'The Locust Years'
House of Commons.
12 November 1936
I have, with some friends, put an
Amendment on the Paper. It is the same as the Amendment which I
submitted two years ago, and I have put it in exactly the same terms
because I thought it would be a good thing to remind the House of
what has happened in these two years. Our Amendment in November 1934
was the culmination of a long series of efforts by private Members
and by the Conservative party in the country to warn His Majesty's
Government of the dangers to Europe and to this country which were
coming upon us through the vast process of German rearmament then
already in full swing. The speech which I made on that occasion was
much censured as being alarmist by leading Conservative newspapers,
and I remember that Mr Lloyd George congratulated the Prime Minister,
who was then Lord President, on having so satisfactorily demolished
my extravagant fears.
What would have been said, I wonder, if I could
two years ago have forecast to the House the actual course of events?
Suppose we had then been told that Germany would spend for two years
£800,000,000 a year upon warlike preparations; that her
industries would be organised for war, as the industries of no
country have ever been; that by breaking all Treaty engagements she
would create a gigantic air force and an army based on universal
compulsory service, which by the present time, in 1936, amounts to
upwards of thirty-nine divisions of highly equipped troops, including
mechanised divisions of almost unmeasured strength and that behind
all this there lay millions of armed and trained men, for whom the
formations and equipment are rapidly being prepared to form another
eighty divisions in addition to those already perfected. Suppose we
had then known that by now two years of compulsory military service
would be the rule, with a preliminary year of training in labour
camps; that the Rhineland would be occupied by powerful forces and
fortified with great skill, and that Germany would be building with
our approval, signified by treaty, a large submarine fleet.
Suppose we had also been able to foresee the
degeneration of the foreign situation, our quarrel with Italy, the
Italo-German association, the Belgian declaration about neutrality -
which, if the worst interpretation of it proves to be true, so
greatly affects the security of this country - and the disarray of
the smaller Powers of Central Europe. Suppose all that had been
forecast - why, no one would have believed in the truth of such a
nightmare tale. Yet just two years have gone by and we see it all in
broad daylight. Where shall we be this time two years? I hesitate now
to predict.
Let me say, however, that I will not accept the
mood of panic or of despair. There is another side - a side which
deserves our study, and can be studied without derogating in any way
from the urgency which ought to animate our military preparations.
The British Navy is, and will continue to be, incomparably the
strongest in Europe. The French Army will certainly be, for a good
many months to come, at least equal in numbers and superior in
maturity to the German Army. The British and French Air Forces
together are a very different proposition from either of those forces
considered separately. While no one can prophesy, it seems to me that
the Western democracies, provided they are knit closely together,
would be tolerably safe for a considerable number of months ahead. No
one can say to a month or two, or even a quarter or two, how long
this period of comparative equipoise will last. But it seems certain
that during the year 1937 the German Army will become more numerous
than the French Army, and very much more efficient than it is now. It
seems certain that the German Air Force will continue to improve upon
the long lead which it already has over us, particularly in respect
of long-distance bombing machines. The year 1937 will certainly be
marked by a great increase in the adverse factors which only intense
efforts on our part can, to effective extent, countervail.
The efforts at rearmament which France and
Britain are making will not by themselves be sufficient. It will be
necessary for the We~tern democracies, even at some extension of
their risks, to gather round them all the elements of collective
security or of combined defensive strength against aggression - if
you prefer, as I do myself, to call it so - which can be assembled on
the basis of the Covenant of the League of Nations. Thus I hope we
may succeed in again achieving a position of superior force, and then
will be the time, not to repeat the folly which we committed when we
were all-powerful and supreme, but to invite Germany to make common
cause with us in assuaging the griefs of Europe and opening a new
door to peace and disarmament.
I now turn more directly to the issues of this
Debate. Let us examine our own position. No one can refuse his
sympathy to the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence. From time
to time my right hon. Friend lets fall phrases or facts which show
that he realises, more than anyone else on that bench it seems to me,
the danger in which we stand. One such phrase came from his lips the
other night. He spoke of "the years that the locust hath eaten". Let
us see which are these "years that the locust hath eaten" even if we
do not pry too closely in search of the locusts who have eaten these
precious years. For this purpose we must look into the past. From the
year 1932, certainly from the beginning of 1933, when Herr Hitler
came into power, it was general public knowledge in this country that
serious rearmament had begun in Germany. There was a change in the
situation. Three years ago, at the Conservative Conference at
Birmingham, that vigorous and faithful servant of this country, Lord
Lloyd, moved the following resolution:
That this Conference desires to
record its grave anxiety in regard to the inadequacy of the
provisions made for Imperial Defence.
That was three years ago, and I see, from The
Times report of that occasion, that l said:
"During the last
four or five years the world had grown gravely darker..... We have
steadily disarmed, partly with a sincere desire to give a lead to
other countries, and partly through the severe financial pressure of
the time. But a change must now be made. We must not continue longer
on a course in which we alone are growing weaker while every other
nation is growing stronger"
The resolution was passed unanimously, with
only a rider informing the Chancellor of the Exchequer that all
necessary burdens of taxation would be cheerfully borne. There were
no locusts there, at any rate.
I am very glad to see the Prime Minister [Mr
Baldwin] restored to his vigour, and to learn that he has been
recuperated by his rest and also, as we hear, rejuvenated. It has
been my fortune to have ups and downs in my political relations with
him, the downs on the whole predominating perhaps, but at any rate we
have always preserved agreeable personal relations, which, so far as
I am concerned, are greatly valued. I am sure he would not wish in
his conduct of public affairs that there should be any shrinking from
putting the real issues of criticism which arise, and would certainly
proceed in that sense. My right hon. Friend has had all the power for
a good many years, and therefore there rests upon him inevitably the
main responsibility for everything that has been done, or not done,
and also the responsibility for what is to be done or not done now.
So far as the air is concerned, this responsibility was assumed by
him in a very direct personal manner even before he became Prime
Minister. I must recall the words which he used in the Debate on 8
March 1934, nearly three years ago. In answer to an appeal which I
made to him, both publicly and privately, he said:
Any Government of this country - a
National Government more than any, and this Government - will see to
it that in air strength and air power this country shall no longer be
in a position inferior to any country within striking distance of our
shores.
Well, Sir, I accepted that solemn promise, but
some of my friends, like Sir Edward Grigg and Captain Guest, wanted
what the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence, in another state
of being, would have called 'further and better particulars', and
they raised a debate after dinner, when the Prime Minister, then Lord
President, came down to the House and really showed less than his
usual urbanity in chiding those Members for even venturing to doubt
the intention of the Government to make good in every respect the
pledge which he had so solemnly given in the afternoon. I do not
think that responsibility was ever more directly assumed in a more
personal manner. The Prime Minister was not successful in discharging
that task, and he admitted with manly candour a year later that he
had been led into error upon the important question of the relative
strength of the British and German air power.
No doubt as a whole His Majesty's Government
were very slow in accepting the unwelcome fact of German rearmament.
They still clung to the policy of one-sided disarmament. It was one
of those experiments, we are told, which had to be, to use a
vulgarism, 'tried out', just as the experiments of non-military
sanctions against Italy had to be tried out. Both experiments have
now been tried out, and Ministers are accustomed to plume themselves
upon the very clear results of those experiments. They are held to
prove conclusively that the policies subjected to the experiments
were all wrong, utterly foolish, and should never be used again, and
the very same men who were foremost in urging those experiments are
now foremost in proclaiming and denouncing the fallacies upon which
they were based. They have bought their knowledge, they have bought
it dear, they have bought it at our expense, but at any rate let us
be duly thankful that they now at last possess it.
In July 1935, before the General Election,
there was a very strong movement in this House in favour of the
appointment of a Minister to concert the action of the three fighting
Services. Moreover, at that time the Departments of State were all
engaged in drawing up the large schemes of rearmament in all branches
which have been laid before us in the White Paper and upon which we
are now engaged. One would have thought that that was the time when
this new Minister or Co-ordinator was most necessary. He was not,
however, in fact appointed until nearly nine months later, in March
1936. No explanation has yet been given to us why these nine months
were wasted before the taking of what is now an admittedly necessary
measure. The Prime Minister dilated the other night, no doubt very
properly, the great advantages which had flowed from the appointment
of the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence. Every argument used
to show how useful has been the work which he has done accuses the
failure to appoint him nine months earlier, when inestimable benefits
would have accrued to us by the saving of this long period.
When at last, in March, after all the delays,
the Prime Minister eventually made the appointment, the arrangement
of duties was so ill-conceived that no man could possibly discharge
them with efficiency or even make a speech about them without
embarrassment. I have repeatedly pointed out the obvious mistake in
organisation of jumbling together - and practically everyone in the
House is agreed upon this - the functions of defence with those of a
Minister of Supply. The proper organisation, let me repeat, is four
Departments - the Navy, the Army, the Air and the Ministry of Supply,
with the Minister for the co-ordination of Defence over the four,
exercising a general supervision, concerting their actions, and
assigning the high priorities of manufacture in relation to some
comprehensive strategic conception. The House is familiar with the
many requests and arguments which have been made to the Government to
create a Ministry of Supply. These arguments have received powerful
reinforcement from another angle in the report the Royal Commission
on Arms Manufacture. The first work of this new Parliament, and the
first work of the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence if he had
known as much about the subject when he was appointed as he does now,
would have been to set up a Ministry of Supply which should, step by
step, have taken over the whole business of the design and
manufacture of all the supplies needed by the Air Force and the Army,
and everything needed for the Navy, except warships, heavy ordnance,
torpedoes and one or two ancillaries. All the best of the industries
of Britain should have been surveyed from a general integral
standpoint, and all existing resources utilised so far as was
necessary to execute the programme.
The Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence
has argued as usual against a Ministry of Supply. The arguments which
he used were weighty, and even ponderous - it would disturb and delay
existing programmes; it would do more harm than good; it would upset
the life and industry of the country; it would destroy the export
trade and demoralise finance at the moment when it was most needed;
it would turn this country into one vast munitions camp. Certainly
these are massive arguments, if they are true. One would have thought
that they would carry conviction to any man who accepted them. But
then my right hon. Friend went on somewhat surprisingly to say, 'The
decision is not final'. It would be reviewed again in a few weeks.
What will you know in a few weeks about this matter that you do not
know now, that you ought not to have known a year ago, and have not
been told any time in the last six months? What is going to happen in
the next few weeks which will invalidate all these magnificent
arguments by which you have been overwhelmed, and suddenly make it
worth your while to paralyse the export trade, to destroy the
finances, and to turn the country into a great munitions camp?
The First Lord of the Admiralty in his speech
the other night went even farther. He said, 'We are always reviewing
the position. Everything, he assured us is entirely fluid. I am sure
that that is true. Anyone can see what the position is. The
Government simply cannot make up their minds, or they cannot get the
Prime Minister to make up his mind. So they go on in strange paradox,
decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for
drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent. So we go on
preparing more months and years - precious, perhaps vital to the
greatness of Britain - for the locusts to eat. They will say to me,
'A Minister of Supply is not necessary, for all is going well.' I
deny it. 'The position is satisfactory.' It is not true. 'All is
proceeding according to plan.' We know what that means.
Let me come to the Territorial Army. In March
of this year I stigmatised a sentence in the War Office Memorandum
about the Territorial Army, in which it was said the equipment of the
Territorials could not be undertaken until that of the Regular Army
had been completed. What has been done about all that?
It is certain the evils are not yet removed. I
agree wholeheartedly with all that was said by Lord Winterton the
other day about the Army and the Territorial Force. When I think how
these young men who join the Territorials come forward, almost alone
in the population, and take on a liability to serve anywhere in any
part of the world, not even with a guarantee to serve in their own
units; come forward in spite of every conceivable deterrent; come
forward - 140,000 of them, although they are still not up to strength
- and then find that the Government does not take their effort
seriously enough even to equip and arm them properly, I marvel at
their patriotism. It is a marvel; it is also a glory, but a glory we
have no right to profit by unless we can secure proper and efficient
equipment for them.
A friend of mine the other day saw a number of
persons engaged in peculiar evolutions, genuflections and gestures in
the neighbourhood of London. His curiosity was excited. He wondered
whether it was some novel form of gymnastics, or a new religion -
there are new religions which are very popular in some countries
nowadays - or whether they were a party of lunatics out for an
airing. On approaching closer he learned that they were a Searchlight
Company of London Territorials who were doing their exercises as well
as they could without having the searchlights. Yet we are told there
is no need for a Ministry of Supply.
In the manoeuvres of the Regular Army many of
the most important new weapons have to be represented by flags and
discs. When we remember how small our land forces are altogether only
a few hundred thousand men - it seems incredible that the very
flexible industry of Britain, if properly handled, could not supply
them with their modest requirements. In Italy, whose industry is so
much smaller, whose wealth and credit are a small fraction of this
country's, a Dictator is able to boast that he has bayonets and
equipment for 8,000,000 men. Halve the figure, if you like, and the
moral remains equally cogent. The Army lacks almost every weapon
which is required for the latest form of modern war. Where are the
anti-tank guns, where are the short-distance wireless sets, where the
field anti-aircraft guns against low-flying armoured aeroplanes? We
want to know how it is that this country, with its enormous motoring
and motor-bicycling public, is not able to have strong mechanised
divisions, both Regular and Territorial. Surely, when so much of the
interest and the taste of our youth is moving in those mechanical
channels, and when the horse is receding with the days of chivalry
into the past, it ought to be possible to create an army of the size
we want fully up to strength and mechanised to the highest
degree.
Look at the Tank Corps. The tank was a British
invention. This idea, which has revolutionised the conditions of
modern war, was a British idea forced on the War Office by outsiders.
Let me say they would have just as hard work today to force a new
idea on it. I speak from what I know. During the War we had almost a
monopoly, let alone the leadership, in tank warfare, and for several
years afterwards we held the foremost place. To England all eyes were
turned. All that has gone now. Nothing has been done in 'the years
that the locust hath eaten' to equip the Tank Corps with new
machines. The medium tank which they possess, which in its day was
the best in the world, is now looking obsolete. Not only in numbers
for there we have never tried to compete with other countries - but
in quality these British weapons are now surpassed by those of
Germany, Russia, Italy and the United States. All the shell plants
and gun plants in the Army, apart from the very small peace-time
services, are in an elementary stage. A very long period must
intervene before any effectual flow of munitions can be expected,
even for the small forces of which we dispose. Still we are told
there is no necessity for a Ministry of Supply, no emergency which
should induce us to impinge on the normal course of trade. If we go
on like this, and I do not see what power can prevent us from going
on like this, some day there may be a terrible reckoning, and those
who take the responsibility so entirely upon themselves are either of
a hardy disposition or they are incapable of foreseeing the
possibilities which may arise.
Now I come to the greatest matter of all, the
air. We received on Tuesday night, from the First Lord of the
Admiralty, the assurance that there is no foundation whatever for the
statement that we are 'vastly behind hand' with our Air Force
programme. It is clear from his words that we are behind hand. The
only question is, what meaning does the First Lord attach to the word
'vastly'? He also used the expression, about the progress of air
expansion, that it was 'not unsatisfactory'. One does not know what
his standard is. His standards change from time to time. In that
speech of the 11th of September about the League of Nations there was
one standard, and in the Hoare-Laval Pact there was clearly
another.
In August last some of us went in a deputation
to the Prime Minister in order to express the anxieties which we felt
about national defence, and to make a number of statements which we
preferred not to be forced to make in public. I personally made a
statement on the state of the Air Force to the preparation of which I
had devoted several weeks and which, I am sorry to say took an hour
to read. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister listened with his
customary exemplary patience. I think I told him beforehand that he
is a good listener, and perhaps he will retort that he learned to be
when I was his colleague. At any rate, he listened with patience, and
that is always something. During the three months that have passed
since then I have checked those facts again in the light of current
events and later acknowledge, and were it not that foreign ears
listen to all that is said here, or if we were in secret Session, I
would repeat my statement here. And even if only one half were true I
am sure the House would consider that a very grave state of emergency
existed, and also, I regret to say, a state of things from which a
certain suspicion of mismanagement cannot be excluded. I am not going
into any of those details. I make it a rule, as far as I possibly
can, to say nothing in this House upon matters which am not sure are
already known to the General Staffs of foreign countries; but there
is one statement of very great importance which the Minister for the
Co-ordination of Defence made in his speech on Tuesday. He
said:
"The process of building up
squadrons and forming new training units and skeleton squadrons is
familiar to everybody connected with the Air Force. The number of
squadrons in present circumstances at home today is eighty, and that
figure includes sixteen auxiliary squadrons, but excludes the Fleet
Air Arm, and, of course, does not include the squadrons
abroad".
From that figure, and the reservations by which
it was prefaced, it is possible for the House, and also for foreign
countries, to deduce pretty accurately the progress of our Air Force
expansion. I feel, therefore, at liberty to comment on it.
Parliament was promised a total of seventy one
new squadrons, making a total of 124 squadrons in the home defence
force, by 31 March 1937. This was thought to be the minimum
compatible with our safety. At the end of the last financial year our
strength was fifty three squadrons, including auxiliary squadrons.
Therefore, in the thirty two weeks which have passed since the
financial year began we have added twenty eight squadrons - that is
to say, less than one new squadron each week. In order to make the
progress which Parliament was promised, in order to maintain the
programme which was put forward as the minimum, we shall have to add
forty three squadrons in the remaining twenty weeks, or over two
squadrons a week. The rate at which new squadrons will have to be
formed from now till the end of March will have to be nearly three
times as fast as hitherto. I do not propose to analyse the
composition of the eighty squadrons we now have, but the Minister, in
his speech, used a suggestive expression, 'skeleton squadrons'
applying at least to a portion of them but even if every one of the
eighty squadrons had an average strength of twelve aeroplanes, each
fitted with war equipment, and the reserves upon which my right hon.
Friend dwelt, we should only have a total of 960 first-line
home-defence aircraft.
What is the comparable German strength? I am
not going to give an estimate and say that the Germans have not got
more than a certain number, but I will take it upon myself to say
that they most certainly at this moment have not got less than a
certain number. Most certainly they have not got less than 1,500
first-line aeroplanes, comprised in not less than 130 or 140
squadrons, including auxiliary squadrons. It must also be remembered
that Germany has not got in its squadrons any machine the design and
construction of which is more than three years old. It must also be
remembered that Germany has specialised in long-distance bombing
aeroplanes and that her preponderance in that respect is far greater
than any of these figures would suggest.
We were promised most solemnly by the
Government that air parity with Germany would be maintained by the
home defence forces. At the present time, putting everything at the
very best, we are, upon the figures given by the Minister for the
Co-ordination of Defence, only about two-thirds as strong as the
German Air Force, assuming that I am not very much under stating
their present strength. How then does the First Lord of the Admiralty
[Sir Samuel Hoare] think it right to say:
On the whole, our forecast of the strength of
other Air Forces proves to be accurate; on the other hand, our own
estimates have also proved to be accurate. I am authorised to say
that the position is satisfactory'. I simply cannot understand it.
Perhaps the Prime Minister will explain the position. I should like
to remind the House that I have made no revelation affecting this
country and that I have introduced no new fact in our air defence
which does not arise from the figures given by the Minister and from
the official estimates that have been published.
What ought we to do? I know of only one way in
which this matter can be carried further. The House ought to demand a
Parliamentary inquiry. It ought to appoint six, seven or eight
independent Members, responsible, experienced, discreet Members, who
have some acquaintance with these matters and are representative of
all parties, to interview Ministers and to find out what are, in
fact, the answers to a series of questions; then to make a brief
report to the House, whether of reassurance or of suggestion for
remedying the shortcomings. That, I think, is what any Parliament
worthy of the name would do in these circumstances. Parliaments of
the past days in which the greatness of our country was abuilding
would never have hesitated. They would have felt they could not
discharge their duty to their constituents if they did not satisfy
themselves that the safety of the country was being effectively
maintained.
The French Parliament, through its committees,
has a very wide, deep knowledge of the state of national defence, and
I am not aware that their secrets leak out in any exceptional way.
There is no reason why our secrets should leak out in any exceptional
way. It is because so many members of the French Parliament are
associated in one way or another with the progress of the national
defence that the French Government were induced to supply, six years
ago, upward of £60,000,000 sterling to construct the Maginot
Line of fortifications, when our Government was assuring them that
wars were over and that France must not lag behind Britain in her
disarmament. Even now I hope that Members of the House of Commons
will rise above considerations of party discipline, and will insist
upon knowing where we stand in a matter which affects our liberties
and our lives. I should have thought that the Government, and above
all the Prime Minister, whose load is so heavy, would have welcomed
such a suggestion.
Owing to past neglect, in the face of the
plainest warnings, we have now entered upon a period of danger
greater than has befallen Britain since the U-boat campaign was
crushed; perhaps, indeed, it is a more grievous period than that,
because at that time at least we were possessed of the means of
securing ourselves and of defeating that campaign. Now we have no
such assurance. The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of
soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close.
In its place we are entering a period of consequences. We have
entered a period in which for more than a year, or a year and a half,
the considerable preparations which are now on foot in Britain will
not, as the Minister clearly showed, yield results which can be
effective in actual fighting strength; while during this very period
Germany may well reach the culminating point of her gigantic military
preparations, and be forced by financial and economic stringency to
contemplate a sharp decline, or perhaps some other exit from her
difficulties. It is this lamentable conjunction of events which seems
to present the danger of Europe in its most disquieting form. We
cannot avoid this period; we are in it now. Surely, if we can abridge
it by even a few months, if we can shorten this period when the
German Army will begin to be so much larger than the French Army, and
before the British Air Force has come to play its complementary part,
we may be the architects who build the peace of the world on sure
foundations.
Two things, I confess, have staggered me, after
a long Parliamentary experience, in these Debates. The first has been
the dangers that have so swiftly come upon us in a few years, and
have been transforming our position and the whole outlook of the
world. Secondly, I have been staggered by the failure of the House of
Commons to react effectively against those dangers. That, I am bound
to say, I never expected. I never would have believed that we should
have been allowed to go on getting into this plight, month by month
and year by year, and that even the Government's own confessions of
error would have produced no concentration of Parliamentary opinion
and force capable of lifting our efforts to the level of emergency. I
say that unless the House resolves to find out the truth for itself
it will have committed an act of abdication of duty without parallel
in its long history.
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