give information upon all points concerning naval and military matters, especially those dealing with questions of disarmament. This matter was referred to and considered by the permanent Military Council of advisers. When the Council itself met again in August this question was raised. The British representatives said, and rightly said, that so far as the Council was concerned their duties were limited to Bulgaria, Austria and Hungary, and could go no further. The military advisers representing other countries upon this permanent body desired to include also the case of Germany. When I first went out in August I was confronted with this: We, the advisers appointed on behalf of Great Britain, have come to a deadlock. Our functions are limited to Austria, Bulgaria and Hungary; whereas the representatives of other countries—particularly France and Italy I think, though it does not matter for the moment which they were—say that it is no good providing for supervision by the Council unless the case of Germany is also included.

I need not tell your Lordships that a matter of that kind immediately raised a difficulty, but it was solved in this way. After reference home for instructions—the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary himself came to Geneva shortly afterwards—it was arranged that the British representatives should consent to the consideration of the case of Germany at the same time as the cases of Bulgaria, Austria and Hungary were considered. Consequently, at the end of the Council meeting, a joint proposal was made by the military and naval representatives of the various countries to include in their scheme of supervision a scheme which was" applicable to Germany as well as to Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria. Two or three days, I think, were occupied by the Council in order to reconcile certain views, and ultimately a unanimous decision was reached by which a supervisory system could be applied to Germany as well as to the other countries. That shows that this question has been considered very carefully and that provision has already been made for supervision by the Council and superseding the control of the Allied Powers.

I do not want to exaggerate for one moment. The Council was not deciding at that time whether its powers had superseded the powers of the Allied control bodies but was making provision for it. The Allied Control Forces act under the supervision of the Conference of Ambassadors sitting at Paris. Why they should sit at Paris, I do not know; but this question arises. The Conference of Ambassadors have not the staff, or the assistance of expert military, naval and air advisers which the Council have provided under the terms of the Covenant itself, so that in one case you have a body which is very little assisted by expert advice, and in the other you have a body with all—sufficient expert advice at its control.

There is one other matter also which I want to emphasise before I put my Question. There never was an intention of what I may call a unilateral disarmament of the defeatist Powers. The Covenant of the League contains, of course, a corresponding obligation upon all countries to disarm to what I may call a defensive level, and in the series of articles which are set out in the Treaty of Versailles under Part V this Preamble is inserted, which applies to all of them:—

"In order to render possible the initiation of a general limitation of the armaments of all nations, Germany undertakes strictly to observe the military, naval and air clauses which follow."

Your Lordships will notice the words" in order to render possible the initiation of a general limitation."

But beyond that, when Germany was raising objections to the terms of the Treaty, the Allied and associated Powers at Paris gave this official answer in a document to the complaint of Germany:—

"The Allied and Associated Powers have already pointed out to the German delegates that the Covenant of the League of Nations provides for ' the reduction of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety, and the enforcement by common action of international obligation.' They recognise that the acceptance by Germany of the terms laid down for her own disarmament will facilitate and hasten the accomplishment of a general reduction of armaments."

Then they go on to say that they intend to open negotiations immediately with a view to the eventual adoption of a scheme of such general reduction.

We know perfectly well that, although that is the expression of an intention immediately to open negotiations, no general progress has been made up to the present time. I am not now dealing with the Washington Conference, to which a reference has been made, and in which this country, at any rate, made very notable and large concessions. I do not in the least complain of that, but there has been no move for general disarmament except—though I do not want to go into that to-day—that there was a practical scheme for a world conference under the. conditions mentioned in the Protocol. The noble Earl the leader of the Liberal Party pointed to two very important terms in the Treaty of Versailles in the speech he made the other day—namely, Articles 428 and 429. I should like to associate myself with the argument that he then addressed to your Lordships. It was, in effect, that those two Articles did not contemplate trivial matters but contemplated matters of real and vital importance. I think that is perfectly true, but that important question raises a different matter—who is to decide whether there has been a default or not? That is the important question that I raise.

Is it to be decided by the Allied Control Forces, or is it to be decided under supervision by a body appointed by the Council of the League of Nations? That is obviously an extremely important point. We are dealing with a question of fact. Are you to have it decided by an impartial body, or are you to have it decided by a party which, at any rate, would not be regarded as impartial by one of the parties concerned. When I was sitting on the other side of the House, and in close connection with the Foreign Office, this matter was a great deal considered. I will not go into the matters that came up for consideration. I believe that they eventuated in a difference of opinion between certain persons as to when supervision of the Council of the League superseded the provisions relating to Allied control.

My question raises this point: After all the specified matters have been dealt with, when does a time come for bringing in the impartial authority of supervision by the League of Nations? This is a matter which, I know, the Noble Marquess is much interested in. It is what I may call the general peace spirit in these matters. I know of my own knowledge at the present time that the method of supervision in the case of Germany will be determined and settled by the Council of the League so soon as the occasion arises. I do not want to exaggerate. They have not decided when the time arises, but they have the machinery ready, because it was present to the minds of a great many people that if the time had not arisen it was likely to arise very shortly.

There is one, point that has been raised on the other side that I want to touch upon very shortly. It has been said that until there has been a general absolution, so to speak, of these various countries—Germany, Bulgaria, Austria, Hungary—until they have complied with all their obligations, the Allied control should be maintained. I understand the strength of that contention, but the answer to it is this. If you look at the Treaty terms—and Germany is entitled to the full benefit of those Treaty terms—you find a distinction between matters which have to be set right in a prescribed time, and those for subsequent delegation or supervision to the Council of the League. I told the noble Marquess the points that I intended to raise. I think they are extremely important points, especially having regard to the issue to which the noble Earl referred the other night—namely, the issue of the further occupation of the Rhine bridgeheads, or a Rhine bridgehead, on the ground that Germany was still in default. I beg to move for Papers, if there are any which the noble Marquess can lay before the House in further elucidation of this matter.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

The noble Earl said: My Lords, I find it quite impossible to address myself to the Bench opposite without expressing my personal sense of the loss which we have sustained by the passing from our midst of the noble Marquess who so long led this House, and in saying that I am expressing, I know, the feeling shared by the House. Now, in the indictment, such as it is, that I propose to present against the Post Office to-day, your Lordships will be glad to learn that I am not proposing to include matters relating to the telephone service. Those matters are susceptible of having a great deal said of them. I have a record here of a nature which I think will be familiar to many of your Lordships, in which I get through to a number successfully at one moment, two minutes after I am rung up for the next number, a wrong number, three minutes after I am again rung up for a wrong number, an hour later rung up again for a wrong number, and then occasions on which I ask for a number, do not get it, and find afterwards that someone is sitting by the telephone all the time. The telephone service would be a fruitful subject of discussion, and I think it is fortunate for your Lordships' patience that I do not propose to include it to-night, particularly as I understand there already exists some sort of an Advisory Committee with regard to telephonic matters.

There are remarkable things done by the Post Office as a Government Department, in the way in which it conducts its business. They are methods of conducting its business which would be immediately fatal to the success of any commercial concern, but which the Post Office is able to justify owing to two facts—the fact that it has a monopoly, and the fact that it is a Government Department and therefore cannot be sued like an ordinary person who breaks a contract. Your Lordships' House is fortunate in having several ex-Postmasters-General among its members, and it has been suggested to me that I might perhaps say that in this year or that year the Post Office was not subject to any complaints. My complaint is not against any Postmaster-General, and at any rate not against the present one, in. whom I have great confidence, but it is against the system of the Post Office as a whole. Rightly or wrongly, there is a general impression—and I think when your Lordships have heard some of the instances you will think it is not unfounded—that the Post Office is rather a martinet Department and lives in a world of its own, without any regard to the trouble and the inconvenience caused to those who are compelled to use it, and is very reluctant to listen to complaints or to be moved by them.

I just wish to weary your Lordships with one or two instances of the sort of thing that does, in fact, happen. I should tell your Lordships that this Question has been upon the Paper for a long time, and indeed throughout the life of the late Labour Government, and when reference was made to it in the public Press I was inundated by shoals of correspondence and complaints. Here is a case where a packet, both registered and insured, and containing £10, was addressed to some address in Germany. The packet disappeared. The sender of the packet, to whom £10 was a consideration, made inquiries of the Post Office, and after several months the Post Office adopted a defence which was ingenious and, I dare say, in itself successful. It said that the packet had been seized by the Army of Occupation in the Ruhr. If that was the case, the Post Office can hardly be blamed. Anyhow, the unfortunate sender has lost his £10, and has received no compensation whatever for it.

A publisher wrote to me and said that he had sent off many presentation copies of a new book on July 4, 1924. Of the copies he sent off at least eight were neither received by the addressees nor returned to the sender. They simply disappeared in the post. He also says that several addressed to the London area took a whole week for delivery. Then there are many cases of letters which are clearly and correctly addressed, which are delayed owing to their being carelessly delivered at the wrong address, and perhaps being handed back to the postman the day after, or even the day after that. There are worse cases of letters, which are fully paid and correctly addressed, which are never delivered at all, and these cases are infinitely more numerous than they were before the war. The administration of the Post Office in this respect has become very much worse.

There are also cases, in which the Post Office may plead some excuse, in which a letter is not quite correctly addressed, but in which the address could be ascertained with the utmost ease by looking up any work of reference, even the Post Office's own publication, the Telephone Book. The Post Office now adopts the attitude that it is not its business to deliver a letter to the correct address and to take the trouble to look up any work of reference, even its own Telephone Book. It prefers the trouble and the annoyance, both to itself and the sender, of returning the letter to the sender, and simply saying "insufficiently" or "incorrectly" addressed. That does not seem to be a businesslike proceeding. I cannot see that it benefits the Post Office; it certainly does not benefit the sender of the letter.

I have here a case which is worth noting as illustrating what I said just now about the somewhat peremptory and martinet attitude of the Post Office. It is a case of letters, properly stamped and addressed, never reaching their destination,

and never being heard of again; and. after correspondence, this is the Post Office's official reply, and I invite your Lordship's attention to it:

"The Postmaster-General is not legally liable for the loss, damage, delay, non-delivery or mis-delivery of anything sent by post."

No doubt that is true, but I do ask your Lordships whether any trader could conduct his business on that principle for a single moment, and I do ask you whether that is a sufficient attitude for a public Department to adopt when it has failed to render a public service, and a service which, owing to its monopoly, no one else can render? But that is the official attitude.

Then there are cases, now very frequent, of prolonged delay in delivery. I have a case here of a letter posted in the London area at 7.15 p.m., and delivered at an address in the London area at 1.30 p.m. the next day. These things are not unusual, I have a case here of a telegram handed in. at a country post office at 10.20 a.m., and not delivered in London, fifty miles away, till four hours later. Four hours for a telegram to go fifty miles!

There are other matters somewhat of the same kind. There is a new invention. I do not propose to mention its name, because I have no intention of giving it a free advertisement, nor do I guarantee that it is a good or a bad invention. It is an attachment to a telephone, which certain telephone subscribers desire to use, and which the person who makes the apparatus naturally desires to supply. The Post Office answer is that people are to be prevented from using this apparatus, even though they are. prepared to take the risk of a line going wrong or anything of that kind; they are not to be allowed to use a new invention which is not the Post Office's manufacture. There may be practical reasons for that, though I rather doubt it, but it is all part of the same attitude.

This is rather an amusing instance: In a village there is a collecting box, with the usual slit, which will only take an ordinary letter. An enterprising tradesman in this village desired to post some circulars, which were too large to go into the slit of the village letter box. He therefore waited until the postman came round to collect the letters, and said: "Will you take these circulars?" The postman, no doubt quite correctly, said: "No, I am forbidden to take circulars. I cannot collect anything unless it is put into the box"—and the box was of such a character that he could not put them in. That, again, is another instance of what I call unbusinesslike administration.

Further, there are cases of telegrams sent to a registered address which has been discontinued. The Post Office used to charge a guinea, and I think now charge two guineas a year, for a registered address, and there may, therefore, be something to be said for their refusing to deliver a telegram to an address which is no longer registered. Obviously they have not been paid for that special service, but they know perfectly well for whom the telegram is meant, and the sender did not know that the registered address had been discontinued. It seems a little hard if they cannot, perhaps by charging a fee, avoid such inconvenience. Then there is a good deal of trouble about telegrams sent to telephonic addresses. The Post Office Guide says that you can send a telegram to a telephone subscriber by simply putting his number and exchange. If you try to do that you are told that it is not enough, that you must also put his name, and, if you ask why, the Post Office quite frankly tell you that it is because their disbelief in their system is so great that they cannot guarantee to transmit numbers accurately.

And here is another curious thing, which seems to me not to be founded on any business consideration; probably some of your Lordships have experienced it. You have a telephone at your address, you move to another address, and you desire to have a telephone there. If you should ask to have your telephone moved from your old address to your new-address the Post Office make a charge for it. I do not know what it is, but it is something quite substantial. But if you say you will have a new telephone at the new address they make no charge for it, and you can start with a new telephone. Why you should be charged more for removing the old telephone than for putting in a new one is a thing that really only the Post Office can understand; I am quite unable to give any reasons for it.

My next illustration is, I think, unusual; I will do the Post Office the justice to say that. It is the case of a letter sent from the City to Bloomsbury, a total distance of a couple of miles. That letter took fifty-two hours in transmission. That seems rather a long time. Then there are things which the Post Office might do that it does not always do, such as the stopping of lottery circulars and betting circulars. I know it has often been urged upon them that they should interfere with this, but they have always shown a singular tenderness, even when they know what these circulars are.

Here is a business complaint, and a business complaint of a very serious character—a really remarkable record. I do not wish to give the name of the firm, except, of course, privately, but these are people who do a very large business in what is called the mail order system. That is to say, they advertise extensively, they receive remittances by post, and send off goods in response to those remittances. These people in three years, have suffered a loss by pilferage of the goods they have sent off—not of the postal orders coming to them—of £1,116. That seems to reflect on the administration of the Post Office.

Then there are great inconveniences in the shorter hours. There are smaller towns now in which the only post office in the place closes between one and two o'clock daily, and on the early closing day closes at one o'clock for the rest of the day, so that these towns, after one o'clock in the day, are cut off from telegraphic communication with any other place in the kingdom. In spite of high wages and shorter hours, I cannot help thinking that something might be done to remedy that state of affairs particularly since, as a rule, the telephone exchanges are not closed in this way. In another case which I might quote, a trader tells me that two gold chains were sent to him. value £25, of course with all the precautions of registration and insurance. They were not delivered, and he gets no compensation. And we have to remember the remark-aide contention which the Post Office has made about registered letters. I believe it still makes this contention. It is that if they deliver to the addressee the envelope of a registered letter they have completely fulfilled their contract, although the contents may have been abstracted in transit. That shows a courage of which no private trader would be capable.

There is another small matter which has been mentioned to me and I can imagine that there are some reasons for it. I should also think that some explanation might be made. There is a rule at present, I believe I am right in saying, that a poste restante address—that is to say, letters addressed to a post office—can only be used for three weeks. I can imagine some reasons for that provision, though they are not very sound ones. But I am told that in fact and in practice, it causes great inconvenience to commercial travellers and people of that sort who have no fixed address. They want a fixed centre at which their mail may arrive and they can be sure to get it, but it is impossible for this arrangement to be extended.

Then there is a matter I mention in my Question, the matter of an express fee. The Post Office, some years ago with a great flourish of trumpets, introduced a system by which a letter might be delivered out of course of post on payment of an express fee of threepence when the letter was sent; that is to say, that on arrival at the office of destination it should be sent out, as if it were a telegram, by a special messenger and delivered at once. Naturally, this only applies to comparatively big centres where there are telegraph boys available and where the distances are short. But instance after instance has come to my notice where the Post Office takes this express fee of threepence for a village in the country where they know perfectly well there is no express service, and where the letter gains absolutely nothing by this payment and is delivered in the ordinary course of post next morning. It seems to me that in cases like that the address might be looked up in the Post Office Guide and the sender might be told: "You are only paying your threepence for nothing." But it is not done. I am not sure whether this threepence is refunded. It might be, but the Post Office does not always return money for services which are not rendered.

I wish to call your Lordships' attention to the last part of my Question, which is:—

"… and to ask the Postmaster-General whether he will appoint a Departmental Committee …"

Of course, I am only suggesting that it shall be a Departmental Committee, and that it shall be staffed, not exclusively by Post Office servants, but by business men to make recommendations on these and other methods. The Post Office has undoubtedly difficulties to deal with. It is a very great organisation, and there are difficulties of administration. As soon as any organisation becomes as large as the Poet Office a good deal of strictness in rules is necessary. But I cannot help thinking that it might be organised on rather more businesslike lines. I cannot help thinking also, fearing as I do the tradition of the Post Office, that this might be somewhat assisted if advice were to be given to the Post Office by business men chosen by Chambers of Commerce, or in some other way, who could suggest means of getting over what to the departmental mind seems insuperable.

I should like to suggest that some Committee might be set up permanently which should be an Advisory Committee, not merely in the sense that they should only answer questions submitted to them by the Postmaster-General, but that they should be allowed to meet at their own will and to take the initiative in submitting recommendations to him. I think such a Committee would help to bring the Post Office more closely into touch with those whom it professes to serve. I am convinced that a great many of the matters I have mentioned to your Lordships could be solved by business people with ordinary business instincts, and that they have not really the insuperable character which the Department attributes to them. I should like to know whether the Postmaster-General would not consider the setting up of a Committee of this character, thereby making the Post Office more useful than it is. We cannot do without the Post Office. We do not want to break its monopoly, but I think we desire that the services for which we pay should be rendered, and that when they fail to be rendered some measure of justice should be meted out to those who have suffered. I beg to ask my Question.

How comes it that the second-grade and third-grade roads are in the deplorable state in which we find them at present in many parts of the country? There are many reasons, but the main reason is that the local authorities are unable to exercise powers of transferring certain heavy traffic for which these roads are unsuited or of closing certain portions of the roads. Possibly the noble Viscount who will reply to me from the Front Bench will draw my attention to subsection (4) of Section 7 of the Roads Act, 1920, which gives this very power to the local authorities. But the local authorities have not been able to put this section into operation, not only on account of the various difficulties with which it is surrounded but also on account of the expense. Some few years ago a local authority attempted to put the section into operation at a cost of some £2,000, and, as a result, other local authorities have refrained from doing anything of the kind, contenting themselves with doing the best they can for the roads under their control with the amount of money placed at their disposal.

Let me give an illustration of what occurs. A short time ago a certain road, about a mile and a half in length, had become broken up owing to the passage of a heavy motor omnibus. The local authorities would have liked to divert the route. The proprietors of the omnibus said that the route was unprofitable and that the loss to them would be something like 5 s. Per week in fares. But the road had to be reconstructed at a cost of £5,000, one-half of which fell upon the ratepayers. Thus the ratepayers in that locality were paying many pounds perweek

in order that the omnibus proprietor might make some 5 s. a week. It may be asked how the road came to be in this condition. A road gets into this condition because these heavy vehicles, averaging anything between five and ten tons in weight, are, according to the evidence of surveyors throughout the country—and upon this question they are unanimous—faulty in mechanical construction.

It is true that when they are fully loaded and moving at a slow rate they do comparatively little damage, but when, towards the end of their journey, having delivered most of their passengers, they are comparatively empty and are trying to make up speed, the tail end of the vehicle, if I may use that expression, goes bump, bump, upon these lightly built roads and beats them into what is known technically as pot holes. If these pot holes could be treated without delay in the proper way by being filled up with tar metalling, and then if the road were tar sprayed in order to bind the whole surface together, comparatively little damage would be done, but the local authorities cannot do this because tar-spraying is a very expensive matter and they receive only one-quarter of the grant for this purpose.

There is another direction in which matters might be improved. If these vehicles were compelled to carry pneumatic or semi-pneumatic tyres there would be a great improvement. It will be said that this would occasionally cause some delay. That is, I believe, the only possible objection. Pneumatic tyres might be costly, but if sufficient time were given for the old tyres to wear out and the proprietors were only then required to put on new tyres of a stated pattern no great damage would be done to the owners of these omnibuses. It may be urged that eventually the expense would come upon the general public, that the consumer always pays. That is quite true, but surely it would be better that some infinitesimal charge should come back to the consumer than that the ratepayers, who already pay so large a proportion of the expense, should be compelled to make it good.

Let me give another illustration of what takes place in consequence of weight being placed upon roads that are unfit to carry it. In the district in which I live, the Chiltern Hills, there are numerous lightly-built, narrow and tortuous roads and considerable steep ascents and descents. In one place, where about half a mile of road had just been reconstructed and was in good repair, the following day a large tractor drawing a couple of trailers went down that half mile of road and practically broke it up. There was a pit at the bottom of the hill from which heavy ballast was being taken, and it suited the proprietors to cart it up this hill rather than take an alternative road of some three quarters of a mile that was at their disposal. As a result, in the space of three weeks, the road had more taken out of it than would have been taken out of it in as many months had conditions as to weight and rate of speed been different.

Now let me pass on to the question of speed. Again, I may be told from the Front Bench that the speed of these vehicles is limited to twelve miles per hour. That is perfectly true, but they not infrequently, on certain stretches of road, go at the rate of twenty and twenty-four miles per hour. I recently had a letter from the experienced chairman of an important road board. He stated that if the vehicles never exceeded a speed of twelve miles an hour the cost of upkeep of the roads in his district would be one quarter of what it is now. That is a very bold statement. It is frequently said that the public have the matter in their own hands and that the police and the magistrates deal with this question. The police force in this country performs its difficult duties, which call for so much tact, extremely well, but I venture to assert that if the police force of this country were quadrupled they could not succeed in apprehending one in a hundred cases of vehicles exceeding the speed limit. Perhaps some noble Lords present may have been familiar in days gone by with the King's Regulations for the Army in which there is a paragraph concerning discipline which points out that it is not the severity, but the certainty of punishment which acts as a deterrent from crime. Naturally drivers, knowing the chances are a hundred to one in their favour, take the risk. Then it is urged that the police are not backed up by the magistrates. I can only speak for the Bench on which I sit. As a rule, when we know that the driver of the vehicle is in the employ of a rich firm, who will presumably pay his fine, we invariably impose a very heavy fine indeed, but, on the other hand, where we know that the driver is a poor man or in the employ of a poor firm, and that in all probability he will have to pay the fine himself, as a matter of expediency we consider the possibility of throwing the man and his family upon the rates, and also common humanity, and impose only a small fine.

It may be asked: What is the remedy for this excessive speed? I have no remedy to offer. I leave that with the Government. But if I am asked why it is that the speed limit is invariably exceeded, it is because men in business are compelled, in self defence, to exact from their drivers the passing-over of a certain route within a given time, or the delivery of a certain number of parcels or packages within a certain time. The drivers are frequently delayed by customers en. route, and again, in certain parts of the country, on certain days, owing to their having to pass through market towns or other places where there is a glut of traffic, they are obliged to make up for loss of speed when they come to a stretch of road where they can do so.

There is one more point in close connection with the roads that I wish to bring to your Lordships' notice. On many of these narrow roads, which were never built for the traffic that they now have to carry, there is a considerable amount of cottage property, and this heavy traffic, going along those roads, particularly on certain soils and in certain states of weather, shake the foundations of the cottages, cause fissures in the walls, loosen frames and chimney-pots, and do other damage, and the unfortunate owner, who already has to pay heavily in rates for the roads, is having his cottage property destroyed at the same time. I do not think that any noble Lord will deny that that is a great grievance to property owners. It is a great grievance, particularly at a time when certain Acts with regard to small property are being extended for a number of years, with the result that many of us who, from patriotism or humanity in many cases, allowed these cottages to pass into the hands of tenants whom we did not want during the war, and now require these cottages for our own servants, are unable to regain possession because it is well known that in most places it is impossible to furnish alternative accommodation. So we are hit in both ways.

There is one other matter which I would like to bring to your Lordships notice, and that is the question of the railways in conjunction with the roads. In recent years much of the heavy goods traffic formerly taken by the railways has been carried by the roads, and particularly the main roads of the country, which cost between £3,000 and £10,000 per mile for construction only. A considerable amount of that traffic, which is now borne by the main roads at great expense to the ratepayers, might be put back upon the railways by the construction of containers for certain classes of goods. That has already been done in the case of furniture vans; and by means of simple mechanical contrivances, and by good will on the part of the traders of this country, and by incentives in the case of the railways, much of the traffic which is now upon the roads might be re-transferred to the railways.

My speech has travelled over wide grounds, and may I be permitted for a few moments to summarise what I have said? My suggestion is that greater power should be given to local surveyors, under the authority of their district councils, to divert heavy traffic from roads unsuitable for the carriage of that traffic; that an increase should be given as regards the tar-spraying grant to the local authorities; that every encouragement should be given to the railways, on the one hand, and to the traders of the country, on the other, to get back some of the heavy traffic from the roads to the railways. I can imagine that whoever replies from the Front Bench will say that this is a very large subject dealing with the whole of the roads of the country, and one in which some hundreds of millions of money is concerned. I concur. Therefore I ask the Government to set up a committee of experts on roads, railways, mechanical construction of heavy vehicles, and to add to these a certain number of ratepayers' representatives and a certain number of the representatives of trade. I consider that such a committee would be able to furnish a vast amount of valuable knowledge to the Government. Finally, let me say that, this is a great national question and has nothing whatever to do with Party in any sense of the word, and that there is no reason why any noble Lord, sitting in any part of this House, should not support me in the Division Lobby on this matter. I beg to move.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.

Moved, That the Bill be now read 2^a .—( The Earl of Birkenhead.)

On Question, Bill read 2^a .

Moved, That the Bill be referred to the Standing Joint Committee on Indian Affairs.—( The Earl of Birkenhead.)

On Question, Motion agreed to, and ordered accordingly.

Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.

Moved, That the Bill be now read 2^a .—( Viscount Burnham.)

On Question, Bill read 2^a , and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

House adjourned at ten minutes before eight o'clock.