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[MR. ZILLIACUS.] wants to sit on the fence, not to take sides with either bloc, and the French realise perfectly well-it is a long-stand- ing tradition in France-that their security lies in good relations with the Soviet Union, as well as with the West
Mr. Stokes: Why not with Germany?
Mr. Zilliacus : The French do not think so.
Mr. Stokes: They are beginning to.
Mr. Zilliacus: The French believe they will be safe with Germany only on the basis of an agreement between the Great Powers to the East and West of Germany. We could then bargain with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. It will mean hard bargaining; but there is enough common ground to discover paths to agreement.
The United States cannot pursue the present tough policy of preparing for a third world war against the Soviet Union without our co-operation and without the co-operation of Western Europe. If that co-operation is with- drawn, she cannot retire into isolation, because the United States would be courting a major slump by disinterest- ing herself in the Middle East, European and Asiatic markets. She would there- fore have to reach some kind of com- promise on these lines. The Presidential elections have shown that millions of good Americans would hail with joy and relief the prospect of some way out of the deadlock and some way of ending the present drift to war.
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The policy I have ventured to put be- fore the House is not an easy policy and not free from risks. But it is a policy that would work, and it is the only policy that will work. It is a policy which would call for every bit of the sagacity and steadfastness, the guts and the know-how " of the people of this country. But it is a policy which will enable our people to take the lead, and would enable us in six months to lift the nightmare of war hanging over the world like a black cloud and set the feet of mankind on the high road to peace. 6.38 p.m.
Mr. Pickthorn (Cambridge University): I had intended to begin with some com-
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(Mr.
paratively small things, small in compa son with most of the things that have been discussed today, although I wish to finish with one very large thing. But I hope that I may be permitted to lengthen my speech by a few minutes in order to reply to some of the observations we have just heard. I agree with the hon. Member for Gateshead Zilliacus) on one or two points. I agree on the whole with his condemnation of our foreign policy of the last three years as a failure. I disagree about what I should regard as the major symptoms of the failure, and I disagree with what I regard as the major causes; but that it has been a failure cannot really be very easily doubted or challenged. I agree with him also that we ought to begin our approach to Foreign Affairs Debates always by remembering to get down to some fundamental intellectual and moral approach. But I thought his the worst possible approach. I think it is the worst of all possible principles of foreign policy to think your foreign policy ought to be founded upon which quarter of the world is Socialist and which quarter of the world is individualist, and so on.
I have been very pleased lately to Foreign Office in this House have more observe that Ministers speaking for the
than once said what they consider is the balance of British interests. I have contrasted that with the speech which hon. Members will remember in Neville
ter-
February, 1938, when Mr. Chamberlain spoke of British interests as one of the things that we ought to fight for and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Arthur Greenwood) was horrified. He said that he was almost rified, he had never heard anything so disgraceful. It seems to me that if after the terrible 10 years through which we have just gone hon. Gentlemen belonging to the party opposite do not any longer talk that nonsense, that is so much gained.
But the queerest of all the things which the hon. Member for Gateshead (Mr. Zilliacus) told us, was' that the Com- munists did not want war, did not want dis- turbance; did not want economic break- down at all. Then he told us that the war and the economic breakdown of the 1914 period had given them their first boost; and that the war and the economic
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Foreign Affairs breakdown of the 1939 period had given them their second boost; one more war, and whichever side won the Communists would be put in possession of the world. Possibly he may be right; but I find it impossible when anyone tells me some- thing like that, about the practical history of Communism in preference to the pre- Communist literary definition which is found in the dictionaries, to accept the assurance that the Communist authorities do not want war and do not want economic breakdown.
Mr. Zilliacus rose-
Mr. Pickthorn: The hon. Gentleman has had his fair share of the time of the House, but I will give way just this once, and speak that much longer.
Mr. Zilliacus: I want to ask the hon. Gentleman whether he really believes that the Communists were responsible for starting either the 1914 or the last war?
Mr. Pickthorn: I said nothing of the kind.
I implied nothing of the sort. What I said was entirely drawn from the hon. Member's own speech and was per- fectly accurate.
I want to turn to one or two compara- tively small things the defence of indi- vidual British people and individual British corporations abroad. I know it would be out of Order to quote at length from the Debates in another place, but it may save time if I remind hon. Mem- bers who follow Debates in another place of the list of such things that have been discussed there recently. There were the 12 British murdered at Gatow; all the murders and outrages in Palestine; the murders and outrages in Malaya; the contemptuous rudeness with which we were treated at the Danube Conference; the fact that to be even suspected of having ever been at all pro-British is almost a sentence of death, and is quite a sentence of political ostracism, in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Poland; and the kidnappings by Yugoslavs on and near their border. These are all instances of the fact that His Majesty's Government have now lost if not the power at least the habit of protecting British subjects, either their lives or their property, more than has ever been the case in the history of the world. That is a large statement; but I maintain it is an absolutely accurate statement, and puts an enormous burden
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of proof on right hon. Gentlemen oppo- site. Incidentally, when we have got such a number of Foreign Secretaries as we have now, there really should be one of them in charge of a Debate of this sort all the time.
I want to mention especially in this connection, of looking after the interests of subjects of His Majesty abroad, two especial cases. One I will quote tenta- tively, and I am quite prepared to be persuaded that I am wrong. Anyway,
I think it ought to be mentioned in Debate; it has been mentioned so far only in Questions. I refer to the tax, the name of which I cannot translate, so that I hope hon. Gentlemen will forgive my French accent, the tax called impôt de solidarité in France. Under a Conven-
tion of the year 1882, British subjects resident in France are exempt from taxa- tion of that sort. The British Govern- ment decided, I suppose about a year ago, that it would not invoke that Con- vention for the protection of British citizens in France. I do not wish to argue at the moment whether that is a right decision or a wrong decision; but it is a decision which ought to have more justification than it could get in Ques- tion and answer, especially as the most important relevant answer was a written one, and, therefore, not subject to cross- examination.
The point is quite simple. British sub- jects, advised by their lawyers about, e.g., the 1882 Convention, settled down in Paris. I suppose they have no juridical right to compel His Majesty's Govern- ment to use diplomatic means to get this Convention applied for their benefit. His Majesty's Government may be right in deciding not to do so; but the ques- tion I want to put is-Is this new? This was, to speak in Parliamentary terms, a private Bill Convention, something which here would have gone before a Select Committee so that private individuals would know, and might argue, how they were concerned. Is it a new thing that His Majesty's Government, whether on good grounds or bad, declined to invoke the Treaty for the benefit of His Majesty's subjects, without taking steps in any way to compensate the subjects concerned? Those are questions which we ought to have explained. It is a comparatively small matter, but on the background of the Government's failure to protect the life and property of British subjects all