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UK Parliament
Foreign Affairs
31 January 1939
Volume 343
Motion made, and
Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[
Captain Margesson.]
4.15 p.m.
Mr. Attlee
I made a request
to the Prime Minister for an early reassembling of the House in order
to discuss the Spanish question. The Prime Minister was unable to
accede to my desire, but we have asked to-day for a Debate on this
subject because we believe it is one of profound importance and one
which is disturbing the minds of a vast number of people in this
country. I believe, first of all, that there is a growing disturbance
in the minds of the people of this country at the unmerited
sufferings of the women and children of Spain, sufferings through
aerial bombardment, through hunger, and all the incidents which
necessarily accompany the driving out of large populations from their
homes. I believe, secondly, that there is a growing appreciation in
this country of the vital importance of the Spanish trouble to the
future of liberty and democracy in the world. I believe that more and
more people, who at first were inclined to look on this matter as a
purely Spanish question, are coming to understand the importance of
the Spanish struggle in the general European situation, the dangerous
results which may follow from this prolonged intervention by
continental Powers in the affairs of the Peninsula and the
repercussions which they may have on the security of this country and
the security of France.
We have had to-day
an account by the Prime Minister of his visit to Italy. That visit
took place at a time when the Italian Government were openly and
actively intervening in the Spanish struggle. The Prime Minister told
us that Signor Mussolini expressed his willingness at all times to
intervene in favour of peace. The people of this country are more
impressed by the fact that for the last two and a half years he has
been intervening in war. The Prime Minister said that they expressed
their regret at the tension between France and Italy. That tension
has been caused by a campaign of almost unexampled violence in the
Italian Press carried on before the Prime Minister's visit, slackened
slightly during his visit and rising again directly the Prime
Minister's visit had ended. This visit, of which the Prime Minister
has told us to-day, seems to have accomplished nothing whatever. The
only thing of value was to show that there was a feeling in Italy
among the masses of the people that they desired better relations
with the British people. We, too, on this side desire better
relations between the peoples. As far as the conversations between
the statesmen went, there seems to have been nothing which came out
of them which was not known before, and nothing effective was done.
But the point which strikes us is that throughout these conversations
the real vital matter was not discussed, namely, the question of what
is occurring now in Spain and the campaign which Signor Mussolini is
carrying on there, although all the time his Government is a member
of the Nonintervention Committee.
The Prime Minister
made a speech the other day in Birmingham in which he reviewed the
world situation. It was very remarkable that there was no allusion to
the Spanish question beyond an oblique reference to General Franco,
no allusion to the sufferings of the Spanish people, and no allusion
whatever to the fact that a war has been carried on there for two and
a half years with ever increasing aggressive action by two of the
great Powers of Europe. I think the Prime Minister will find that
there is a growing feeling of disgust at the attitude taken by the
British Government throughout the whole of this struggle. When we
debated the Non-intervention Agreement the Prime Minister reiterated
his conviction of the good faith and good will of Signor Mussolini.
He has returned from Italy with that conviction strengthened. It is
difficult to see on what facts his conviction is based. I have seen
no solitary instance of conspicuous good faith by the government of
Italy, and although we have assurances, constant assurances, we never
have any performance. On every occasion when the matter of the
relations of this country and Italy have come up, from both sides of
the House the point has been made that we ought to have some definite
action, and not merely depend on words. When we debated this on 2nd
November the Prime Minister said that we had assurances from Signor
Mussolini that all remaining Italian forces were being withdrawn when
the Non-intervention Plan came into operation. It has not come into
operation, and when we ask why it has not come into operation we are
told that it is because General Franco will not accept it.
Apparently,
General Franco has a veto on the whole proceedings of the
Non-Intervention Committee. The Government of Spain has no such veto.
The Government of Spain has withdrawn all the volunteers. [HON.
MEMBERS: "No," and "Yes."] Some people say "No,"
but I prefer to take the verdict of the League of Nations Inquiry.
There is nothing whatever to prevent Signor Mussolini withdrawing his
troops from Spain whether General Franco likes it or not. They are of
no use to him unless they are fighting on his side. It is more a
matter of the will of Signor Mussolini. Secondly, we had an assurance
that no further troops would be sent to Spain; that compensatory air
forces would not be sent to Spain to replace the 10,000 men who were
withdrawn. He called this a considerable contribution to the
elimination of the Spanish question as a menace to peace. There is
abundant evidence that Italian forces and munitions sent to Spain
have, to say the least of it, been kept up to strength. We are
getting lots of curious interpretations of phrases in regard to this
Spanish matter. We have heard a great deal of "settlement in
Spain," and what that might mean. It might mean that the sending
of reinforcements to replace casualties is not considered to be
sending further troops to Spain. But there is not the slightest doubt
that in the last few months very considerable forces have been sent
to Spain. On 14th December the Undersecretary of State admitted that
there had been forces sent, and he said that they did not mean more
than replacements. Replacements, in view of the heavy fighting going
on, means a very large body of troops. In fact, during the last two
months there has been an ever increasing pressure from Italy with the
avowed object of winning the war for General Franco. All attempts to
minimise the Italian contribution to the offensive in Catalonia is
merely absurd in view of the declaration made in Italy itself. There
are the statements made by Signor Mussolini and by General Franco.
You have telegrams exchanged:
"At this moment, when the imperishable comradeship of blood has
once again stood the decisive test, I send you, together with my
greetings, my most earnest wishes for the future of your people."
That is Signor
Mussolini, and General Franco said:
"I am proud to number among my troops the magnificent
Blackshirts who at the side of their Spanish comrades have written
these glorious pages in the fight against international communism."
We have, in fact, in full action a corps of four divisions—one
completely Italian, and the other three having large proportions of
Italian troops. In that corps of four divisions more than half the
casualties are Italian, and on the top of that the General is
promoted for his services by Signor Mussolini. The fall of Barcelona
is hailed as a great Italian victory; the determination to ensure the
victory of General Franco is openly avowed, and was, as a matter of
fact, accepted by the Prime Minister as the basis of his talks with
Signor Mussolini. Perhaps he will tell us whether he ever raised that
matter. After all, he was visiting a co-signatory to the
Non-intervention Agreement. Two non-interventionists met. They surely
did not part, without discussing a matter of such mutual interest to
them both? I am sure that the Prime Minister told Signor Mussolini
exactly what we mean by non-intervention. I understand that the
conversations were extremely frank, and I think we ought to know what
Signor Mussolini said in reply. But, really, in face of the facts, is
it not ridiculous to try and maintain that you have anything here but
intervention on a large scale? I am not concerned in denying that
there has been some intervention on the side of the Government of
Spain. Arms have been sent and there have been foreign volunteers,
but they were never sent by their Governments; and they have been
withdrawn. The result of the whole of this one-sided non-intervention
has undoubtedly meant giving an enormous preponderance in material to
General Franco.
You have only to
read the figures given in the French newspaper "Le Temps,"
which has generally been on the side of General Franco, describing
the scarcity of munitions on the side of the Spanish
Republic—apparently in artillery it is one to nine, in anti-tank
guns one to 20, and in machine-guns one to five—and the enormous
preponderance of foreign airmen in the prisoners taken by the
Republicans, to realise the immense force that has been put at the
disposal of General Franco as compared with the mere trickle of
munitions that has gone through to the Republican side. Undoubtedly,
the non-intervention system has worked in a one-sided direction. I am
amazed by the indifference of the Prime Minister to the fate of the
British plan for the withdrawal of volunteers. When I recall the
Debates in the House, the enthusiasm for the plan, and how we were
told that it was a great triumph to have formulated the plan and to
have got agreement on it, I am amazed that the Prime Minister allows
the plan to be defeated just because it does not suit General Franco.
Ever since we found that non-intervention was a sham, we have
demanded that the Spanish Government should be given their rights
under international law, and the Government have steadfastly refused;
and they have refused on one basis only, namely, that if there were
not non-intervention, there would be a widening of the struggle that
might lead to a general European conflict. Only the other day, when I
again put forward that demand, the Prime Minister made the same
excuse. But that is not what he said last November, for then he
stated:
"If the nations of Europe escaped a great catastrophe in the
acute Czechoslovakian crisis, surely nobody can imagine that, with
that recollection fresh in their minds, they are going to knock their
heads together over Spain. In my own mind I am perfectly clear that
the Spanish question is no longer a menace to the peace of Europe."
That was the right
hon. Gentleman's view in November. Apparently the Spanish question is
not a menace to the peace of Europe when the Prime Minister wants to
go and make friends with Signor Mussolini, but it remains a menace if
anybody wants justice for the Spanish Government. Will the Prime
Minister explain just what is the difference between the situation
to-day and the situation when he spoke in November? Will he explain
why he again replied to me that the raising of the non-intervention
plan might lead to war in January, whereas in November last he said
that the Spanish question was not a menace to the peace of Europe?
Will he also tell us why the continued intervention of Signor
Mussolini is not likely to lead to a spreading of the conflict,
whereas if anybody says "Arms for the Republic," it is
likely to lead to a spreading of the conflict? In the same speech to
which I have referred, the Prime Minister went on to make the
following remark:
"In the realm of foreign affairs one thing generally leads to
another."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd November, 1938; col. 2110,
Vol. 340.]
That is a profound
truth. Manchuria led to Abyssinia, and Abyssinia to Spain. The
reoccupation of the Rhineland led to the occupation of Austria, and
the occupation of Austria to the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. The
chain of events does not stop there. Successful aggression in
Abyssinia leads to a demand for Jibuti and ain the Suez Canal.
Successful intervention in Spain leads to a demand for Tunis and
perhaps Corsica. Successes in Central Europe may lead to other
demands. One thing leads to another. Every acquiescence in aggression
leads to more aggression, and every acquiescence in wrong leads to
more wrong. Every acquiescence in the bombing of British ships leads
to the bombing of more British ships. Every breach of international
law leads to more infractions and every retreat leads to another
retreat. The action of the British Government throughout the whole of
the Spanish conflict, with the solitary exception of the Nyon
Agreement, has been a definite encouragement to aggression and
breaches of faith. Why should General Franco stop bombing British
ships when he knows that nothing will happen if he continues?
I would like to
ask a specific question with regard to that matter. As long ago as
last February, the Government sent a note to the Burgos authorities
stating that His Majesty's Government reserved to themselves the
right without any further notice to take such retaliatory action in
the event of a recurrence of these attacks as might be required by or
be appropriate to the particular case. That arose out of an attack
made on a British vessel on the high seas and outside the three-mile
limit. On 19th January, the "Stanbrook" was attacked by
aircraft seven or eight miles out at sea. What action has been taken,
or what action is contemplated, in regard to that attack?
But the point is
this. Why should Signor Mussolini cease to intervene in Spain when
his active intervention leads to a further visit from the Prime
Minister? Signor Mussolini knows that whatever he does, it makes no
difference to the British Government's attitude. Why should he keep
faith? The Prime Minister's conviction does not rest on facts; it is
pure faith. Here one touches the essential vice of the Prime
Minister's attitude. The whole of the people of this country desire
peace. Nothing could be more stupid than to say that this or that
section seeks a war, or would be willing lightly to be involved in
war; but to announce generally to the world that war is such a
terrible thing that anybody can do anything they like and count us
out, is not the way to promote peace. I suggest that William Pitt, to
whom the Prime Minister referred in his speech the other day, hardly
ever, if ever—I think never—took that line. But that is precisely
what the Prime Minister does. When any suggestion is made from this
side that the Non-intervention Agreement should be carried out, the
right hon. Gentleman says "If you do anything of that kind, it
may lead to a general conflict." To follow that line is, in
effect, to give a carte blanche to other Powers to do exactly as they
please. For many years this country had a policy by which it refused
to enter into definite commitments on the Continent. Whether it was a
wise policy, or an unwise policy, it was a policy that was carried
out for very many years; but it never took the line of making a
negative commitment, of saying that whatever happens this country can
never take any action. That is the vice of the policy of unilateral
appeasement; and however much the right hon. Gentleman may try to
deny it, that is the line he takes.
We claim that the
Spanish Republic, which is not defeated, has the right to receive
arms. The only possible excuse for taking that right away from them
would have been if it was to be applied strictly on both sides. No
one pretends that is being done; no one suggests that there is not
active intervention in Spain. It may be that some will say, "In
existing circumstances, even if that right were restored to the
Spanish Government, they would not get any more arms than now."
If that be so, to give the right could not lead to the general
conflict which the right hon. Gentleman fears. On the other hand, if
it is not so, then clearly we are weighting the dice against the
Spanish Government all the time. The sufferings of the Spanish people
have called forth an immense amount of sympathy for them in this
country, and I would like the Government to be doing more than they
are doing on behalf of the men, women and children in the devastated
areas of Spain. It would be easy to stir the emotions of the House by
giving the reports of eyewitnesses as to what has happened in
Barcelona and in Catalonian territory generally, to say nothing of
other parts of Spain. No one can read unmoved the stories of the
flight, in winter time, of this hapless, hungry population. I would
like the Government to do a great deal more for these people,
especially when we read that in their retreat they were subjected to
attack from the air.
I have stressed
the point that whatever General Franco does, nothing ever happens, so
that there is no incentive for him to desist from his actions,
whether directed against British ships, British men, or against
unarmed civilians. We have had reports on the bombing of undefended
cities; have any steps been taken with regard to that matter? It is
true that, whatever the Spanish Government do, it is never of any
help to them. They sent away all the foreign volunteers, anticipating
the British plan; but they never had any acknowledgment of that, and
it had no effect whatever on the Prime Minister's attitude. Whatever
consent they may give, and however loyal they may be, there is no
acknowledgment.
There is a growing
feeling in this country that the Government have made up their mind
that they want General Franco to win, that non-intervention
throughout has been a sham, and that what the Government have done
has been to give a free hand to the enemies of the Republic. But I
think there is to-day a growing recognition of the dangers of the
policy of the Prime Minister. The right hon. Gentleman says that he
has been assured by the Italian Government that they seek no
territorial acquisitions in Spain, and that they will withdraw their
troops at the end of hostilities. Does that mean very much in these
days? One can get control over a country nowadays without making
territorial acquisitions. If a Government is in dependence on another
Power, it is quite unnecessary for that Power to occupy the
territory.
I believe that
many people in this country are realising that if Spain became a mere
dependency of the Axis Powers, the strategic consequences to this
country and to France would be very serious. Let it be remembered
that those strategic consequences are being pointed out with the
utmost frankness in the Italian Press. Statements are made that now
France is being cut off from her overseas possessions, that Italian
ships will hold the seas, that the way through Spain will be closed,
that pressure will be brought to bear on France and that once again,
France will have three frontiers to defend. If General Franco wins,
he will have won through German and Italian aid. There is already
very great Italian and German penetration in Spain. My hon. Friend
the Member for Gower (Mr. Grenfell) asked a question with regard to
the arms sent to Vigo. There have been many questions with regard to
air forces along the Pyrenees. There is there a threat to France, and
a threat to this country, too. The distance from the north coast of
Spain to the south coast of Britain is not too far for aircraft.
However much you
may believe that Herr Hitler sincerely wishes peace, and we all hope
that he may wish for peace, the fact remains that the Prime Minister
thinks it necessary, in view of the dangers of the situation, to urge
this country to arm more and more and the position in the Spanish
Peninsula is a factor of immense importance in estimating any
potential grouping of the great Powers of Europe. We have to face
that situation to-day because, under the leadership of the National
Government, the League of Nations system has been thrown over
altogether. We are back in a world of armed anarchy. But I would like
the House to consider for a moment what, in the event of any
hostilities, a hostile Spain would mean to this country, to our trade
routes through the Mediterranean, to our trade routes through the
Atlantic, through the menace not only from submarines but also from
the air? What would have been the effect upon our people—there are
many in the House who will be able to tell us—if we had had a
completely hostile Spain during the last Great War? It is worth while
remembering that just those elements which back General Franco,
backed the Central Powers in the last War, and that just those
elements which back the Spanish Republic, were the friends of this
country and kept Spain neutral.
The Prime Minister
was describing the other day at a banquet the powerful additions made
to the British Fleet in the last year or two, but these would be
entirely offset if the axis Powers were given a strategic advantage
on the Spanish Peninsula, just as all the exertions of the Secretary
of State for Air and the Secretary of State for War have been offset
by the disappearance of Czechoslovakia. The Prime Minister believes
that time is on our side in this race in armaments which we are in
now and which is the direct result of the policy of the National
Government. I say that the strategic position of this country has
been worsening year by year. Quite apart from what are called
ideological conceptions, an independent Spain is vital to the safety
of France and of this country. I cannot understand the delusion which
imagines that if General Franco wins, with Italian and German aid, he
immediately become independent. I think that is a ridiculous
proposition. I believe that the Spanish Republic has, in fact, been
fighting the battle of democracy and freedom against aggression. I
believe that resistance in Spain has warded off a crisis which might
have come to us. I believe that all the time we have played the
ignominous part of holding the hands of Spain while she was attacked
by an aggressor and preventing her defending herself. I do not
believe that the Spanish people are conquered. I believe that they
can yet be victorious. But we do demand that this country should
cease the hypocritical farce of non-intervention, and restore to the
Spanish Government that right which is theirs inherently as the
Government of a sovereign State.
4.50 p.m.
The Prime Minister
(Mr. Chamberlain)
In the
observations which have just been made by the Leader of the
Opposition he has confined himself to a single topic, the topic of
Spain, varied only by a few acid comments upon the visit to Rome,
from which I derived the impression that the right hon. Gentleman was
against it. As regards Spain, he touched upon two aspects of the
conflict there. One of them was concerned with the matter of general
policy. On that, of course, it is impossible for us to agree with
him. On the other aspect, which I might call the humanitarian aspect,
there is no difference between him and us. No one can read the
accounts of the pitiful procession of wounded men, old men, women
and children, some of them mutilated, struggling up the precipitous
mountains which divide France from Spain under conditions of bitter
hardship, of snow, wind and rain, and then being herded together in
such shelters as can be provided for them on the other side—no one,
I say, can read of that, without feeling once more what a terrible
thing war is, even in its secondary effects. Everyone, I should hope,
will feel when reading those accounts, how much more terrible it
would be if the area of conflict should be extended and if the people
and the children of other countries were to be compelled to undergo
sufferings like those now being endured by the people of Spain. I
think everybody must have been touched by the account of the help
which is being given by the French to those unfortunate refugees.
Miss Rathbone
Not by ourselves.
The Prime Minister
It must indeed be
a difficult position for those people in the south of France, not
well off themselves, with very little accommodation to offer, to find
themselves in the presence of these thousands and thousands of
strangers coming in and making an appeal to their humanity. It does
seem to me that, in that situation, they have done all that any
people could do in such circumstances. All honour to them. We,
however, are further off. We are not in geographical proximity to the
Pyrenees and to the people who are now so much in need of help, but
what the British Government can do to help, they are doing and will
continue to do. We have already made a contribution through the
International Commission for the assistance of child refugees from
Spain. We have paid £20,000 to the Commission and we have put a
further £20,000 at their disposal, and as and when the need arises,
I have no doubt we shall be ready to do more. I understand that the
French Government have arranged with the Spanish Government for an
area near the frontier where refugees can be concentrated, and if
they can obtain assurances from the Spanish Government that this area
will not be used for military purposes, I hope it may be possible
also to obtain assurances from General Franco that this area will be
spared from attack.
There is also a
representative of the International Commission going to Catalonia to
try to arrange with the Spanish Government for a safety zone for
women, children and old people, and in that case also I hope that
similar assurances may be available from both sides. Inquiries are
being made as to the possibility of arranging for refugees who have
been separated from their homes by the fighting line, to return if
they wish to do so. I may say that His Majesty's Government have
already addressed an appeal to General Franco to exercise all
possible humanity in the circumstances which prevail in Catalonia.
Probably hon. Members heard before the fall of Barcelona that many
people anticipated that its fall might be followed by a terrible
massacre. Nothing of the kind has happened?
Miss Wilkinson
What about the
refugees?
The Prime Minister
I should have
thought that hon. Members opposite might have given thanks.
Miss Wilkinson
What about the
refugees who were bombed? Are you not going to answer about that?
The Prime Minister
I have already
answered about the refugees and I have no further information to give
about them.
Miss Wilkinson
Is that your reply
to the question?
The Prime Minister
I do not think
that an exchange of personal conversation across the Floor of the
House is an advantage to the House in having the information which it
requires, and the hon. Lady will perhaps wait until later when she
may have an opportunity of joining in the Debate.
That is all I have
to say on that particular aspect of the question and I turn now to
the general question of Government policy in Spain. Intervention in
Spain had taken place before the setting up of the Non-Intervention
Committee and I think perhaps that is a fact which is sometimes
forgotten by hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite when they are
speaking of events which have happened or are happening in Spain.
Intervention had taken place. [HON. MEMBERS: "On Franco's
side."] We regret that that intervention should have taken
place, and we have done our best, not only to prevent more
intervention taking place, but to try, if possible, to get those
foreign troops who had entered Spain, withdrawn. We made it clear
from the beginning that our fear was that if the policy of
intervention were continued and increased, sooner or later it was
bound to lead to an extension of the conflict, and it has been our
aim to prevent that extension. I am satisfied that if our policy was
right, as I believe it to have been right all along, now is certainly
not the moment to change it.
We have heard a
great deal of comment and criticism upon the working of the
Non-Intervention scheme from the right hon. Gentleman and others. He
keeps on telling us that intervention is still taking place and he
suggests that we are maintaining that there is no intervention today.
We have never maintained any such thing. The right hon. Gentleman has
himself admitted that there has been intervention, not on one side
only, but his chief complaint has been that there has been more
intervention on the side to which he is opposed than on the side that
he and his friends favour. I think we are entitled to ask the right
hon. Gentleman and those who agree with him, when they make these
complaints about intervention, to tell us what it is that they would
do.
Mr. Attlee
I should suggest
that instead of keeping up the ban on the Spanish Government, we
should restore to the Spanish Government the right to get their arms
when and where they can, and that is the demand that we have made all
the way through.
The Prime Minister
I think it must be
pretty obvious now that if intervention on the side of the Spanish
Government were to take place, it would have to take place on a very
considerable scale if it were to alter the state of affairs in Spain
at the moment. The attitude of the party opposite seems to be to
imagine that it would be possible to have considerable intervention
on the side of the Spanish Government without any corresponding
activity on the other side. So far as this country is concerned, the
effect of allowing the Government in Spain to purchase arms would be
very little, because we ourselves, obviously, want all the arms that
are in our possession for our own protection.
Mr. Shinwell
Why did you export
them last year?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman
is always very anxious to intervene and ask questions when we on this
side are speaking, but he very much resents any interruption when he
is speaking.
Mr. Shinwell
rose—
The Prime Minister
With regard to—
Mr. Shinwell
The right hon.
Gentleman cannot face it.
The Prime Minister
With regard to
supplies from other countries, we cannot control those, and it must
be for other Governments to decide their own action and their own
policy in the light of the circumstances which prevail. The right
hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition appears to accuse me of
some sort of inconsistency, because—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"]—if
I may be allowed to finish my sentence—some time ago I said that I
no longer considered the situation in Spain to be a menace to Europe
and because I now say it would be a menace to Europe if intervention
took place. I fail altogether to see where the inconsistency lies. I
do not consider that the situation in Spain is at this moment a
menace to the peace of Europe, but most emphatically I do consider
that if we abandoned the policy of non-intervention, and if
intervention on any considerable scale took place in favour of the
Spanish Government, that would mean that the Spanish situation would
be a menace to Europe.
Mr. Attlee
I never suggested
that intervention should take place or that anyone should intervene,
but merely the right of the Spanish Government to buy their arms when
and where they chose. You have at the present moment, as the right
hon. Gentleman well knows, intervention taking place on a great scale
from Italy. Am I to understand that intervention from that side does
not matter and that it is only intervention on the other side that
matters?
The Prime Minister
No; I never said
that, and I never meant it. [Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker
The right hon.
Gentleman has been asked a question, and he is not allowed to answer
it. We cannot carry on the Debate in this way.
The Prime Minister
The right hon.
Gentleman has not brought forward any evidence to show that
intervention is taking place on a great scale, unless he means, as,
of course, we all know, that Italian troops are fighting and that
Italian material is being used in the course of the conflict. But
intervention took place before the Non-Intervention Committee was set
up, as I have already said, and it would be a mistake to think that
nothing is going through to the other side. The right hon.
Gentleman's complaint is once more that there is more going through
on one side than on the other. I repeat that in my view a reversal of
the policy of non-intervention must inevitably lead to the extension
of the conflict in Europe, and that is against the policy which has
been followed and will be followed by His Majesty's Government, whose
efforts all through this conflict have been to maintain an attitude
of impartiality. The Opposition, who certainly have never attempted
to pretend that they were impartial, have made no mention this
afternoon of the question of belligerent rights.
Miss Wilkinson
But I did.
The Prime Minister
The hon. Lady has
said so many things that perhaps I did not hear that. Let us touch
for a moment on this question of belligerent rights. There was a firm
conviction on the part of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite,
when we announced that we were going to pay a visit to Rome, that we
were going to do so for the purpose of granting belligerent rights to
General Franco. They protested in the most violent terms against any
such idea, and I can only conclude from that fact that they thought
that if we did grant belligerent rights to General Franco, that would
be very much to his advantage. We did not do so. And it is clear that
while hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite think that our
partiality has been shown to General Franco, the supporters of
General Franco are highly indignant because of our partiality to the
Spanish Government in refusing to grant General Franco belligerent
rights. Signor Mussolini, in the course of the conversations in Rome,
expressed the view that it was absurd to call a man who was in
possession of three-quarters of the Spanish territory a rebel, but,
of course, the reason why we refused to grant belligerent rights to
General Franco was not on that ground at all. It was on the ground
that this was not a civil war merely, but that the matter was
complicated by that intervention of foreign Powers on one side or the
other, and it was on that account that we declined to grant
belligerent rights. When the war is over, I think it will be
generally recognised that, although at one moment we may have seemed
to favour one side and at another moment we may have seemed to favour
the other side, yet throughout we have endeavoured to maintain an
attitude of strict impartiality, and that at any rate we can claim
consistency in this, that our actions have backed up our desire, so
frequently expressed, that this Spanish question should be settled by
the Spaniards themselves.
The right hon.
Gentleman opposite has drawn a terrifying picture of the threat to
British and French interests if General Franco should win a victory.
That is based upon the assumption that after that victory Italy or
Germany or both would be found in possession of Spanish territory.
Mr. Attlee
No.
The Prime Minister
I am very glad to
hear that denial. Do I understand that that is withdrawn?
Mr. Attlee
I did not state
that. I expressly said that whether they occupied territory or not,
that was not the real point. The point was whether the Spanish
Peninsula would be under the control of the Axis Powers.
The Prime Minister
That is a very
much more vague position than we have had on previous occasions. We
have constantly been told that ports would be occupied, that forts
were to be built, that attacks on the Balearic Islands would take
place from Italy, and that there would be aerodromes in her
possession, and it was thought that it would be a great menace to
British and French interests. I am very glad to hear that they are
coming down now to something less specific and perhaps less
formidable.
Mr. Attlee
The right hon.
Gentleman has really, quite unintentionally, no doubt, misunderstood
my argument. Obviously occupation of Spanish territory by the Axis
Powers would he extremely dangerous to this country—I am not
leaving that out as a possibility—but my argument was addressed to
this, that whether that was so or not, the economic domination or, if
you like, the ideological domination of Spain by either Herr Hitler
or Signor Mussolini, or the general subservience of that country,
whether territory was occupied or not, would be dangerous to the
strategic position of this country.
The Prime Minister
I take note of
what I will call the modified argument of the right hon. Gentleman,
but I confess that it is a more difficult one to answer. Every
Government of every country in the world may choose to take sides on
one or other of the different ideological notions, and we cannot
prevent them, but what really the right hon. Gentleman's statement
amounts to is this. He says, "I do not believe these assurances
that have been given to you by Signor Mussolini and Herr Hitler."
[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] That is accepted by hon.
Members opposite. I think the worst way in which to ensure that a man
who has given his word should keep it would be to tell him, "I
do not believe for a moment one word you say, and I am going to make
all my assumptions and take all my actions on the assumption that you
are not going to keep it." I do no think that would be a wise
way, apart from anything else, of carrying on diplomacy; but I am
certain that the right hon. Gentleman is mistaken. Let me remind him
that only the other day, when we were in Rome—as I said this
afternoon in the account which I read to the House—we received
again fresh, repeated assurances from Signor Mussolini and Count
Ciano confirming what they had already told us, that they had nothing
to ask of Spain after the war was over; and, of course, I had similar
assurances from Herr Hitler.
I ask myself, Why
is it the habit of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite always to
take the worst possible view of the motives and intentions of other
people with whose views they disagree? If they go on frightening
themselves by filling their imaginations with improbable hypotheses
they make themselves ridiculous. They throw a gloomy aspect on
affairs still more by constantly depreciating our own efforts to
re-arm ourselves. They leave out of account any suggestion that we
have vast resources, although everybody knows it, which probably, if
we were ever engaged in a life and death struggle, would ensure us
victory in the end. They have taken no account either of the
alliances and the friendships that we have with other countries. This
loading of the dice against ourselves is a habit of mind and of
speech which leads, it seems to me, to a great amount of unnecessary
distress in the minds of people at home and may well lead to very
dangerous misunderstandings abroad.
It is not true
that the great efforts we have made in rearmament have been offset by
other considerations. It is true, of course, that the amount of
preparation that we had to do before we could really make substantial
and visible progress in rearmament was enormous. It was like what
happens when a building is erected. A hoarding is put up and you
cannot see anything behind the hoarding while month after month the
foundation is being laid. When that part of the work is finished the
steel structure goes up measurably, day by day, higher and higher. We
are beginning now to see the result of the long preparations, and on
all sides the public is realising that our efforts have resulted in
an enormous and ever more rapidly increasing addition to our
defensive strength. As to our prestige abroad, it has never stood
higher than it does to-day, and there never was a time when our
friendship was more greatly desired by other countries.
It is untrue that,
as the right hon. Gentleman says in an article in a newspaper which I
read to-day, the policy of appeasement has failed. On the contrary, I
maintain that it is steadily succeeding. The right hon. Gentleman
complains now that nothing effective was done at Rome. Only a little
while ago he was complaining that something effective would be done
that he would not like. Our visit to Rome has, I hope, strengthened
the feeling of friendship between this country and Italy. At the same
time, it has not weakened our relations with France. Our relations
with France are perhaps closer and more intimate than they have ever
been in our recollection, and, more than that, they are solidly based
on a mutual confidence which multiplies many times over. Each of us
can look not merely calmly but with favour at the friendships which
the other makes. We saw with great satisfaction the other day the
statement about the agreement between France and Germany.
We had another
example of ineffectual and highly exaggerated fears in the sort of
prophecies that were published in some parts of the Press and voiced
by some people about what Herr Hitler was going to say in the speech
which he made last night. It was a long speech; it touched on a great
many topics and covered a wide field. I do not pretend that I have
had time yet to examine with care every phrase in it, but I can say
this, that I very definitely got the impression that it was not the
speech of a man who was preparing to throw Europe into another
crisis. It seemed to me that there were many passages in the speech
which indicated the necessity of peace for Germany as well as for
other countries. We all of us have our domestic problems, our
economic and financial problems and our problems of employment, and
none of us would be unsympathetic to the idea that the statesmen of
the various countries should devote themselves for a time to the
improvement of the conditions of their own people.
I ventured to say
in the speech the other night, to which the right hon. Gentleman has
referred, that in my view there were no questions arising between
nations, however serious, that could not be settled by conversations
and discussions round the table. I repeat that now. I would only add
this qualification, that it is no use to embark upon discussions with
a view to the general settlement of differences, the satisfaction of
aspirations and the removal of grievances, unless the atmosphere is
favourable. When I say that, I mean unless those who come to the
table are all convinced that all those who sit round it want a
peaceable settlement and have no sinister ideas in their minds. After
this long period of uncertainty and anxiety in Europe confidence is
not easily or quickly established. I say, therefore, that we want to
see not only words which indicate a desire for peace; before we can
enter upon the final settlement we shall want to see some concrete
evidence in a willingness, let us say, to enter into arrangements
for, if not disarmament, at any rate, limitation of armaments. If
that time comes, if we can find a spirit corresponding to our own
elsewhere, then I know that this country will not be unsympathetic
and we shall be ready to make our contribution to the general
appeasement of Europe.
5.24 p.m.
Sir Archibald
Sinclair
The Prime Minister
has widened the range of our discussion this afternoon, and I am far
from complaining of that, because I believe that the case for an
alteration of our policy in Spain rests at least as much on the
danger of recent developments in that country to our own national
interests and to those of France and to world peace, as upon
considerations of fairness and impartiality to the two sides in
Spain. As the right hon. Gentleman said, intervention in Spain has
taken it out of the category of a civil war and it must be regarded
as part of a very dangerous world situation.
The Prime Minister
referred towards the end of his speech to Herr Hitler's speech last
night. I agree with him that none of us has had time to give to that
speech the consideration which it deserves, more particularly as we
are presented in our newspapers this morning with versions of the
speech which vary in not unimportant particulars. There was, however,
one passage of the speech to which I am surprised the Prime Minister
did not refer. That is the attack that Herr Hitler made on three
Members of this House, who are not Members of my party or of the
party above the Gangway but who are supporters of the Prime Minister
himself. We are frequently told from the Government Bench that we
ought to be very careful of our words in referring to Germany and to
Herr Hitler, and that we must be careful what we say and print, as
some of our words are not too polite and are liable to provoke Herr
Hitler. It is remarkable that he should have chosen for his attack
three right hon. Members of the House who are among its most
experienced and courteous Members, who have never referred to the
German Government or the German Führer except in language of the
strictest dignity and courtesy, and who, I am afraid, can only have
been singled out for this attack on account of the broad views, which
they hold with conviction, about the course which British policy
should follow in defence of British national interests and in the
interests of world peace. The effect upon British public opinion
will, of course, be greatly to enhance the reputation and influence
of these three right hon. Gentlemen, but it is a serious act of
interference in our politics.
I am not for one
moment going to suggest that the Prime Minister would be cowed by
Herr Hitler's attack or that he would be afraid, for fear of Herr
Hitler's personal censure or resentment, to bring any one of these
right hon. Gentlemen into his Cabinet; but I am suggesting that if he
thought it was in the national interest, as a great many hon. Members
on all sides of the House and a great number of people outside do, to
bring, let us say, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping
(Mr. Churchill) into the Government as Minister for the Co-ordination
of Defence, if he reached that conclusion, he would have very
seriously to ask himself what would be its effect upon his policy of
appeasement and whether such an appointment would be objectionable to
the German Government. The fact that the Führer is singling out for
attack certain right hon. Gentlemen who might well be called upon to
hold high office in the not distant future is a direct interference
in our politics which must embarrass the Prime Minister in this or in
succeeding Governments.
It would be a very
easy task, and to many of us not an uncongenial one, to submit Herr
Hitler's speech to dialectical analysis, but to-day I would rather
deal with the plain facts of the world situation with which we are
confronted. There is undoubtedly a feeling of disquiet in the country
at the present time. There is economic dislocation and loss of trade.
The Home Secretary, in a speech the other day, talked about people
whom he described as "jitter-bugs." I am very far from
wishing to defend those mercurial people in the City of London who
one day seem to be moved, by rumours which may be passing through its
streets, to throw their securities on to the market, and a few days
later, on the strength of a single speech, without having had time to
consider it in relation to the facts of the international situation,
go rushing into the market to create what the newspapers call a
"Hitler boom."
Mr. Macquisten
Does not the right
hon. Gentleman know that very few securities actually changed hands?
Sir A. Sinclair
I was merely
saying that there may be some people to whom the Home Secretary
rightly applied the term "jitter-bugs." If the hon. and
learned Member for Argyll (Mr. Macquisten) does not agree with me,
perhaps he will settle the matter with the Home Secretary afterwards.
There may be some people to whom that description applies, but I do
not believe that it can fairly be applied to public opinion as a
whole in this country. I do not think public opinion is alarmist or
defeatist. I do not think there is any ground at all for defeatism
but there is undoubtedly a certain distrust of the Government's
foreign policy. On the one hand we are told to trust to rearmament.
There is a considerable amount of dissatisfaction with the handling
and the progress of that rearmament—though that is not the subject
of the Debate this afternoon—but we see that while on the one side
we are rearming on the other side we are losing abroad the support of
vital and powerful forces on which, only a few months ago, we could
have relied to help us to resist aggression.
Look back, indeed,
for less than a year—to the time when the Prime Minister took over
the control of our foreign policy. Before then the Rome-Berlin axis
was a mere phrase, a phrase describing a diplomatic understanding.
Now you can see it stretching across the map of Europe—a
geographical and strategical reality—dividing the West of Europe
from the East, cutting us off from South-Eastern and Eastern Europe.
Russia, which was then playing her part as an active member of the
League of Nations in defence of the rule of law, is now alienated,
and we see that Germany has not been slow to observe that Russia has
been alienated and to send her own missions to Moscow to improve
trade relations, to start with, at any rate, between the two
countries. Austrian independence is gone, Czechoslovakia, that one
stronghold of democracy in Central Europe, is sacrificed.
Now the Prime
Minister, in his statement at the end of Questions this afternoon,
describing his visit to Rome, tells us that he and Signor Mussolini
discussed whether it would be advisable to bring the guarantees of
the Czechoslovakian territories into operation but that, as one
prerequisite of such action, Signor Mussolini pointed out that the
constitution—the constitution—of Czechoslovakia should be
settled, meaning, no doubt, brought into line with the ideas of the
totalitarian States, That fine army which mobilised some 40 divisions
strong, well equipped, well led, highly trained, with a great
munitions industry behind it, with 1,000 aeroplanes to co-operate
with it, no longer exists for the defence of democracy. The Skoda
Works, the third, or, if we include Russia, the fourth greatest
munitions industry in the world, is now geared up to the German
munitions industry instead of being available for the help of the
democratic Powers. The Prime Minister says that our prestige is
high—after these events. I say that he cannot have read the United
States newspapers in saying that. As for our friendship being sought,
why in the last few months we have seen one nation after another, in
Eastern and South-Eastern Europe certainly, ceasing to seek our
friendship, like Russia, or hastening to co-ordinate their policies
with the policies of the totalitarian States, and in the case of
Hungary even joining the anti-comintern pact.
Speaking last
autumn after the terrible and, in my view, disastrous events of
September, I urged the importance of making it abundantly clear that
we should at any rate stand firm in the West, along the Rhine, behind
France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland and Spain. Every one of those
countries is, in varying degrees, feeling the pressure of the
totalitarian States. Only yesterday I saw a gentleman who had come
back from Holland and he told me he found there grave doubts since
Munich. For my own part, being a great admirer of the Dutch people, I
believe that if their independence were threatened they would fight
behind their dykes, whatever happened; but my friend, who knows
Holland very well, tells me that since Munich a number of people are
saying, "If we are not to have Britain behind us, if she is not
going to stand for the principles of policy for which she used to
stand in old days, it will be no use sending our young men to a
useless slaughter." We ought to give Holland the assurance that
in the hour of danger we should stand by her if she were exposed to
unprovoked aggression.
Look at
Switzerland. Pressure is being brought upon Switzerland by Germany to
prevent criticism in the Swiss Press of Germany's actions. Pressure
is being brought, too, to persuade Switzerland to give to Germany
the advantage of some part of her munition manufacturing power.
Pressure is even being brought to bear upon her to give a loan to
Germany. One very experienced European statesman, whose father was a
diplomat of one of the Central Powers during and before the War, and
is very well known in Europe, tells me that the same feeling is
starting in Switzerland—that they are not sure that in the hour of
danger, if they are attacked by Germany, there will be anybody behind
them to help them to resist unprovoked aggression.
So much for the
line of the Rhine. But we have to think, too, of our communications
with the outer world, and of Spain, which stands athwart the
communications of France and Britain. Either the help which General
Franco is receiving from Germany and Italy is indispensable to his
success in the Spanish Civil War or it is not. if it is indispensable
it means that we are conniving at a conspiracy between the German,
the Italian and the Spanish dictators to crush the liberties of the
Spanish people, while at the same time denying them arms to defend
themselves against this conspiracy. For my own part I do not and
cannot admit the right of the German and Italian dictators to dispose
of the destinies of Spain. It is high time we said to Herr Hitler and
Signor Mussolini, "What you do in Germany and in Italy is your
own affair, but the British people will not stand your meddling with
the liberties of Europe." Only the Spanish people, not the
German or the Italian dictators, have the right to decide by whom
Spain is to be governed.
If on the other
hand German and Italian intervention is not indispensable to the
victory of General Franco, why are German and Italian troops there,
why are German and Italian blood and treasure being so lavishly
expended in Spain? Can we really accept the Prime Minister's
assurances that the totalitarian States have no territorial or
strategic aims in Spain which threaten French or British interests?
Is that truly the proposition which the Prime Minister coolly asks
this House to accept? On this side of the House we certainly reject
it, and I do not believe that the majority of the Prime Minister's
supporters accept it, in their own hearts. Are those assurances even
faintly credible? Who believes them? The Prime Minister and a
diminishing number of his supporters, but who else? The Prime
Minister asks why we do not believe them. Well, we read, not I am
afraid in the original but translations from the German Press and the
Italian Press, and whatever is said to the Prime Minister in private
conference, we find the dictators of those countries loudly
proclaiming the opposite.
"France bites the dust and must pay the price of her defeat.
Yesterday Mussolini said for all, We shall pass.'"
That is from the
"Lavoro Fascista," of Rome, after the fall of Barcelona and
after Mussolini had made that speech in which he scoffed at the
Republicans, recalling that though they had said, "They shall
not pass," yet, "We have passed"—and, "We shall
pass" as Mussolini put it. The crowd which a few days before had
welcomed the Prime Minister to Rome, the same crowd as had rushed out
to cheer the peacemaker, now shouted back to Mussolini, "To
Paris." The Italian Press and the German Press arid Signor
Mussolini proclaim the importance of the Franco victory at Barcelona
for the furtherance of the Italian claims upon France. Indeed, if
General Franco is allowed to conquer Spain with German and Italian
support it is apparent that the totalitarian States, which have
already established a stranglehold on the countries in South-Eastern
Europe, will then have a comparable hold on France and on the
communications of France and Britain with their Empires. They will be
able to divert supplies of raw materials which our own industries
need and without which we could not complete our rearmament. We must
not forget that about 90 per cent. of the mercury which is
indispensable for the detonators used in our rearmament comes from
Republican Spain. Is the Prime Minister going to allow the source of
that indispensable material to fall under the control of a Fascist
Government in Spain under the domination of Germany and Italy?
The Prime Minister
frequently, and other public men at intervals, tell us that they
would resist any attempt by any country at world domination; but, of
course, Abyssinia, for example, is much too small an issue on which
to offer resistance to a policy of aggression, Austria? Austria is
much too remote. You cannot offer resistance to aggression on an
issue of that kind. Czechoslovakia? No, because in the case of
Czechoslovakia there was a grave obstacle in self-determination. The
Prime Minister, who has such contempt for phrases like "collective
security" has a curious respect for "self-determination."
Spain? Ah, no, you cannot resist in Spain, because to do so would be
contrary to the principle of non-intervention—another of those
mesmeric phrases! But the whole process must be considered as a
whole. As a whole, it is a means of obtaining world domination, and
if the Prime Minister is to wait until Herr Hitler makes a speech
announcing world domination by the totalitarian States or announcing
that he is going out for such a policy he will wait until all the
keys of power have passed into the dictators' keeping and when
resistance will be impossible. At every stage until then the speeches
of the dictators will be full of soothing assurances which we shall
accept at our peril.
In the speech he
made as recently as November last, in the Debate in this House, the
Prime Minister reminded us of a speech which he had made earlier on
26th July, when he had said:
"If His Majesty's Government think that Spain has ceased to be a
menace to the peace of Europe, I think we shall regard that as a
settlement of the Spanish question."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th
July, 1938; col. 2955;Vol. 338.]
He went on to say
on 2nd November:
"In my own mind I am perfectly clear that the Spanish question
is no longer a menace to the peace of Europe."
Who thinks that
to-day? There are few people thinking it in this country. If you look
across the Channel to France you see that only a fortnight ago the
French Chamber spent a week discussing foreign affairs, and mainly
the Spanish question and the danger which it presented to the peace
of the world. Two months after the Prime Minister gave us that
assurance that the Spanish question had ceased to be a danger to the
peace of the world the French Chamber and the French people, who are
more directly concerned than we are, spent a week discussing the
danger which it presented to the peace of the world. The Prime
Minister also said:
"When I was at Munich, Signor Mussolini volunteered me the
information that he intended to withdraw 10,000 men, or about half
the Italian infantry forces, from Spain, and since then those men
have in fact been withdrawn."
Recently there
have been a great many calculations of the strength of the Italian
infantry in Spain, many of them by war correspondents of
unimpeachable integrity and impartiality, but I will take the lower
estimate which General Franco's Government itself gives. The Havas
Agency claimed to state authoritatively that yesterday—that was on
8th January—there were 16,315 Italians in the whole Nationalist
Army fighting on the Catalan front. If you allow something less than
4,000, which is a ridiculously small allowance, for the reserves in
the rear and the people looking after the bases and so forth, you get
20,000, so that on General Franco's own figures we find that 10,000
are not a half but at best one-third of the Italian forces in Spain.
That gives us a measure of the value of the assurances on which we
are asked to rely from Signor Mussolini.
Brigadier-General
Sir Henry Croft
Will the right
hon. Gentleman give us the date of what he says is the official
statement from General Franco?
Sir A. Sinclair
Yes. It was 8th
January, 1938, but it was not an official statement from General
Franco. It was a report from the Havas Agency. [HON. MEMBERS: "Ah!"]
Well, wait a moment. What is the use of saying "Ah"? The
Havas Agency's report says:
"It is authoritatively stated in Saragossa."
When Havas or
Reuter's or any of the well-known agencies say that it is
authoritatively stated in the capital of a country or at the
headquarters of a Government, you know in fact that the statement has
been made on the authority of the Government. On 2nd November the
Prime Minister went on to say:
"I have no doubt that hon. Members will represent that Italian
men, pilots, aircraft and other material still remain in Spain, and
so also there remain men and material of other than Italian
nationality in Spain on one side or the other; but we have received
from Signor Mussolini definite assurances, first of all that the
remaining Italian forces of all categories will be withdrawn when the
nonintervention plan comes into operation."
What prevents the
non-intervention plan from coming into operation? It has been
approved by all the members of the Non-Intervention Committee without
exception. The only man who has disapproved of it and who refuses to
allow it to come into operation is General Franco himself. If he is
to be regarded as an excuse for not bringing it into operation or as
an excuse for Signor Mussolini to retain his troops in Spain, the
answer is that Signor Mussolini has only to tell General Franco that
the time has come for non-intervention to be observed and that he is
going to withdraw his troops from Spain, and General Franco would, of
course, have to agree to bring the plan into operation.
The second
assurance on which the Prime Minister told us to rely was that no
further Italian troops would be sent to Spain. We have, in fact, had
definite information, which different hon. Members have given to the
House since then, that Italian troops have been sent. We are told
that they are only replacements. That brings me to the third point
made by the Prime Minister,
"that the Italian Government have never for a moment entertained
the idea of sending compensatory air forces to Spain in lieu of the
infantry forces which have now been withdrawn. These three
assurances, taken in conjunction with the actual withdrawal of this
large body of men, in my judgment, constitute a substantial earnest
of the good intentions of the Italian Government. They form a
considerable contribution to the elimination of the Spanish question
as a menace to peace."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd November, 1938;
cols. 208–209, Vol. 340.]
What in fact
happened? There was, of course, an immense reinforcement of the
intervening troops on the Catalan front, a colossal reinforcement. I
hold in my hand a cutting from a newspaper to which the Leader of the
Opposition has already referred and which is well known as very
moderate—indeed, a newspaper of Right Wing sympathies in Paris—the
"Temps." This is what the "Temps" says about the
increase in Italian troops during the past year:
"The actual Littorio division has only a distant relationship to
the division of the same name which operated in 1937. It was
motorised from the beginning, like the three other Italian divisions
which are called by the name of different coloured arrows. During
1938 it has been mechanised. That is to say that not only like the
other three Italian divisions is it able to move with great rapidity,
but all the artillery is drawn by power. Each arrow division has a
battalion of armoured cars, with 40 tanks of six tons and two-man
tanks with two machine-guns. The Littorio division is better
provided. Each battalion of infantry. about 600 men, is next to a
battalion of tanks with about 200 men. The division has eight or nine
battalions. It disposes of more than 300 medium tanks, without
talking of artillery or light armoured cars, a total of 8,000 or
9,000 men."
They go on to say
that the proportion of Government artillery to Nationalist artillery
on the Catalan front was one to nine, of anti-tank guns one to 20, of
light machine guns one to five, and of field guns one to 50. In the
whole Republicen Army on the Catalan front of 200,000 men there are
only 40 heavy machine guns. The Prime Minister talks of intervention
being on both sides, but the Republican Government can get together
only 40 heavy machine guns, looking, as they had a right and a duty
to look, for the protection of their own people, wherever they could
all over the world, as in Mexico, which country does not belong to
the Non-Intervention Committee and is not bound by the
Non-Intervention Agreement. Does the right hon. Gentleman really
compare that scale of intervention with the scale which is undertaken
not by private individuals selling in the open market to the Spanish
Government but by the official Governments of Germany and Italy,
which are represented on the Non-Intervention Committee?
Hon. Members
Shame.
Captain McEwen
Would the right
hon. Gentleman tell us the percentage of Italians in the Arrow
division?
Sir A. Sinclair
I cannot tell the
House the exact percentage but I imagine that if you took all ranks
it would be comparatively small; but the command, the staffing, the
artillery and the tanks are the Italian contribution. As for airmen,
the "Daily Telegraph" on 28th December reported that, of
the airmen captured alive over a period of 12 months, 35 were
Italians, 17 were Germans, and only eight were Spaniards, while of
the dead 100 were Italians, 50 were Germans and only 16 were
Spaniards. And the right hon. Gentleman asks us to compare the amount
of intervention on the Nationalist side with that on the Republican
side. Here is overwhelming evidence of the increase in the Italian
fighting strength in Spain during 1938, while the Prime Minister was
receiving those assurances from Signor Mussolini. The Italian
corkscrew of the hon. Member for West Leicester (Mr. H. Nicolson) had
been carefully applied all through the negotiations with the Prime
Minister.
The Prime Minister
says to us, "Tell us what you would do." I ask the Prime
Minister to stand by the policy which was the policy of his
Government as recently as September, 1937, only some 16 months ago,
when at Geneva, at the Assembly of the League of Nations, the then
Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Warwick
and Leamington (Mr. Eden), supported a resolution that if
non-intervention could not be made a reality within the near future
all the States parties to the Non-Intervention Committee would have
to reconsider the policy of non-intervention. That was the policy of
the Government over which the Prime Minister then as now presided. It
is time to put it into effect, if indeed it was not humbug and
hypocrisy at the time it was put forward.
Let me make it
quite clear, in reply to what the Prime Minister said to the Leader
of the Opposition, that our complaint is not that more is going
through to one side than to the other. That is not our main
complaint. Our main complaint is that there is no help going to the
Spanish Republican Government at all from any Government in the world
at the present time, but that there is an overwhelming amount of help
going from the Governments of Germany and Italy to General Franco's
side at the present time. It is a crime—it is worse than a crime,
it is a blunder—not to let the Spanish people buy arms to defend
themselves against the attacks of the totalitarian States, attacks to
which, the Prime Minister knows, we may be exposed one of these days.
That is why we are rearming. Why do we let the Spanish people fall a
victim to them now?
The Prime Minister
referred to the plight of the refugees. I was very glad to hear him
say that there is no difference between parties in the House on this
question. I was particularly glad, because there is certainly
difference outside this House—a great deal of difference. I see in
some newspapers arguments used such as, "Why do they not stay in
their villages? Why do they not trust to General Franco and stay in
their villages?"
Sir H. Croft
Hear, hear!
Sir A. Sinclair
The hon. and
gallant Member agrees with the argument that they should stay in
their towns and villages instead of streaming down the roads to the
French frontier. I can give the hon. and gallant Member the answer. I
have spoken to people who have come back from Spain. The answer is
that for the last two or three weeks—I rather think for longer, but
I know for the last two or three weeks—these Italian and German
aeroplanes have been deliberately going to towns and villages far
behind the lines, where there is no military objective, and bombing
them in places where there are no shelters for the people to go to,
and, when the people rush out into the streets and fields, following
them up with their machine guns. Why, it will be asked, do these
airmen use their weapons in this way, not against the military
forces, but against civilians? The object, of course, is to provoke a
rout and send them streaming across the lines of communications of
the Republican Army, so as to cause as much confusion as possible
behind the lines of the Republican Army. That has been the deliberate
policy, and that is why the refugees are thronging down the roads at
the present time. I was not satisfied with the Government's
statement. Food ought to be sent; medicines and ambulances ought to
be sent; and I do not think the Government's contribution is enough.
The people of this country have seen in the newspapers photographs of
these unfortunate people; they know what the suffering is. We would
support the Government in giving, and we urge the Government to give,
more generously to satisfy the needs of these people.
The Prime Minister
referred to the fact that there had been no massacre in Barcelona. If
I may respectfully say so, the hon. Lady above the Gangway made a
pertinent comment on that point which the Prime Minister did not seem
to understand. She said "Refugees." Exactly; because large
numbers of these people who would have been massacred have preferred
to trek along the roads without food to the French frontier. Let us
say that we are glad that there has been no massacre, but whom does
the Prime Minister expect us to thank? I am not sure. If the Prime
Minister wishes for a tribute of thanks to himself and his Government
for their intervention with General Franco, I very gladly give it to
him. I am glad he did that, and I thank him for his action. But if he
meant that our thanks are due to General Franco for refraining from a
massacre of his fellow- countrymen, then I say it is a marvellous
illustration of the degradation of the standards of government in
recent years.
With regard to
France, she is more directly affected than we are by these events in
Spain, and we ought to support her in any measure which she thinks
necessary and we think reasonable to protect herself against Italian
threats to her rights and interests in the Mediterranean. I referred
earlier in my speech to Herr Hitler's speech. I welcome the tone of
it, but I am not surprised. Could there have been a greater folly on
the part of Herr Hitler than by a menacing speech to have provoked
France into action which would redress the balance of forces against
the Spanish Government and prevent General Franco from winning? Of
course, he was not going to make that kind of speech. To preserve
peace we must convince the world of our determination, and the
determination of our Government, to stand by France in taking all
measures to protect her vital interests. I deeply regret—and this
is my most serious criticism of the Prime Minister's speech this
afternoon and of his speech at Birmingham a few days ago—I deeply
regret that he gave no such assurance to France in either of those
speeches. M. Delbos, when he was Foreign Minister in France, on 4th
December, 1936, said this:
"I wish to state in the name of the Government that all the
forces of France, land, sea and air, would be immediately and
spontaneously used in the defence of Great Britain in the event of
unprovoked aggression against that country."
M. Bonnet, who is
now the French Foreign Minister, appeared on 13th December, only a
month or so ago, before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Chamber,
and an official statement issued after the meeting recorded that M.
Bonnet had laid particular stress on French-British solidarity, and
had stated that he regarded as still valid the declaration which had
been made by M. Delbos and which I have just read. Last week, at the
conclusion of the debate in the Chamber, M. Bonnet stated that in
case of war all the forces of Great Britain would be at the disposal
of France, just as all the forces of France would be at the disposal
of Great Britain. I am very much disappointed that the Prime Minister
did not explicitly endorse that declaration of M. Bonnet, and I would
ask him whether, before the end of the Debate to-day, we may not
have an official endorsement of that statement on behalf of His
Majesty's Government. I want it to be endorsed, but, in any case,
this House is entitled to know whether or not it is a fact that, just
as the forces of France will be at the disposal of Britain in case we
are the victims of unprovoked aggression, the forces of Britain will
be at the disposal of France if she is a victim of unprovoked
aggression.
I have been, and
remain, a convinced opponent of the Prime Minister's foreign policy.
His methods seem to me to have been disastrous. But I have never
doubted his sincerity, nor his devotion to the pursuit of peace, and
he has put one item on the credit side of the peace account which
must be given due weight in relation to all the items on the debit
side. That is that he has convinced a large part—it is difficult to
say how large a part, but a substantial part—of the German and
Italian peoples of the good will and peaceful intentions, not only of
himself, but of his supporters in this country. I cannot help
thinking that he might even improve the value of this asset to the
cause of peace if he would stop representing his political opponents
at home as warmongers whom he alone, with difficulty, restrains.
The Prime Minister
When did I say
that?
Sir A. Sinclair
I am afraid I have
not any quotation with me, but, if there is any doubt about it, I
shall be very glad to send the right hon. Gentleman a quotation which
I have in my mind, from a speech which he made in this House, and
against which I myself protested at the time. I will certainly look
that up, and one or two other quotations, and send them to the Prime
Minister.
It is true, as I
said earlier in my speech, that the same crowd which flocks out to
welcome the Prime Minister in Rome on one day swarms into the streets
a few days later to shout "To Paris" under the stimulus of
Signor Mussolini's oratory. Nevertheless, both in Italy and,
especially, in Germany, there are, I believe, a large number of
people who see in the Prime Minister and his umbrella symbols of
decency and tolerance and quietness which contrast favourably with
the noise and glitter and self-assertiveness of the governors of the
totalitarian States; and these sentiments were, I believe, greatly
reinforced in Germany by the shame which was widely felt by decent
Germans at the Jewish pogrom. I believe that a number of people in
Germany feel like this, but probably they are a diminishing quantity.
For many people
are also saying in Germany, even moderate people, that the Nazis,
after all, know what they want; they sacrifice for it; they strive
for it; they have got it without war so far. They are true to their
ideals—base ideals, as I think—of nationalism and racialism.
These people are asking: Has Britain any ideals? Have we no
principles? If we have, why are we not true to them? If democracy and
freedom are our ideals, why do we allow one democracy after another
to go down before the assaults of the totalitarian States? The Nazi
Government may complain about Press criticisms of Germany in this
country, but a number of these moderate Germans are asking why our
Press in this country hushes up the truth about the horrors of the
German concentration camps. We must show them that we are neither
ashamed nor afraid to take our stand for freedom, international good
faith, the equal rights and status of all nations, great and small,
the principle of trusteeship in colonial territories and the rule of
law. It has been said that the difference between the Germans and the
British—and the German Government in particular—is this: that the
German Nazis have faith but they have no conscience, and that we have
conscience but that we have little faith. There is some truth in
that.
Let us have faith
in the things which we believe. Let us have faith in our traditions
of statesmanship. Do not let us always be belittling our record for
example in colonial administration. [Interruption] I never have
myself. Let us be true to our ideals, and let us have faith in the
essential decency of the methods of colonial government which have
been practised by this country. Let us show that we have faith in the
principle of trusteeship, that we do not need to compromise on it if
we are challenged from some foreign quarter. We know there is a devil
in the world, in our own country as in others; but let us convince
ourselves, our friends and those, like the Germans and Italians, with
whom we want to be friends, that the devil is not invincible, and
that we want to help Germans, Italians and all people in establishing
a world order which shall be fair, just and righteous, and in which
our children and our children's children shall enjoy the blessings of
peace.
6.19 p.m.
Sir H. Croft
I am sure that
every Member of this House is delighted to find the right hon.
Gentleman in such robust form after his holiday. It would be indeed a
great task to attempt to follow him over all the ground he has
covered, and I do not intend to do that. I think many hon. Members
will be pleased with the final note of his speech, that we should
cease this belittling of the British administration in the Empire. I
am grateful to him for showing that the Liberal party at and rate
divorces itself from that section of opinion which desires, in all
humility, to hand over our colonial territories to some international
body in order to show how they ought to be administered in future.
But with regard to the rest of his speech, frankly I was deeply
concerned. I cannot see how such a speech is going to help the
peoples of the world to get on better terms with one another. I have
just entered my thirtieth year in this House, and I can remember the
old Liberal leaders in days gone by. Sometimes I thought they were
prepared to go out of their way to be too polite to other countries,
because the ideal they put before us was the promotion of complete
understanding with all peoples of the world. But the right hon.
Gentleman attacked Germany, the dictator of Italy, the people of
Italy and the vast majority of the people in Spain, and seemed to me
even to deprecate the idea that Russia and Germany had recently come
to a trade treaty to bring about freer trade between nations. All
these countries came under his whip. He even tried to make a little
difficulty between this country and France by making us believe that
we had differences of opinion with France.
Sir A. Sinclair
I have allowed a
great deal of distortion to pass, but when the hon. and gallant
Member suggests that I said we had differences with France, that is a
complete misapprehension. I asked that the Government should endorse
the statement made in the Chamber last week by M. Bonnet about the
intention of Great Britain to go to the help of France if she was the
victim of unprovoked aggression.
Sir H. Croft
It is really
consoling to hear the right hon. Gentleman say that, but it seemed to
me that he was trying to find differences of opinion between the
Prime Minister and the French Foreign Secretary. I am glad that that
was not so. At least let us keep one friend—
Sir A. Sinclair
You have sold most
of them.
Sir H. Croft
—that the leader
of the Liberal party will not ostracise. The hon. Gentleman referred
to the strategic position in Spain. I am surprised to find that there
is a difference between the two leaders of the Popular Front, or
whatever the name is now. The leader of the Official Opposition has
made it clear that he has abandoned the whole of that case—and
about time too.
Mr. Cocks
He did not.
Sir H. Croft
I do not want to
enter into controversy with the hon. Member, but again and again the
leader of the Opposition said that now the danger lay in influence.
He did not believe that it was a question of the occupation of Spain.
Mr. Cocks
Not necessarily.
Sir H. Croft
The right hon.
Gentleman is under no illusions. He says that he does not believe a
word from anyone who is connected with this quarrel. I beg to differ.
If you are going to have peace in this world you have to come to some
stage when men can talk together and make agreements. Otherwise you
have a vista of hopeless disagreement before you. The right hon.
Gentleman asked, was the Prime Minister going to allow the mercury
mines, which are at present in the hands of Republican Spain, to pass
into the hands of the new Spain? How can he stop that happening? It
is quite clear that when the Spanish situation clears up—and we all
pray, whatever our views, that it will not be long before that
happens—the Spanish people are going to have control over their own
fate, and their own industries. When the right hon. Gentleman attacks
the Prime Minister, I remember him rising in his place in this House
and saying:
"On behalf of my hon. Friends and myself, I wish to express to
the Prime Minister the feelings of relief which we have felt at the
news which he has conveyed to the House, and, let me add, of
gratitude to the Prime Minister for the exertions, the unsparing
exertions, which he has made towards peace."—[OFFICIAL REPORT,
28th September, 1938;col. 27, Vol. 339.]
Sir A. Sinclair
I agree with that
but will the hon. and gallant Member read on?
Sir H. Croft
I have not the
whole quotation with me.
Sir A. Sinclair
If the hon. and
gallant Member wishes to quote me he must quote me fully. I repeated
to-day what the hon. and gallant Member has just read out.
Sir H. Croft
But surely the
right hon. Gentleman did not use those exact words?
Sir A. Sinclair
No, not verbatim,
but in the speech from which the hon. and gallant Member is now
quoting I added that my remarks were made on the assumption that when
the Prime Minister went to Munich he would insist on terms which
would preserve the economic life and the complete freedom and
independence of Czechoslovakia. It was on the basis of that that I
gave him my good wishes.
Sir H. Croft
If the right hon.
Gentleman really thought at that time that the Prime Minister had
made these unsparing efforts for peace will he not give him credit
over the Spanish affair for having tried to keep the peace of Europe?
The right hon. Gentleman even tried to make trouble between us and
the United States. Surely that is unwise. Every indication shows that
the American people are in closer understanding of us, certainly than
they have been in my political life. I am sorry that the right hon.
Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) has
just left the House, because I might remind him that his employer—if
that is not too harsh a word—Mr. William Randolph Hearst, said only
last week that he appreciated the work done by the Prime Minister of
this country. And has not President Roosevelt made it clear that he
is thinking along the same lines as we are, and has he not made
speeches unexpectedly frank in defending the democratic liberties of
the world, and saying that he possesses the same ideals as we in this
country?
Now I want to come
to the right hon. Gentleman's extraordinary story with regard to
Spain. In my belief, democracy can exist only if we are going to base
our life generally on truth. We are always proclaiming to the rest of
the world that in this country, unlike the totalitarian States,
Russia, Germany and Italy, we tell the people the truth. If one
examines, as I have done every day, the reports from Spain by "Our
own Correspondents," as they are frequently described, and, I
must confess, by certain agencies, one really is staggered by the
spate of what in a very few weeks will be proved to have been false
news from Spain. I do not blame the right hon. Gentleman for making a
speech such as he has made. How can he know any better? He has been
reading some of his newspapers. He speaks as though it is Italy alone
which has won this war. The people of Italy have become supermen
under the dictator, if you believe him. What is the truth? Not 5 per
cent. of the men under arms in Nationalist Spain to-day are Italians.
He mentioned the Littorio division and the three other Italian
divisions. If he is informed at all about military forces in Spain,
he must know that the Littorio is the only Italian division in Spain.
He must know that the three Arrow divisions are 96 per cent. Spanish.
Although it is true that one or two officers in the High Command are
Italians, the fact is that only 4 per cent. of the men, in these
legionary divisions are Italians. [Interruption.] The right hon.
Gentleman was talking about the four legionary divisions.
Sir A. Sinclair
What about the
artillery and the tanks?
Sir H. Croft
I do not want to
detain the House, because these are things upon which one can speak
at some length. The right hon. Gentleman asks me about tanks. Who
sent the first tanks to Spain? Is he aware of the fact that out of
every tank section the two heavy tanks on General Franco's side are
Russian tanks? I suppose they fell from heaven. He says how short the
Republican Government are of ammunition and guns. Of course they are.
Nationalist Spain all through these offensives has been capturing
this material. On the northern front alone, at Bilbao, they captured
270 guns and an enormous number of machine guns, and it is true that
General Franco is now better armed. An hon. Gentleman says that no
munitions have come in on the other side. I do not want to make
trouble. Heaven knows there is enough trouble in the world. I am not
going to mention even the name of the country, but I tell him—and I
have a shrewd suspicion that the Foreign Office knows this—that 11
ships laden with munitions sailed from one non-intervention port
between 17th November and 16th December.
The newspapers
seem to give the impression that there has been only one air force in
Spain throughout the war. In a very short time from now the history
of the Spanish Civil War will be written and the facts will be known.
I do not want to exaggerate if I can possibly help it, but it is
thought that General Franco's aviation has brought down 1,500
machines. Were those machines made in Spain? We have been told ad
nauseam by the Press in this country that Barcelona has been
shattered. We have all been told to get the jitters and dig ourselves
in like rabbits, troglodytes and other kinds of animals because of
what has happened in Barcelona. Let the right hon. Gentleman go to
Barcelona—I am sure they will be very glad to see him—and he will
find, so I am informed by several people who have just returned, that
that city is in fact practically intact. The clocks and all the
houses just round the docks are absolutely shattered, but the city
itself is practically intact.
It is the hope of
all of us that this war is coming to an end, and I trust that we
shall not continue to allow ourselves to believe that everything
which comes over the wires from Spain is true. As far as I can see
there has been doubt in every great journalistic coup, from Guernica,
up to that story of the valiant destroyer at Gibraltar which defeated
six enemy craft, including a first-class cruiser, and rammed another
warship that got in her way. In fact, I think that the only thing she
did was to ram the shore when she was driven there by a minelayer.
Let us give every tribute to the most wonderful propaganda in the
world organised by Moscow in order to delude idealists and theorists
and those who are ready to believe in any country but their own.
I am grateful to
hon. Gentlemen above the Gangway for their unusual toleration in
allowing me to offer these few re- marks, but I suppose that it will
not be long before the whole of this question will be settled, and
then the facts will emerge. The right hon. Gentleman told us once
again to-day that all the foreign volunteers had been withdrawn from
Republican Spain. [Interruption.] But it was reported that 800 of
them were killed by the murderous bombs of General Franco a few days
ago. Was that true? Did they not declare that 800 international
volunteers were bombed from the skies; that there was this horrible
calamity while the internationalists were awaiting return to England,
Canada, France and to other lands? It is true that one of those who
originated that remarkable story, said only yesterday that, after
all, it was now doubted whether the story was true. It was thought
that there were only two slightly injured. But when General Franco's
other divisions were attacking in the north it was a strange fact
that they bumped into three international brigades composed of
central Europeans and South Americans only as recently as 22nd
January.
I do beg of hon.
Members to get the true perspective in regard to what is happening in
Spain. There has been intervention and we all deplore it; there has
been very considerable intervention on both sides. A sin is no less a
sin because it is only comparatively great. I am glad to think that
in this country nine-tenths of the people support the King's
Government in seeing that non-intervention has been maintained. I
think that the people of the world in general realise that although
there were a few people who stimulated recruiting and sent a few
misguided youths from this country, history will record that this
country, perhaps alone of all the great countries, endeavoured to
keep faith with her word and maintained non-intervention to the best
of her ability from start to finish.
6.38 p.m.
Mr. Bellenger
Now that we have
heard the whole truth and nothing but the truth from the hon. and
gallant Gentleman the Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft), I am
wondering why we have never heard this revelation of facts from the
Government themselves. We have endeavoured on many occasions to get
from the Government essential facts upon which we could base our
judgment, and the Government have always informed us that they did
not know. Perhaps in future, when we put questions to Ministers on
these subjects, they will consult the hon. and gallant Gentleman the
Member for Bournemouth, because I am sure from what he has told us
this afternoon he has a wonderful fund of information, although he
did not attempt to tell us his authority for these very strange
statements. He tells us that at some time or other the true history
will be given. I wonder. We have had history in the past. Can we
believe the historian that writes this history? Who is to be the
historian to write the history of the Spanish civil war? Is it to be
the Duke of Alba or some of those noble Spanish gentlemen who have
introduced their Moors in order to preserve Christianity in Spain?
Sir H. Croft
May I ask the hon.
Gentleman to withdraw what he has just said, because one in every
five of the people in Spain is of Moorish blood, on both sides, and
it is an insult to the Spanish people to talk like that?
Mr. Bellenger
The hon. and
gallant Member referred to history, and if he will refer to the
history of Spain he will know that the proud Spaniards had long years
of struggle to throw the Moors out of Spain, and now they have been
introduced—and I repeat the statement—by General Franco to
preserve Christianity in Spain. The hon. and gallant Gentleman has
cast some aspersion upon the bona fides of those who have gone to
fight for the Spanish Government. They have my admiration. They did
not have what we were supposed to have when we fought for King and
country between 1914 and 1918. They have fought for an ideal, and,
whether they are right or wrong, makes no difference to me. They
believed in that ideal, and many have sacrificed their lives—men of
our own country. I am not going to say that I have ever stimulated
recruiting for the Spanish war. I have been invited by both sides in
Spain to go to Spain, but I have refused. I can form my opinions here
about the Spanish war. I am in complete agreement with my leader—the
Leader of the Opposition—when he says that it is not merely a fight
for democracy and a fight for Spain. It is also a fight for some
British interests, only strangely enough, as it seems to me, some
Members of the Conservative party who have always boasted of their
patriotism and their loyalty to British interests, now seem to be
running away.
The Prime Minister
made a speech this afternoon totally different from that made by the
leader of the German Reich last night. I listened to that speech for
over two hours last night, and I wished that hon. Members of this
House and even the Prime Minister himself could have listened to it,
because the whole policy of the Prime Minister seems to be based upon
his implicit trust in the word of Herr Hitler and the guarantees of
Signor Mussolini. If I could believe implicitly in the same, almost
childlike, way that the Prime Minister does, I should be supporting
the Prime Minister in his policy of appeasement. But when I listened
to the speech made by the German Führer last night I could feel,
apart from the words that he uttered, most of which I could
understand, hatred and contempt exuding from his soul, if he has a
soul. If the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister, or even the
right hon. Gentleman the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs, whom I wish to congratulate on his promotion, could have
listened to that leader of Germany speaking a new faith, in which I
believe he profoundly believes, they would have understood that the
creed which the Führer of Germany is preaching to-day is the creed
of blood and iron based on an entirely different foundation from that
of Government policy. Some of his words were uttered against leading
members of the Conservative party, with whom we on this side have
disagreed, but for whom we have a great admiration in their
independence, as they have sacrificed quite a lot because of their
disagreement with the Prime Minister, perhaps temporary in some
cases, but longer in others. When I listened to the contemptuous
remarks of the leader of Germany against democracy and what he called
the bourgeois Statesmen of these democracies, I wondered how the
Prime Minister could be so generous, yes, so simple and so naive in
his belief that Hitler means what he says to the Prime Minister in
Munich. He is prepared to give peace on paper, and Mussolini is
prepared to give certain undertakings in the form of an Anglo Italian
Agreement, but the question is, do these men mean to observe what
they say and keep the guarantees they give to our Government?
Although I have
tried to find some solid basis upon which I can pin my hopes, I must
not neglect the facts which have occurred in the past. Some of those
facts have been referred to by the Leader of the Opposition and the
Leader of the Liberal party to-day. Will hon. Members opposite deny
that time and again the leader of Germany and the leader of Italy
have broken their word? Why are we rearming to such an enormous
extent? Why are repeated injunctions made to us on these benches to
observe some form of unity in this country? I can assure hon. Members
opposite that the fear and horror of war is as strong in our hearts
as it is in their hearts, and so strong is it felt in the hearts of
our families, in the hearts and minds of our electors in the
constituencies, that we should he only too willing, if we possibly
could, to agree with the Government and come in with them for this
wonderful peace which they tell us they have brought back from Munich
and other capital cities; but what are we to say when leading Members
of the Government tell us, as the right hon. Gentleman who is now in
charge of air-raid precautions told us the other day, that the
Government are making preparations on the basis of an early war? The
minds of the people are confused, their spirits and hearts are
depressed when they are being continually told that the Government
are preparing for an early war. They must, therefore, expect that an
early war is probable. How does that coincide with all the statements
that have been made by the Prime Minister and his friends abroad that
war is not inevitable?
When the Home
Secretary takes to task people in this country whom he describes as
jitter-bugs, I would ask him who are these jitter-bugs. Are they
members of the working class? Are they the lower ranks of society?
They are not. The lower ranks seem to me to be the only people who
are keeping their heads. If we are to believe the statements made by
the administrative chief of the A.R.P. Department of the Home Office,
it is not the upper classes who are taking part in A.R.P., but the
lower classes. The jitter-bugs are in the circles with which the
Prime Minister and leading Members of the Government associate: they
are not in the lower ranks of society. The common people of this
country are ready for a policy of appeasement, because they do not
want war. If they are convinced that the alternative is rearmament
and adequate defence to face the totalitarian States, against whom we
are arming, they are ready to play their part in the defence of our
country, our nation and our ideals, but it seems to me that leading
Members of the Government are going the wrong way to get our support
in these matters.
As I listened to
the Prime Minister dealing with the subject of Spain—in regard to
which I have not taken any prominent part in public meetings outside
or by speeches in this House, although I have my own opinions about
it—and I noted the ingenuous manner in which he tried to
substantiate his policy of letting nonintervention pursue its very
unbalanced way until the Spanish Republic arc absolutely beaten to
their knees, I wondered what he was thinking about those vital
British interests which he tells us he is arming to protect and which
he invites us to support. He told us what the British Government are
doing for the refugees in Spain. It reminded me very much of the
parable, with which hon. Members are conversant, of the poor fellow
who was waylaid by the roadside and there were certain passers by,
the Pharisee and the good Samaritan. I wondered into which category I
could place the Prime Minister. He is not a good Samaritan or, at any
rate, his Government are not good Samaritans in this matter. They are
easing their conscience by providing £20,000. I hope they are
satisfied and that they will have no sleepless nights when they think
of the streams of refugees, for whom the Prime Minister's heart
almost bled when he spoke of them.
I come now to a
point which has been in dispute between the Leader of the Opposition
and the Prime Minister. The Leader of the Opposition said that if
General Franco won in Spain vital British interests would be
seriously prejudiced. He went on to say—it matters not to me
whether he has receded from his previous views—that not necessarily
would the military occupation of Spain be the method adopted by the
totalitarian States to obtain control in Spain. He said that they
could get control by other means. I think he mentioned economic
penetration. We have been told by the Secretary for the Overseas
Trade Department that Great Britain is not going to allow what he
called unfair trading tactics by Germany to push British trade
interests right out of the field in South-East Europe and several
millions of pounds have been voted by this House in order to protect
British interests in that area. Why had we to do that? Hon. Members
know the answer. It is because of the economic intention of Germany,
not only to gain a strategic position in Central Europe but trading
facilities to drive British trade entirely out of those markets.
British trade is
already suffering considerable disabilities in the south eastern
markets of Europe. Are we going to allow that sort of thing to happen
in Spain? Italy may observe her undertaking to observe the status quo
in the Mediterranean, but if Germany and Italy adopt the same
economic tactics in Spain as Germany is adopting in South East
Europe, then the Leader of the Opposition made out his case entirely
when he said that British interests will be seriously prejudiced. We
know that trade always follows the flag. Nowadays, it may be that the
flag goes in front of the trade. I have always understood it to be a
cardinal principle of Conservative policy to protect British trade in
all parts of the world, but they are not doing that today, as they
know very well, in China.
Can we get some
policy from the Government upon which we can agree? Hon. Members may
be somewhat sceptical about that. They may think that in party
politics it is not possible to agree on issues like this, but I can
assure them that from my point of view it is possible. Within my own
party in this House or elsewhere if I thought the Prime Minister
could guarantee peace I should not be afraid to stand up and support
him, irrespective of the consequences to myself. Supporters of the
Government are condemning us as warmongers because they think that
that will be to their advantage in the constituencies. If we could
get a guarantee of peace, it would be worth sacrificing a lot for. I
am not blinded by party feelings or passion when I approach this
question, but I apply my reasoning powers with regard to what the
Prime Minister tells us, and I ask myself whether his policy will
give us peace. He tells us that it is a policy of appeasement. If the
people of the country really knew what this appeasement means, I
believe the Prime Minister would get more support in the country than
he is getting at the present time. He is not getting the support
which one would think the great peace maker of the world should get
at by-elections, and perhaps we of our party are not getting it
either. Hon. Members must give me credit that I am trying to examine
these matters not in a party spirit but in a purely analytical and
neutral manner. If they want party politics in the matter, they can
get plenty of it in this House, but party politics should not be
introduced into this subject.
There is profound
disagreement between the two sides of the House on this subject,
whatever we may think about domestic issues. We on our side do not
believe that the Prime Minister has brought us peace. We believe that
his policy of appeasement, in so far as we can understand it, will
cost this country and the world a tremendous amount of money and
blood. [HON. MEMBERS: "What would you do?"] It is easy to
ask what we would do. My answer is that we are not the Government. It
is the duty of the Government to put a concrete policy before us. If
their policy were one in which I could believe I would support it.
This is not the appropriate moment for me to say what I would do,
although speakers from my party have stated what they would do, what
we ask the Government to do and what the Government promised to do
when they won the Election in 1935. I cannot see that the present
policy of appeasement, whatever that may mean, with its huge policy
of rearmament will lead to peace. I remember what happened in 1914
when we had somewhat similar circumstances, and I believe that this
policy will lead inevitably to war.
Hon. Members may
say that war is not inevitable, but what are we to assume from the
statements made by the Prime Minister and members of the Government?
When the Prime Minister the other day appealed on the wireless for
the support of all classes in the defence of the country, he said
that we are preparing for war. I do not know whether those were the
literal words he used, but hon. Members will recollect that passage
in his speech. What can the ordinary man and woman think when the
Prime Minister says that? However much he may have attempted to
camouflage it and gloss it over in the other parts of his remarks,
that was the statement he made. The working class are ready now, as
they were in 1914, to defend the ideals which we thought we believed
in in those days. We were ready then to defend the system which the
Prime Minister wants to perpetuate. To-day it appears to me that the
Prime Minister is back to the Victorian days, waving the Union Jack,
as Conservatives have always been ready to do, and to put it on their
platform. Waving the Union Jack. What for? To perpetuate a system
which has produced, as Herr Hitler rightly said, 2,000,000 unemployed
in this country. Is that what I am asked to defend? I cannot defend
that. I am prepared to defend something far greater than that, but in
so far as the Prime Minister's policy of appeasement goes, which
really means preserving the same old vested interests which are
making huge profits out of our patriotism and our loyalty, I say it
is not good enough.
In listening to
the speech of the leader of Germany last night I was struck by a fact
which I do not think hon. Members quite understand. Probably wisely,
they will not take the trouble to listen to Herr Hitler's speeches.
It is strenuous at times, but it would repay them. I have listened to
him at Nuremberg and I listened on the wireless last night. He is
enunciating a policy which, if he is successful in bringing it to its
logical conclusion, will destroy the very system that hon. Members
opposite think they are going to preserve for a limited class. Let
them make no mistake. Herr Hitler is not going to preserve the
capitalist system for capitalists. He told his audience quite
clearly, in referring to past German history and to the old nobles of
Germany, that National Socialism is not going to protect vested
interests, and that is one of the reasons why the Governor of the
Reichsbank has been withdrawn from the Reichsbank.
When the Prime
Minister goes to Germany and Italy he is applauded. I believe those
are the genuine feelings of the people who go to see him there. I do
not know much about Italy, but I know a good deal about Germany, and
I am certain in my own mind that the people of Germany no more want
war than we do. But do not let the Prime Minister make a mistake.
Although they may not want war, Italian troops have been fighting and
dying in Spain at the order of their Duce, and if once Herr Hitler
starts his war machine the German people will march. They will march
perhaps with sinking hearts, and not with the same faith and
enthusiasm that they had in 1914. Whatever the results may be,
whether the war is short or long, that war machine, once it is
started, can only result in complete destruction of many of the
things that hon. Members opposite believe in, for as far as property
is concerned they will have the most to lose. We shall have only our
lives to lose. Hon. Members opposite and the circles that they
represent will have far more in material values to lose once the war
machine is started. There was one passage in the Führer's speech
which, it struck me, had a certain amount of truth in it. Truth comes
from strange places, as we have heard to-day in listening to the hon.
and gallant Gentleman the Member for Bournemouth. The Führer
assessed the amount of money that it has cost this country in
rearmament to protect what he termed Germany's stolen colonies. I am
not going to agree with him that they are stolen colonies, but I do
agree that it has cost Britain—that was the main purpose in
starting German rearmament—a tremendous amount of money in order to
carry out the Prime Minister's policy of appeasement.
There have been
Governments in Germany with whom our Government could have
negotiated. Could they not have thought of appeasement in those days?
Appeasement would have been far cheaper for Germany and the world
than it will be later on. Appeasement in the minds of Herr Hitler and
Signor Mussolini means something entirely different from what it
means in the mind of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister's policy
of appeasement is a nebulous one. It is leading to heavy rearmament,
to financial stringency in all circles and to heavy taxation. It is
leading in Germany to a 60-hour week, with static wages and rising
prices, and it may lead to the same thing in this country. May it not
be that presently we shall be considering, whether we like it or not,
guns before butter? I know which I would choose. I would rather have
butter before guns, and that is why I say that the only policy that
will bring peace to the world is not the policy of appeasement but
the policy of disarmament, the policy that was exemplified in the
Covenant of the League of Nations, to which the Prime Minister and
the Government will have to get back one of these days, and the
sooner he starts negotiations with those countries, which have got to
come inside that comity of nations one of these days, the better. I
was sorry to hear the Prime Minister say that he contemplates no
negotiations whatever with Germany. Where, then, is his policy of
appeasement? I know how difficult it may be for him to go once again
to Germany—it was difficult at one time for him to go to Italy—but
he has got to do it at some time or other. If he really believes that
Herr Hitler means what he says, how are we to test him? Shall we test
him on the battlefield or round the green table?
7.7 p.m.
Commander Sir
Archibald Southby
The hon. Member
made one statement which, I think, should be commented upon at once.
It was that the Prime Minister had said he was not contemplating
negotiations with Germany. That is not what I understood the Prime
Minister to say. I understood him to say that at the present moment
there were no negotiations in contemplation, but that he looked
forward to discussions with the statesmen of the world, to which the
German statesmen would, of course, come—negotiations which would
have as their aim the settlement of the outstanding questions which
divide the nations at present. It should not go out from the House
that the Prime Minister has ever said he did not contemplate
negotiations at the earliest possible moment with Germany, or with
anyone else in whose hands lies the peace of the world.
We have come back
after the Christmas Recess. I think there can be very few people in
or outside the House who have not in their hearts realised that the
fact that we in the British Empire have enjoyed a season of peace and
good will can be directly attributed to the work which the Prime
Minister did for us and for the rest of the world at Munich and
since. I think we are agreed in being horrified at the terrible and
pitiful state of that stream of refugees wandering across Spain in an
effort to get to France. I do not think it matters whether it is
correct to say that they could have stayed in their towns or whether
they were driven by force of circumstances on their pitiable trek,
but in contemplating their misery one should remember and have a
little thankfulness in one's heart for those who saved the women and
children of this country from similar misery which would have
resulted if the crisis in September and October had ended in a
European war. I take no side in Spain, but I think justice must be
done to both sides. No reference has been made in the Debate to what
General Franco has done in his efforts to feed the people in those
areas into which his victorious troops have gone. A tribute was paid
by the Prime Minister to the fact that the fall of Barcelona did not
result in the terrible state of affairs which many feared would
result, and it is true that efforts have been made by the Nationalist
side to succour those who up to now have been suffering.
In my mind the
thing that stood out most in the Prime Minister's speech was his
reference to the peaceful settlement of the world difficulties which
we hope to find in the future. One reason why hopes of peace to-day
are greater than they were in July, 1914, lies in this, that in 1914,
broadly speaking, the peoples of the world were not averse to war,
because they did not realise what war meant. To-day, the generation
which is largely in control of the affairs of the nations is one
which has seen the horrors of war, and there is in the hearts of the
people of all countries a hatred of war and a desire to prevent it
coming if by any means it can be prevented. It is that feeling in the
hearts of the people which has given rise to the affectionate
reception which the Prime Minister has had in Germany and Italy. I
think we might occasionally pay tribute to what other countries think
of the man on whose shoulders lies the destiny of the world. Hon.
Members opposite are quite sincere in disagreeing with the
Government's foreign policy, but I wonder if they ever consider how
much foreign people believe that it is the only policy that can save
the world at present, and give expression to that belief by their
reception of the man who they think has at last instituted a policy
of appeasement and understanding. I believe it is quite possible to
have a peacable settlement of the world's difficulties. I do riot
believe war is coming. I do not believe that war need come if we keep
our heads and our belief in ourselves and have a little thankfulness
for the blessings which we enjoy. But I am sure you will never get a
peaceful settlement of the difficulties, the grievances and the
sources of irritation which divide the nations of the world unless
all the statesmen who go to the conference table go meaning to find a
means of peace and to get an understanding without holding anything
back.
If we are to have
a peaceful solution of the world's difficulties, sooner or later we
shall have to discuss with German statesmen the future of the
Mandated Territories which were formerly German colonies. What the
outcome of that discussion will be I do not know, but you cannot go
to the conference table with any hope of success unless you make it
plain that you will discuss that or any other question with an open
mind and with a real desire to find a peaceful settlement. I think we
can compliment the Prime Minister on the work that he did for us and
on the fact that the personal contact that he made with Signor
Mussolini and Herr Hitler gives hope that a peaceable solution of the
world's troubles may be found. We should pay particular attention to
the fact that these two statesmen met as equals discussing the
affairs of their two countries. There was no question of dictating on
either side. They were trying to exchange views and opinions so that
the path to a better understanding of differences in the future might
be facilitated. It seems to me that hon. and right hon. Members
opposite are sometimes blinded by their hatred of the totalitarian
system of government. I do not like it any more than they do.
Colonel Wedgwood
Oh!
Sir A. Southby
The right hon. and
gallant Member is quite entitled to say "Oh," if that is
his contribution to the Debate, but I do ask hon. and right hon.
Members opposite not to be so blinded by their hatred of the
totalitarian system of government as to jeopardise the peace of tine
world. You can get a better understanding with the peoples of Italy
and Germany only if you discuss with their leaders the world's
difficulties, and, after all, we must not forget that these peoples
have great respect and affection for their leaders. Instead of
welcoming the assurance we are given by the statesmen of Italy that
they have no desire for territorial gain in Spain or elsewhere, hon.
and right hon. Members opposite the moment that statement is made say
quite openly that they do not believe a word of it. If hon. Members
opposite persist in that attitude they will inevitably produce the
war which they desire to prevent. The right hon. Member for Caithness
(Sir A. Sinclair) said quite openly and exceedingly loudly, as hon.
Members will agree, that he disbelieves the word of Signor Mussolini
and Herr Hitler. Does that help appeasement?
Mr. Gallacher
It is true.
Sir A. Southby
The hon. Member
may say that it is true, but that does not necessarily make it the
truth. Mournful reiteration does not establish a fact. It does not
help towards appeasement, when there is some hope of appeasement
being brought about, for responsible statesmen like the right hon.
Member for Caithness to get up, particularly after contact has been
made by the Prime Minister of this country with the head of the
Italian State, and say that they do not believe a word of what Signor
Mussolini says. I say that they should stop this futile and dangerous
railing at people on the other side. It is just as important to stop
this railing as it is to stop the defeatist moaning about the
position in which this country finds itself; this country with an
incomparable Navy and Air Force, and an Army which, though small in
size, is exceedingly efficient; with resources which are
unparalleled, with peace and liberty within its borders, and with
social services which are the envy of the whole world. Surely we
might count our blessings and realise that even if the future may be
dark and dangerous we of all nations are best fitted to encounter the
dangers.
Most of the Debate
has turned on the question of Spain. I repeat, that I take no sides
on the Spanish question. I have listened to practically every Debate
in this House on the Spanish problem and I have been struck by the
fact that hon. and right hon. Members opposite, who I know feel
strongly on the question, continually refer only to those who support
the Republican Government as having any right to be termed the
"people of Spain." In point of fact, General Franco has the
support of the vast majority of the people of Spain and, therefore,
it is at least only fair to say that a large proportion of the people
in Spain believe implicitly fn the cause for which General Franco is
fighting. The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger) made, I will
not say an insulting but a rather scathing allusion to the Moors.
They are Spanish subjects. How would we like to hear someone on the
Continent make scathing allusions to our incomparable native troops
in India? I did not hear the hon. Member complain because French
Senegalese troops are doing their duty in helping the refugees who
are coming to France. Why should there be this railing at Moorish
troops because they are on the side of General Franco?
Mr. Bellenger
Would the hon. and
gallant Member be so proud of our native troops if they were used to
shoot down our own people?
Sir A. Southby
I do not think it
is fair to say that. I do not see how you can deny the right of
Spanish subjects to say how Spain shall be ruled. Why should the
Moorish troops be singled out for opprobrium when one never hears,
and quite rightly, anything said about the native troops of France?
When this war in Spain is over a Spanish Government will rule Spain.
Spain will remember that foreign arms and foreign munitions on both
sides were used to prolong a struggle which has desolated Spain and
the Spanish people for these long years. To hear some hon. Members
opposite talk one would think that not a man or a gun had gone into
Spain on the Government side. I can never understand why that should
be said. Almost for the first time the leader of the Opposition in
to-day's Debate admitted that arms and munitions and men have gone in
on the Government side. Let us deplore the fact that arms and
munitions are going in on either side. I think the case made by the
Prime Minister is unanswerable. If we were to take sides in the
Spanish struggle the only result would be a widening of the struggle
involving the whole of Europe in the Spanish war.
I have heard the
argument time and again in this House as to how many foreigners there
are on General Franco's side and how many on the Government side. I
have even heard it said that there are no foreign legionaries on the
Government side because they have all been withdrawn. The hon. and
gallant Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft) dealt with that point
in his speech, but there is a simple way of finding out how many
foreign legionaries remain on the Government side, because it must be
possible to know how many prisoners, who are not of Spanish
nationality, have been taken by General Franco during his recent
advance. The fact is that there are, unfortunately, foreigners on
both sides in Spain. The right hon. Member for Caithness, as far as I
understood his speech, was pleading for arms for Spain, for the right
of Spain to buy arms.
Mr. Gallacher
Hear, hear.
Sir A. Southby
The hon. Member
says "Hear, hear," but if that is conceded does anybody
suppose that there would not be a further increase of arms supplied
to the other side? The only danger would be that this country would
have intervened in the Spanish struggle. I do not know whether the
right hon. Member read an article in the "News Chronicle,"
which I understand is very much the organ of his party. The article
appeared on 20th January, and this is what it said:
"Guns and ammunition are Spain's urgent need. The British
Government must be made to understand that the British people are
behind the Republicans in their fight and that non-intervention must
be abandoned in favour of active help."
And I think the
article goes on to suggest that the right hon. Member for Carnarvon
(Mr. Lloyd George) should raise the fiery cross and lead a crusade.
Is that really what the Liberal party wants? Do they want active
intervention? I say that the Government's policy is not only the
right policy, but it is the only policy. We must keep out of the
Spanish war at all costs. I do not believe that the British people
are behind the Republican side; I do not believe they are behind
either side in Spain. The people of this country are anxious to see
this terrible war brought to an early conclusion, and are only
anxious lest by any chance this country should be involved in it.
Mr. Kirkwood
Will the hon. and
gallant Member listen to this for a moment. I have had a petition
sent to me from thousands of skilled engineers on the Clyde calling
for food and arms for Spain.
Sir A. Southby
Such a petition
does infinite credit to the kindness of heart of the hon. Member's
constituents, and I hope he will explain the true position of the
Spanish struggle to them. If the Opposition desire a better
understanding between the people of this country and the peoples of
Italy and Germany surely it is time they should drop the
misrepresentations which go on about the war in Spain. Just because
their sympathies are with one particular side in Spain that is no
reason why they should blame everybody else who does not hold the
same view and accuse them of being Fascist in their outlook. If they
cannot be impartial, they should at least be able to realise that
there are hon. Members on this side of the House who are quite
impartial on the Spanish question. The Leader of the Opposition
talked to-day about the "trickle of munitions" into the
Government side in Spain. What did Dr. Negrin mean when he announced
that the Government side in Spain had an ample supply of munitions?
An "ample supply" does not suggest that they are being
obtained by the trickle to which the Leader of the Opposition
referred.
The fact of the
matter is that the difference between us on this side and hon.
Members opposite is that we want to keep out of the war in Spain; we
do not want to take sides in it at all. Hon. Members opposite feel
strongly, as they are entitled to do, about the Spanish conflict.
They do not want General Franco to win, and they are really not so
much democratic as anti-Fascist in their outlook. That is the
trouble. If they would try to be impartial there might be some hope
of this horrible, beastly struggle in Spain coming to an end. The
Debate has ranged not only over the question of Spain and the conduct
of the Prime Minister but over the whole question of foreign policy.
I believe implicitly that the foreign policy of the Government is
right; it is succeeding and I believe it will finally succeed and
that it will under God's providence bring this country and the world
to a period of stable and lasting peace. But let us stop this
anti-Fascist cry. Do not let us divide the world into camps if we can
possibly avoid it. Let us give credit to men in other countries for a
desire to do their best for the people they govern. I do not believe
in the totalitarian form of government any more than do hon. Members
opposite.
I believe that in
Italy and in Germany not only the peoples desire peace but that
Signor Mussolini and Herr Hitler desire peace, and that to them peace
is essential. That is the feeling in these countries, and similarly
there is no desire for war in this country. I do not believe in
calling anybody in this country a warmonger. I think the policy
advocated by hon. Members opposite might lead to war, and they think
the policy in which I believe might lead to war; but I acquit them,
as I hope they will acquit me, of any desire to stir up trouble and
to make war for the sake of making it. I and many hon. and right hon.
Gentlemen opposite have seen war at first hand; and I hope and pray
that none of us will ever see another war, but we ought to remember
that if we do not stop this criticism which adds fuel to fires that
are already smouldering, inevitably they will burst into flames. The
result might well be a crisis at a time when there may not be a
shrewd, patient and optimistic Prime Minister to pull us out of the
fire. Recently, in the "Daily Herald," which voices the
opinions of hon. Members opposite, there was an article by Lord
Ponsonby, who used to be a member of the Labour party, in which he
said:
"The foolish cry of fighting Fascism carries the day, urged by
our jingoes on audiences whose truculent spirit can be roused, many
of whom are waiting for a very definite message."
The cry of
anti-Fascism is a very easy one to raise, but it is a very dangerous
cry. Now is the time when public men, inside the House and outside,
ought to refrain from speeches and writings calculated to inflame
passions throughout the world. The right hon. Gentleman the Member
for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) said in the House, not so very long
ago, that the Prime Minister had saved Signor Mussolini from the fate
that all democrats hoped would soon befall him; and he went on to
state that he was not ashamed to say that he wanted to see the
destruction of dictatorships in Europe. What would the right hon.
Gentleman have said if responsible statesmen in Italy or Germany had
said that they wanted to see the destruction of the democratic system
in this country? [HON. MEMBERS: "They have!"] They have
not, and it is idle for hon. Members to pretend that they have. The
hon. Member for West Bermondsey (Dr. Salter) said, in April last, in
the "News-Chronicle":
"All around me in Parliament I hear We will have no truck with
dictators while they are in their present mood.' I say you will
either have to have truck with them round the council table or on the
battlefield. There is no alternative."
In conclusion I
make an appeal to hon. Members on both sides. Do let us stop an
international slanging match before it carries us too far. Mr. J. H.
Thomas, who very often said very wise things, I think once said that
democracy would be all right if it were not for the democrats. That
is an immortal truth. Democracy can fail only if we democrats who
believe in it do not do our duty and help to make it work. One cannot
put men, democratically elected and chosen by the free vote of the
people, into positions of trust and responsibility and expect them to
do their job efficiently and successfully if one never ceases railing
at them, interfering with them, and blackguarding them. It would be
impossible for a company to work efficiently if, when the directors
had been appointed in a democratic way, whenever they took certain
steps in the interests of the company, as they believed, they were
blackguarded and interfered with by the shareholders.
Mr. Bellenger
That is often
done.
Sir A. Southby
They wait until
annual general meeting, and then change the directors. Let us wait
for the annual general meeting before we start black-guarding those
who, at the present time, are charged with the responsibility of
governing this country. I make this appeal to hon. and right hon.
Gentlemen opposite who, I believe, desire peace as fervently as I do.
We have an opportunity now, which if it is lost, may never come
again, of getting an understanding between Germany, Italy, Russia and
ourselves and the rest of the world, which will result in lasting
peace in our time and in the time of our children. If that
opportunity is missed, as I pray it will not be, it will be upon our
heads that the blood of countless thousands of people in the world
will rest.
7.36 p.m.
Mr. Stephen
I agree with the
hon. and gallant Baronet the Member for Epsom (Sir A. Southby) in one
respect—I do not think these serious matters are suitable for a
slanging match, and I suggest to the hon. and gallant Baronet that
even when the General Election comes, it will not be a time for
blackguarding one another. It may be natural for one to get a little
bit heated on occasions, but my opinion is that world matters at the
present time are too serious to be dealt with by slanging methods. A
curious development in our time is that so much foreign policy is
discussed by the world's statesmen over the radio. Millions of people
listen to them, and I must confess that after listening to some of
the speeches that have been made over the wireless from time to time
by the world's statesmen, when there has been a good deal of slanging
going on, it has appeared to me as though some of those statesmen
resembled nothing so much as a lot of tom-cats out at midnight
squalling and spitting at one another.
With regard to
Spain, my hon. Friends and I were in opposition to other hon. Members
when the policy of non-intervention was decided upon, because we did
not believe that it was a good policy. At that time, I suggested that
many members of the Government and many hon. Members opposite had
allowed their class prejudice to blind them to what were their class
interests, owing to the fact that in the Spanish struggle there were
on the one side the gentlemen and on the other side the working
classes, in a very large measure. To many hon. Members opposite, it
seemed right that they should support General Franco. When the policy
of non-intervention was decided upon, I criticised the Government,
and I said that if the parties in Spain had been different, if the
Government in Spain had been a bourgeois Government, popularly
elected. and if there had been a working-class rising, the National
Government would never for one moment have contemplated such a
non-intervention policy which would have resulted in the refusal of
arms to the popularly-elected Government in Spain. I still believe
that.
I think that the
criticism which I made of the Government's policy with regard to
British Imperialist interests was a sound one, and I believe that the
party in Spain which looks like emerging from this struggle will be
very largely hostile or indifferent to British Imperialist interests,
and that the interests of German and Italian Imperialism will be much
better served by their ally if he is successful in the struggle in
Spain. I do not suppose that the Prime Minister is so simple as to
think that the German and Italian Governments are spending millions
of money in Spain without expecting to get some material return for
it.
I noticed that
Herr Hitler said, in his speech last night, that he did not want to
interfere with things in France, Britain or America, and therefore,
why should Britain and America always be lecturing Germany as to what
is happening in that country? But the same Hitler and his Government
specifically said, as did Signor Mussolini, that they were not
prepared to tolerate a Bolshevik government in Spain. There was not
much prospect of there being such a government in Spain, but the
working-class government that there was in Spain was so described by
Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini, and they were prepared to interfere
in Spain. Evidently, they make some difference when it comes to this
country or America, perhaps because the material resources of Britain
and America are so much greater than the material resources of Spain.
I think the Government ought to face the fact that the
non-intervention policy has been a failure on the part of so many of
the parties who were supposed to be loyal to the Agreement, and as I
see the position, the Government ought, even at this late stage, to
drop the Non-Intervention Agreement, since it has not been loyally
observed by the various parties to it, and allow the Spanish
Government to obtain arms in whatever quarters they can. I was also
interested in the Prime Minister's remarks concerning refugees and
the terrible problem presented by these people, who are afflicted by
such misery and suffering. I hope the Government will deal very
generously with the refugees from Spain, because, after all, we have
so much responsibility for the sufferings that have taken place in
Spain.
I wish to say a
few words with regard to the general foreign policy of the
Government. The Government's foreign policy now is somewhat different
from the one on which it was elected in 1935. To a very large extent,
the League of Nations has become of very little importance in the
Government's policy, and personally I do not think that matters very
much. From the beginning, I was convinced that a foreign policy based
upon a supposedly collective peace system under the League of Nations
was impossible in a capitalist world. After the War, for several
years, it was the instrument of the big Powers. It was all right for
France and Britain, for they were the big Powers in the League of
Nations, and they practically dictated what would happen in the
League. I think there was a real justification for the criticism made
in the German Chancellor's speech last night as to the way in which
the League of Nations had operated during those years when Germany
was a Member of it. I remember that when I was a lad, playing in the
streets of Glasgow, sometimes when the streets were opened up there
were a lot of stones and sand, and one lad would climb up on to a
mound and the others would try to overcome him, the one at the top
shouting "I am the king of the castle and you are the dirty wee
rascal." During those years the League of Nations seemed to
operate pretty much in this way—that France and Great Britain took
turns in chanting "I am the king of the castle, and Germany is
the dirty wee rascal." As I am reminded by an hon. Friend, there
was a democratic government in Germany in those days. Later, under
the leadership of Herr Hitler, Germany moved away from that position
and was no longer content with the part of "the dirty wee
rascal." To-day Germany is probably the most formidable military
Power in Europe, with the possible exception of Soviet Russia.
All this has
produced a tremendous change in international relationships. The
Prime Minister has had to face the difficulties involved in those
changed circumstances, and he has embarked on what he believes to be
a policy of appeasement. When he took office he told us that he was
greatly disturbed at the deterioration which had then taken place in
the international situation. He said the position in foreign affairs
was gradually deteriorating, and that he had set himself to try to
remedy that state of things. In trying to come to friendly terms with
Signor Mussolini, he went so far that he was prepared to put through
the agreement between Great Britain and Italy, even at the expense of
allowing his Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Gentleman the Member
for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Eden), to go. But in spite of the
agreement between Great Britain and Italy the international situation
continued to deteriorate, and in September the Prime Minister had to
hurry to Munich to try to save the situation in the fifty-ninth
minute of the eleventh hour. The nations of the world were once more
on the threshold of war.
I remember when
the right hon. Gentleman told us of the agreement which had been made
with Herr Hitler and of his satisfaction that by his efforts then,
he had saved the peace of the world. I give him all credit, along
with my colleagues, for his effort and what he did at that time. I
remember his satisfaction when he told us of the declaration signed
by Herr Hitler and himself that the two nations would hereafter
settle their disputes by discussion and never by war. In spite of
that declaration, I think the foreign situation is still
deteriorating and the position of the various nations in relation to
one another is still fraught with the greatest possibilities of
disaster. I remember, too, the distinguished brother of the Prime
Minister, the late Sir Austen Chamberlain, coming to this House with
all the glory of having helped to make the Locarno Treaty which was
to secure peace in Europe. I got into some trouble with the Labour
party then because of my scepticism with regard to the Locarno
settlement. I also recall the Kellogg Pact. Declarations have been
made and signed, and I believe that the statesmen of the respective
countries when they made those declarations and entered into those
agreements did so sincerely. I believe they sincerely intended to
keep those agreements. I believe that the statesmen of the world do
their best in making those agreements to overcome the difficulties in
the way of peace. But the Kellogg Pact and the Locarno Treaty mean
nothing to-day. They are all gone, and I think the declaration who
came from Munich is in pretty much the same position as those former
declarations. Those pacts and agreements are not broken because of
the willful dishonesty of the rulers of one country or another. They
are broken because of the economic circumstances of the people in the
respective countries and the political developments which flow from
those economic circumstances. Those factors are responsible far the
crises which occur between one nation and another.
I listened to the
Prime Minister's speech on Saturday, and I noticed that there was a
good deal of satisfaction in the British Press and in part of the
foreign Press at the fact that he had taken, as was said, a firmer
attitude on this occasion, and that a stronger line was indicated at
the end of the speech in which he associated himself with the speech
of the President of the United States. The right hon. Gentleman, it
was said, had made it plain that we were not again to give way to
any expression of physical force. Many people who read the Prime
Minister's speech Sunday were much more satisfied with his
deliverance on that occasion than with former speeches. The right
hon. Gentleman also emphasised on that occasion the importance of
going on with the rearmament programme. He said, in effect, "I
am going on with my policy of appeasement, but I am also going on
with the acceleration of the rearmament programme." What did
Herr Hitler say last night? He said he hoped that there would be a
long peace, but that he was going to proceed with the acceleration of
his rearmament programme. What will come out of the acceleration of
these rearmament programmes? What real appeasement is to be found in
such developments? I cannot see that this tremendous burden of
armaments on the countries of Europe can have any result but one. It
is bound, ultimately, to lead to an explosion.
As I listen to
Debates in this House on foreign affairs, I confess I come closer and
closer into sympathy and agreement with my right hon. Friend the
Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury). I become more and more
convinced that the pacifist way of dealing with the situation is the
better way. I am not hopeful about the appeasement policy of the
Prime Minister. I hope that my fears may prove to be unjustified, but
I view the present international situation with the utmost misgiving.
However many journeys the Prime Minister, with his umbrella, may make
to various capitals of Europe to talk with this or with that
statesman, I do not think he will be able to bring us into a world of
peace.
I may be asked
what would I propose having put aside the League of Nations, and
expressed distrust of the appeasement policy of the Prime Minister. I
say there are some facts which must be considered. There is, first,
the fact which has been stated by the Prime Minister on various
occasions and is, I think, apparent to everybody, that in all
countries totalitarian and democratic alike, the overwhelming
majority of the people, rich and poor, are full of enthusiasm for
peace and tremendously opposed to the thought of war. They shrink
from the idea of a great world conflict.
That is one big
fact. Another big fact is that in all countries there is this
ruinous and wasteful expenditure upon the instruments of death and
destruction, and at the same time a growing need on the part of the
people for developments in their social conditions. In each country
it is said "The international situation is so unsettled, what
can we do? Must we not go on rearming?" There are some people
indeed, who think that the atmosphere will never be cleared until we
have passed through another war. There are some people who think that
only war will clear away this dangerous atmosphere and allow the
nations to get out of the terrible mess into which they have been
plunged. Possibly in one respect I would agree. I would say, "Yes,
let us have war, but let us make sure that we are going to war with
the proper enemy and that we have a sufficient number of allies."
If I am asked what
allies I would suggest, I would say, "Well, there is France,
which fought with us in the last War. We remember the gallant
Frenchmen and we would do well to have them on our side." Then
the Italians were with us in he last War. Let us also have Italy as
an ally. We all know what a tremendous foe we found the German Empire
to be in the last War. So I would say, "Let us have Germany on
our side also." Then the greatest military power in the world
to-day is Soviet Russia. We cannot go into war without making sure
that Soviet Russia, also, is one of our allies. Then there is the
great power of the United States. Let us make sure that we have the
United States on our side. Who then is to be the enemy? I say we
ought to make sure what is the enemy, and I say that the enemy of the
peoples of the world to-day is poverty in the respective
countries—poverty based upon greed, selfishness, ambition and a lot
of nonsense about pride of race.
Herr Hitler told
us last night that he did not hope that Germany would come into the
position of being among the favoured banana growers but he said that
business in Germany was going through a hard time, that Germany was
in need of raw materials and of opportunities in the world markets
and that they could only get those raw materials and those
opportunities by having theirin colonial development along with
countries like France and Britain. "We must have our
opportunities in the colonies, and we must have our raw
materials—so, what about it old man? "That is Herr Hitler's
speech. Germany asks," What about ourof colonies? You see that
we need them, and you people in Great Britain and America should stop
lecturing us and give us our share. We do not interfere in your
affairs and you can have any kind of government you like, but let us
have the opportunities we need."
If you were to get
the nations embarked on a war against poverty, you would not have
these Colonial questions, and I suggest that the Prime Minister
should give an invitation to the German, French, Italian, Russian,
and American Governments to come to a conference preliminary to a
world conference. But if he calls such an international conference,
Britain must be prepared to give guarantees that would make such a
conference a reality. The various nations will not forget the World
Economic Conference of a few years ago and what a futile exhibition
it was. If the Prime Minister would invite those Governments to a
conference, and would inform them that so far as the British
Government and the British people were concerned, we were prepared to
put the whole of the resources of the British Empire—our individual
property as well as our national property—into the common pool—for
such a war on poverty, I believe that we should be pursuing the only
real policy of appeasement that might lead to a real world peace.
That is the
position that I take in this House. All these attempts to talk nicely
to Herr Hitler, to admire him, and to say how much we marvel at the
great things he has done there, or the same to Signor Mussolini, or
the tributes that we pay to that great democrat, Mr. Roosevelt, in
America, will not, I believe, get you anywhere so long as there are
those international, economic problems inherent in the present
economic system. So it is that I would ask the Prime Minister to take
a much bolder line and to ask the world to unite in a great war, a
real war, in which every decent man and woman could take part, a war
against poverty. In that way, I believe, we should be on the way to
peace. In every country, whatever the religion of the men or the
women, I believe that all of them who know would say that Jesus
Christ was a much greater man than Napoleon Bonaparte, and I would
say that a Government that would base its policy on the principles
of Jesus Christ would be in the way of making a far better job of it
than Governments which base their policies upon the principles of
Napoleon Bonaparte. I ask the Prime Minister to go much further than
he has gone and to realise that the problems that are driving the
world distracted today are fundamentally economic problems. Let him
face up to that and to the fact that it is only by the British Empire
being prepared to put its resources at the disposal of all humanity
that we shall be in the way of realising world peace.
8.5 p.m.
Wing-Commander
James
I hope I shall not
be thought discourteous if I do not follow the very excellent speech
of the hon. Member for Camlachie (Mr. Stephen), to which we have just
listened, but I do not want to occupy more than a few minutes. With
one remark in his opening phrases I should like to associate myself,
and that was when he said that this was surely not a time for
indulging in abuse and personalities. I was very glad indeed to hear
that observation. I want first of all to make a few observations upon
the question of propaganda. Anybody must recognise, wherever their
sympathies may lie in the Spanish war, that there are honest,
honourable, and sincere men on both sides, and we all must have
sympathy for those who are now under the shadow of defeat. I remember
that in France, in the autumn of 1918, I had the same sort of
sneaking sympathy for the beaten side that every Englishman has for
the hardships of the loser. But, with regard to propaganda, we are so
liable, in these days of totalitarian States and that intense
propaganda, which is the curse of the world to-day, to overlook its
effects upon ourselves. I think that is extraordinarily well
exemplified by the attitude of the British people to the war in
Spain.
Contrast the
propaganda of the two sides and its effects. On the side of the
Nationalists the propaganda has throughout the war been poor, from
their own point of view, and unskilled. They have taken little
trouble with it, and indeed to seek to impress other people with
their point of view is contrary to the whole trend of the Spanish
character. Also, of course, they have had from the start extremely
limited financial resources, and propaganda nowadays is largely a
question of how much money you are prepared to spend upon it. One has
seen estimates of the enormous amounts of cash expended by the
totalitarian States upon their propaganda. The insurgents in Spain
certainly went to the other extreme. Indeed, they have had very
little money to spend on it, and even when some important
pronouncement was made, such as General Franco's assurance on
neutrality at the time of the September crisis, it was largely
blanketed in our Press by more sensational news.
On the other hand,
the propaganda by the Republican Government has been throughout, I
think, extremely skilful, and they have certainly spent a very great
deal of money upon it. They have been clever enough assiduously to
cultivate the humanitarian sentiment in all countries, and they have
deserved their undoubted success in that respect; but it must be
remembered that on the purely mechanical side they have had, until
quite lately, a very great advantage, because the only direct
telephone lines from the Spanish Peninsula through France to the rest
of Europe ran through Madrid, and so, purely mechanically, the news
from the Nationalist side in Spain was anything from 24 to 48 hours
late, and news which is not "hot" news, as it is called, is
very little good. This fact of the varying use and effects of the
propaganda on each side has constantly impressed itself upon me when
I have visited Spain, and I have ventured, as I believe in the
interests of truth, on several occasions to try and expose some of
the fallacies that have gained currency, merely because it was not
possible to overtake, for the purely mechanical reasons that I have
stated, the stories started by the Left. The hon. Gentleman the
Member for Gower (Mr. Grenfell) remembers the allegations about the
trials in the Asturias, and he will remember that only in yesterday's
"Times" their correspondent in Barcelona said that little
complaint had been found with the system of trials adopted by the
Nationalists. I believe that to be a fair statement of the case and
to be according to the facts.
Mr. McGovern
Were they fair?
Wing-Commander
James
Yes. I think, if I
may say so, the hon. Member has a jaundiced view of Spanish justice
from his knowledge of the trials on the other side. The lopsided
view of the Spanish struggle that undoubtedly exists in this country
is due to a considerable extent to ignorance of Spanish history. This
lopsided view has become such an obsession of our political
Opposition that they are hardly willing sometimes to listen to the
often reasonable statement of the case on the other side. I believe
that, as has happened on several occasions in the last few years,
time will very shortly show that most, if not all, of their fears as
to the future are groundless. I used to think that there were two
categories of persons with whom no wise person should argue, and they
were women and admirals, but I think I must now also add Left-wing
intellectuals, and put them in the same class. I very much regret
that it has not been found possible for any responsible, fair-minded
Members of the Labour party to visit Nationalist Spain. I have tried,
as many of them know, to persuade some of them to go there. I think
it would have been a surprise to them, and even now I would urge upon
them to see whether they cannot make up a little party, or whether
one Member cannot go and see for himself something of the conditions
in Nationalist Spain. In urging that, I am merely reciprocating a
kindness, for it was entirely due to the initiative of a Labour
Member that I first went to Spain at all and became interested in
this civil war.
The papers during
the last few days have exhibited rather remarkably one of the
delusions current about the Spanish War, a delusion which it would
have been so very easy for the Nationalists to have explained away if
they had taken the slightest trouble about their propaganda. I refer
to the operations of the Moroccan Corps. The "Times" of
27th instant, in a leading article, talked about General Yagué's
Moorish regiments marching down the hills to Barcelona, and again in
the Debate to-day this question of the employment of Moors has
cropped up. I would like to remind the House that in fact General
Yagué's Moroccan Corps does not consist of Moorish regiments. During
the battle of the Ebro I spent two days moving about freely in the
area over which General Yagué's Moroccan Corps was fighting, and in
fact the Moroccan Corps simply meant the corps built up on the troops
based on Morocco before the civil war began. From my personal
observation, I can say that only a very small minority of General
Yagué's Moroccan Corps consists of native troops. Of course, I have
not seen the whole corps, and I do not know what the actual
proportion is, but it is certainly something under 20 per cent. When
General Yagué's Corps crossed the Ebro in their famous flanking
movement in March, I watched the first two brigades go across, and
there was not a Moor among them, and it was not till the late
afternoon that I saw a Moorish battalion moving up.
I would again
emphasise, because I think it affects the whole outlook on the
Spanish War, that there has been a far smaller volume of foreign
intervention, both in personnel and in material, than the
propagandists on either side have been prepared to admit. I am
certain that in a very few years, probably a few months after the
civil war is over, there will hardly be a man in Spain who will not
protest that the war was fought almost entirely without the
intervention of foreign forces. I will support my thesis by two
quotations from a non-British source, from an interesting article on
the Spanish war written in the French military paper, "Revue
Militaire Général," of September, by Commandant Andriot. This
is the first statement, and I think it is profoundly true:
"Material such as tanks, artillery, fortifications, and aviation
is in reality worth no more than the men who employ it."
One of the reasons
why the Nationalists have won the war is because from the start
General Franco, who was, before the war began, regarded as the great
training expert in the Spanish Army, has organised his army properly.
He started training from the word "Go" When hon. Members
opposite demand arms for Republican Spain they have, I think,
overlooked the fact that had the arms been forthcoming the Government
would not, with their organisation have been able effectively to use
them. The writer in this French military review further said what, I
think, is indisputable:
"The International Brigades formed for a long time the backbone
of the Government's defence. These men were volunteers from all parts
of the world and included many who had served their time in various
conscript armies. The exertions of the International Brigades
undoubtedly saved the Government cause from immediate collapse in
1936, and gave time, at the cost of high casualties, for the raw
militia to find their feet."
In deploring the
Italian intervention at a later stage, which I think is deplorable,
even scandalous, we should remember how effective was the support
that came to the Government in the earlier stages. An article in the
"Times" this morning by an ex-member of the International
Brigade gives a striking figure of the personnel employed. It is
36,000, and this is the first time, as far as I know, when from
official sources at Barcelona such a figure has been admitted. It is
a contrast to the fantastically high level sometimes quoted from the
other side. Attention has been concentrated on intervention to the
exclusion of a rational view of the purely military events in Spain.
It is common for writers and speakers in this country to start their
remarks by saying, "It is not denied" or "it is
admitted" that, for example, so many thousands of Italians
landed at a certain time—an assertion which has rarely been
substantiated by them. I believe that Mussolini's bitterest enemy
could not have wished him and the Italian people any worse disaster
than their intervention in Spain.
I will quote some
words of the Englishman who knew the Peninsula better than anyone
else—the Duke of Wellington. A book was reprinted the other day
called "Conversations with the Duke of Wellington," which
contained letters and conversations with Lord Mahon, who was at one
time a junior Minister. In a letter dated 1847 the Duke replies to a
letter from Lord Mahon, who has expressed anxiety that the projected
marriage between the heiress to the Spanish throne and one of the
sons of the House of France might put Spain under French domination.
The Duke, with his experience of the times and his knowledge of the
Peninsula, wrote back, that he did not think we need very much
worry—foreign intervention in Spain does not pay—and that even if
the marriage came off, he did not think anything would come of it in
the way Lord Mahon feared. Elsewhere in his writings the Duke of
Wellington records that shortly after the French had been driven out
of Spain in the Peninsula War, the most unpopular nation among
Spaniards was England.
We are faced,
whether we like it or not, in the not distant future with a win for
the Nationalists. Let us consider what would have been the
alternative. Is it likely that the second republic could have
survived and could have given Spain a good Government? People so
often talk as if this republic was the first attempt to give Spain a
democratic Government. Its career was closely paralleled by the first
republic from 1873 to 1875. The first republic, which had five
presidents in two years, was a period comparable in its
administration with the present republic and it was terminated like
this one by a military rising. It was a rising however, which did not
support an extreme right, but resulted after General Campos' coup in
the establishment of the limited liberal monarchy of Alfonso XII. We
have now to consider our attitude in our dealings with the new Spain.
I trust that this House and the Government, and especially Lie left
wings with their uncompromising attitude, will recognise facts. Let
them remember that our recent history is littered with examples of
the mistakes which we may make here. There was our attitude to Italy.
There was our attitude to the Streseman Republic. After all, we
created the Rome-Berlin Axis. I supported sanctions at the time and I
was a fool to do so because they were not effective, and only drove
Italy into the arms of Germany. Let us try to make the new Spain a
decent country as far as we can. Let us try to help the new Spain
take her place in Europe. Our counsels of moderation are far more
likely to be heeded if we approach the new Spain as a friend rather
than as a critic. We have to live in Europe with the new Spain. Let
us do our best to help it to be a good and great European Power.
8.25 p.m.
Lieut.-Commander
Fletcher
I wish very much
that the hon. and gallant Member for Wellingborough (Wing-Commander
James) had approached me with a proposal that I should visit General
Franco's territory. I should have been very glad to go. At the time
when I visited Government Spain, I endeavoured to make it known that
I should be willing to visit Franco territory if invited. He is a
poor student of affairs who is unwilling to visit both sides in such
a dispute, and I should have been all the more willing because I have
endeavoured to avoid being partisan in this Spanish war and have
occupied myself chiefly with the questions of international law and
of British security involved in the struggle. The hon. and gallant
Member always succeeds in creating an atmosphere of great
reasonableness and great fair mindedness when he speaks, but he is
not going to make my heart bleed because of any deficiencies which
General Franco may have suffered on the score of propaganda. Had I
been in General Franco's position I would have said that, provided I
might have all the Italian and German aviation, artillery and men I
could get the other side might have the propaganda.
Wing-Commander
James
Since the hon. and
gallant Member has referred to me, may I just say that perhaps I had
been misled by the speeches he had made—those which I had heard and
the accounts of his speeches in his constituency which I had
read—into thinking that he was not exactly an impartial student of
the Spanish war?
Lieut.-Commander
Fletcher
I quite
understand, but my speeches to which he refers show that I have tried
to avoid being partisan and I sincerely regret that the hon. and
gallant Member did not approach me.
When I listened to
the Prime Minister to-day the chief impression left upon my mind was
that, for good or evil, he has now closed his ears to argument on the
subject of the foreign policy which he is pursuing. I dare say the
fact is that he could not persist in that policy had he not so closed
his ears; but to be driving ahead, impervious to argument, is a
dangerous state of mind for the leader of a great nation to get into.
I have never heard the Prime Minister contend that justice had been
done at Munich, or that justice is now being done in Spain, and his
arguments amount to saying that justice can only be done at the cost
of war, while injustice can be done without the risk of war. If that
be so, it is not a very cheerful outlook for the British Empire.
The speech of the
Prime Minister to which we listened to-day was a sequel to the speech
which he made at Birmingham on Saturday. I noticed that in that
speech—and it was referred to again by the hon. Member for
Camlachie (Mr. Stephen)—the Prime Minister seemed to endeavour to
give the impression that at Munich he had signed some undertaking
with Herr Hitler that the two nations would always consult together
about any matters which might be in dispute. Speaking without
references by me, that is certainly not the impression left upon my
mind at the time by the paper which was brought back from Munich, and
I must express my very serious doubt indeed that any such undertaking
does in fact, exist between the two nations. If it does not it is
most important to avoid giving the impression that it does. The
Birmingham speech fell almost exactly into two equal parts. The first
half extolled the merits of the foreign policy of appeasement, that
policy which we were told to-day is succeeding. The second half
described the feverish rearmament preparations which are being made
in order to meet the situation which the foreign policy of
appeasement has rendered necessary.
That speech at
Birmingham was a review of the world situation which never mentioned
Russia and never mentioned Spain. I suppose that to mention those
Spanish refugees, waiting in agony for the dawn, machine-gunned as
they struggle to safety, who, rightly or wrongly, do regard this
country as the principal architect of their misfortunes, would have
been a very discordant note to introduce to the warm and well-fed
jewellers of Birmingham. Those refugees were mentioned today by the
Prime Minister. There was a sending for water and a washing of hands
to the tune of, I think, £20,000. At Birmingham the Prime Minister
told us that he has a good conscience. He can look back without any
regrets. Hailie Selassie an exile, Schuschnigg a tortured prisoner,
Benes, an exile, Negrin with his back to the wall. None of these men
cause the Prime Minister one twinge of conscience; looking back, he
has nothing to regret.
The Prime Minister
introduced us to a great phrase at Birmingham. There is a point at
which even he will stick in his heels. He will resist
"any attempt to dominate the world by force."
No such intention
will ever be announced by either of the dictators. They will never
announce that they are out to dominate the world by force. Their
intention is to gain one strategic position at a time, until
resistance to them becomes impossible. In each crisis we say, "Oh,
but there is no threat to dominate the world. Abyssinia is invaded,
but that is only Abyssinia, it is not the world. Austria goes,
Czechoslovakia goes, Spain may go. Oh, but there is no threat to
dominate the world. Those are only nations of whom we know little.'
If there were a threat to dominate the world you would see how bold
we should become." I believe that the greatest danger of war in
the world to-day is the conviction of Herr Hitler and of Signor
Mussolini that this country under the Prime Minister will always
yield to the blackmail of a threat of force. That is where the great
possibility of war exists.
We heard an
account to-day of the visit to Rome, a visit which took place while
British ships were being bombed by Italian aeroplanes. I wonder very
much if it so happened that any British ships were bombed during the
very days of the visit, while our Prime Minister and our Foreign
Secretary were being so very well and efficiently received, to order,
as we heard to-day. Does the Prime Minister still maintain his thesis
that although British ships are bombed by Italian aircraft the
aircraft are under the control of General Franco and that Signor
Mussolini could not stop the bombing even if he wanted to? That the
great Italian Dictator has no authority over his tool, General
Franco? Will the Government continue to claim, and the claim was
repeated today, not to have intervened in Spain when the most potent
weapon which has been aimed at the Spanish Government has been the
weapon of starvation and our refusal to protect British ships
lawfully carrying food to Spain has been a most potent aid to General
Franco? I wonder if during those conversations in Rome the subject of
the bombing of British ships by Italian aircraft was ever mentioned;
or was it considered too rude a subject to introduce into such a very
pleasant tea party, and as possibly not in harmony with a British
Prime Minister drinking the health "Long live the Emperor of
Ethiopia"?
I also noted
to-day that in regard to this visit to Rome the Prime Minister
claimed it as a great merit on his part that he had not been talked
into granting to General Franco those belligerent rights to which he
is not entitled. Much of this Debate has turned on the question of
intervention or non-intervention. We are agreed on this side of the
House that nonintervention was perhaps the best policy had there
been honest non-intervention on both sides. We differ from the
Government, not necessarily on that, but because they have allowed
non-intervention to be turned into a farce, operating to the benefit
of one side alone. Looking back on the long sorry story of the work
of the Non-Intervention Committee, does the Prime Minister claim that
as the result of that work Italy and Germany have sent to General
Franco one gun, aeroplane or man less than they intended to do? Of
course they have not. The Prime Minister made no attempt to-day to
answer the question why the Spanish Government should be denied their
right in international law to purchase arms, while Italy and Germany
have been allowed illegally to send arms to the Spanish rebels. The
Prime Minister and speakers from that side of the House have
repeatedly said that we advocate intervention on behalf of the
Spanish Government. Apparently they are not able to comprehend the
perfectly clear and simple statements made by my right hon. Friend
that we advocate nothing of the sort, but only the restoration to the
Spanish Government of their legal rights which they unquestionably
possess in international law and which is a completely different
thing from armed intervention on their behalf.
Every word that
the Prime Minister says on this subject of the trouble in Spain shows
that he fries to put both sides upon an equal footing. Frankly, we do
not. We say that one side is the legal Government and that the other
side are rebels against a legal government. The Prime Minister speaks
of the war as a civil war, but we do not. We say that it is an
Italian and German invasion of Spain in support of a rebellion. The
statement was repeated by the Prime Minister to-day that to abandon
nonintervention meant war. To say that is merely to defer to the
German and Italian view that for Great Britain and France to accord
legal rights to a legal government means war in Europe, but for Italy
and Germany to intervene at will and at large on behalf of the rebels
with men and munitions prevents war. That is a thoroughly Gilbertian
view, and is also an absolute and naked surrender to the doctrine of
force. Apparently it is no menace to Europe if Italy and Germany are
allowed to intervene, but it would be a menace to Europe if the
Spanish Government were allowed legally to buy arms to defend
themselves against that illegal intervention.
The Prime Minister
says that the Opposition have never concealed their partiality in
this matter. It follows that he thinks that it is partiality to say
that a friendly Government should have their legal rights. Let us
look at the conduct of the two sides in this struggle. General Franco
bombs open towns, machine-guns refugees, refuses the withdrawal of
foreign troops, bombs British ships, kills British seamen and refuses
to pay compensation for the damage which he does. We acquiesce in his
victory. The Spanish Government refuse to bomb open towns, abandon
that form of retaliation, send away their foreign troops, advocate
mercy and humanity in the conduct of the war, nurse in their
hospitals British seamen wounded by Italian aircraft, bury, with
every honour, British seamen slain by Italian bombs. Their reward is
that we acquiesce in their defeat.
We left the
subject of intervention and were taken to the next subject of good
faith and good will. The Prime Minister accepts the assurances of
Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini and chides the Opposition for not
doing the same. We simply go by the record, which amply justifies our
incredulity. Instead of chiding the Opposition the Prime Minister
would have done better to quote a few instances in which Herr Hitler
and Signor Mussolini have kept their word. We are dealing with men
who make no secret of it, but say quite openly, as an article of
their creed, that they keep an agreement only for as long as it suits
their convenience to do so. We have heard Foreign Secretaries and
Under-Secretaries in this House conceal information which must have
been at their disposal and twist their replies to questions in order
to deny Italian actions in Spain which the official Italian Press was
openly publishing and glorifying. All that has been done to defend
the strange hypothesis of Italian good faith, and is a very strange
example of being more royalist than the King. Spain is the touchstone
of German and Italian good faith. I remember the hon. Member for West
Leicester (Mr. H. Nicolson), who ought to know what he is talking
about, saying:
"It is literally true that no vitally important political treaty
has ever been signed by Italy that she has not broken."—[OFFICIAL
REPORT, 21st February, 1938; col. 102, Vol. 332.]
When the Prime
Minister was putting forward his proposals for Anglo-Italian
conversations he sweetened them to the House by saying that he had
sent for the Italian Ambassador and told him most firmly that the
conversations could be entered into only on the understanding that no
more Italian reinforcements went to Spain while they were proceeding.
Is it claimed that that undertaking was kept? Again the Prime
Minister said:
"When I was at Munich Signor Mussolini volunteered me the
information that he intended to withdraw 10,000 men or about half the
Italian infantry forces from Spain."
Was that true, or
is it true that 39,000 Italian troops fought at Tortosa? The Prime
Minister said:
"We have received from Signor Mussolini definite Italian
assurances that no further Italian troops will be sent to
Spain."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd November, 1938; col. 209, Vol.
340.]
Has that assurance
been kept? How does the Prime Minister reconcile the presence of
Italy on the Non-Intervention Committee with the statement of his own
Foreign Secretary
"that Signor Mussolini has always made it plain that for reasons
known to us all that he was not prepared to see General Franco
defeated."
How can that
statement be reconciled with the good faith of Italy in the work of
non-intervention? While discussing Italian good faith could we be
told when the Italian destroyers and submarines were sold to General
Franco? The Government must have the information and it would be very
interesting if they would inform the House of the date of the sale.
Good faith! The late Foreign Secretary, speaking at Coventry some
time last week, said that agreements and pacts had been signed and
resigned with Italy and broken. That is Italian good faith. How does
Germany keep faith? The Anglo-German Naval Agreement has been
prominently displayed to the world in the Government's shop window,
but it has been abrogated and is obviously now completely a dead
letter.
On the strength
of such a record of bad faith the Prime Minister asks us to accept
further assurances that neither Italy nor Germany, but particularly
Italy, have any territorial ambitions in Spain. Apparently Hitler
and Mussolini have done all that they have in Spain out of love for
General Franco because they think that he is such a nice man. When it
is all over they will just accept a hearty vote of thanks from this
great Christian gentleman and withdraw without asking for anything at
all. Read the official Italian Press on the subject of what Italy
thinks she is going to get as a result of her Spanish adventure.
Territorial acquisitions are not necessary; submarine bases and air
bases can be prepared and kept in readiness by Spaniards, with the
necessary agreement about placing them at the disposal of Italy or
Germany in case of need, and there can be agreements to permit the
landing of men and of artillery near Gibraltar. The fact is that if
General Franco remains, as we have very good reason to suppose he
will, under the domination of Italy and Germany, the whole structure
of our Imperial defence is undermined. It is not merely the
Mediterranean and the Cape routes to the Pacific and the Far East
that are threatened, but also the Atlantic routes to South America,
and the wheat and meat that we should want to bring from there in
case of war.
On the top of all
this about good faith we are told that Signor Mussolini is what Sam
Weller would call "werry strong" for peace. Can the Prime
Minister tell us of one single thing Signor Mussolini has ever done
for peace, except when peace was directly in his own interests, as it
was at Munich when he prepared with Herr Hitler the agenda for the
meeting? Was Abyssinia an example of Italian pacifism? Is Signor
Mussolini in Spain in pursuit of peace? The whole Italian and German
hypotheses is that their intervention in Spain does not constitute a
breach of the peace! The Prime Minister accepts these assurances
about Italian good faith. Well, if there were no "mugs,"
there would be no confidence men and how would the confidence men
live? After all, confidence men must live. If there were no "mugs"
and no confidence men, what would happen to the capitalist system?
The Stock Exchange would have to close. And what would become of the
lawyers? The capitalist system is founded on an unceasing supply of
"mugs" and confidence men.
The Prime Minister
has said to-day that our prestige never stood higher. I fear he does
not read all the foreign Press. I think that, as with many men at the
top, those under him only take to him the things which they know he
will enjoy reading. In fact, I have heard that, to be "in the
swim" with the Prime Minister, you have to learn the "crawl."
He spoke about our allies and friends. Who are they? Might we have a
list of these wonderful allies and friends who are all so proud to be
in with us? He said that Herr Hitler's speech last night was very
reassuring, but from Rohm to Benes there has never been a victim whom
Herr Hitler did not reassure before he struck him down. I begin to
get nervous when I hear that his speech last night was reassuring. In
one crisis after another, from Abyssinia to Czechoslovakia, this
country has retreated—and retreated, not to positions prepared by
ourselves, but to positions carefully prepared for us by our
potential enemies. Now all the reassurances, which have been repeated
to us in one crisis after another, are repeated to us about Spain. I
can only say that I hope for my country's sake that I may have to
apologise to our Prime Minister and admit that in this case his
reassurances were justified.
8.51 p.m.
Sir Nairne Stewart
Sandeman
I am certain that
the hon. and gallant Member for Nuneaton (Lieut.-Commander Fletcher)
is quite sincere in his very amusing and sarcastic remarks. He has
been talking about what would happen if there were no "mugs"
and no confidence men, but what about politicians? They would go
exactly the same way as stockbrokers and other people of that kind. I
do not think that the hon. and gallant Member will ever have to
apologise for the Prime Minister—
Lieut.-Commander
Fletcher
I said that I
should be very glad to have to apologise to him if he is right about
Spain, and not wrong.
Sir N. Stewart
Sandeman
I beg pardon. I am
sure that the hon. and gallant Member will have to apologise to the
Prime Minister, and I am sure he will do it in the most eloquent
fashion. The longer one is in the House the more one believes in the
sincerity of people's views. For myself, it takes me a very long time
to make up my mind, but, after I have made up my mind, it takes an
awful lot of shifting. Also, I think I have a perfect right to my
own opinions, as hon. Members above the Gangway have a perfect right
to theirs. I have made up my mind that General Franco, for a number
of reasons, has right and justice on his side. My reason for taking
an interest in this matter is that I have some friends in the Basque
country, people whom I would trust implicitly, and they wrote and
told me what was going on in their part of the country. They,
luckily, managed to get away, but their estate was practically
wrecked, though the house was more or less left alone, because they
had one or two good Basque maid-servants, who, I suppose, were able
to talk to the Reds. There were many people, however, who were not in
that position. The tortures and murders that went on there simply
sickened me.
I went on to
inquire, because, like many of my friends in the House, I do not
believe what is in the Press. I do not know why the Press should give
such a distorted view of nearly everything that is happening in the
world. I wish for the old days when in the newspapers one had
statements of facts and facts alone, and they kept their leading
articles for the discussion of those facts. We all want to know the
truth about this Spanish question, but I have found it very difficult
to get at the truth. I have made incessant inquiries on the subject.
Take the statements in the Press about the bombing of Guernica. If
anyone will take the trouble to get the pictures—they can be got
for a shilling a time—of the mess in Guernica, they will find that
it was nearly all road mines. I heard one man say that he was there,
but it turned out that he was never within five miles of the place.
Miss Rathbone
Did the hon.
Member read the reports sent by Press correspondents on the spot
representing papers like the "Times" and Reuters? Which
does he think the most reliable—reports that were made months
later, or reports from Press correspondents on the spot?
Sir N. Stewart
Sandeman
These photographs
were not taken months later. It is just the Press that I have been
objecting to, because, as I have said, I do not believe all that it
says. We have been told that belligerent rights cannot be given to
General Franco for the reason that there are so many Italians and
Germans fighting for him. We have to take that as read. But when are
we going to give them belligerent rights? At present they have 39 of
the provinces and the other side have 11. It looks to me as if by
Easter there will be 50 provinces on the one side, and that will mean
all Spain with the same good government and law and order as are now
found behind the lines in the Franco part of Spain. I have friends
who tell me about it, and they say there is no trouble at all there.
Mr. Thurtle
There is the
silence of death.
Sir N. Stewart
Sandeman
"O death,
where is thy sting?" is the reply to that.
Mr. Thurtle
If anyone gets up
to protest against Franco he is put against a wall and shot.
Sir N. Stewart
Sandeman
I do not believe
that that happens without a trial. I do not know where the hon.
Member gets his information. He is evidently credulous. I am not
nearly so credulous. We know that a good many people have been
butchered in cold blood, but we have a good idea how many were
butchered in cold blood by the so-called Spanish Government. There
was a list of people each with a red cross against his name, who
would have been done away with if Franco had not come to their
rescue. [Interruption.] That can be proved. I was talking to a priest
a few days ago and he told me that his name had been marked with a
red cross and that he would have been killed if he had not been able
to get away, or if Franco had not started what you call a revolution.
[An HON. MEMBER: "What do you call it?"] I call it putting
things right—and the hon. Member above the Gangway, if he thought
he could get away with it, would do the same thing. I have a lot of
friends in Franco Spain who are in business, and they say they are
having no interference at all. I would rather be a Red in the hands
of Franco than one of these poor fellows who are backing Franco who
were in prisons in Barcelona and are having such a horrible time.
There are one or
two questions I should like to ask. What about the Jose Luis Drez? I
should say the position of that is very difficult indeed, because you
cannot exactly intern it, as there are no belligerent rights. I
shall be glad if my right hon. Friend will give me some idea of the
position. And what is the position of our Ambassador and the various
Consuls in Government Spain? Have we any there now, or have they been
obliged to go? There may be some in Valencia. Then I should like to
come to the question of the Italians and Germans as against the
International Brigade. How many ships have we sent to Valencia to
bring off members of the International Brigade who have been sent out
of that part of Spain? It is very difficult to believe that there are
no members of the International Brigade left there. If that is so,
how did they get out, and who took the mout? It is known to everybody
that there are many Germans and Italians who do not agree with the
régimes in their own countries. How are you going to repatriate
them? If you send them back to Germany and Italy they will be "for
it." We know that there were a lot of Belgians, and they have
not turned up. Have they been killed? There were a lot of Portuguese,
and I am told that many of them have not gone back. If they are still
in that part of Spain it cannot be said that there are none of the
International Brigade fighting for the Spanish Government. I am told
that a lot of passports have been lost and that a number of new
citizens have turned up in Spain, though I cannot vouch for that with
the certainty that I feel about many of the other things I have said.
We are quite
certain that this war is nearly over. [An HON. MEMBER: "You were
certain two years ago!"] Yes, and I was right and other people
were wrong. I am quite certain it is only a question of a very short
time. I think Easter will probably see the whole thing over. What is
going to happen them? [An HON. MEMBER: "Another rebellion!"]
No, I do not think there will be another rebellion. But Spain will
want a great many things. We have heard much about Spain's love for
Italy and Germany. I will not gainsay that, although I do not think
there is as much truth in it as some people believe. But Italy and
Germany cannot give them all the money they will want.
Mr. Gallacher
So it is money you
want?
Sir N. Stewart
Sandeman
What about all the
good things we buy from Spain, and the money we have invested in
Spain? I am certain that from Franco we shall get a far fairer deal
in getting some sort of payment for it. [Interruption.] I know my
hon. Friends above the Gangway do not like to hear the truth, but
they will find out in time that they were wrong, and, unlike the hon.
and gallant Member for Nuneaton, they will not say they were sorry
they were wrong. We have heard a lot about the totalitarian States.
To some hon. Members, the term is like a red rag to a bull, but
surely the principal totalitarian State is Russia. I believe that if
it had not been for Communism you would not have had Nazism or
Fascism. It is the wicked father or mother of both. It is none of my
business how Russia is run, or how Germany and Italy are run. People
generally get the Government that suits them. [An HON. MEMBER: "It
does not suit the Jews."] The Jews do not like it, but I do not
think the Jews were quite as clever as they usually are.
We have heard a
great deal about the popularity of the Prime Minister in this
country. I have seen no sign of any falling off in that popularity. I
shall never forget the scene in this House when many people in the
public gallery were waving and cheering because they knew there was
not to be a war. If the Prime Minister has made any mistake at all it
is in saying that he will not have a General Election now. But for
that decision there would not be all this barking at his heels,
because his opponents would be afraid of a General Election. To say
that the Prime Minister is not popular on the Continent is a great
mistake. I will give an example of what I know of a Scottish lady who
had been in Germany. She was taken very ill indeed and had to go into
a hospital there, and being Scottish she insisted upon paying the
doctor. The doctor said that he did not want any payment, but at last
the doctor said, "Oh well, there you are. Open that when you get
home." Inside the letter were the words, "It is only part
payment of the debt of gratitude the whole of the German people owe
to Mr. Chamberlain, the Prime Minister of England." [Laughter.]
I can quite understand certain people laughing at that story and not
believing it, but it can be proved quite easily. The hon. Member for
West Fife (Mr. Gallacher) had better look out, because I am not sure
that the lady does not live in his constituency.
I personally
believe that the appeasement policy is a very good one indeed and
that it is working well. We hear an awful lot—and we do not mind
it—about the Rome-Berlin axis. I think that it will be found that
the word "axis" was not in very common use until that was
brought about. I believe that the greatest move that we could
possibly make in this country is some sort of accord with the United
States of America. I believe that it can be done and that it needs
only a few clever and tactful arguments to be put before the people
of the United States to show them how it would benefit them. I have
been at a loss to find a word to match the word "axis."
Somebody has suggested Trans-Atlantic "accord"—not a bad
word—but there is another word which fits it best of all. It is the
word "plexus." [An HON. MEMBER: "Solar plexus."]
No, solar plexus is a little different. If you look it up in the
dictionary you will find that the word "plexus" is "a
knitting and binding together." It is a much closer form of
union. I wish you would all make a row about it, as I would like the
word to be taken up in the United States, so that they might do
something about it.
I believe that if
the English-speaking races could get together all fear of war and
need for armaments would come to an end. War is a most horrible
thing, but the only chance of stopping it is to be well armed and
ready for it. If you are strong and in good condition no one wants to
fight with you. If you let yourself get flabby and out of condition
liberties are taken with you. I am certain that if his health is
spared, the Prime Minister will be at the head of the Government for
a long time to come. I hope that we can do something to bring this
country closer to the United States. It is an effort which will be
well worth making.
9.10 p.m.
Miss Rathbone
I hope that the
hon. Gentleman the Member for Middleton (Sir N. Stewart Sandeman)
will forgive me if I do not follow his argument. It seemed to be a
rather characteristic example of what was a little while ago a very
common attitude of those who represent business and commercial
interests in this country towards the Spanish issue. If I remember
rightly, the hon. Member was one of those who at the time of the
Japanese first invasion of Manchukuo were quite sure that Japan was
doing a very good turn to British and other commercial interests by
paving the way for the great entry of the West into Chinese commerce.
Sir N. Stewart
Sandeman
May I remark here
that at a public meeting I said that I had found out my mistake a
long time ago? Whenever I find that I have made a mistake I at once
own up to it.
Miss Rathbone
I honour the hon.
Member for owning up to his mistake. I am afraid that it will not be
very long before he may have to make the same magnanimous
acknowledgement when he finds out how mistaken he has been in
believing that Germany and Italy, and especially Italy, after they
have spent so much money and blood on the Spanish struggle, are, if
Franco wins, going to allow themselves to be left out while British
gold comes in and makes a better bargain.
Mr. De Chair
We intervened in
the Spanish War against Napoleon in 1812 and made great sacrifices in
blood, but we did not remain there afterwards.
Miss Rathbone
I do not go back
to what was done after the Napoleonic wars as I am not sufficiently a
historian for that, but I know what happened to the hopes of those
who knew so well what was going to result from the Japanese invasion
of Manchukuo. I think that we shall make a great mistake if we
believe that Italy and Germany have spent all they have on the
Spanish issue merely for the sake of General Franco's beaux yeux are
then going to have the prize filched away from them. I wonder how
many Members read last Sunday the very interesting despatch from the
Berlin correspondent of the "Sunday Times," a paper that
has been anti-Republican Government in its general outlook. In it he
summed up the four advantages which were expected in Berlin to result
in a Franco victory. The first was that the Reich and Italy are far
on the way to establishing themselves in positions of strategic
superiority along British and French routes of imperial
communication. The second was that the Axis powers are nearer to
acquiring access to naval, military and air bases whose very
existence, they believe, is bound to exercise a "deterrent"
influence on British and French policy. The third—and I draw the
attention particularly of the hon. Member for Middleton, is that they
will be in a better position to obtain vital, natural resources
available in Spain, notably, copper, mercury, rubber and tin; and
lastly, they will be able to exploit the Spanish market. I think that
that is a much more intelligent anticipation of what would be the
result of a Franco victory than that of the hon. Member for
Middleton. I could give many instances front the Italian Press to
prove the same thing, but I do not want to do that.
It is not my
intention to delay the House but I should like to deal with the
general question of the Debate. In the nine years that I have been a
Member of this House I have never listened to a Debate of a more
depressing character. We all feel depressed. Whatever we may think
about the Spanish issue we must realise that the skies are very dark
and threatening. But there is another cause for depression to-day.
During the speech of the Prime Minister I could not detach my mind
from observation of the opposite benches, and as my eyes passed from
row to row of hon. Members opposite I felt that I had never looked at
a more doubtful, hesitating set of men. There was scarcely one
outburst of applause throughout the Prime Minister's speech, with the
exception of that which came from a Conservative bench immediately
behind me from hon. Members who possess stentorian voices. The vigour
of their applause made up for the smallness of their numbers. The
feeling of uncertainty which prevails among those who support the
Government, as well as other people, is but a reflection of the deep
feeling of uncertainty which pervades the whole country.
I wonder how many
hon. Members have studied the summaries of public opinion that are
obtained by the Institute of Public Opinion, and published in the
"News Chronicle." That newspaper is not responsible in any
way for the way the opinions are collected. The records show a most
remarkable change of opinion in the country on the Spanish question.
In October, 57 per cent. of those whose opinion was taken were in
favour of the Republican Government of Spain and 13 per cent. were
pro-Franco. The remainder expressed no opinion. Three months later,
when the same question was put to exactly the same constituencies,
namely, "Do you want the Spanish Government or General Franco to
win," there was a remarkable change of opinion. The proportion
in favour of General Franco was the same as before, but the
proportion definitely in favour of the Republican Government had gone
up to 75 per cent. Those facts show the trend of public opinion.
Proletarian British opinion has always been enthusiastically
pro-republican. I have never known in my fairly long public life a
question that has gone so much to the heart of the British working
class and the British intelligentsia as the cause of the Spanish
Republic. But the curious thing about this latest summary from the
Institute of Public Opinion is that it was in the Conservative
middle-class constituencies that the wave of opinion in favour of the
Spanish Government was the greatest. They are awakening to the facts
and are realising that this Government from the point of view of our
vital interests have made a fatal mistake in conniving at a victory
for General Franco by the assistance of Italian and German arms. I
think the deadly nature of that mistake is likely to be brought more
closely home to us in the future.
I rose, however,
to speak more particularly on the policy of His Majesty's Government
with regard to refugees. Those of us who are passionately opposed to
the foreign policy of the Prime Minister and his Government often
remind ourselves that there may be factors which we fail to
appreciate and that there may be deadly weaknesses in our home
defence position that have caused the Government to take up an
attitude on one international attitude after another that seems so
pusillanimous and so treacherous. But we are confirmed in our
judgment on the major issue when we reflect on the ungenerous and
shortsighted attitude adopted by the Government on minor
international issues such as the refugee question where there could
have been little risk in a generous attitude. His Majesty's Ministers
are by nature humane men and they must feel individually for the
sufferings of the refugees from Spain, Germany and Czechoslovakia. We
know, too, that the officials who have to carry out the regulations
laid down by the Government on the question of the refugees have not
only expressed themselves humanely but have often shown active
humanity in individual cases. They work energetically, and there is
universal testimony to the kindness with which they treat individual
refugees, but what can one say about the general attitude of the
Government on this question?
Take the subject
to which the Prime Minister referred—the terrible sufferings of the
refugees who are fleeing from the on-coming insurgent troops in
Spain. The Under-Secretary also spoke feelingly on this subject at
Geneva. There is, however, the old story:
"By their fruits ye shall know them."
What have the
Government actually done to give substance to this sympathy? This
country and France have the greatest responsibility of any of the
countries not immediately concerned in the conflict for the
non-intervention policy, and that fact involves some responsibility
for the sufferings which the Spanish people are now undergoing. What
have we done to relieve these sufferings? We have contributed twice
over £10,000, and now the Government have promised another £20,000
to the International Commission for the relief of child refugees in
Spain. That is a small contribution compared with what other
countries have done. France in the last few years must have taken
between 50,000 and 100,000 refugees from Spain, and maintained them
chiefly at Government expense. We in this country found great
difficulties in getting the Government to allow us to bring in 4,000
Basque children and to support them from voluntary funds.
France at the
present time is besieged by hordes of starving refugees who are
nearly dead from cold and terror, and the Prime Minister spoke of how
nobly the French were trying to meet that position. What has Great
Britain done to help France except contribute £20,000 towards the
International Commission? Surely, we ought not to leave the greater
weight of the burden to France. Could we not send ships to some
Spanish or French port and bring shiploads of refugees to this
country, to be temporarily cared for. Why leave it all to France, who
have received so many refugees?
Vice-Admiral
Taylor
Does the work done
by His Majesty's ships count for nothing?
Miss Rathbone
To what does the
hon. and gallant Member refer?
Vice-Admiral Taylor
I mean the refugee
work carried out by ships of His Majesty's Navy.
Miss Rathbone
That was mostly
done earlier for the benefit of wealthy Franco refugees.
Vice-Admiral Taylor
I deny that
statement.
Miss Rathbone
I have given way
three times and I cannot do it again. I think that makes it worse.
The Government did send, at a cost of £30,000, a ship to bring away
well-to-do Franco refugees, but they have done nothing corresponding
to that for the Republican refugees. The United States, a country so
much further away and with so much less responsibility, has already
given corn to the value of £100,000. Compare that with our £40,000
dribbled out by His Majesty's Government in instalments. Sweden, a
small poor country, has promised £75,000—more than double what
Great Britain has given or promised. So much for what Great Britain
has done to help the miserable refugees from Spain. Let us turn for a
moment to what she has done for refugees from other countries, in
Germany and Mid-Europe. Here, too, we surely have some responsibility
for the results of the Treaty of Versailles and of the Munich
Agreement. We heard to-day in answer to a question the number of
refugees from Germany who have been allowed to enter this country. We
all know, from the recent survey, that there are half a million Jews
alone who are being hunted for their lives, stripped of all their
goods and in deadly peril.
Since the
beginning of July only between 6,000 and 7,000 German refugees have
been allowed to enter this country, of whom nearly one-half were
children. We know that the regulations under which they are permitted
to enter are such that it is mainly only the relatively well-to-do
refugees who are able to get in because only these can obtain the
financial guarantees demanded. We, unfortunately, accepted the fatal
principle adopted at the Evian Conference that not a penny was to be
spent from public funds and that everything done to assist refugees
must be done by voluntary enterprise. There is not an expert on the
refugee question who does not recognise that that is equivalent to
saying, "We are very sorry for all the people who are in danger
of being drowned by this flood, and we will do our best to rescue
them, but, mind, we must use nothing but teacups to bale out the
flood." Lastly, the refugees from Czechoslovakia have the
greatest claim on our generosity. Let us grant, for argument's sake,
that Czechoslovakia gained as much as we did ourselves from the
Munich Pact, because it saved them from war. Does that apply to those
who are trying to get out of the country now, because under its new
Constitution it is neither for the safety of the country nor for
their own that they should remain there? The men of German race who
had the pluck to stand up to Henlein and Hitler, now that
Czechoslovakia has become a vassal of Germany, dare not remain there.
What has been the attitude of the Government? We were told to-day
that 650 adult refugees and 160 children had been allowed to come in
during the last four months but there are several thousands who are
in deadly danger. We are apparently willing to abandon them to the
danger of being handed over to their deadly enemies rather than risk
a few thousand pounds in bringing them over. I know that the
Under-Secretary has sympathy in this matter, and I appeal to him to
do something to speed up the mechanism and to relax these regulations
which are making it impossible for voluntary organisations to bring
over more than this dribble of refugees because they make it
necessary in every case, not merely to provide the cost of transport
and maintenance, but the cost of eventual migration and settlement
overseas. Cannot we risk a few thousand pounds rather than abandon
these people to the terrible fate that may possibly await them? I
feel that in this small matter we may appeal with some hope of
success for the Government to adopt a more farsighted and generous
policy than heretofore.
9.32 p.m.
Mr. H. Strauss
No one who has sat
through the Debate will seek to minimise the differences that
separate those who have spoken on the other side and those who have
spoken from these benches. To do so would not be fair to speakers in
any quarter of the House. I agree, however, with one speaker from the
Labour benches that we do not want to exaggerate any differences that
there may be between us in foreign affairs, and I have been wondering
whether part of the differences that have been so noticeable is not
due to a confusion between two questions which are really quite
separate. The first is this. Is the state in which the world finds
itself such as to inspire confidence or anxiety? The other is, Is
British foreign policy one which should forthwith be changed? I am
not going to say that those questions cannot have any possible
connection, but they are obviously independent. It is not true that,
if all goes well, British foreign policy is necessarily right, nor,
on the other hand, is it true that, because there are matters in
various quarters of the world which naturally fill thinking men with
serious anxiety, therefore British foreign policy must be changed. I
am sure that every fair-minded man, wherever he sits, must recognise
that the British Government governs Great Britain; it does not govern
the world; and those who give us a great catalogue of everything
during the last 10 years that has gone differently from what we
should have wished, and assume that British foreign policy must have
been at fault, are guilty of a non sequitur.
Let me give an
example of what I mean. I think the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr.
Bellenger) agreed with the statement, so often repeated on the
Government side, that war is not inevitable, but he went on to ask
what people were to think when a Minister said that he was preparing
for an early war. The hon. Member said that must surely mean that
early war was probable. Of course it means nothing of the kind. It
merely means that an early war is possible. I am not going to say
that I think the world is free from anxiety. I cannot see how any
thinking person could come to that conclusion. If it was merely a
question of optimism or pessimism as regards the interpretation of
last night's speech, I might possibly agree more with some hon.
Members who have spoken on the other side than with the more
optimistic view of the Prime Minister. If we examine that speech
carefully and observe the propaganda now current in Italy against
France and in Germany against this country, if we examine also recent
economic changes and developments in Germany itself, we cannot, if we
are honest with ourselves, free ourselves from anxiety. That does not
mean that the policy of nonintervention should therefore be
abandoned. It does not mean that in an uncertain world an attempt at
appeasement coupled with a determination to be prepared if the policy
fails, is not the best and indeed the only wise policy for this
country to pursue.
A great deal has
been said about the Non-Intervention Agreement. I do not think it has
ever been claimed from these benches that it is a perfect or ideal
arrangement. I certainly have never said anything of the kind, but
what I have thought and what I still think, is that it was the best
arrangement available which was calculated to achieve two results—to
prevent the war spreading and becoming a European conflagration, and
to secure, as far as any international agreement could, that the
Spanish struggle should be decided by the Spanish people alone. The
first of these objects has hitherto been achieved, but the second, as
we all know, only partially. I must, however, quarrel with many hon.
Members opposite and still more with writers in the Press, who
consider not only that the Non-Intervention Agreement has been a
failure but also that it is in itself an outrage against
international law. The hon. and gallant Member for Nuneaton
(Lieut.-Commander Fletcher) announced that he was going to speak from
the standpoint of international law and then gave utterance to many
propositions which were wholly novel in the ears of any lawyer. What
is meant when hon. Members opposite say, as they do with perfect
sincerity, "What you ought to do is to restore the right of the
Spanish Government under international law to purchase arms." I
say that they should consider two questions; first, whether any such
right exists under international law and, secondly, whether anybody
has ever denied it. I know that that will fill some hon. Members with
surprise, but I ask them to consider the position very carefully. If
they mean that there is an absolute right in any Goverment to
purchase arms, they must presumably mean that there is a
corresponding duty in other Governments to sell arms.
Do they really
believe that international law says that every country is under a
duty to sell arms to other Governments? If they do not mean that,
then they must consider what it is they do mean. The great weakness
of speaking of a right under international law to purchase arms is
that it seems to deny what everybody knows to be a perfectly good
right in international law for any Government to agree not to supply
arms to either side or to allow their ships or nationals to carry
such arms. When hon. Members on the Front Opposition Bench talk about
the scandal of denying to the lawful Government of Spain the right to
purchase arms, do they realise the crime under international law of
which they are accusing the United States of America, with whom they
always profess to desire friendly relations? The United States is
refusing to supply arms in exactly the same way as we are. I suggest
to hon. Members opposite that the sooner they clear up their minds on
this matter and realise that there is no outrage against
international law in the Non-Intervention Agreement, the better it
will be for clear-headedness on all sides.
I believe there
was only one practical alternative to the Non-Intervention Agreement,
and that was to grant belligerent rights accompanied by neutrality.
One of the reasons why this course was not adopted was given by the
Prime Minister—namely, that with the foreign intervention which is
taking place it would be difficult to adopt the traditional policy of
belligerent rights and neutrality. I would remind hon. Members
opposite that, while we recognise the Republican Government as the
government of Spain, there are other great Powers which recognise the
insurgent government as the government of Spain, which very much
complicates the problem and increases the risk of a European war if
no Non-Intervention Agreement were in existence.
Many hon. Members
opposite have talked about the scandal of this country acquiescing in
the defeat of the Spanish Government. What do they mean by
"acquiescing in the defeat? Do they mean that we should have
come to an absolute determination to secure the victory of the
Spanish Government? That would have laid us open to exactly the same
accusation which they bring against other Powers. I would ask them to
consider whether in calling so energetically for the abandonment of
the policy of non-intervention they have considered the views of
certain countries whose views should be considered. That is true of
their attack on the foreign policy of the government generally. I
wonder whether they have considered the necessity of consulting the
Dominions? If they would turn to the resolution passed at the last
Imperial Conference and also observe the welcome which the Dominions
gave to the Anglo-Italian Agreement, they would realise how very far
the Dominions were and are from sharing their disapproval of the
foreign policy of the Government. I am not saying whether their
criticism is right or wrong, but I am asking them most sincerely to
believe that it is most important for the Government at every stage
to consider the views of the Dominions; and there is not a single
hon. Member opposite who has mentioned the rest of the British Empire
to-day.
Again, there is
the question of the French Government. An hon. Member opposite quite
rightly said that in the Spanish question France is perhaps more
closely concerned than we are, but hon. Members opposite have quite
ignored the fact that the French Government and Chamber have come to
exactly the same conclusion about not abandoning the policy of
non-intervention to which our own Government has come, and I suggest
that it is extremely dangerous and even frivolous to ignore the
wishes and the determination of the country which must be our closest
ally in peace and war. To show the extent to which the irresponsibles
of the Left can go I notice that in the current number of the "New
Statesman," a paper which above all others represents that
intelligentsia for which the hon. Member for the Combined
Universities (Miss Rathbone) expressed such admiration, there is an
article which speaks of the cruel and devastating thought that a
French popular front Government maintained a policy which betrayed
Spain. They point out that pressure from a Conservative British
Government is not a sufficient excuse. Then there follow these
remarkable words:
"Nor is the threat, which has really been the decisive factor,
that help for the Spanish Government would be opposed, possibly even
to the point of civil war, by the French Right."
In other words,
even if there was a threat of civil war in France, should France
abandon the policy of non-intervention, the policy of
non-intervention ought to have been abandoned. A civil war in Spain
is not enough for the intelligentsia of the Left; they want a civil
war in France also.
I come now to
another matter. One argument of hon. Members opposite against the
Spanish policy of the Government has been that it has somehow been
contrary to, or inconsistent with, what they call a League policy. A
good example of the nonsense that can be talked on this subject is
given in a letter in yesterday's "Times" signed by, among
others, the hon. Member for Barnstaple (Mr. Acland) and the Master of
Balliol, in which there were the following words:
"The Spanish people, who are entitled to look for armed
resistance from League members. …"
Nobody who has
studied the terms of the Covenant can fail to know that that is
nonsense. There is no automatic obligation for members of the League
to take up arms on any occasion, and by the resolutions of the League
itself, any taking of military action under Article 16 would have to
depend on a unanimous Council or at any rate a unanimous Council
apart from the interested parties. They entirely ignore the fact that
this matter of the Spanish war has been before the League on several
occasions. On two occasions, and two occasions only, was there
unanimity, and that was when the Council approved the policy of
non-intervention and supported the action of the Non-Intervention
Committee in London.
The right hon.
Baronet the Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Sir A. Sinclair)
mentioned to-day what was done at the League in September, 1937, and
he quoted a speech made by a British Minister on that occasion, in
which there was a reference to the possible ending of
non-intervention. What the right hon. Baronet failed to tell us, and
what is most material, was that the proposed resolution which the
British Government then backed did not become a resolution of the
League because two Powers opposed it and there were no fewer than 14
abstentions, including two members of the British Commonwealth of
Nations.
Mr. W. Roberts
Who were those
two?
Mr. Strauss
I thought the hon.
Member knew—Portugal and Albania; and there were 14 abstentions,
among them the Irish Free State and South Africa. It is no good
whatever for those who oppose the non-intervention policy to try to
pretend that the League is behind them in their opposition.
Lastly, hon.
Members opposite are very indignant—and I think rightly—when they
say that their opponents accuse them of wanting war. Certainly, I
have never made any such accusation, but what I do say is that many
of their criticisms of the foreign policy of His Majesty's Government
are quite meaningless unless they want war. I have time to mention
only two examples. Hon. Members opposite constantly mention the
action taken over the Manchurian question in 1931 and 1932. At the
recent by-election in East Norfolk, Lord Addison, in explaining the
foreign policy of His Majesty's Government, so far forgot the facts
and forgot himself that he said this country let loose Japan on
China. I think that such a statement may have partly accounted for
the figures of the result of the by-election. What a
misrepresentation. Who would have thought from that that the members
of the League of Nations, including this country, took action which
caused Japan to leave the League of Nations?
Mr. Stimson's book
is often mentioned in this connection. Certain inaccuracies in that
book were pointed out by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in a recent
debate, but assuming that every word in Mr. Stimson's book was
correct, I wish more hon. Members would read that book. It makes it
absolutely clear that nothing would have stopped Japan then except
force, and that the United States were not prepared to join in the
application of force. If the League of Nations had attempted to
resort to sanctions, something would have happened which throughout
that war did not happen—the Ambassadors would have been withdrawn
by China and Japan from the other's country, Japan would have
declared a blockade of China, and from that blockade there is no navy
that would have been in a position to rescue China. Neither Russia
nor the United States was a member of the League. England had no
base anywhere near the scene of operations, except Singapore;
Singapore was not ready, and the party opposite, who now pretend that
there was something that could have been done against Japan, steadily
opposed the creation of Singapore as a naval base.
I cannot go
through the whole list of what hon. Members opposite call the
betrayals or weaknesses of the Government. In the course of the
Debate, one hon. Member mentioned the reoccupation of the Rhineland
as an occasion when this country might have taken action. I think the
right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd
George) said recently that that was one of the times when England
ought to have taken action and did not. I remember that at the time
the tight hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs was so
much against action that he even criticised the Government for
entering into staff conversations with France. This is the man who,
after the event, says that that was one of the weaknesses or
betrayals in British foreign policy. Austria has been mentioned.
Which hon. Member opposite thinks that, apart from war, there was any
way of preventing the anschluss? Has any hon. Member opposite ever
suggested a way in which it could have been prevented? It is fair to
accuse the party opposite of advocating a policy which would involve
war only if they pretend they had a policy which would have saved
Austria, when they know very well they had nothing of the sort.
In conclusion, I
believe that the policy of non-intervention should not now be lightly
abandoned; I believe that that is the view of the country which must
be our closest ally; and I believe very grave results would follow
upon the sudden abandonment of that policy now, an abandonment
incidentally which would not save the Republican Government's cause.
I close by repeating what I said at the beginning. I believe the
state of the world in which we find ourselves is one to cause
anxiety. I hope that whatever happens, the attitude of the Government
will not be, "Do not alarm the people," but will be to
trust the people and to tell them the truth. I have spoken recently
in Norfolk and in my constituency, and I agree entirely with what has
been said by various hon. Members in all parts of the House—that
the people of this country still retain their ideals and the causes
in which they believe, and that if those causes are threatened, as
they may be, they will, given the right leadership, make an adequate
response.
9.55 p.m.
Mr. Arthur Greenwood
Apart from the
last few words, the speech of the hon. Member for Norwich (Mr. H.
Strauss), was a speech which, I think, would have been condemned by
the Home Secretary, who in such delicate language, described certain
people in this country as "jitter-bugs." I think the hon.
Member's speech was that of the type of creature described in that
indelicate term by the Home Secretary only a few days ago, his
belief, apparently, being that firm words and understanding of a
nation's intentions must mean war, and that the only way to achieve
peace is to give away concession after concession. That is not the
view which we take. Now that the right hon. Gentleman the Prime
Minister is here, I wish to say in all fairness, because I have
always tried to be honest with my opponents in this House, that his
speech to-day was not one of his best efforts. It was at times
facetious, occasionally caustic, sometimes rather petulant and gave
no evidence whatever of an appreciation of the tragedy which
confronts us to-day.
Even those in
this House and outside it who sneer at every Spanish Republican as a
"Red" or a Bolshevik, cannot deny that the loyal Spaniards
have fought a heroic fight against overwhelming odds. Even those who
were most cynical about the Spanish war, and who originally regarded
it as a dog fight—that was the term used by a Member on the
Government benches—with which we were not concerned, are now, as
has been made clear, I think, in the speeches to-day, beginning to
realise the dangers which a Franco victory might bring in its train.
Yet, as we have heard from the Prime Minister, the Government
refuse to budge. Full of sympathy for the refugees but not so full of
it as to do them justice, the Prime Minister spoke in moving language
of the pitiful condition of the men, women and children who to-day
are refugees in their own land, and salved his conscience by the
Government's grant of £20,000 with another £20,000 in the offing,
and perhaps some more money if that were needed.
But, apart from
that, the Government, as the Prime Minister has made perfectly clear
to-day, stand idly by watching the recognised Government of
Spain—still recognised by His Majesty's Government as the
Government of Spain—fighting for its existence with its back to the
wall, suffering agonies beyond description, as the right hon.
Gentleman himself admitted, sustaining its defence with superb
courage and showing what I believe to be an unquenchable spirit in
the face of adversity. Yet, in spite of all this, the Government
offer a little money and make an appeal to General Franco for
humanity and clemency. Already 130 British ships have been attacked
from the air by Franco's forces. The British Government have
protested. Those protests have been received with contempt by the
leader of the rebel forces in Spain and this new gesture of the right
hon. Gentleman in the interests of humanity, this hope that clemency
will be shown towards the civilian population, will, no doubt, meet
with the same kind of reply.
The only moral
drawn by the right hon. Gentleman from the picture which he painted
this afternoon of weary, terrified refugees fighting against had
weather and hunger and bombed on their way, was that the suffering
would be much more terrible if the area of the struggle were
extended. The real moral to be drawn from this is that the accredited
Government of Republican Spain should have been given the right to
defend itself. That is the proper moral to be drawn. The right hon.
Gentleman, in reply to my right hon. Friend, reminded the House of
the fact, of which, I think, we on this side were fully aware, that
intervention was a fact before the Non-Intervention Agreement was
reached, and that subsequently it was the policy of His Majesty's
Government to do what they could to get foreign troops withdrawn from
Spain. But, in fact, as time went on, intervention, notwithstanding
the Agreement, was intensified with nothing more than formal protests
and paper schemes from the British Government. The right hon.
Gentleman and his colleagues, watching this growing intervention by
two great Powers on the side of the rebel forces and the relatively
tiny trickle of assistance which came to the aid of the Spanish
Government, took the extraordinary view, to which my right hon.
Friend alluded, that the supply of arms to the Government side might
precipitate war, while the use of the power of Germany and Italy
undisguised could and would preserve the peace.
I have heard hon.
Members to-day put forward the fantastic view that all this mass of
force and arms used by Franco had been captured from the Republican
side. That seems to me to be a purely fantastic view of the
situation. Members of the Government know that it is not true. They
know perfectly well that the great mass of the arms and munitions
used by General Franco have been provided by two States with whom the
Prime Minister is now in the friendliest association. The Prime
Minister, after his series of disastrous talks in Germany last
Autumn, declared in the House of Commons on 2nd November, as my right
hon. Friend reminded the House, that the Spanish war would not now
develop into a wider struggle, but after his recent talks with Signor
Mussolini, he informs the House to-day that intervention, as he calls
it—I have never called it intervention myself, but that is the
right hon. Gentleman's own term—would be dangerous to peace.
This is a very
curious situation. Is it that he knows that Signor Mussolini now has
the bit between his teeth and is determined at all costs to go
through with his adventure; is it that he knows now that whatever may
happen Mussolini is determined to bring an early and final victory
for Franco in Spain? Is that the reason? If that is so, why was not
this disclosed in those talks at Munich, those talks behind closed
doors, after which the Prime Minister came and said, "Spain is
now removed from the arena of a general war"? If that be so, if
it be that Signor Mussolini, at whatever cost and with the added
weight of Hitler's speech last night, is going through with this
adventure, then I say that this House ought to be told. Or is it, as
the right hon. Gentleman informed us this afternoon, that
intervention would have to be, to use his exact words, "on a
considerable scale" and that intervention on such a scale might
cause international complications? The fact that on the right hon.
Gentleman's own admission a great deal would be needed to redress the
balance between the two armies in Spain shows that the Prime Minister
fully realises how successful the policy of non-intervention has
been against the Spanish Government and how futile it has been as
regards the rebels. There is no other conclusion to be drawn from
that statement by the right hon. Gentleman.
But is it
unreasonable to ask that even now the right to purchase arms when and
where they can should be restored to the Republican Government? That
is what we ask. We do not ask for intervention. I remember a Debate
on the Spanish issue in the House of Commons six or seven months ago
when the Chancellor of the Exchequer, following me at the close of a
Debate, told the House that we wanted to go to war with Spain. That
was repudiated by every Member who sat on this side of the House, and
I had to intervene and say that our demand was the simple one that
this Spain, fighting for its life, ought to have the right to buy the
arms which it needs. That is the claim which my right hon. Friend the
Leader of the Opposition made to-day, and in replying to that claim
the Prime Minister spoke of the extraordinary attitude of the party
opposite. If I may say so with all respect, I think the Prime
Minister's attitude is equally extraordinary. He is now trying to
evade the elementary right of the Spanish Government to buy means of
defence, by saying that other Governments can decide for themselves
in this matter, but that we cannot afford to send arms.
I leave aside the
fact that during the two and a half years of the Spanish War British
arms have been exported abroad, and I come back to his statement that
other Governments can decide for themselves in this matter. Why then
does he not take the lead in scrapping the Nonintervention Agreement
and restoring to its signatories the rights of which they have been
deprived, or, to put it in this way, the rights which they renounced,
of trading with arms in Spain? If the right hon. Gentleman says that
nations can do what they wish, he is by that statement making himself
an accessory before the fact regarding those nations which signed
that agreement. The right hon. Gentleman, by his statement this
afternoon, has admitted that the agreement is a farce. He realises
the right of other nations, if they wish, to sell arms to Spain. Then
why, I ask, has he not got the courage of his convictions, why does
he not realise that this agreement is a farce, and why does he not,
by washing his hands of the agreement and ending it all, if he cannot
help them, if British manufacturers cannot help them, allow at least
other people who have been bound by their word to come to the
assistance of the Spanish Government?
The right hon.
Gentleman spoke with some pride of the impartiality of the British
Government, and he said that we on this side had never pretended to
be impartial. That is perfectly true. I have never pretended to be
impartial in this dispute. The whole of my sympathy has been on the
side of the Republican, constitutional Government in Spain, and I am
not ashamed of my position. I do not pretend to be impartial, and I
am not at all sure that the Government's impartiality is unspotted.
The Prime Minister quoted the refusal by the Government of the grant
of belligerent rights to Franco as evidence of the Government's
impartiality. I was against, and my party was against, the granting
of belligerent rights to a rebel—[An HON. MEMBER: "To the hon.
Member for Jarrow?"]. Let me say that belligerent rights have
not been asked for by my hon. Friend. Our relations, so far as I am
aware, are completely friendly. I would have regarded—and my hon.
Friends will agree with me—the grant of belligerent rights to
Franco as another concession. It was not, in my view, the actual
grant of belligerent rights that was fundamentally important, but the
sign of another concession to the two totalitarian Powers. In fact,
the grant of belligerent rights was, and still is, far less important
than the refusal to Spain of the opportunity to defend itself by the
purchase of the arms and supplies it needed, and far less important
than the series of events which followed the signing of the Anglo
Italian Agreement.
The Prime Minister
informed us this afternoon that Signor Mussolini intends to stand by
the Anglo-Italian Agreement. Italy, he told us—I think these are
his very words—has nothing to ask from Spain; Italy has no
territorial ambitions, and he went on to say that Italy stands by the
Non-Intervention Agreement when the plan comes into operation. I
assume that Signor Mussolini's mind is working in the direction that
it need never come into operation if he has his way. The Prime
Minister—and I say this with all respect to him—seems to me to
be extraordinarily gullible. I am sorry that one who comes from the
hardware district of this country should believe everything he is
told. That seems to me more than astonishing; it is, I believe, in a
Prime Minister, unique. The Prime Minister told us after his Munich
conversations that Herr Hitler has no more ambitions in Europe. He
came back from Munich and, alighting from his aeroplane, said, "It
is all right now." Subsequent events have proved that it is not
all right now.
I do not
propose to go into the various events and the statements and actions
of Herr Hitler since then. They have hardly been conducive to the
policy of appeasement. They have become increasingly—I do not like
to use the word "offensive," but, at least, his statements
and actions have made the Prime Minister's task of appeasement
increasingly more difficult. Now he comes back and says he accepts
Signor Mussolini's policy of peace. He accepts Herr Hitler's policy
of peace in his speech last night. It is a strange policy of peace
which, prior to the right hon. Gentleman's visit, leads the
State-directed Italian newspaper to run a bitter campaign against the
French Government. It is a strange policy of peace which led Herr
Hitler last night to say—it is difficult to know what exactly he
did say, because accounts differ—but he said, in effect, that
whatever Italy does, Germany will stand by her. In view of what Italy
has threatened in recent weeks that can mean only one thing.
I do not wish to
cast any aspersions upon the personal integrity of the two dictators,
and the right hon. Gentleman believes what they say, but they have
been proved to have broken their word too often for me to believe
what they say until they give an earnest of their good intentions. To
those gentlemen speeches matter nothing. We have, and we could quote,
a whole series of Herr Hitler's speeches in which he has made
declarations which he has broken, and broken deliberately. The
totalitarian dictators start a game of football under Association
rules and finish it under Rugby rules. If I may say so, that is not
British. We may differ as to which rules we should accept and which
game we should play, but it becomes almost impossible to accept the
word of people who have proved by their actions that they have gone
back on their publicly declared word.
With Austria gone,
with Czechoslovakia dismembered and now the puppet State of Hitler,
with Spain bleeding and suffering, the Prime Minister believes that
appeasement—these are his very words—steadily increases. Then,
one may ask, why this intensification of rearmament? Why this
boosting of the Royal Air Force the day before Hitler speaks?
Accidental, it may be said. [HON. MEMBERS: "It was in the "Daily
Herald!"] We must give hon. Members credit for knowing better
than that. The whole Press of this country was ringing with the
enormous development of the Air Force of Britain, and on an
appropriate occasion we may say something about that, but now I am
only just wondering why, with this belief in peace, the right hon.
Gentleman, or somebody on his behalf, should have loosed this great
story 24 hours before Hitler was to make a speech about which the
Government appeared to be "jittery." Where are the
potential war-makers in Europe? [HON. MEMBERS: "On the Labour
Front Bench!"] Hon. Members opposite may think this is amusing.
I hope they will get amusement out of it. I still put the question,
to which we require an answer, Where are the war-makers in Europe?
[HON. MEMBERS: "Behind you!"] It is a great tribute to the
power of our party if it is thought that we are so powerful as to be
war-makers. Everybody in this House knows where the danger lies. It
lies with two men, and two men only. It lies with Herr Hitler and
Signor Mussolini, the cooing doves of Europe. They are desirous of
peace, they told the Prime Minister. They ought to know what they
mean, and he believes them. Appeasement is steadily decreasing, with
provocative actions having been taken ever since Munich by both those
great Powers and with an intensification of the struggle in Spain.
The Prime Minister
tried a passage of arms with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the
Opposition about the possible repercussions of the Spanish War. He
said that my right hon. Friend was climbing down, but let me say that
it is not the habit of my right hon. Friend to do so although it may
be the habit of the Prime Minister. Then the Prime Minister, fearing
that he had gone a little too far, said that my right hon. Friend
had modified his statement. We have not altered our outlook at all on
this matter. We do not know, in the unfortunate event of a Franco
victory, whether Germany and Italy will evacuate Spain. The right
hon. Gentleman says that they will, but we do not know. If they do
not, will the position be one which does not gravely imperil British,
French and other European interests? If that dread thing should
happen, and the worst of all possible fortunes befall Spain, and
those two great Powers still remain, will that be regarded with
equanimity by the right hon. Gentleman? It will not. He knows that
the British Empire will then be threatened in the Mediterranean as it
has never been threatened before in its history, and he knows that
for the first time Germany will then come out on to the Atlantic
seaboard.
Suppose the right
hon. Gentleman is right and that those Powers evacuate Spain and all
the territories held by Spain—what then? The stubborn fact will
still remain that the victories of Franco have been the victories of
Germany and Italy, won by the weight and the arms of those two
nations. I do not believe that the Prime Minister dares challenge
that statement. Those victories will not have been won in the
interests of this puppet rebel general but in the interests of the
more powerful and ambitious motives of the two totalitarian States. I
cannot imagine that Signor Mussolini tried this adventure, brought
his country to the verge of financial ruin and spent money, treasure
and lives because he liked the look of Franco. There must be some
deeper motive behind it. And if it should be that the Republican
Government were crushed, can we assume that Spain under Franco would
be an independent State? Is it not more than likely that it would be
subservient to and the instrument of the two totalitarian States that
had brought him to power? Therefore, as my right hon. Friend said,
British, French and other democratic interests are involved, and they
are being sacrificed now by a Government controlled by a party whose
proud boast it has always been that it was the architect of the
British Empire. After Munich, the right hon. Gentleman was hailed by
his followers as the saviour of peace. The saviours of peace were
the people of Czechoslovakia, who offered themselves on the altar in
order to avert a European war.
To-day the Prime
Minister speaks of democracy. Its battle is being fought now round
Madrid and in Catalonia, without even the moral support of the
British Government which proclaims that it is democratic. That war in
Spain is not yet over. Those who believed that the fall of Barcelona
meant the end of the war profoundly misjudged the spirit of
Republican Spain. But should that great nation, fighting for its
independence, come to grief, and should the destruction of democracy
follow in Spain, Britain's part and this Government's part will be
one of the most shameful episodes in our history.
10.33 p.m.
The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Butler)
After the
onslaught which the right hon. Gentleman has just delivered on the
Government, I should normally have been tempted to follow him into
the political arguments which he has used, but I feel that the House
will have appreciated the answer to many of his arguments, and will
have shown by their applause the almost unanimous appreciation that
is given to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister for the
improvement which is seen in the general international situation. The
right hon. Gentleman spoke of disastrous talks in Germany. That is
not the feeling of the friends of my right hon. Friend on this side
of the House. Their feeling is that the personal contacts which my
right hon. Friend and the Foreign Secretary have been able to
establish with the leaders of other States have borne fruit. We have
never, on this side of the House, exaggerated the extent of those
talks but we have said that they have been worth while, and I am
convinced that events will prove that we are right.
I will, in the
course of my remarks on the very tragic and serious situation in
Northern Spain which is before us this evening, deal with some of the
arguments adduced by the right hon. Gentleman, but I wish first to
turn to some points connected with the distress of the Spanish people
at the present time. I think there has been general agreement in the
House that the Spanish people have had a tragic time. Even since my
right hon. Friend spoke, the situation has changed, and I can give
the House the latest information on the subject of refugees in
Northern Catalonia. Our latest information is that the Spanish
Government themselves have told us that the neutral zone for refugees
on the Spanish side of the frontier is impracticable, owing to the
difficulty of finding at short notice shelters and accommodation for
the crowds of these unfortunate people. If the Spanish Government
were to find that this solution of a neutral zone on their side of
the frontier was in the end practicable, our offer referred to by the
Prime Minister, to urge General Franco to respect that area, would of
course, remain.
Meanwhile, the
French Government have opened their frontier to a proportion of these
refugees and have appealed to His Majesty's Government to offer help
on a generous scale to feed and shelter all those who have crossed
their frontier. As my right hon. Friend said, there are, of course,
difficulties on the French side of the frontier. The towns are small,
the accommodation limited, and one can well imagine the immense
difficulties facing the French Government at the present time. I am
sure the House will not press me to go further to-night than to say
that I am convinced the French authorities are doing their best to
cope with the refugees' plight. The International Commission, as
those who have studied their work can well imagine, have at once
risen to the occasion. They have established canteens on both sides
of the frontier. The American Commissioner has proceeded to
Perpignan, and the officials of the International Commission are, I
understand, basing their work on that town.
We have replied to
the appeal of the French Government by saying that we propose to
offer further help as the need develops, and I would like to answer
the doubts that have been raised in the minds of the hon. Member for
Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger), the right hon. Gentleman the Member for
Caithness and Sutherland (Sir A. Sinclair) and the hon. Lady the
Member for the English Universities (Miss Rathbone), lest His
Majesty's Government were not going to be sufficiently generous in
the help afforded to these refugees. I think they must be under a
misapprehension. From the start, His Majesty's Government have helped
the International Commission: in fact, it was, I might almost say,
due to our initial grants, small though they may have been, that the
work of the International Commission for child refugees got started
and that other Governments followed that example. Now, the position
is that we have promised another £20,000, not as a final sum but as
a figure to enable them to get on with the difficult work at the
present time. The work on the French side of the border will be done
with the aid of the International Commission, the French authorities,
the French Red Cross, and so on. I assure the House that we are aware
of the terrible plight of the refugees and are desirous of providing
help commensurate with their need, and that it is the wish of the
Government to maintain the general interest we have tried to show in
the work of the International Commission.
I am sure the
House will bear with me if I just describe some of the work that has
been done, since it is very important for us to consider closely this
relief work in time of distress. I have been told that in parts of
Government Spain where the Commission have been working food might
have been regarded as almost the only currency in the districts,
owing to the seriousness of the situation. I have been told of the
work of members of the Commission, one of whom has, on every
occasion, been about the last person to leave a town before it was
taken over by General Franco's forces. Special arrangements have been
made to enable child refugees to have special dried biscuits, dried
milk and sugar to eat in the course of their journey as they leave a
particular town which has been taken. I have been told by members of
the Commission whom I have met at Geneva and elsewhere of the manner
in which they buy their food supplies in France, and their milk in
Holland and bring them to the suffering refugees on the north side of
Catalonia.
The International
Commission works on both sides in Spain, and I am informed that
representatives are remaining in Barcelona and are putting their
services at the disposal of General Franco's administration. Further,
they are offering to extend help to any villages already occupied by
General Franco, where, owing to the rapidity of the advance, the
needs of the population left behind require immediate attention. I
have been questioned by several hon. Members in this House on the
subject of whether the International Commission will be a big enough
organisation to cope with the immediate need because it started to
deal with children alone. I can assure the House that we have
investigated this point. We have found that with the aid of the
French authorities and of the Spanish Government authorities the
Commission will be able to bear the new burdens laid upon it, and
that, as we decided at the League Council meeting, it is more
effective to deal with the immediate distress through the Commission
than to wait for a broader and bigger scheme, as is suggested in the
Bray-Webster Report. Before I leave this question I should like to
pay a tribute to the Society of Friends for the work which they have
done, to the Friends' Service Council, and to the work of the
International Council, the National Joint Committee on Spanish
relief, the General Relief Fund, the Save the Children Fund and the
Scottish Ambulance Unit.
It may be
reassuring to the House, after the many controversies we have had on
the question of non-intervention, and also on Spain, if I devote a
few minutes to describing another side of the humanitarian policy of
His Majesty's Government in the course of the Spanish struggle. The
question of the exchange of prisoners has often been brought up by
hon. Members on all sides of the House and has always had the
pressing attention of my Noble Friend and myself. The hon. Member for
Middleton and Prestwich (Sir N. Stewart Sandeman) asked me a question
as to what our representatives in Spain are doing, and I can tell him
that our Minister at Barcelona and his staff have been closely in
touch throughout in spite of the fact that the tide of war has flowed
over the district in which they resided. His Majesty's consuls and
vice-consuls have throughout performed their duty in a manner which
has won admiration, and His Majesty's Chargé d'Affaires now at St.
Jean de Luz has also kept closely in touch. Perhaps some of the best,
most careful and most difficult exchanges of prisoners to which
little publicity has been given, have been effected through our
Ministers in Spain. A large number of Spaniards have been exchanged
in this way from one side and the other.
The hon. Lady the
Member for the English Universities made a statement, which certain
hon. Members repudiated at the time, in which she said that the
British Navy had taken certain rich persons into shelter as refugees.
I must answer that point. It must be remembered that one of the most
notable achievements of the Navy was that in the summer of 1937 we
gave Naval protection to British ships which evacuated some 50,000
supporters of the Spanish Government from the Asturias and Basque
territory, and we also gave protection to a Spanish ship carrying
refugees from Bilbao. That is typical of the kind of work that the
Navy has tried to do in these critical times.
Hon. Members may
be interested in the negotiations for the release of British
prisoners, many of whom have relations among our constituents. Their
release has, unfortunately, been protracted, due to certain
unavoidable delays, but I hope the House will be satisfied with my
assurance that those prisoners are already concentrated on the
frontier, and I hope that it will now be a matter of days only before
they actually start on their journey home. I should like here to pay
a tribute to the Spanish Government. It is a remarkable fact that in
the middle of this offensive the Spanish Government should have
carried out to the best of their ability their promise to send away
foreigners from the International Brigade and have actually
transferred by night from the southern zone to Barcelona the members
of the International Brigade fighting in the southern zone. Those
volunteers have been withdrawn from the front and are waiting to be
finally withdrawn from Spain.
I will give the
figures of the success attending the League Commission's efforts for
the withdrawal of foreign volunteers from Spain. A total of 4,640 out
of 12,673 volunteers had been evacuated by the middle of this month
from Government Spain, by virtue of the Spanish Government's
withdrawal plans. I mention that because the Leader of the Opposition
asked whether His Majesty's Government fully appreciate what the
Spanish Government have done in this respect. He referred also to the
bombing Commission which was sent to Spain, composed of two British
representatives, to report on the invitation of either side on the
bombing of civilian areas and to declare whether military or other
objectives had been attacked. In this connection I should like to say
that the spokesman of the Spanish Government, Signor Del Vayo, at the
League Council expressed the Spanish Government's thanks for the
rapidity with which the Committee has always responded to its
appeals, and also for the lofty spirit of impartiality and
objectivity with which its reports have been drawn up. I hope that in
these realms of humanity and in the realm of the exchange of
prisoners hon. Members opposite will be able to find something good
in the Government's actions and intentions.
There is one
further matter in regard to the exchange of prisoners, and that is
the Commission of Sir Philip Chetwode, which has been specially
interested in the exchange of prisoners. The respect with which his
Commission is held will, we hope, soon result in the exchange of
large batches of prisoners, though hitherto there has been little
actual result from its endeavours. We believe, however, that the
respect in which he is held and in which his Commission is held, has
had a moderating influence upon either side in their attitude to the
prisoners under their control. There is another piece of information
which I should like to give to the House relating to the devastation
caused by the Spanish War. Those who have attended meetings of the
League Council will perhaps have been as impressed as I have been by
the frescoes of the Spanish artist, Sert, in the League Council
chamber. They depict those very horrors of war from which the Prime
Minister is trying to save this country, and which I wish the Spanish
people could have been spared.
Sir H. Croft
May I ask how many
international volunteers have been evacuated from the Madrid front?
Mr. Butler
The total
evacuated from Spain amounts to about 4,500 out of 12,500.
I was referring to
the Spanish painter for this reason, that there has been constituted,
at the urgent request made to us from many quarters, and made also to
the French Government, an International Committee of which the
chairman is the director of the Louvre, to withdraw certain pictures
which are some of Spain's most valued treasures. The director of the
National Gallery has been co-operating with the director of the
Louvre, and it is hoped that these pictures will be taken to some
place of safety, such as Geneva. In any case we hope to find a place
where they can be hung and shown.
Let me come, after
dealing with this question of relief and certain aspects of the war,
to certain of those political controversies which have engaged our
attention in the many Debates that have been held on Spain. I think I
can sum up the attitude of the Government, as was done by the Prime
Minister, by saying that we have honourably stood by our pledges
under the Non-Intervention Agreement and that we have followed
throughout a policy of non-intervention. As my hon. Friend the Member
for Norwich (Mr. H. Strauss) said, it is a great mistake in foreign
policy to make out that His Majesty's Government are responsible for
every other Government on earth. The Non-Intervention Committee is
international, whilst His Majesty's Government are responsible for
their own actions only. They have exerted the influence they have to
frame a plan, and it is indeed our regret that that plan has not been
carried out. We have acknowledged that there have been breaches of
the Non-Intervention Agreement, but we have strictly observed our own
non-intervention undertakings.
I was interested
to hear the right hon. Gentleman's version, which I at once accept,
of the Labour party's view of this Spanish struggle. He said, Let the
Spanish Government buy arms. I think the whole of the difficulties of
this comparatively simple solution from his point of view are summed
up in some later words of his when he said, "Scrap the
Non-Intervention Agreement." Our case is simply that, if you
scrap the Non-Intervention Agreement, you will risk turning the
Spanish problem into a world conflict, which we have so far been able
to avoid. Therefore, sincere as are the right hon. Gentlemen and hon.
Members opposite, we believe that the risks in accepting their policy
are too great for us to be able to entertain them.
Miss Wilkinson
Will the right
hon. Gentleman explain just what those words mean? Do they mean that
we have not allowed the supply of anti-aircraft guns to save the
lives of these women and children because Hitler and Mussolini might
have made war on the British Empire?
Mr. Butler
My own version, I
think, is correct, that, in the words of the right hon. Gentleman, if
you scrap the Non-Intervention Agreement you get into wider world
troubles which we are not willing to face. The Leader of the
Opposition says that from a strategic point of view we ought to adopt
a different policy. He used the phrase that an independent Spain is
vital to our interests. I believe that that sums up one of the main
anxieties that are felt about our Spanish policy. I cannot, however,
see that to widen the conflict as the result of the policy which hon.
Members opposite advocate would be other than detrimental to the
strategic interests of our own country. I am encouraged, when I
examine statements made by both sides showing that, whichever may win
the struggle, both are resolved to maintain Spanish independence. I
have here a statement made by Signor Negrin, the first of his 13
points:
"To ensure the absolute independence and complete integrity of
Spain; a Spain entirely free from all foreign interference, whatever
its character and origin, with her peninsular and insular territory
and her possessions untouched and safe from any attempt at
dismemberment, seizure or alienation."
That is the view
of the Spanish Government. Take the authoritative statement of the
Burgos authorities, words written by them in August last in a note
addressed to the Non-Intervention Committee. They said:
"National Spain does not wish to lose this opportunity of making
known to the Committee and to the world, which is emerging gradually
from unrest provoked by the perverse propaganda of its enemies with a
view to complicating the international situation, that it solemnly
reiterates its former affirmation that it is fighting for the
greatness and independence of the country and does not consent and
never will consent to the slightest mortgage on its soil, or its
economic life and that it will defend at all times to the last
handful, its territory, its protectorates and its colonies, if anyone
dares to make an attempt against them."
These two
statements show that the independence of the Spanish character will
prevail at the end of the civil war, and they can be taken in
conjunction with the assurances which the Prime Minister has
received. To sum up, according to British interests and consistent
with our international obligations I consider it is wise for us to
pursue a policy of non-intervention in Spain. The Spaniards are a
proud, brave and independent race. On both sides they may have
accepted foreign aid in their hour of need, but of one thing I am
certain that, after the war, they will return to their position of
complete independence. This country will never seek, as it has never
sought, any position threatening that independence. We have our
interests there just as Spain has her interests in this country, and
we shall seek to protect and develop those interests to the mutual
benefit of the two peoples. The forces of culture, character and
commerce which have brought our two countries together in the past,
will, I believe, do so again. For our part I can say that we shall
neglect no step to further legitimate British interests; meantime I
remain convinced that in the circumstances impartiality in the war is
the firmest basis we can have for friendship in the peace which will
follow it.
10.59 p.m.
I hope the House
will permit me just two sentences. We have heard with gratitude that
the Government are going to do something to mitigate the sufferings
of the unfortunate refugees in Spain, but I would like to add this:
Some of us on this side cannot help a feeling of nausea of what I may
call the new technique of first betraying a brave people and then
expressing sympathy with them afterwards.
AYES.
[11.0 p.m.
Agnew, Lieut.-Comdr.
P. G.
Cooper. Rt. Hn. T.
M. (E'nburgh, W.)
Hambro, A. V.
Alexander,
Brig.-Gen. Sir W.
Courthope, Col. Rt.
Hon. Sir G. L.
Hammersley, S. S.
Allen, Lt.-Col. Sir
W. J. (Armagh)
Cox, Trevor
Harbord, A.
Amery, Rt. Hon. L.
C. M. S.
Craven-Ellis, W.
Haslam, Henry
(Horncastle)
Anderson, Sir A.
Garrett (C. of Ldn.)
Critchley, A.
Haslam, Sir J.
(Bolton)
Anderson, Rt. Hn.
Sir J. (Sc'h Univ's)
Croft, Brig.-Gen,
Sir H. Page
Heilgers, Captain F.
F. A.
Anstruther-Gray, W.
J.
Crookshank, Capt.
Rt. Hon. H. F. C.
Hely-Hutchinson, M.
R.
Apsley, Lord
Cross, R. H.
Heneage,
Lieut.-Colonel A. P.
Ask., Sir R. W.
Crossley, A. C.
Hepburn, P. G. T.
Buchan.
Astor, Hon. W. W.
(Fulham, E.)
Crowder, J. F. E.
Hepworth, J.
Baldwin-Webb, Col.
J.
Cruddas, Col. B.
Herbert, A. P.
(Oxford U.)
Balfour, G.
(Hampstead)
Davidson,
Viscountess
Herbert, Major J. A.
(Monmouth)
Balfour, Capt. H. H.
(Isle of Thanet)
Davies, Major Sir G.
F. (Yeovil)
Higgs, W. F.
Barclay-Harvey, Sir
C. M.
De Chair, S. S.
Hoare, Rt. Hon. Sir
S.
Barrie, Sir C. C.
De la Bère, R.
Hogg, Hon. Q. McG.
Beamish,
Rear-Admiral T. P. H.
Denman, Hon. R. D.
Holmes, J. S.
Beaumont, Hon. R. E.
B. (Portsm'h)
Despencer-Robertson,
Major J. A. F.
Horsbrugh, Florenes
Beechman, N. A.
Dixon, Capt. Rt.
Hon. H.
Hudson, Capt. A. U.
M. (Hack., N.)
Beit, Sir A. L.
Dodd, J. S.
Hunter, T.
Bernays, R. H.
Doland, G. F.
Hurd, Sir P. A.
Blaker, Sir R.
Donner, P. W
Hutchinson, G C.
Boothby, R. J. G.
Duckworth, Arthur
(Shrewsbury)
James,
Wing-Commander A. W. H.
Bossom, A. C.
Duckworth, W. R.
(Moss Side)
Joel, D. J. B.
Boulton, W. W.
Dugdale, Captain T.
L.
Jones, Sir G. W. H.
(S'k N'w'gt'n)
Bower, Comdr. R. T.
Duggan, H. J.
Jones. L. (Swansea
W.)
Boyce, H. Leslie
Duncan, J. A. L.
Keeling, E. H.
Briscoe, Capt. R. G.
Dunglass, Lord
Kerr, H. W. (Oldham)
Brocklebank, Sir
Edmund
Eastwood, J. F.
Kerr, J. Graham
(Scottish Univs.)
Brooke, H.
(Lewisham, W.)
Eckersley, P. T.
Keyes, Admiral of
the Fleet Sir R.
Brown, Rt. Hon. E.
(Leith)
Edmondson, Major Sir
J.
Kimball, L.
Brown, Brig.-Gen. H.
C. (Newbury)
Elliot, Rt. Hon. W.
E.
Lamb, Sir J. Q.
Browne, A. C.
(Belfast, W.)
Ellis, Sir G.
Lancaster, Captain
C. G.
Bull, B. B.
Elliston, Capt. G.
S.
Latham, Sir P.
Burghley, Lord
Emery, J. F.
Law, Sir A. J. (High
Peak)
Burgin, Rt. Hon. E.
L.
Emmott, C. E. G. C.
Leech, Sir J. W.
Burton, Col. H. W.
Erskine-Hill, A. G.
Leigh, Sir J.
Butsher, H. W.
Fildes, Sir H.
Leighton, Major B.
E. P.
Butler, Rt. Hon. R,
A.
Findlay, Sir E.
Lewis, O.
Caine, G. R. Hall.
Fleming, E. L.
Liddall, W. S.
Carver, Major W. H.
Fox, Sir G. W. G.
Lipson, D. L.
Fremantle, Sir F. E.
Little, Sir E.
Graham.
Cary, R, A.
Fyfe, D. P. M.
Llewellin, Colonel
J. J.
Castlereagh,
Viscount
Gilmour, Lt.-Col.
Rt. Hon. Sir J.
Lloyd, G. W.
Cayzer, sir C. W.
(City of Chester)
Gledhill, G.
Locker-Lampson,
Comdr. O. S.
Cazalet, Capt. V. A.
(Chippenham)
Goldie, N. B.
Loftus, P. C.
Chamberlain, Rt. Hn.
N. (Edgb't'n)
Grant-Ferris, R.
Mabane, W.
(Huddersfield)
Channon, H.
Granville, E. L.
MacAndrew, Colonel
Sir C. G.
Chapman, A.
(Rutherglen)
Greene, W. P. C.
(Worcester)
M'Connell, Sir J.
Christie, J. A.
Gretton, Col. Rt.
Hon. J.
McCorquodale, M. S.
Clarke, Colonel R.
S. (E. Grinstead)
Gridley, Sir A. B.
MacDonald, Sir
Murdoch (Inverness)
Cobb, Captain E. C.
(Preston)
Grigg, Sir E. W. M.
Macdonald, Capt. P.
(Isle of Wight)
Colville, Rt. Hon.
John
Grimston, R. V.
McEwen, Capt. J. H.
F.
Conant, Captain R.
J. E.
Gritten, W. G.
Howard
Maclay, Hon. J. P.
Cook, Sir T. R. A.
M. (Norfolk, N.)
Guinness, T, L. E.
B.
Magnay, T.
Cooke, J. D,
(Hammersmith, S.)
Hacking, Rt. Hon.
Sir D. H.
Maitland, Sir A.
Manningham-Buller,
Sir M.
Ramsden, Sir E.
Strauss, H. G.
(Norwich)
Margesson, Capt. Rt.
Hon. H. D. R.
Rankin, Sir R.
Stuart, Hon. J.
(Moray and Nairn)
Markham, S. F.
Rathbone, J. R.
(Bodmin)
Sueter, Roar-Admiral
Sir M. F.
Mason, Lt.-Col. Hon.
G. K. M.
Reed, Sir H. S.
(Aylesbury)
Tasker, Sir R. I.
Mayhew, Lt.-Col. J.
Reid, J. S. C.
(Hillhead)
Tate, Mavis C.
Meller, Sir R. J.
(Mitcham)
Reid, W. Allan
(Derby)
Taylor, C. S.
(Eastbourne)
Mellor, Sir J. S. P.
(Tamworth)
Rosbotham, Sir T.
Taylor, Vice-Adm. E.
A. (Padd., S.)
Medlicott, F.
Ross, Major Sir R.
D. (Londonderry)
Thorneycroft, G. E.
P.
Mills, Major J. D.
(New Forest)
Ross Taylor, W.
(Woodbridge)
Titchfield, Marquess
of
Moore,
Lieut.-Colonel Sir T. C. R.
Rowlands, G.
Tree, A. R. L. F.
Moore-Brabazon,
Lt.-Col. J. T. C.
Royds, Admiral Sir
P. M. R.
Tufnell,
Lieut.-Commander R. L.
Morris-Jones, Sir
Henry
Ruggles-Brise,
Colonel Sir E. A.
Wakefield, W. W.
Morrison, G. A.
(Scottish Univ's.)
Russell, Sir
Alexander
Walker-Smith, Sir J.
Muirhead, Lt.-Col.
A, J.
Russell, R. J.
(Eddisbury)
Wallace, Capt. Rt.
Hon. Euan
Munro, P.
Salt, E. W.
Ward, Lieut.-Col.
Sir A. L. (Hull)
Nall, Sir J.
Samuel, M. R. A.
Ward, Irene M. B.
(Wallsend)
Neven-Spence, Major
B. H. H.
Sandeman, Sir N. S.
Watt, Major G. S.
Harvie
O'Connor, Sir
Terence J.
Schuster, Sir G. E.
Whiteley, Major J.
P. (Buckingham)
O'Neill, Rt. Hon.
Sir Hugh
Scott, Lord William
Wickham, Lt. Col. E.
T. R.
Orr-Ewing, I. L.
Shakespeare, G. H.
Williams, C.
(Torquay)
Palmer, G. E. H.
Shaw, Captain W. T.
(Forfar)
Williams, H. G.
(Croydon, S.)
Patrick, C. M.
Shepperson, Sir E,
W.
Windsor-Clive,
Lieut.-Colonel G.
Peake, O.
Shute, Colonel Sir
J. J.
Winterton, Rt. Hon.
Earl
Perkins, W. R. D.
Smiles,
Lieut.-Colonel Sir W. D.
Wise, A. R.
Peters, Dr. S. J.
Smith, Bracewell
(Dulwich)
Womersley, Sir W. J.
Petherick, M.
Smith, Sir R. W.
(Abardeen)
Wragg, H.
Pilkington, R.
Snadden, W. McN.
Wright,
Wing-Commander J. A. C.
Porritt, R. W.
Somerset, T,
Young, A. S. L.
(Partick)
Procter, Major H. A.
Somervell, Rt. Hon.
Sir Donald
Radford, E. A.
Southby, Commander
Sir A. R. J.
TELLERS FOR THE
AYES.—
Raikes, H. V. A. M.
Spens, W. P.
Captain Hope and
Lieut.-
Ramsay, Captain A.
H. M.
Storey, S
Colonel Kerr.
Ramsbotham, H.
Stourton, Major Hon.
J. J.
NOES
Acland, R. T. D.
(Barnstaple)
Groves, T. E.
Pethick-Lawrence,
Rt. Hon. F. W.
Adams, D. M.
(Poplar, S.)
Hall, J. H.
(Whitechapel)
Poole, C. C.
Adamson, Jennie L.
(Dartford)
Hardie, Agnes
Price, M. P.
Alexander, Rt. Hon.
A. V. (H'lsbr.)
Harris, Sir P. A.
Quibell, D. J. K.
Anderson, F.
(Whitehaven)
Hayday, A.
Rathbone, Eleanor
(English Univ's.)
Attlee, Rt. Hon. C.
R.
Henderson, A.
(Kingswinford)
Richards, R.
(Wrexham)
Banfield, J. W.
Henderson, J.
(Ardwick)
Riley, B.
Barnes, A. J.
Hicks, E. G.
Ritson, J.
Bartlett, C. V. O.
Hills, A.
(Pontefract)
Roberts, W.
(Cumberland, N.)
Bellenger, F, J.
Hollins, A.
Robinson, W. A. (St.
Helens)
Bevan, A.
Jenkins, A.
(Pontypool)
Rothschild, J. A. de
Broad, F. A.
Jenkins, Sir W.
(Neath)
Seely, Sir H. M.
Brown, C.
(Mansfield)
John, W.
Sexton, T. M.
Buchanan, G.
Johnston, Rt. Hon.
T.
Shinwell, E.
Burke, W. A.
Jones, A. C.
(Shipley)
Silkin, L.
Cape, T.
Kennedy, Rt. Hon. T.
Silverman, S. S.
Charleton, H. C.
Kirby, B. V.
Simpson, F. B.
Chater, D.
Kirkwood, D.
Sinclair, Rt. Hon.
Sir A. (C'thn's)
Cluse, W. S.
Lathan, G.
Smith, Ben
(Rotherhithe)
Cocks, F. S.
Lawson, J. J.
Smith, E. (Stoke)
Collindridge, F.
Leach, W.
Smith, Rt. Hon. H.
B. Lees-(K'ly)
Cove, W. G.
Lee, F.
Smith, T.
(Normanton)
Cripps, Hon. Sir
Stafford
Leonard, W.
Stephen, C.
Daggar, G.
Leslie, J. R.
Stewart, W. J.
(H'ght'n-le-Sp'ng)
Dalton, H.
Lunn, W.
Strauss, G. R.
(Lambeth, N.)
Davidson, J. J.
(Maryhill)
Macdonald, G. (Ince)
Summerskill, Dr.
Edith
Davies, S. O.
(Merthyr)
McGovern, J.
Taylor, R. J.
(Morpeth)
Day, H.
Maclean, N.
Thurtle, E.
Dobbie, W.
MacNeill Weir, L.
Tinker, J. J.
Dunn, E. (Rother
Valley)
Mainwaring, W. H.
Tomlinson, G.
Ede, J. C.
Mander, G. la M.
Viant, S. P.
Edwards, A.
(Middlesbrough E.)
Marshall, F.
Walker, J.
Edwards, Sir C.
(Bedwellty)
Milner, Major J.
Watkins, F. C.
Fletcher, Lt.-Comdr.
R. T. H.
Montague, F.
Watson, W. McL.
Frankel, D.
Morgan, J. (York,
W.R., Doncaster)
Welsh, J. C.
Gallacher, W.
Morrison, Rt. Hon.
H. (Hackney, S.)
Westwood, J.
Gardner, B. W.
Morrison, R. C.
(Tottenham, N.)
Whiteley, W.
(Blaydon)
Garro Jones, G. M.
Muff, G.
Wilkinson, Ellen
George, Megan Lloyd
(Anglesey)
Nathan, Colonel H.
L.
Williams, E. J.
(Ogmore)
Gibson, R.
(Greenock)
Noel-Baker, P. J.
Williams, T. (Don
Valley)
Greenwood, Rt. Hon.
A.
Owen, Major G.
Windsor, W. (Hull,
C.)
Grenfell, D. R.
Paling, W.
Woods, G. S.
(Finsbury)
Griffith, F.
Kingsley (M'ddl'sbro, W.)
Parker, J.
Young, Sir R.
(Newton)
Griffiths, G. A.
(Hemsworth)
Parkinson, J. A.
Griffiths, J.
(Llanelly)
Pearson, A.
TELLERS FOR THE
NOES.—
Mr. Mathers and Mr.
Adamson.
Adjourned
accordingly at Eleven Minutes after Eleven o'Clock.
See also: https://hansard.parliament.uk/search/Contributions?searchTerm=Catalonia&startDate=01%2F15%2F1939%2000%3A00%3A00&endDate=10%2F19%2F1939%2000%3A00%3A00
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See also: https://hansard.parliament.uk/search/Contributions?searchTerm=Catalonia&startDate=01%2F15%2F1939%2000%3A00%3A00&endDate=10%2F19%2F1939%2000%3A00%3A00
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