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[Mr. Adams.]
entreat all parties not to allow the Gov- ernment to begin, as it were, the strangu- lation of the British Empire by colonial concessions to Germany.
Because I feel that this country and our Empire are in the very direst danger, I am going to take leave now to say some- thing which hon. Members may regard as highly indelicate. I have heard it said that the Chancellor of the Exchequer may succeed to the Premiership. In 1932 the same right hon. Gentleman was Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, when Ger- many was still reasonable and civilised, and yet during those early and promising days of the Disarmament Conference the right hon. Gentleman found ample reasons for having no policy at all. He must be regarded to-day as the main architect of our present ruin. I do not expect my hon. Friends in the Conservative party to dispute that proposition, because in 1935 they will remember we compelled his promotion to the Home Office.
Like my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Abbey Division (Sir S. Herbert), I would like to see a Govern ment of National Union, including the Leaders of the Opposition. It does seem to me a most absurd thing, in this hour of our national danger-for it is nothing less, even though the crisis to-day may have been understated in this Debate- that the right hon. Members for Spark- brook (Mr. Amery), Leamington (Mr. Eden), St. George's, and Epping are out- side the Administration.
So far from
causing Herr Hitler to go to war, believe that the inclusion of those right hon. Gentlemen in the Government would cause to think twice a man who under- stands the use of force and respects those who would be able, if necessary, to use it. In what vital particular over the last five or six years has the reading of Ger- man motives by the right hon. Member for Epping been proved wrong?
I would suggest that we need to-day men in all parties, men with the wit, the wish, and the will to stand up for a stronger Britain. If this nation is to survive as a great nation, as a leader of freedom, flying the banner of liberty from this island, visible to all the world, the days of surrender by this country must be ended. If we want peace, peace with honour, peace for the time not only of those who are perhaps reaching the end
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of their lives, but also peace for the time of those of us who are under 40 and for the time of our children, we must take the last resort, which is this-rearmament on a scale hitherto undreamt of, excluding no possibility of general national service, to meet and, if necessary, to defeat Ger- many. In this crisis there is nothing else and nothing less for us to do. We are indeed forced back in this emergency on to the Tacitean paradox which in happier days we could afford to ridicule: Si vis pacem para bellum. So long as the Nazi régime persists in Germany there is no hope of preventing war except through vast rearmament by Britain.
7.19 p.m.
a
Mr. Boothby: We have had from the hon. Member for West Leeds (Mr. V. Adams) characteristically vigorous speech, with the last part of which I, per- sonally, found myself in a good deal of agreement, but I must point out to him that he has slightly exceeded the right angle to which he referred. I do not pro- pose to say anything about the Munich Agreement, or indeed about what has happened in the past. I am one of those who think that, in the circumstances of the time, and under the conditions which then prevailed, the Prime Minister had no alter- native at Munich but to make the best terms he could. I think that those condi- tions ought not to have arisen, and need not have arisen; but there they were, and it was not entirely the fault of the Prime Minister that they existed; and I am one of those who feel very strongly that he had no option but to take the action he took, that that action was courageous, and that he deserves the profound gratitude of the people of this country for what he did. There is one other thing I would like to say, which I do not think has been said enough in this House to-day, and that is how much we all welcome the appoint- ment of my right hon. Friend the Member for the Scottish Universities (Sir J. Ander- son) to the Cabinet and to be in effect Minister of Civilian Defence.
Apart from that, I think the Govern- ment must have been aware of the very considerable uneasiness which has per- vaded this House throughout the Debate, not greatly diminished since the four days' Debate a few weeks ago; and I think there It is real cause for that uneasiness still. is not confined to any one party. The House as a whole is uneasy, because this
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International Situation the gun deficiencies. I took the trouble to look it up, and I found that the War Office alone has spent £43,000,000 on artillery. I do not know the exact num- ber of anti-aircraft guns of modern type that were available for the defence of this country at the time of the crisis, but if it was zo per cent. of the establishment I should be very surprised. In many cases it was far below that. Similarly, we spent with regard to aeroplanes, £110,000,000 on aeroplanes, and that, at £15,000 apiece, ought to work out at 7,000 aeroplanes. Who in this House supposes we had 7,000 efficient fighting Did we aeroplanes three weeks ago? have 1,000, did we have 500, did we
International Situation 1 NOVEMBER 1938
House has a collective responsibility, and a very direct responsibility, for the safety of this country. We have failed adequately to discharge that responsibility. Why? Because we have been continu- ously and grossly misled by Ministers, over a period of several years, as to the true state of our defences. You cannot get away from that. To listen to the speeches of some Ministers, at different periods, you might have thought that guns and aero- planes were flowing in on them in such an avalanche, like rain, that it was almost a source of embarrassment. Indeed, there were moments when one felt quite sorry for the Germans. But when the much heralded crisis, of which we all had ample notice, arrived, we discovered that the condition of our defences was in fact abso- lutely deplorable-and that has since been admitted by Ministers themselves and by the Civil Service although nothing that the Government have ever asked for our defences has been refused by this House I at any time during the last four years. think that, if the full list of the gaps and deficiencies were disclosed--which I hope it will not be it would be a very astonish- ing document. But attention must be drawn in this House-and I am rather surprised it has not been drawn so far to the observations of Mr. Eady:
"We are not prepared; we have hardly begun to prepare; we do not know how all the failures that occurred during the crisis can be avoided next time.'
servant.
Mr. Eady went on to say that the regula- tions issued to the local authorities were the sloppiest ever produced by a Govern- ment Department. This was a high civil We all have our own experi- ences of what happened during the period of the crisis, with regard to shelters, sand bags, hospitals, arrangements for the evacuation of children, fire brigades, police, production generally in the country, voluntary service of all kinds, the shoals of offers that came from dif- ferent people all over the country, the total inadequacy with which they were dealt with, no use being found for them at the last moment, and the confusion which arose. The hon. Member who has just sat down said that the confusion in Germany was greater than in this country. All I can say to that is that Germany must have been is a very con- fused state indeed at the time of the crisis.
Similarly we have heard and there is no good in concealing these facts about
have even 100? I do not know what the precise figure was; but all this goes to show that after four years of alleged re- armament, and an expenditure totalling £1,000,000,000, the results were very un- satisfactory indeed. I would like to ask what has happened in this respect during the last four or five weeks. One would have expected I think all of us hoped after the last Debate that a terrific effort would be made; but I have not seen any sign of it. There appears to have been a certain amount of examination, and we have had one or two interesting speeches from Members of the Government, but that it all. There was one speech par- ticularly, by the Home Secretary, at Clacton-on-Sea, which was of consider- able significance and importance. He said:
"If this country could be so organised as to make it impossible for a knock-out blow to succeed, we could face the future with the
certainty that we could never be defeated." And there was another extremely interest- ing speech, by the Secretary of State for War, at Cardiff, from which I will give this quotation:
To obtain appreciable acceleration, or an appreciable enlargement within the given time of our rearmament programme, it would be necessary to revive our war-time method under which every other consideration is subordi- nated to this. A Ministry of Munitions to be effective must have full powers to allot orders, to assign priorities, to control the supply of materials, and to make arrange- ments for diversions of skilled labour."
J
We
If this speech means anything at all, it means that if we are to have effective rearmament
"within the given time,' must have a Ministry of Supply. The speech has otherwise no meaning at all; and it has been strongly reinforced in that very orthodox financial newspaper,
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