text: UFDC Home | Help | RSS TABLE OF CONTENTS HIDE Front Cover Main Back Cover Title: British speeches of the day ALL VOLUMES CITATION THUMBNAILS PAGE IMAGE ZOOMABLE Full Citation STANDARD VIEW MARC VIEW Permanent Link: http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00076217/00016 Material Information Title: British speeches of the day Physical Description: 5 v. : ; 23 cm. Language: English Creator: British Information Services Publisher: British Information Services,British Information Services Place of Publication: New York Publication Date: June 1944 Frequency: monthlyregular Subjects Subject: World War, 1939-1945 -- Periodicals ( lcsh )Politics and government -- Periodicals -- Great Britain -- 1945- ( lcsh )Foreign relations -- Periodicals -- Great Britain ( lcsh ) Genre: federal government publication ( marcgt )periodical ( marcgt ) Notes Dates or Sequential Designation: Began with Mar. 1943. Dates or Sequential Designation: -v. 5, no. 5 (June 1947). General Note: At head of title: British Information Services, an agency of the British government. General Note: Description based on: Vol. 4, no. 1 (Feb. 1946); title from cover. Record Information Bibliographic ID: UF00076217 Volume ID: VID00016 Source Institution: University of Florida Holding Location: University of Florida Rights Management: All rights reserved by the source institution and holding location. Resource Identifier: oclc - 01412079lccn - 45006482 Table of Contents Front Cover Front Cover 1 Front Cover 2 Main Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Back Cover Page 61 Full Text ,? ,. ^ % \ -- -, BRITISH INFORMATION SZU& j AN AGENCY OF THE BRITISH GOV' 0NhEN T 2 Aug '44 BRITISH SPEECHES OF THE DAY HERBERT MORRISON, Home Secretary and Minister of Home Security, April 29, 1944. A Sense of Plan and Purpose. P. J. NOEL-BAKER, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of War Trans- port, May 5, 1944. Transport in Wartime. LORD SELBORNE, Minister of Economic Warfare, May 9, 1944. The Effectiveness of the Blockade. LORD BEAVERBROOK, Lord Privy Seal, May 10, 1944. The Future of Civil Aviation. SIR JOHN ANDERSON, Chancellor of the Exchequer, May 10, 1944. International Monetary Policy. OLIVER LYTTELTON, Minister of Production, May 19, 1944. The Transitional Period. WILLIAM MABANE, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food, May 22, 1944. Problems of an International Food Administration. WINSTON CHURCHILL, Prime Minister, May 24, 1944. ANTHONY EDEN, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, May 25, 1944. Foreign Affairs. Vol. II, No. 6 June 1944 NEWYORK20 .. ... 30 ROCKEFELLER PLAZA . . Circle 6-5100 WASHINGTON, D.C. 5 1336 NEW YORK AVENUE, N.W. . .Executive 8525 CHICAGO I .. 360 NORTH MICHIGAN AVENUE .Andover 1733 0 8 o . 260 CALIFORNIA STREET . . Sutter 6634 N o0 to RT. HON. HERBERT MORRISON Home Secretary and Minister of Home Security At Birkbeck College, April 29, 1944 [Extracts] In approaching our postwar economic problem it is essential that we do not lose sight of the wood in our preoccupation with the trees. It is right that we should consider questions of finance, of balance-sheets, of capital replacement, of wages, of industrial location, the provision of credits, research, and so forth. All these things are vital and should not be neglected. But let us never lose sight of the fact that an even deeper problem than any of these is the problem of the attitude of the men and women who are engaged in industry, the employers, the managers, the technicians, the scientists, the workers at bench and lathe, the clerks ard assistants of every kind-the problem of social morale. With what objective are they working, what is it they are really trying to achieve? Upon the answer to that question will turn the issue whether we shall succeed in effecting a great national revival after the war or whether we shall lapse into a position that is -in every sense second-rate. ... Human Values I think we have got past the point where our people, after the experiences they have been through, will ever again be content with limited and material aims. Less and less is our society today content to accept the motives and ideas that animated it at an earlier stage. Less and less does the excessive emphasis onrthe motive of individual gain commend itself to our consciences. We may not yet have any clear idea what we mean to put in its place-and that is our great problem-but we do at least know that the old ideas and incentives are no longer sufficient to move us. The personal advantage motive is not merely frowned upon and argued against; it is less and less effective as a motive because men pursue it with a divided mind. This affects not only the entrepreneurs but all the men and women who work for gain in factories, stores and offices, in mines and shipyards and docks. We are now consciously setting out to achieve a condition of full employment. We want to bring about as a permanent feature of our economic life the state of affairs to which we have been accustomed in war when there are jobs for all, and those responsible for production go hunting for workers with the same keenness with which the unfortunate workers used once to go hunting for jobs. Someone may say that full employment is an ideal which has never yet been realized in our form of society except in war or in short peacetime booms. That is so. But I hope we will not hastily draw the conclusion that what has not yet been done cannot therefore be done. Of one thing I am sure, that if when things have settled down after the war we prove unable to avoid substantial unemployment on anything like the scale we saw before the war, the social and economic strain that will be involved may even threaten the fabric of our society. Ordinary men and women have become profoundly and utterly impatient of the very idea of the human and material wastes involved in unemployment. They just won't have it. My conclusion is that Government will be encouraged by the powerful force of public sentiment to adopt every conceivable method of avoiding mass idleness, and I do not think it too optimistic to hope that the will and [1) British Speeches of the Day aspiration of our people and the ingenuity of their rulers will succeed in the task before them. This question of what men and women think worth while in life will assume the most urgent and pressing practical importance if this or some later Government succeeds in the objective it has set before itself and organizes matters in such a way that there will be work for practically everybody who wants it practically all the time. . . Lessons of the War Then we ought to do everything we can to ensure that working conditions and welfare arrangements are worthy of our people. One of the ugly revelations brought by the war has been the backwardness of a great many of our industries in the provision of what should be the bare minimum of amenity and decency for their workpeople. Under the spur of war needs and under the enlightened direction of the Minister of Labour and the Supply Ministers a great deal of progress has been made in such matters as the provision of factory canteens, rest rooms, medical care, entertainments, and so on. But the gap between the worst and the best is still far too wide, and when the wartime limitations of black-out, shortage of materials and shortage of labor are removed, there will be the great opportunity for a great drive to recondition our industries on the side of human and personal welfare. Another lesson taught by the war which we shall be wise to apply in peace is the lesson of what can be done to help people to find the right jobs. In the Army a study of the personal capacities and mental characteristics of recruits has helped enormously in putting men where they can do their best work. In normal postwar conditions there should be a great opportunity for enlightened industry or public authority in a friendly way to help square pegs into square holes and to avoid those misfits that can breed so much boredom, frustration and unhappiness. There will be room, too, for a great deal of that work of explanation and education which in our war industries goes by the name of "works relations." Human beings, as intelligent creatures, work very much better when they know what they are doing and why. Only the most backward, obscurantist, stupid and ignorant of employers can suppose that it makes no difference to his men or his girls whether or not they work with an understanding of the background, the purpose, the social significance of their labors. Of course, if you treat human beings as cogs in a machine, if you assume that they do not care a rap what they do or why, so long as they get their weekly wage-packet, they will soon justify your belief and behave as though you were right. But you will have missed the real point about them. By a different attitude, by the creation of a different atmosphere, by putting enlightenment in the place of ignorance and confusion in their minds, you can get an altogether different quality of work from them even in the case of the most repetitive jobs. . It is all very well to tell the worker that the gadget he is making will help to run a motor lorry. So far so good. But you will not really succeed in enlisting his full energies unless you are able to tell him what the motor lorry is going to run for and to convince him that it will serve the needs and purposes of the community as a whole. . We must have a sense of plan and purpose in our society as we have in war. What is that plan and purpose to be? What can it be except the organized effort to increase the well-being of society as a whole? And that plan and purpose must be held up before the eyes of ordinary men and women as the direct object to their efforts and endeavors. Transport in Wartime 3 As our modern industrial life has become increasingly complicated, so it has become, for a great number of the people engaged in it, more disintegrated, more atomized, more purposeless. We cannot expect to enlist the loyalties of the great mass of men and women by appealing to them solely in terms of personal advantage, or even in terms of the limited advantage of their own industry. . . Can we expect to elicit the full enthusiasm of men and women for anything short of a society that is both genuinely unified and genuinely free? Can we win through if the objective that all our people are able to hold up before themselves is anything less than the Common Good? I am not pleading for-there is no need for-a uniform and dead-level equalitarianism in our society. There is room for variety of many kinds. But there is great and urgent need for a genuine sense of common purpose, a sense that is not destroyed in the minds of ordinary men and women by any feeling that their own public spirit and readiness to serve is being exploited for some limited or unworthy purpose. If we can work out a form of social and economic organization that will truly promote the objective of the Common Good, we shall have solved the fundamental problem of incentives in economic life. We shall, I am profoundly convinced, solve it on no other terms. [Official Releasel. RT. HON. P. J. NOEL-BAKER Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of War Transport House of Commons, May 5, 1944 I am painfully conscious of the magnitude and the difficulty of my task. For ope thing the Estimates of my Ministry, in its present form, have never before been debated by this Committee of the House. The Estimates of its predecessor, the Ministry of Transport, have not been debated since 1939. Since then the Ministry of Transport has been amalgamated with the wartime Ministry of Shipping and, also, since that time, these two Ministries, or their present successor, have taken over control of the seven major industries by which the transport of the country is carried on. The form of control varies from case to case. Ocean-going shipping is controlled by requisitioning on a time charter basis; coast vessels by the issue of licenses or permits for every journey which they make; docks, not only in the nine chief ports, but in many other places, by special statutory powers; railway companies by the Railway Agreement; inland waterways and canals by the directorate set up in 1942; road passenger transport without formal agreement with the public authorities or companies concerned, by the statutory powers and influence of the Regional Transport Commissioners and by our power to control the fuel issues which the undertakings all receive; road haulage, for short-distance work, by fuel rationing and for long-distance work by the organization which my noble Friend has set up and by Regulation 73B, to which the House agreed the other day. As I say, the form of control varies. But its purpose, and the effective power which it confers upon my noble Friend, is, in every case, the same. In every case he can decide what services there shall be, what changes or restrictions must be imposed; he must decide, in consultation with his colleagues, what priorities must be given to certain categories of passengers or goods, what traffic is nonessential 4 British Speeches of the Day and must, therefore, be discouraged or altogether cut out. These powers are very wide. They affect every passenger by ship, road or rail. They touch the interests of every manufacturer and trader. They intimately concern 1,500,000 transport workers. They are vital to the conduct of the war. The Committee will understand, therefore, that the responsibilities which my noble Friend carries are very heavy and that his daily tasks are varied and complex in the extreme and they understand, I hope, that my task today is by no means easy. So, I hope that Members will grant me their indulgence, if it seems to some of them that I have failed to mention many subjects which they think, rightly, are of great importance. Three Reasons for Wartime Control There are three main reasons why my noble Friend and his predecessors were driven to take control of the whole transport system of the country. The first is that adequate transport is the very foundation of successful war. That has been a military platitude since the Romans conquered Gaul and Britain because they knew how to make roads. Today, more than ever, transport by land and sea has become a fighting arm. Transport remains the very blood-stream of civilian production and of the nation's social life. There is a common pool of transport material and skilled transport personnel from which all requirements must be met; a common pool of locomotives, rolling stock and lorries; a common pool of passenger ships and tramps, of merchant officers and seamen, of engineers, of drivers and mechanics; a common pool on which both the Armed Forces and the civil authorities must draw. The imperious necessities of the Forces must be met, but they must be met with due regard to the fact that the work of the whole nation must go on. The whole of transport, therefore, must be planned together, and it cannot be planned without control. The second reason is that every individual movement of men or material must be planned right through, from the point of departure to destination, in whatever country or continent the destination may chance to be. To obtain the best from our transport system we must cut out every possible delay. We must know, therefore, in advance the cargo of every ship that comes to port; we must know how that cargo has been loaded so that we can make the right arrangements for its unloading and for the clearance to the proper places of the goods it brings. When we load a vessel here, we must do it with a knowledge of the capacity or the limitations of the ports or transport systems at the other end, the a ailability of wagons, the strength of bridges and all the rest. For example, if we are sending goods to Russia by way of Persia, we must so pack them that they can get through the tunnels on the Persian railways. In every movement, the use of road, rail, docks and ships must be planned as a single, integrated whole. The third reason for control is the tremendous pressure on every part of the whole transport system caused by war conditions. That pressure has been due, in part, to our general strategical position. In many ways, Hitler's greatest single advantage against us has been in transport. He has been working on interior lines. These lines, until the fairly recent past, were relatively safe. The supplies of materials that he could receive were all in Europe, near at hand. He had an immense pool of European transport material on which to draw. We were working on external lines-14,000 miles round the Cape to Egypt, and sending arms for the Russian front, by the Arctic Seas to Archangel, or through the Persian Gulf. Our lines were subject to the most dangerous attacks by surface craft, by U-boats, by Focke-Wulfs. Even here in Britain our railways were liable, for many months, to interruption by bombing from the air. Many of our import cargoes had to be Transport in Wartime diverted from their normal ports in the South and East Coasts to ports on the North and West. Owing to the fact that transport, material and labor formed a common pool for military and civil work, we could not get the flow of new ships, lorries and locomotives that were required. Shipyards had to give the highest priority to escort vessels, and other naval craft. Boiler-makers were taken from railway workshops to other work even more vital than their own. Motor manufacturers were given orders for tanks, armoured cars, aircraft carriers, and a score of other types of vehicles for the Armed Forces. The flow of new omnibuses and haulage lorries became a trickle, and until the Government took it vigorously in hand, even the supply of spare parts of civil vehicles was uncertain and precariously small. Normal maintenance and repairs were impeded by the great shortage of skilled personnel, and nowhere more seriously than on the inland waterways and canals. The Burden and the Achievement While this was happening, the volume of the traffic grew and grew. The capacity of the ships was much reduced by the fact that they had to go in convoy. Convoy means an immense reduction of effective sailing time. To outwit the U-boats they had to follow circuitous and lengthy routes. Their actual deliveries were reduced by the serious losses they sustained. Yet every month they had to carry an immense and increasing burden. More and more troops and equipment were sent to distant fronts. To Egypt was added Eastern India and then the South Pacific. When great armies had been built up, they had to be supplied. An immense American Army for invasion and an immense American Air Force had to be brought across the Atlantic. Increasing quantities of raw material for war production had to be supplied. I cannot, for obvious reasons, give detailed figures. We must remember the splendid part which the new American Merchant Navy have played in sharing the burden. With the Allied merchant navies, which we control, Norwegian, Greek, Dutch, French, Belgian, and others, to whom we owe so much, we carried a colossal total in 1943. The Prime Minister said, fourteen months ago, that up to then, we had transported 3,000,000 troops overseas. Last year we made a formidable addition to the total, and, with the troops went a vast quantity of tanks, aircraft and other equipment very difficult to load and handle. In spite of our losses, particularly in the earlier months of the year, and the fact that our import program was, or course, heavily reduced, all ordinary requirements for industry and for the nation were not only brought to these shores last year, but we reached our target with a margin to spare. The pressure on the railways, and indeed on other forms of inland transport, has been no less. There have been more passengers on the railways-not only troops for overseas but troops on leave. Journeys over 200 miles, of troops and their dependents, constituted 80 per cent of the passengers who traveled. There have been more workers traveling regularly in two directions every day. There have been workers traveling, transferred to places other than their homes, with privilege concession travel at stated intervals. There have been evacuated persons, schools and institutions which have been displaced, and many more. Taking 1943 as a whole, the number of passenger journeys, excluding season tickets, was up by 20 per cent as compared with the period before the war. The average distance of every journey had increased by more than one half, so that the total passenger miles were up by 60 per cent and the pressure has gone on steadily increasing. Passengers in 1943 were more by the stupendous figure of 106,000,000 than they had been the year before. Freight traffic increased by even more. Light merchandise, which needs British Speeches of the Day most handling and takes most space in the wagons, has increased by 86 per cent as compared with 1938. Heavy merchandise and minerals have increased by 68 per cent. Even coal traffic has increased by 13 per cent, compared with the figures before the war. Not only so, but the average haul was longer. By the end of 1943 the railways were carrying 1,000,000 ton-miles more freight traffic every hour of every day than they had been before the war. The Inland Waterways Nor is that the end of the story. There are 7,000 extra trains for workers every week-1,000 a day-and, in addition, in a single recent week, there were 2,400 other special trains and passengers and freight carried on Government account. Anyone who knows the difficulties of arranging a special train and making a path available and all the other detailed complications, will realize the burden that these special trains impose. The increased burden is no less on the omnibuses. In Derby, the vehicles which, on the average, are more than twelve years old, the corporation transport undertaking is carrying close on 50 per cent more passengers than before the war. That figure is quite common. Sometimes it is 60, 70 and 80 per cent more, indeed, in some places two persons are traveling by bus where only one traveled before the war. Even on the canals and inland waterways, where, before the war, the traffic was dwindling for many years, there are now more cargoes than can be moved. Many boats and barges are laid up because we cannot repair them. Many of the skilled crews drifted in the early stages of the war into the Forces and other trades. We have not had the labor to do all the dredging or the other maintenance that we wanted to do. In recent months there has been a very serious water shortage. I am told that a difference of one inch in the level of the water, means a difference of a ton in the load that you can put on it. In spite of all those difficulties, the inland waterways are carrying almost as big a tonnage as before the war-that is, about 1,000,000 a month- and if the statistics enabled us to calculate it in ton-miles, the fact of longer cargo journeys would show that the real work has had a big increase .... This extra burden must be carried, in some cases, on canals, with less transport material and nearly always with less renewals of materials and with less reserves. I have mentioned the restriction of the flow of new vehicles on the roads. It must be carried either with a smaller labor force, as on the roads and canals, or, in other cases, with labor forces whose trained skill has been diluted in a high degree. The railways have not only sent locomotives overseas, but 110,000 men into the Armed Forces. These have been replaced by women, who have done magnificently well. I cannot pay too high a tribute to the spirit, adaptability and endurance that they have shown. Even with dilution, my Ministry has found like other Departments of State, at almost every point and in almost every section of our work, that labor shortage has been a very serious factor in impeding what we want to do. This extra burden must be carried in spite of the difficulties which war conditions inevitably create. Hon. Members have often read how hard it is to sail a ship in convoy, without lights, through a North Atlantic storm. Perhaps 'they have not thought what work is like in a railway marshaling yard, in the blackout, on a stormy winter night. Perhaps they do not realize what it means regularly, week after week, to drive a bus or lorry, with dimmed headlights, through the darkness for many hours a day. It is not only the extra strain which war conditions cast on the personnel; it is the reduced capacity which inevitably results. In the blackout, buses must run to a slower schedule. The average rate of freight trains is only seven and one-quarter miles an hour, as compared with the magnificent speed of nine before the war. Transport in Wartime The Power to Plan That is a rough outline of the problem with which my Noble Friend is faced-the increased traffic that must be moved, the lessened means with which to move it and the special wartime difficulties which must be overcome. It is surely plain that he can never face it without control of the whole transport system. It is plain that he must have power to discourage nonessential traffic, or to eliminate it altogether, if that is desirable and possible. It is plain that he must have the power to decide priorities, to see that his decisions are effective, and that urgent traffic really does get through. He must have the power to plan from first to last, and make certain that his plan is carried out, and that the transport system is linked together and is really co-ordinated in that special sense. He must have the power to ensure that the rates and charges and the cost of transport shall not divert the traffic from that means of transport which in the public interest it is best to use; that the transport system shall be considered as a whole, that it shall be co-ordinated in that sense and that traffic shall be allocated to that means of transport which, for the service of the nation, can move it best. In the operation of that control, my noble Friend is bound to interfere with the normal traffic and even to cause hardship or inconvenience to importers and exporters, to traders and manufacturers and to the traveling public as a whole. He cannot help it. He is responsible to the Government and to Parliament for the proper use of transport, and it is for Parliament to ensure that the restrictions he imposes are justified by the result which he obtains. Reduction of Nonessential Traffic It is plain that his first purpose, with an increased burden and restricted means, must be to cut out unnecessary movement, whether of passengers or goods. Everybody knows the drastic restrictions on ocean travel and nobody doubts that they are required. Nobody has yet suggested how we can ration passenger traffic by train or bus. But we have discouraged nonessential traffic in many ways. In spite of great increases in 'the traffic, we have cut passenger train mileage by 30 per cent. That means that train loadings are up by 120 per cent since before the war, with the discomfort and the discouragement to needless travel which that entails. We have abolished cheap fares, and other special concessions, which were intended to induce people to travel who could really have stayed at home. We have had propaganda and advertisement campaigns, in which the companies greatly helped, to try to make the public understand the basic transport facts. We have cut road passenger services just as much as rail and, with the extra spur of the fuel and rubber shortages, we have not only reduced the normal services but we have cut out half the bus stops, all the long-distance coaches, and such shorter services as the Green Line coaches in the London area. We have made the buses park in the center of the city at "off-peak" times. We have stopped late evening services and services on Sunday mornings. We have withdrawn unlimited travel tickets on the buses and some specially attractive fares. All in all, we have cut road vehicle mileage to something like two-thirds of what it was before the war. We have been encouraged to take these measures because we found that they have not only given real savings in fuel and power, but they have definitely stopped a lot of nonessential travel. A special inquiry was made into the elimination of the Green Line coaches. We not only saved 11,500,000 vehicle miles a year, but we found that half the passengers who used to use those services have given up altogether making the journeys they used to make. With goods traffic we could take bolder measures. We could not only request, we could instruct and we could compel. In co-operation with the Ministry of British Speeches of the Day Food and the Board of Trade, for whose generous help we are extremely grateful, we have had many schemes to cut out long hauls of goods, to prevent cross-hauls of similar commodities, and to rationalize the distribution of essential food supplies and other things. It has been calculated that the scheme for "zoning" the railway hauls of certain commodities have given a tremendous result. There used to be very lively criticism of the zoning scheme for fish. I do not think the critics knew that the saving in fish train mileage was no less than 35 per cent. Altogether, in the zoning of beer, chocolates, biscuits and many other things, the stupendous total of 276,000,000 ton-miles per annum have been saved. We have also dealt with retail distribution. We have had thousands of schemes throughout the country to control and rationalize the retail delivery of groceries, bread, milk and other things. We have only had two substantial complaints about these schemes, and I hope that they are both settled by now. The schemes saved us 25,000,000 gallons of motor fuel a year, a saving of 36 per cent far beyond the target we had set ourselves; they saved us 34,000 vehicles and they saved us manpower on a very considerable scale. These measures to eliminate the needless transport of persons and things, and to reduce the services we run, have made a great contribution towards the solving of the problem with which my noble Friend was faced. They have been supplemented by other measures, such as the heavier loading of railway wagons, the staggering of working hours, a very important matter, and a big drive for quicker turn-round. A saving of nine hours on the average journey of a railway wagon means an additional capacity of 55,000 wagon loads, without the extra congestion which 55,000 more wagons on the line would mean. We got a saving of nine hours last winter. The Problem of Manpower We have had a big drive to accelerate repairs both of railway rolling stock and vehicles on the roads. Eighty-five per cent of all the work in the railway workshops today is on repairs. I venture the assertion that the Vehicle Maintenance Department of the Ministry, which works in close co-operation with the Ministry of Supply, has done a splendid piece of work for the nation by bringing back many thousands of essential vehicles to the roads. I have already said that, like other Ministries, we have been hampered by the shortage of our labor force. My noble Friend has taken a great variety of measures to make the best use of the forces he can command. Everyone knows about the decasualization of the officers and men of the Merchant Navy through the Reserve Pool, which is run by the industry, the Shipping Federation and the trade unions, with our grateful assistance and support. Everyone knows about the decasualization of the dockers by my Minister's schemes on the Mersey and the Clyde, and by the National Dock Labour Corporation in the other ports. Without these schemes, in which the Ministry of Labour have greatly helped us, we should have had the greatest difficulty in keeping our ships at sea, and the docks would have been much less efficient than, in fact, they are. On the railways great economies of manpower, particularly in the bookkeeping and clerical grades, have resulted from the fact of Government control. In the railway rate book there are tens of millions of different headings, but for Govern- ment traffic we have a series of flat rates per ton for different Ministries, whatever the distance and whatever the categories of the goods. The Committee will ap- preciate the saving when I say that Government traffic is a vast proportion of the freight the railways carry. We have a simplified system for dealing with claims for damage to goods in transport, and a simplified system for demurrage. We rely on other methods to speed the turn-round. I believe that before we had this Transport in Wartime system one Army depot used to send up its demurrage accounts by the sack full. We have washed out booking tickets for members of the Forces. Their railway warrant serves as their ticket instead. There is no clearing of working expenses between the railway companies. Expenses and receipts go into a common pool. Hon. Members will understand that these are not trifling items, and that together they do much to lighten the burden which the railways have to carry .... Many of the same economies are obtained by the Road Haulage Organization in Government and other long distance haulage traffic ivith which it deals. The Minister also gets economies in the use of transport, the better use of transport, from the close co-operation of the different railway companies which now exist. The companies themselves had done something in that direction before the war, but they would be the first to say that it has gone very much further now. They now really work together as a single team. Passenger stock is a common pool. Their freight wagons, together with the 600,000 private wagons which we re- quisitioned, are also a combined pool managed by a Central Wagon Control, with its own headquarters, which acts for the railways as a whole. Sheets and ropes for goods wagons have been pooled, a very important point in speeding the turn- round. The traffic managers of the companies have a joint conference by special telephone every day. The companies manufacture and repair locomotives for each other. They lend each other locomotives, they work their locomotives on each others' lines, they lend each other skilled staff. Above all, they have cut out com- petitive routes, so that all traffic now goes by the most speedy route, irrespective of the company to which it belongs .... The Machinery for Planning Besides these measures, my noble Friend must himself plan the traffic programs and allocate the different flows of traffic to that means of transport which will give the best return. There must be machinery to decide when and how essential cargoes shall be loaded overseas, how incoming cargoes shall be disposed of, and how traffic shall be distributed here between railway, road and canal. That machinery has been created. The loading of every ship that .comes here or that leaves these shores is planned and settled by the officials of the Ministry, who deal with tonnage allocation, with sea transport for the Forces, with liners and with tramps, and by our many distinguished representatives and missions overseas. The planners must aim at insuring that deadweightt" and "measurement" cargoes shall be, as far as possible, balanced. When loading for operations, they must plan not only what each ship must carry, but the order in which items shall be unloaded on the beaches at the other end. Incoming vessels are allocated to the different ports by our Ministry Diversion Room, where every day, in the light of the latest in- formation about empty berths, available railway wagons and road haulage capacity, the Committee decides what cargoes each ship is sent, and the port which can best discharge it and best handle the cargoes which it brings. Internal traffic is no less carefully planned. There meets at intervals the Central Transport Committee, on which each Department that uses transport is represented. That committee plans six months ahead; it makes allocations between roads and railways and canals; it deals with suggestions by ad hoc subcommittees. The allo- cation of coal traffic between road transport and rail is a case in point; others are the seasonal traffics in home-grown timber, sugar beet and seed potatoes. We have similar committees in the regions. Twelve committees meet, under the regional transport commissioners, with representatives of rail, road and water transport, to decide how traffic shall be carried and what means of transport can best be used. In many of our seventy-eight districts the district transport officers have much the British Speeches of the Day same machinery at their command. So, at every level there is real and effective co-ordination of the transport system as a whole. The Workers Shoulder Their Burden If my account of my Department's work has been intelligible, the Committee will understand that our task is to plan, to decide and to direct. In that task the Ministry have had invaluable assistance from members of the industry, shipping people, road hauliers, and others, who have come in to help, and who have worked under the leadership of my noble Friend. They have done a splendid job. But the operation of the transport system is done by the different undertakings and companies themselves. They act as our agents, at our direction, but they-the managements and the workers-do the actual daily work. I cannot praise enough the spirit which they have shown. The management have displayed an energy and a devotion which proves the patriotism by which they are inspired. Fqr six- teen hours a day on end there is heavy pressure. The workers have done their very best. Parliament has often expressed its admiration for the Merchant Navy: I will add only this. The Merchant Navy are civilians. In the last war they lost 12,000 men; in this war they have already lost more than twice that number; yet we have always more recruits than we can train for the job. Now, almost without exception, officers and seamen have volunteered to face the very dangerous hazards of the Second Front. Seeing the discharging records of the dockers, one would never guess that in Liverpool, for example, the average age of the dockers is 52. When I was last there, I saw men loading frozen meat into a van. They were lifting frozen carcasses, weighing 40 lbs., to a height of seven or eight feet. I asked one what his age was. He said that he was 78, and that his mate was 69. It often happens that a bus conductress must deal in a single shift with 1,000 or even 1,400 fares. That means that, apart from starting and stopping the bus, she must give a ticket and the correct change every twenty seconds of her eight hours on duty. I niust not fail to mention the leadership which the workers have had from the trade unions. The spokesmen of the trade unions are sitting on advisory committees. We are in daily contact with them, on every problem that arises, and they have always helped us in every way within their power. I must say something about the forbearance and the help of the traders and the general public. No one knows more than I do what they have had to bear: no one appreciates as much as I do the cheerful spirit which they have shown. We must make further calls upon their endurance in the coming year. With the growing volume of traffic, the limited resources at our command, and the diversions and dislocations, which the Second Front must mean, it is not too much to say that inland transport may be the bottleneck of our efforts. The managements, the workers and the public can help us by giving a quicker turn-round of everything that moves, by refraining from journeys which they would like to undertake, and by helping the transport per- sonnel in every way within their power. Every sacrifice and every effort they make will be of immediate assistance to the troops who man the ships, the aero- planes, and the guns. Transport After the War I believe that the work of my Ministry for five long years has built up an instrument which will stand the strain of the coming operations. I believe that the instrument will make its contribution to the victory that lies ahead. I believe that we have learned many lessons that will be of value when the war is over. I must not abuse the patience of the Committee any longer, but I could speak The Effectiveness of the Blockade about the work we have done to prepare for transport reconstruction in the future. . .. Now I will only mention our road program, our Committee on Road Safety, our work on electrification of the railways, our studies of the future of the canals, our studies of general transport co-ordination-which is of supreme importance- our preparatory work to make the Merchant Navy a great and honorable career, and our work in the Middle East Supply Center, which may lead to valuable inter- national co-operation. I want to quote one sentence from a recent statement by my noble Friend. He said: "For the first time, we have evidence of the benefits of a fully co-ordinated transport system, and I do not think that the industry would ever want to go back to the conditions prevailing before the war." in the war, for the first time, we have had real transport co-ordination. We have seen what it can do. Without it, our progress to victory would have been gravely hampered. Transport, in time of peace, is no less necessary than in time of war. Its efficiency on land, in the ports and estuaries, along the coasts, and on the sea, is a vital factor in the kind of life our people will be able to afford. I hope we shall face the future with firm determination to learn and to apply all the lessons which our, war experience can teach. [House of Commons Debates) THE EARL OF SELBORNE, Minister of Economic Warfare House of Lords, May 9, 1944 I hope that the public realize how much more difficult a task the Navy have had in this war than they had in the last. It has been much more difficult because in the first place the Navy was much smaller; secondly, Italy and Japan were always hostile, and later enemies; thirdly, in 1940 we lost the French Fleet, and lastly there was no European bottleneck. In the last war the Dover Patrol func- tioned at one end of the North Sea and the Tenth Cruiser Squadron at the other, the Mediterranean was blocked at both ends, and that completely blocked the entrance to all the ports to which Germany had access; but in this war, after 1940, the whole Atlantic seaboard lay clear, and therefore the fact that the blockade has been maintained to the extent that it has been maintained is, I think, a very remarkable performance on the part of the Royal Navy. There is one other point about the blockade which I should like to make, and that is that the methods of the blockade have, of course, had to be altered from what they were in the last war. In Nelson's day the blockade was enforced on the high seas. My noble relative, Lord Cecil of Chelwood, when he was Minister of Blockade, introduced the navicert system, which revolutionized the application of the blockade, and in this war that has been developed still more to what we call control at source. Our weapons were' the bunkering facilities on which all' ships that sail the seas depend, from the coaling stations, which are nearly all British controlled throughout the world, or where British companies operate, and also the facilities of insurance. Unless a ship conforms to the requirements of the Ministry of Economic Warfare it can get neither insurance nor bunkering. That has been effected by means of what we call ship navicerts and ship warrants. None of that would have been effective, however, if the British Navy had not been in the background. To that extent the machinery of the blockade has been very much developed in the new conditions, compared with what it was when the noble Viscount was Minister of Blockade. British Speeches of the Day A Vast Combined Operation The methods of the Navy have also changed, of course. The close patrols of the last war have given place to long-range interception, and in that the Fleet Air Arm and Coastal Command have been playing a very big part. The other weapons with which we have enforced the blockade are the Black List, of which the noble Lord, Lord Nathan, spoke, and rationing the neutrals. That is again a device that we took over from the noble Viscount, Lord Cecil. It was he who first introduced the rationing of neutrals, and that was adopted from a much earlier date in this war than it was in the last war. By these means Germany has been prevented from using her Atlantic seaboard to import food and raw materials. When Japan entered the war at the end of 1941 our enemies tried to break the blockade, and it was very important for them to do so, because it so happened that their economies were complementary: Japan had the tungsten, the rubber, and the oil that'Germany so much needed; Germany had precision tools, blueprints, ball-bearings and the like, all of which Japan required very much. And therefore they started a system of fast blockade runners, that ran from the East to West and from West to East without showing lights or using their wireless or calling at any port. For a time they had a limited success, but before long the Royal Navy, the Navies of our Allies and the Air Forces were able to get on the job, and we have altogether sunk some fifteen blockade runners, four outward and eleven inward. Now that traffic, except for a few submarines, which can carry very little, has practically ceased. The cargoes that were destroyed included 45,000 tons of rubber, 1,500 tons of tungsten, 17,000 tons of tin, 25,000 tons of vegetable oils, and Far Eastern drugs of great importance, such as quinine. But it was not the cargoes that were sunk that were most important, it was the cargoes that never sailed on account of the way that we were able to demonstrate that the blockade could be enforced. Thus the Royal Navy imposed deficiency on Germany from outside, and at the same time-and again this is where the blockade is very different from what it was in the last war-the Royal Air Force and the American Air Force have created deficiency inside Axis Europe. The work of the Air Forces is a most powerful addition to the work of the Navies. The Navies stop the import of rubber from Malaya, the Air Forces destroy the synthetic rubber factories in Germany. That was why in the last war it was called the Ministry of Blockade and this time it is called the Ministry of Economic Warfare, because we are really co-ordinating a vast combined operation against the enemy's fighting power by various methods outside and inside his frontiers, in his coastal waters by bombing and mining, and in men's minds by propaganda-and I should like to add that the peoples of occupied Europe have joined in this in their resistance movements in actions which have had such important economic results in what is called sabotage. In all this we have worked in the closest co-operation with our American colleagues, both at home and abroad. All our economic information is pooled with our American Allies. Uncovering Cloaked Transactions Your Lordships will realize, as the noble Lords, Lord Nathan and Lord Rennell, have pointed out this afternoon, that this co-ordinated attack on the resources of the Axis could not be carried on without a very well manned Intelligence Depart- ment. This organization assesses the economic factors in Germany's military capa- bilities and her intentions, and these are embodied in inter-Service appreciations, through the medium of the Joint Intelligence Committee of the Chiefs of Staff, upon which my Department is represented. This is the organization by which the vulnerable parts in Germany's economy are discovered, neutral firms trading with the enemy are detected, enemy efforts to build up foreign exchange balances The Effectiveness of the Blockade are prevented, and smugglers of diamonds, platinum, etc., are frustrated. The noble Lord, Lord Nathan, spoke truly when he said that the importance of these small materials is very great in this war; things like platinum and diamonds have a most vital importance. Modern industry depends on an adequate supply of industrial diamonds. And I need hardly say that the smaller the object, the more difficult it is to enforce the blockade in respect of it. Therefore the blockade is enforced not only by the Allied Navies and Air Forces but by every means at our disposal. If I might give an example of the efficacy of our methods, I could quote the case of the Spanish and Portuguese Merchant Navies plying to and from their own harbors all over the world. You would think that Germany, through what we call "cloaked transactions"-transactions which are different from what they purport to be-could have imported a tremendous amount of materials by those routes. And yet we know that if you take the whole period of the war not more than 11/2 per cent of that tonnage has operated on enemy account, and at the present moment less than half of 1 per cent is operating on enemy account, and that is on the short voyage across the Bay of Biscay. The noble Lord, Lord Nathan, asked some questions about the Black List, First, he asked me if it had been applied without fear or favor. I can give him that assurance without hesitation. No matter how big or how powerful any firm may be, if its activities are calculated to be prejudicial to the Allied cause we should not hesitate, in conjunction with our Allies, to act. He also asked me what the relations were between the Statutory List, as we call it in Great Britain, and the Proclaimed List in America. For all practical purposes those two lists are identi- cal, and steps are taken and machinery exists by which they are kept identical. The Black List is a most potent weapon. It means the destruction of a firm's whole foreign trade and frequently in a firm going into bankruptcy. The firm is from that moment onward boycotted by the world of commerce. I should like to make it clear that the end of the war may not necessarily mean the end of the Black List. Our memories are proverbially short, but they are not quite so short as all that, and we shall not readily forget what neutral firms did during this war. Another method by which the blockade is enforced is, as the noble Lord said, what we call pre-emption. That again was practised by my noble relative, Lord Cecil of Chelwood, in the last war-buying in neutral markets accessible to Ger- many commodities which would be of use to the enemy. By this means, for in- stance, we greatly reduced the dispatch to Germany of wolfram from the Iberian Peninsula, chrome from Turkey, and ball-bearings from Sweden. In that connec- tion I should like to join with my noble friend Lord Nathan in the tribute he paid to the United Kingdom Commercial Corporation for the very valuable work they have done in that respect. Finally, of course, it is by diplomacy that we have also endeavored to enforce the blockade. We have made agreements with neutral countries. These neutral countries require certain things from us, and we require certain things from them. Therefore there is the opportunity and the means by which we can make a fair agreement. One of the things we require from them is that they shall not send commodities of military importance to the enemy. As the fortunes of war swung decisively in our favor and the danger to European neutrals of German invasion vanished, we have been able to make increasingly satisfactory agreements with European neutrals. I spoke last week of our recent agreement with Spain, and I should like to stress one point. I was sorry to see that in some quarters that agree- ment was hailed as a victory over Spain. It was nothing of the sort. It was a compromise mutually satisfactory to Spain and to the Allies; but it was a victory over Germany. British Speeches of the Day Nazis Prepared Anti-Blockade Defenses The Noble Lord, Lord Nathan, asked some questions about the efficiency of the blockade, and in answering them I want to be careful not to overstate the facts. We must remember that after the last war the Germans publicly ascribed their defeat to the blockade. If I may say so, I think that they exaggerated partly in order to pretend that their Army was invincible; but they did publicly ascribe it to the blockade, and undoubtedly the blockade played a very important part in bringing about their defeat. That having been their theme and their experience, the Nazis laid in vast quantities of all the materials of which they anticipated shortage during the next war in the years immediately preceding 1939. More than that, long before the Nazis got into power-almost before the ink of the Treaty of Versailles was dry-the Germans started creating those great synthetic industries such as synthetic rubber, synthetic oil, cellulose textiles, and the like, which would make them to a much greater extent independent of outside supplies when the next war came. Besides that, the Nazis organized their .agriculture so that far more food should be produced in Germany in this war, and they devised a system of rationing more complete, more scientific, and more efficient than they had in 1918. Therefore they started this war very much better qualified to with- stand the blockade. Then in 1940 they conquered the greater part of Europe and with it, of course, immense supplies of all the raw materials which are useful to war. They then proceeded to organize all the territory they had conquered in such a way as to make it work for the Nazi machine. Nevertheless, these tremend- ous resources were not inexhaustible if they were not replenished from outside. The effect of the blockade, which may have been slight at first, has been cumu- lative, and in my opinion is now undoubtedly very great. I am not going to sug- gest that Germany will collapse because she is running short of this or that com- modity. The picture should be painted with a broader brush. This is how I see it. Germany's stocks, once so plentiful, are seriously depleted. Submarine blockade- runners can do little to replenish them. Neutrals are increasingly aloof. Air raids create fresh problems which every day are harder to solve. Surpluses have become deficiencies, of which the most serious is probably manpower. To those responsible for German production the prospect at this crucial moment must indeed seem somber. This result is mainly due to three things-first, the vast expenditure of supplies and reserves and the German losses in Russia; second, the Allied victories in Africa; and third, the Allied command of the sea and the air. The part that my Department has played I have tried to explain. We are the "boys in the back- room" in this matter. Germany has for a long time been short of many things essential to modern warfare-oil, rubber, textiles, ferro-alloys. The noble Lord said that Germany had enough oil for military operations. It all depends what military operations he means. In my opinion there is no doubt that German military operations have been for some time past severely hampered by shortage of oil. Their greatest shortage, however, is in men. The effect of the blockade can be seen clearly in terms of manpower. For instance, Germany has nearly a million more men and women employed in agriculture that she had in the last war. If it were not for the blockade all these men and women would either be making munitions or else using them. Again, German civilian motor traffic has practically entirely gone over to producer- gas. Our Ministry of War Transport has quite rightly refused to allow producer-gas to proceed in this country beyond what may be described as a thorough experimental stage because it is grossly wasteful in manpower; but Germany has been forced on to it because her oil has been cut off. We in this country, on the other hand, are importing literally scores of millions of tons of goods every year. All the ersatz industries are very wasteful of manpower and this, combined with her colossal losses in the field, has- produced Germany's acute manpower crisis which she has The Effectiveness of the Blockade tried to solve with European slaves, of which some seven millions are working in Germany itself. Now we have got to the point where Germany is even enlisting unwilling foreigners into her Armed Forces. That is surely very significant. The time has now come when Germany cannot maintain simultaneously the numerical strength both of her Armed Forces and her civilian labor force, while the quality of both has steadily declined. Germans up to the age of sixty are called up for military service, and for fresh recruits the enemy now relies on classes under eighteen or over forty-seven. I give one other angle from which I think it is fair to look at the picture. When Hitler attacked Russia in 1941 he hoped to conquer the Ukraine, the Donets Basin, the Kuban and the Caucasus, and I think the measure of his defeat and the precariousness of his economic situation can be seen in that single fact. He may well have calculated that the vast mineral and agricultural resources he would get from those territories would repay the tremendous losses of the campaign. As it is, he has had the losses of the campaign and none of the gains of conquest. Any one who supposes that the sea blockade in this war was ineffective or of minor importance must have found it difficult to explain the events in the Bay of Biscay at the end of last December when the Germans risked a large force of destroyers, of which they lost three, in order to bring in a single blockade-runner. In our opinion the difficulties of Hitler's Generals are being increased every day by the growing scarcity of commodities. Therefore any neutral who now sends Germany vital war materials is simply prolonging the war and we shall certainly do our best to prevent that happening. M.E.W. to End with European War The noble Lords, Lord Nathan and Lord Rennell, both asked me about the future, arid Lord Nathan suggested that the Ministry of Economic Warfare should continue into the post-war period. As I have pointed out, there are two parts of the Ministry of Economic Warfare. There is the administration of the blockade on the one hand and on the other hand the intelligence system that has been built up to advise me about the blockade and to advise the Services in regard to their operations. I would, however, like to make it clear that when we tender advice to the Services about military operations all that my Ministry can do is to indicate the relative importance of certain targets; how, and when, and whether those targets should be attacked must of course depend on the decision of the Commander-in-Chief. But obtaining the information on which to advise the Services and on which to advise the Minister of Blockade involves a great organi- zation and the compilation of most detailed information about the whole of Axis Europe. If I may say so, I think'what Lord Rennell said in that respect was very true, but I see no reason why the Ministry of Economic Warfare, as such, should continue long after the Armistice with Germany. I am not in favor of the prolongation of wartime Departments beyond their period of usefulness, and if I am Minister of Economic Warfare at that time it will be my ambition that my Department should be the first wartime Department to close its doors. I think not only the liberties of His Majesty's subjects but also the prosperity of the country will be sustained in inverse ratio to the number of Government Departments and Government officials who survive this war. But that does not mean that economic warfare against Japan would not continue, nor does it mean that the Black List, as I have already said, would necessarily come to an end. All it does mean is that it would no longer be necessary to have a separate Ministry for the purpose. I might explain to your Lordships that in the matter of enforcing the blockade we are working, as I have said, very closely with our opposite numbers in Washington and it is a natural division of labor that, whereas our American Allies are the greatest authorities on the economic 16 British Speeches of the Day situation in the Far East, we perhaps are in more intimate touch with the economic situation in Europe, and therefore, for the purpose of enforcing the blockade in the Far East, Washington requires little assistance from my Department. For these reasons I do not think that the continuance of a separate Ministry of Economic Warfare would be justified for long after the Armistice with Germany, and the remaining administrative functions of the Ministry of Economic Warfare could very well be administered by the Foreign Office or one or two other permanent Departments. Economic Intelligence to Go to Foreign Office But the intelligence side of the Ministry of Economic Warfare which, by the way, is known by the name "Enemy Branch," is in my view in a different category altogether, and I very much share the views expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Rennell, in that matter. Quite apart from the manifold uses of economic intelligence for fighting the war, economic intelligence is of vital importance for the planning of many operations which will follow the defeat of Germany. In the first place, there is intelligence for the Far Eastern war, economic disarmament and economic control of Germany, reparations, the economic effects of frontier rectification, the rehabilitation of occupied territories, the devel- opment of economic sources of supply to allow Europe to recuperate. These are matters on which the Foreign Secretary and Foreign Ministers will need expert advice in the months immediately succeeding the Armistice. I am glad to be able to announce therefore that the Foreign Secretary has. decided to create an Economic Intelligence branch of the Foreign Office, and it is clear-and I am glad to know that both noble Lords who have spoken this afternoon will agree with this-that he could have no better servants for this purpose than the very efficient and experienced staff which has hitherto been working in my Department. The Foreign Office, however, already has to consider these problems and others requiring economic intelligence. Therefore there is an overlap, as it were, between the peacetime requirements of the Foreign Office and the wartime work of the Enemy Branch of my Department. For this reason the Foreign Secretary and I have recently agreed to transfer the control to the Foreign Office of all that part of my Department which is concerned with intelligence in enemy worlds. This does not mean that I have transferred to him my functions. The transferred staff will continue to be responsible to me for everything within the scope of my responsibilities and will continue to do for other Departments, particularly the Service Departments, work they had been doing in the past. In addition, however, they will be responsible to the Foreign Secretary for everything outside that work, and in consequence will be, I hope, of much use to him in dealing with the increasing number of problems relating to the period after the German collapse in which an appreciation of economic development and policy is essential. For the time being, therefore, Enemy Branch is serving both the Foreign Secretary and myself, and its official name is now Enemy Branch, Foreign Office and Ministry of Economic Warfare. There is really less change in that than might appear at first sight, because throughout the war this section of my Department has been advising not only me as Minister of Economic Warfare, but also, as I have said, the Service Departments and the Foreign Office and other Departments. It merely means that their work as the war draw to its end, will more and more .be concerned with peacetime problems and problems of transition, and less and less with purely wartime problems. I am sure that your Lordships will rejoice with me in the decision of the Foreign Secretary that henceforth the Foreign Office is to be adequately equipped in regard to economic intelligence, which must play an increasingly important part not only in foreign policy but in all politics. I The Future of Civil Aviation personally am very proud that it is a section of my Department that has been selected for that function-or rather let me put it in this way, I am very proud" to have worked with such men during the war. (House of Lords Debates] LORD BEAVERBROOK Lord Privy Seal House of Lords, May 10, 1944 The Conference with the United States of America was most satisfactory and the Americans are pleased with it, too. I will undertake to deal with that Conference in some detail and with the issues raised by my noble Friend. There are a number of questions on the Order Paper directed to the Government by my noble Friend, and these I will attempt to answer also. Answering Questions In the meantime, one or two additional questions have been raised. I am asked who will represent the United Kingdom at the International Conference.. That is a decision that has not been taken because the date of the International Conference has not yet been fixed. Are we in agreement with the Dominions? Always in all these matters we have agreement with the Dominions. We sometimes have to make some effort to find a common purpose but we invariably find it. I am asked the function of the Royal Air Force Transport Command and the noble Lord raised some questions respecting the Transport Command, too. The Transport Command is intended to serve the military machine. It is not for civil purposes at all, and any operations which may be carried on by the Trans- port Command in the form of civil services are necessarily subservient to military purposes. It is as reasonable to criticize the Transport Command in relation to civil services as it would be to criticize Carter Paterson and Company if they carried passengers in some of their vans. The parallel is quite good. The Trans- port Command does undertake a number of irregular transport services, or rather irregular passenger services, but regular transport operations are in the keeping of British Overseas Airways Corporation. I was very glad indeed to hear compli- ments to B.O.A.C. from the noble Lord, Lord Rennell, and I am satisfied that that Company will continue to function in a form and manner as in the past, and with satisfaction to the community. I now come to the question of a chosen instrument and monopoly. As my noble friend put it, is it still a monopoly or no monopoly? At any rate, it is still what it was. It is fixed by Statute, and until Parliament decides to repeal the Statute, the chosen instrument is just what it used to be. I will endeavor to tell your Lordships how it seems to me, but possibly others might take a different view. . . The first question raised by my noble friends is that of Ministerial responsibility for Civil Air Transport in His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The responsibility for civil air transport rests with the Air Ministry. The respon- sibility for co-ordinating future policy rests with the War Cabinet Committee. The War Cabinet Committee deals with postwar Civil Air Transport, and I am the Chairman of the Committee. It is a Committee of Ministers.. It includes all those Ministers who are concerned with policy toward civil aviation. It is called the British Speeches of the Day C.A.T. Committee. It is not an executive body; it has no administrative duties: it only recommends, and its recommendations must be subject to Cabinet sanction. The purpose of the Committee is threefold, and if I may, I will deal with the purposes in detail. Its first duty is to co-ordinate Government policy on civil aviation. Next it has to assume responsibility for an International Air Conference. The Conference has yet to be held. The Committee's third function is to recom- mend the departmental organization and Ministerial responsibility for civil avia- tion. Those are the duties of that Committee. I hope I am answering the questions to the satisfaction of my noble Friend. The next question is that of the international regulation of civil air transport. The international regulation of civil air transport must necessarily await the decision of an International Conference. The decision must be taken at the Inter- national Conference, and it is hoped that that Conference will be held this year but the decision depends upon other nations as well as Great Britain. We must await the decision of the nations of the world joining the Conference, and the time and place will depend upon them to some extent. The noble Marquess's third question is that of internal and inter-Common- wealth and Empire airlines. Internal airlines depend on the Air Ministry; the authority and control rests with them. Inter-Commonwealth and Empire lines were dealt with at the Commonwealth conversations six months ago. The findings provide for adequate regulations, including plans for an All-Red route. Aircraft Types The next question is the types of aircraft, and we must admit that the United States has a long lead over us in air transport. But we have a number of excellent designs for new types. I must frankly tell your Lordship that so far as progress with the construction of these new types goes, we have had disappointments. No blame attaches to anyone for this state of affairs; it is entirely due to our necessary preoccupation with the needs of the war, and it is no use hoping that such progress will result until we have made complete provision for destroying the enemy. Until then there can be nothing but disappointments so far as preparation of types for civil aviation is concerned. However, at present, there are several types of aircraft. There are plans, but, as Ilsay, progress is slow and there have been set-backs caused by military priorities. The York is in production on a small scale, and is giving excellent service with R.A.F. Transport Command and also with B.O.A.C. The York flew the other day 6,857 miles, from the United Kingdom to Delhi, in thirty-two hours flying time. That works out at an average ground speed of 214 miles an hour. The York'carried a load of four tons. The Shetland Flying Boat is due to make its first flight in a few weeks, but at present it will not be put into production. The Halifax Transport may fly late in 1944, but it will not be in production this year. The small De Haviland Feeder Line Transport may fly in about a year. That, I think, is an account of the preparation of types for civil aviation, with the exception of the Tudor. The Tudor has been held up because of military work and cannot be in service for some time. I do not deny that this is disappointing but the only comfort I can offer is that when military necessities permit, progress will be swifter and perhaps we may be able to make up for lost time. The Extent of the B.O.A.C. Monopoly I am going to deal with the fourth question on the Order Paper-the question relating to chosen instruments and subsidies-when I come to deal with the sixth 18 The Future of Civil Aviation question relating to the scope and powers of air-line operating companies. The present position is that British Overseas Airways Corporation has a monopoly subsidy on overseas airways. That is, a monopoly of Treasury grants for the development of air transport service. To that extent British Overseas Airways Corporation is the chosen instrument of the Government. Before the war, Imperial Airways received aggregate con- tributions of 900,000 ($3,600,000) yearly, the Postal Administration taking part in the scheme on the basis that all contract mails would be carried by air on the Empire routes. The B.O.A.C. is, in this, as in other respects, the contractual successor of Imperial Airways. Apart from this the Postmaster General has the power to award a mail contract to any transport concern which seems to him to offer the best service on any particular route. That is the briefest and clearest explanation I can make of the statutory position of the B.O.A.C. It is a position which is, perhaps, not easily grasped-I have some difficulty in grasping it myself -but if you read it in Hansard tomorrow it may seem clearer than the explanation I have given to you. [The Marquess of Londonderry: That is a decision to maintain the Act of 1939 in being?] The question of the Act of 1939 rests with Parliament. The decision must depend on Parliament. What decision Parliament will take I could not anticipate. But there is the statutory position-monopoly in the sense that it is a monopoly of subsidies and a monopoly of certain payments from the various States concerned with the transportation of mail, but no monopoly in the respect that no lines are forbidden to fly over the seas, or that the Postmaster General is forbidden to make payments for carrying mail even on a similar route. There is no statutory position that could prevent any concern from operating British airlines overseas, so long as that concern conforms to air worthiness and other regulations-none! In time of war the flight of civil aircraft inside the limits of the United Kingdom and its territorial waters is controlled by the Air Navigation Order, 1939, and must be subject to any restrictions which may be necessary on operational grounds. That is a war measure. Any concern which wishes to operate, whether a shipping company or any other organization, must have permission to land at its destination and will need aircraft and trained personnel, both air crews and ground crews. Permits to land at foreign airports may be sought through the Foreign Office. At present there are no suitable transport aircraft available apart from those in service, nor can skilled and experienced personnel be spared from wartime duties. I am sure that the House will find no fault with that statement. While this is the present position, it is clear to all of us that we are entering an era of change and experiments. There are many uncertainties and we must be ready to adapt our policy to the conditions as we find them, and not to hold on to the position which at present exists. We must be swift to seize on all the opportunities presented to us and, be sure, that is the purpose of the Air Ministry and also of the Committee over which I preside. Now some good judges think that air transport will rapidly attain to a self- supporting basis. Many Americans go so far as to say that air transport over the North Atlantic will be a self-sustaining venture, and that in a few years air transport, over the North Atlantic may reach not only economic operation but profitable conditions. There are others less optimistic, who say that a few aircraft will supply all the services we require. The Committee are not prepared to base their policy on these predictions either way. We are committed to the pursuit of an efficient and enterprising civil aviation, and we are committed to the furtherest expansion of British air transport that conditions in this country and the Erfipire British Speeches of the Day will permit. We are looking for.our proper share in the world traffic. We have set our faces against a wasteful and improvident subsidy race. That, I think, answers the questions that my noble Friend has raised on the Order Paper. The Postwar Aviation Conference with the U. S. I shall go on to the discussion of our relations with the Americans and the recent Conference with a deputation from the United States. We first of all agreed with the Americans that the principle of international regulation of subsidies was a necessity, and we look forward with hope-I may say with confidence-to the day when subsidies will prevail no longer. That is the hope and purpose of the Government. The methods by which.we shall seek to dispense with subsidies are many but, rest assured, we shall go as far and as swiftly as possible. The negotia- tions with the United States were entirely satisfactory. We have, in fact, taken another considerable step forward. We have had a conference with Mr. Berle and his colleagues representing the Government of the United States. It was a most excellent meeting. The deliberations have taken us very far along the road to agreement between the two Governments, but here I must make one thing clear. We should not move in the direction of making plans without taking into account our resources in aeroplanes. The mistake of making plans without resources is an error that has often been perpetrated in the past. There have been occasions when it has been the case of all plans and no planes. That is something I mean to do my best to guard against. I told you about our resources in aircraft. I told you about our difficulties and troubles. I have not painted a very optimistic picture. On the contrary, I have given you a full and faithful account of the necessity of military operations and the extent to which we mean to devote our resources to the purpose of destroying the enemy. There is, of course, another source of supply of planes. That is the United States of America. Mr. Edgar Glanville has asked a question in another place. He has asked whether the supply of American civil aircraft will be available for British air routes after the war. I am able to answer that question. Mr. Berle has assured us most generously as to the supply of transport aircraft in the period immediately following the end of the war. As your Lordships know, a pooling arrangement in manufacture was made early in the war whereby the United States agreed to construct long-range heavy aeroplanes while the United Kingdom was encouraged to build fighters. This was a most admirable and most sensible division of respon- sibilities for war purposes, but it plainly conferred on the United States advantages in relation to postwar manufacture for the civil aviation market. You can under- stand, therefore, with what pleasure I heard from Mr. Berle that the United States was prepared to make transport aircraft available to Britain on a nondiscriminatory basis in the interim period before British production of these types gets going. This is the assurance which I give the House with Mr. Berle's authority. I received his authority to make this statement here today. Of course, we are not satisfied to rely on the supply of aircraft from the United.States, grateful as we are to Mr. Berle and the United States Government for the promises which have been made. We are not at all disposed to rely on aircraft from the United States. We shall do all we can to promote our own supplies of aircraft for civil aviation, for our purposes must be to provide opportunities for the aircraft industries in Britain. That is a phase of the issues relating to civil aviation which I never forget and never overlook. Postwar Production Problems The interest of the air industry in Britain I never forget. But the production of Aw aircraft is not the whole story on the industrial side of civil aviation. The Future of Civil Aviation There is also the continuing need to provide spares and equipment for airfields. These are very big items and are most important. Once the equipment, the maintenance workshops, the overhaul procedure and the provision of spares are established for a particular route, then any change in equipment is tiresome and expensive. Therefore it is essential that we should establish systems of British aircraft, British engines, British supplies, and British ground equipment at the earliest possible date. Again, there are radio aids to air navigation. The transport aircraft of the future is built round radio apparatus. Radio apparatus is most important. It enables flight to be made more swiftly and regularly than would have been possible a year or two ago. We must, therefore, have adequate radio apparatus, and radio apparatus offers an immense field for manufacturing enterprise, a field that is very big indeed, a field that did not exist before the war. Installations in aircraft and on the ground open up real prospects for a big new industry. This radio development is, of course, the most important of all the develop- ments that have taken place during the war. It is more important even than the development of aircraft. The most sensational development that we have seen in this war has been the development of radio in its many manifestations. As a consequence, the whole system of communications will be transformed after the war is over. Not only will there be the apparatus which is already in operation, but there will be much more put into use the moment the conflict is at an end. In this new system of communications, we must take a very big part. It is certainly as important as the manufacture of aircraft and engines, perhaps even more important, that we should have a full share in the development of communications. Then again we must sustain our position in the production of engines. The production of engines is the backbone of the aircraft industry. It is immensely important. It is no use having an industry without the manufacture of engines, for it would simply be a carriage-building business. As the House knows, there are two types of engines, air-cooled engines and liquid-cooled engines. Before the war Britain had the monopoly of the manufacture of liquid-cooled engines. The manufacture of liquidcooled engines was practically confined to Great Britain. Here, too, the best air-cooled engines were produced for military purposes, but the United States of America had provided air-cooled engines for civil aviation purposes which appeared to be an improvement on any other types. But that engine was necessarily limited when it was put to military uses. The British engines, in other words, were more effective for military uses, but the air-cooled engines of the United States of America appeared to be highly satisfactory for the purposes of civil aviation. When the war is over and civil aviation is resumed liquid-cooled engines are going to take a very big place. The liquid-cooled engines come to the front for civil aviation purposes. The liquid-cooled engine may take its place alongside or even in advance of an air-cooled engine, and here in Britain we are admirably equipped with our liquid-cooled engine. Here is the home of the liquid-cooled engines, here is built the engine that may be the favorite engine for civil aviation after the war is over. That is not only a possibility but a real probability, in fact, I would say a certainty. Already the Canadians are equipping some of their air- transport planes with liquid-cooled engines and I am in a position to tell your Lordships that the Canadians prefer liquid-cooled engines. The Proposed Conference In answering an enquiry made in another place by Mr. Glanville I have made a digression from the Conference with the United States of America, so I come back to it. I referred to the story of negotiations last month. The United States British Speeches of the Day delegation at the Conference proposed that we should go forward to an Inter- national Conference on certain lines, and I will quote those lines. They were that there should be an international authority to lay down standards for technical requirements and for rates for air-carriage, and interchange of information. According to the American plan, the proposed authority would start on a non-executive basis with no power or means of enforcing its regulations, at least during an interim period. I hope I have made quite clear the position taken up by the United States of America. It proposed an international authority on a non-executive basis with no power or means of enforcing its regulations-at least during ap interim period. The United Kingdom Delegation presented for con- sideration what is known as the Canadian Draft Convention, which has been laid on the table of the Canadian Parliament. This draft Convention lays down a detailed plan for an international regulatory authority with powers of enforcement. Its provisions include the allocation of frequencies of air services and national quotas for international air traffic. I hope I have made clear the distinction between the two proposals. The Canadian proposal was considered by the Americans to be too rigid as a basis for talks at the proposed International Conference. After discussion it was agreed, therefore, that we should go forward to the Conference on the basis of proposals for international handling of civil aviation agreed to at the Common- wealth conversations some six months ago. These proposals are in some respects open to varying interpretations, and were considered by the Americans to be flexible enough to provide a more satisfactory basis for an International Conference. The broad purpose would be to draw up an International Convention on air navigation, to be implemented by an international transport organization which would evolve standards, seek to eliminate uneconomic competition, work out for each nation equitable participation in world air transport, and maintain a broad equilibrium between air transport capacity and traffic on offer. On these general principles the United States and Great Britain are in agreement. The powers of enforcement of the provisions will be open to further discus- sion. There you have the progress towards international co-operation in civil aviation. I repeat the principles: the elimination of uneconomic competition, the setting up of national quotas in international air transport, equilibrium between transport capacity and the traffic offering on any international air route. These must be the foundations of any enlightened approach to this subject in the future. But make no mistake. We did not give up the Canadian Draft Convention without reluctance. We would have preferred it. Mr. Howe, the Canadian Minister, has produced an admirable document for building up his structure for the regulating authority on the principles agreed to at the Commonwealth con- versations. We gave it up with reluctance, but we had to abandon it, and now we must build up a new structure on the same proposals of the Commonwealth conversations. It may be that it will not be everything we could desire. You may ask what we can do to build a new structure. That remains to be seen. I refer once more to the statement I have just made. We have reached agree- ment on principles with the United States, but the powers of enforcement of those principles are open to further discussion. International regulation is what we seek. International regulation would subject civil aviation to the control of an international authority which lays down standards and regulates frequencies, but there is something called international operation which is quite different from international regulation. International operation is the actual operation of air lines by international authority. That project is sought by Australia and New Zealand. It would mean that civil aviation would be actually operated by a world-wide transport organization The Future of Civil Aviation That is what Australia and New Zealand would like to establish. But, just as we made concessions to American feeling, so Australia and New Zealand have made it clear to us in their agreement of January 21st last that they will be prepared to make concessions to opinion here. So you see the helpful situation we are building up. On every issue we are consulting with the Dominions. I am glad to have the opportunity of making this very intricate speech. In Hansard the various ramifications of the claims of the American, Canadian and British authorities will seem clearer. You may find much to favor in the statement-I hope so-but at all events we are always in agreement with the Dominions. Bases, Cabotage and Innocent Passage There are two other subjects I must mention before I sit down-bases and cabotage. .' Our Government have no desire to exclude aircraft of other nations. We demand no prescriptive right to the use of airfields for ourselves. Rather do we mean to use them for the purpose of steadily developing civil aviation throughout the world. Here it must be said that the bases are few in number at which any great volume of traffic can be collected. Just the same, it will be necessary to have international agreement on traffic regulations and arrange- ments. This is an essential condition for future developments. The President has made certain proposals for the future of international civil aviation. He has declared for the right of innocent passage for all nations throughout the world and for the right to land anywhere for refuelling and other non-traffic purposes. I am authorized by the Prime Minister to say that we join with the President to the fullest extent in subscribing to those principles. I repeat the principles: the right of innocent passage for all nations throughout the world and the right to land anywhere for refuelling and other non-traffic purposes. I now wish to dispose of the issue of cabotage. It is a doctrine that is not always clearly understood, so perhaps your Lordships will allow me to provide a definition. Cabotage means the reservation to a nation of all traffic within its territory. The question at once arises, does the reservation apply to traffic between the United States and Hawaii and the United States and.Porto Rico? Yes, it does. Does it apply to traffic between the United Kingdom and our Crown Colonies? Yes, it applies to traffic between the United Kingdom and our Crown Colonies. It is a right which we clearly concede to other Colonial Powers. There is no intention in any direction, so far as I can see, to resist it. It is generally accepted. In the Dominions there is no opposition to our claim. Of course the Dominions and India will set up a similar system. [LORD ADDISON: I am sorry to interrupt, but this is of enormous impor- tance. I did not quite catch the noble Lord's explanation of the meaning of the word. I am sorry to be so ignorant, but it is quite a new word to me, 'and I should like a little more illumination.] Cabotage is the right of a nation to carry its own traffic within its own territory. [VISCOUNT SAMUEL: To the exclusion of other nations?] To the exclusion of all. [LORD BARNBY: Not over other territory?] It relates to the territory of the country concerned. It is right to carry traffic from New York to Chicago, from Chicago to San Francisco-the exclusive right of the United States to carry that traffic. Therefore the question at once arises, does cabotage involve traffic between Great Britain and the Colonies? And the answer is, yes, it does. British Speeches of the Day [VISCOUNT TRENCHARD: In a straight line over everybody's country?] It is the right to carry traffic from Great Britain to the Colonies and from the Colonies to Great Britain. That is the claim by Great Britain, and the claim by the United States of America. The United States have put forward their claim to carry traffic from the United States of America to Honolulu and to Porto Rico. [VISCOUNT TRENCHARD: In a straight line? That is the question we all want answered.] I cannot say whether it is a straight line. It is cabotage. I do not think that question arises. Flying above the territory of another nation will necessarily involve the authority of such nation for such a flight. The foreign country would have to give permission for such a flight, but there is a way round. We hav e not had to fly above France for our journeys to the Mediterranean of late. We can always find a way round. I have explained what is the meaning of cabotage and cabotage is conceded. . . [VISCOUNT TRENCHARD: My Lords, may I make myself clear? Supposing you want to fly from.here to Nigeria, we will say, and you fly the shortest way. Is this going to mean that you can fly over France, Spain, Portugal, and over French territory in other parts of the globe?] Cabotage would mean the flight from Great Britain to Gibraltar, but I cannot suppose that an aeroplane would fly above France and Spain without the consent of France and Spain. That seems to me quite obvious. [LORD ADDISON: My Lords, I don't like to interrupt but may I take it that what the noble Lord said previously about the right of innocent passage would mean that a machine on one of these flights would have the right to go from one place to another, whatever country it flew over?] The right of innocent passage depends upon the decisions of an International Conference. Let us hope that the time will not be long until France comes to an International Conference; or even that the representative of France in Algiers may come to an International Conference. They will then have presented to them proposals for the international regulation of civil aviation. If France joins in that, France will have conceded innocent passage over French territory. Thus, of course, a flight over French territory becomes a simple experience. But when I came to deal with cabotage I was most concerned to establish the principle of cabotage within the British Empire. The British Empire is not at all a parallel to the United States of America. I felt that perhaps there might be some resistance to the claim I put forward for cabotage within the British Empire, but there has been no resistance. [VISCOUNT SAMUEL: Does the noble Lord mean the British Empire exclud- ing the Dominions? I understood him to be limiting it to the Crown Colonies.] The idea is that other members of the Commonwealth will enter into an International Conference under their own power-under their own steam, so to speak-and will take decisions on matters concerned with international flying along with us. If, at the International Conference we reach an agreement, then certainly the Dominions could claim cabotage for themselves, just as we do. [VISCOUNT SAMUEL: That does not apply to traffic between the United Kingdom and Australia?] Australia would come'to the Conference under her own steam. She would make her own claim for cabotage. [VISCOUNT SAMUEL: But that does not apply to the British Empire as a whole?] International Monetary Policy I specifically mentioned the Dominions, included in the Commonwealth. India comes within the Commonwealth and India also would come to the International Conference and would make her claim to cabotage. My Lords, I have given you an account of the present position. It has been brief and I hope that I have covered the points that have been raised by my noble friend, Lord Londonderry. I am sorry that a good deal of what I have said has been so involved and tedious, but it had to be. Occasionally I have been word perfect because I have had to follow my text with care. I have had to speak on matters which concern the United States of America as well as ourselves, and on two occasions I gave you statements on things which I have agreed with Mr. Berle. [House of Lords Debates] SIR JOHN ANDERSON Chancellor of the Exchequer House of Commons, May 10, 1944 I have myself, on more than one occasion, given the House an assurance that the Government would come to this Debate without any commitment. I hope no hon. Member anywhere in the House thinks that that assurance has not been most fully redeemed. Before coming to certain specific matters of detail in connection with the scheme, there are two general observations I should like to make. The first is that I think we all owe a very great debt of gratitude to those who have col- laborated in the working out of this plan. An immense amount of time and thought and care and effort on the part, not only of our own people, but of the experts and representatives of other Governments, has gone to the framing of what I might call the third edition of our currency plans. As I have said, I think we owe them all a very great debt of gratitude, whatever may be the ultimate out- come of our deliberations. The second observation of a general character I want to make is this. This is indeed, as many hon. Members have said in the course of the Debate, a matter demanding the most careful examination on the part of all of us, because the financial and economic future not only of the United Kingdom, but of the whole Commonwealth, may well depend upon how we direct ourselves in regard to these matters. Before I proceed to comment on some of the main aspects of the plan, there are a few points upon which information has been sought by speakers in the Debate which perhaps I had better get out of the way first. Voting and Management A question was raised by my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot) and also by the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down in regard to the voting arrangements contemplated in the plan. They are not set out in the plan, and hon. Members are undoubtedly at a disad- vantage in estimating the working of the plan in the absence of precise information on that point. I can tell the House this, that the general idea accepted by our friends in the United States and ourselves-when I say "ourselves" I mean the experts who worked on the plan-is that voting power should run parallel with quotas, and that the voting power of the United States and the voting power of the British Commonwealth should be, for practical purposes, equal. That is the British Speeches of the Day idea running through this plan. It has been brought out quite clearly in discussions between our experts and the experts on the other side of the Atlantic, and I am glad to be able to make that point perfectly clear. The voting power of the United States and of the Commonwealth would probably work out in each case at something like 20 per cent or 25 per cent of the total, though it depends on the actual quotas and there is some disagreement as to the quotas of some of the smaller countries. That is my understanding of that point. There is another matter on which the White Paper gives inadequate information and that is in regard to the arrangements for management of the Fund. This is a most vital matter, as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Pethick-Lawrence) very justly pointed out. There is indeed, need, in my opinion, for further and closer discussion in regard to the arrangements for management, if we go on with the plan, and not only with the arrangements for management but the location of the offices of the Fund and so on. Our experts on this side have the conception of a general council of men of very high standing, with alternates who could take their part at periodical meetings but, at the same time, an element of executive management with a certain security of tenure composed of people chosen for their known freedom from prejudice or bias, and for their expert knowledge. They would be chosen, of course, by the representatives of the nations forming the general directorate of the Fund. That is the general idea but it needs to be very much more closely worked out. Then the question was put by Miy hon. Friend the Member for Kidderminster (Sir J. Wardlaw-Milne) as to where the currencies, in which the Fund is to deal, will be held. He rightly conjectured that they are to be held in the central banks of the various countries. In fact, the Fund will be banking with those central banks. My hon. Friend also asked whether the United States could, for example, under this plan, pay their quota fully in gold. As I understand the matter the answer is, "Yes." My hon. Friend also asked how Clause III (7,b) is to be inter- preted. As hon. Members know, the Fund is to be made up in the main of national currencies, with a proportion of gold, and the intention of the Fund is to provide a means of strengthening those currencies. Therefore, in the circum- stances it seemed reasonable that if a State possesses gold in large quantities the management of the Fund should be entitled to require of that State that it should put a proportion of its gold at the disposal of the Fund for the strengthening of the currencies of the State. Another question my hon. Friend asked was whether the scheme enabled one nation to discharge its duty to another by giving that other nation a claim on its own money, or in other words, a claim on its exports. the answer is undoubtedly, "Yes." The main purpose of this scheme is to secure that result .... Withdrawal and Sanctions I would now like to say something about the right of members to withdraw, a right on which my right hon. Friend the Member for East Edinburgh dwelt at some length in his speech. Provision for that right, I understand, was introduced into the scheme primarily because it was held that no purpose could be served by attempting to hold people in the Fund against their will. It was felt that small nations would be more likely to come into this scheme if they felt that in the last resort they had the right to withdraw. It was also considered that having the right to withdraw in certain cases-indeed the discretion-would protect, to some extent the members of the Fund against any tendency on the part of the manage- ment to be unreasonable. International Monetary Policy Before I pass from this question I would like to say two other things. First I can readily give my right hon. Friend opposite the assurance for which he asked, that it would not be, in the view of the Government, right to take up an attitude now which would deprive a member country of the advantage of this right to withdraw. We are not proposing to create a situation in which it would be possible to charge a country with having wrecked a great scheme by withdrawing, if the circumstances of withdrawal were such as are contemplated in this scheme. The second thing is in regard to the suggestion which my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Kelvingrove was disposed to throw out, namely, that it might be possible perhaps to find what I might call an intermediate sanction be- tween accepting the dictates of the management of the Fund, however distasteful, and clearing out. I think it may well be that some modification of the plan could be devised which would enable a member State to remain in the Fund, although it had taken action which the management of the Fund, for the time being, were not prepared to approve. The Place of Gold in the Scheme I pass now to the question of scarce currencies. My right hon. Friend opposite was quite right in regarding as severe the provision in the scheme for enforcing the obligations which properly fall upon creditor States by providing various sanc- tions, where such a State fails to discharge those obligations. It was felt that the sanctions provided in the scheme were of a very severe character, that they were probably so severe that a State whose currency was becoming scarce would, in practice, take measures to relieve the situation which was developing before the question of enforcing the sanctions provided by the scheme had become of practical importance. That is the view which the framers of the scheme took, and my desire is to put the House in possession of any explanation I can in regard to provisions of the scheme upon which comments have been made. I would like to say some- thing about a question which has engaged the minds of many Members-how far this scheme involves States that may enter the plan in a return to the Gold Standard. I believe there is no foundation for the view that this scheme in any way involves a return to the Gold Standard. Certainly, the attitude of His Majesty's present Government would be one of the most vehement opposition to any suggestion that we should go back to the Gold Standard. Let me try to explain, as briefly and as simply as possible, why I think the view I have indicated is the right view. Hon. Members will perhaps forgive me if I begin by a rather elementary statement of what I understand by the term "Gold Standard." The classical view of the Gold Standard is, I believe, that of a cur- rency which is self-regulating being fixed by law at a certain parity of gold, and being kept between what are called specie points by a free movement of gold in and out. That was the old, orthodox Gold Standard monetary system which we had in this country up to the outbreak of the last war. We have seen variants of that system. In ,particular, in our own case, between 1925 and 1931 we had a Gold Standard which was not self-regulating but which was so managed that it was kept between the specie points on a fixed parity with gold. What this plan contemplates is that, instead of a fixed parity there should be a recognized machinery for the adjustment of the rates of exchange of the several countries in relation to other currencies, including the United States currency, which is based on gold and, therefore, the scheme provides for regulating the parity of national currencies in the last resort with gold, but it is not a question of damping the national cur- rency to gold. It is a question of keeping national currencies in relation to gold by what we might describe as an adjustable link. They are kept in relation, but British Speeches of the Day the link which joins them is a variable one and the scheme is designed to facilitate the adjustment of exchange rates where fundamental disequilibrium of exchange has arisen. The Sterling Area I should like to explain what I understand-I may perhaps be wrong-by fundamental disequilibrium. I do not mean, as I think my hon. Friend the Mem- ber for Lowestoft (Mr. Loftus) indicated, merely a disequilibrium in the balance of payments. What I understand by a fundamental disequilibrium for this purpose is where the relationship of currencies one to another has got out of harmony with the respective values of those currencies in terms of goods and services. In those circumstances the management of the Fund is enjoined to facilitate adjustment of the par value. The right hon. Gentleman opposite was right in saying that one of the objects of the Fund, as set out in page 6 of the Statement of Principles, is to damp down temporary disturbances effecting exchange rates. May I say a word about the position of what we know as the sterling area in this connection. I have said more than once that the Government would not be disposed to favor any plan which was likely to interfere in any way with the rela- tionship between the different States which have been in association with one an- other under what we understand by the sterling area arrangement. We adhere quite firmly to that. We have made it absolutely clear, in the discussions on the other side of the Atlantic, that that is our position. I can say now that the technical representatives of the Dominion Governments who were engaged in discussions a few weeks ago in this country with our representatives were unanimously agreed that there was no reason to expect that the long-term objectives of these monetry proposals would be in any way detrimental to the maintenance and strengthening of the relations between the countries forming the sterling area. What I have said in that regard applies also to other countries which have looked to this country. Equilibrium an Aid to Full Employment Another matter to which hon. Members obviously attach great importance is the hearing of this on the policy of full employment, to which the Government, with the support I am sure of Members in all quarters, stands pledged. Any danger to the policy of full employment from external influences would presumably arise either from our inability to sell a sufficient volume of exports to pay for the food and raw materials requisite for full employment or as the result of fluctuations in employment in the export industry as a consequence of violent fluctuations in external demand. The arrangements under discussion are designed to help the full employment policy in both those respects, because one of the main purposes of the plan is to prevent, or at least to mitigate, violent fluctuations in external demand and, in addition to the specific measures contemplated, the Fund will provide a platform where, in the event of difficulties, the best co-operative means of escape from those difficulties can be discussed by representatives of the countries concerned. In the section of the plan dealing with the purposes and the policies of the Fund it is expressly stated that the Fund will be guided in all its decisions by the purpose of shortening the periods and lessening the degree of disequilibrium in the international balance of payments of member countries. It is also expressly provided in the Statement of Principles that the Fund shall not be entitled to call in question, in dealing with any applications which may be made, the domestic policy followed by the country concerned. I should like to deal now with some of the points made by those who have taken part in the Debate. I should like first to deal with the powerful speech of International Monetary Policy the hon. Member for Seaham (Mr. Shinwell). I thought that towards the end of his speech he adopted a rather minatory attitude towards me, but that was probably for rhetorical purposes. I am doing nothing but presenting to the House a plan drawn up by experts, which hon. Members have expressed a very keen desire to debate, and I am now engaged in explaining certain points arising in connection with that plan. The hon. Gentleman-this ran right through his speech -asked himself a series of questions. What is the prospect of America lowering her trade barriers? What is the use, he asked, taking a metaphor from my right hon. and gallant Friend, the Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot) of a permanent way if there is no desire to travel? American imports will be necessary to us. How are we to pay for them? Incidentally, in that connection I thought he inadvertently raised an argument in favor of the multilateral approach of this scheme rather than the bilateral. May I remind hon. Members of the origin of these plans that are now being worked out, not only this one, but other plans that have been under discussion? It all goes back to Article 7 of the Mutual Aid Agreement. Perhaps hon. Members will allow me to quote a few passages from that Article, which was accepted by His Majesty's Government. It runs: "In the final determination of the benefits to be provided to the United States of America by the Government of the United Kingdom in return for aid furnished . the terms and conditions thereof shall be such as not to burden commerce between the two countries, but to promote mutually advantageous economic relations between them and the betterment of world-wide economic relations. To that end, they shall include provision for agreed action by the United States of America and the United Kingdom, open to participation by all other countries of like mind, directed to the extension, by appropriate international and domestic measures"- this is very relevant to the question of expansionist policy on which stress has been laid- "of production, employment, and the exchange and consumption of goods, which are the material foundations of the liberty and welfare of all people; to the elimination of all forms of discriminatory treatment in international commerce, and to the reduction of tariffs and other trade barriers, and, in gen- eral, to the attainment of all the economic objectives set forth in, the Joint Declaration"- that is, the Atlantic Charter. Then it went on: "At an early convenient date conversations shall be begun between the two Governments with a view to determining in the light of governing economic conditions, the best means of attaining the above-stated objectives by their own agreed action and of seeking the agreed action of other like-minded Govern- ments." It is important that in any Debate on this or any other of the plans that have been under consideration, this document should be kept in view. As the Prime Minister made clear in the recent Commonwealth Debate in the House, before this Agreement was formally entered into between our two Governments, the under- standing was clearly established between us that this contained no obligation on our part to get rid of Imperial Preference in consideration of the Lease-Lend facilities that have been put at our disposal. I have not the slightest doubt that those who have been engaged in discussions with representatives of the British Treasury on the other side of the Atlantic have been handling this matter with the most complete good faith and with the intention of securing, as far as possible, British Speeches of the Day the objectives set out in the passage from which I have quoted. Of that I have no sort of doubt whatever. There is no reason to see in this plan any deep or dark design to get the better of this country in these matters. Monetary Scheme is Basis of Future Economic System My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, to whose speech I have already made one or two references, stressed his view that it was bound to be extremely difficult to assess the value and importance of a plan of this kind unless there was at the same time available to Members all the other schemes and plans which, together with this, will form the basis of a comprehensive economic system for the post- war world. I quite recognize the difficulty, but I can assure my hon. Friend that we have to proceed in these matters by stages. This currency plan is a general plan which must form part of the foundation for any scheme concerned with our external relations, and it seemed to me not unreasonable that we should get ahead as rapidly as we could in working out the technical details of a plan of this kind while leaving any final commitment of principle to stand over until we have looked at the picture as a whole. My hon. Friend asked a question. He asked whether we think that an increase of 50 per cent, in our exports-whether in money value or in quantity-will, in fact, be practicable. The answer is that His Majesty's Government intend to work for that objective, and that they do not regard it as in any way unattainable, in their co-operative effort. In the earlier part of my speech I dealt with the ques- tion about management which my hon. Friend raised. The hon. Member for North Lambeth (Mr. G. Strauss), who is, I think, not in his place, expressed his disagreement, rather to my surprise, with three of the items in the statement of objectives on page 6 of this Paper. I did not think that he did full justice to what is set out in the Paper. I intervened to point out that, when he referred to the elimination of foreign exchange restrictions, he omitted the very important words which follow "restrictions," and which are: "which hamper the growth of world trade." When he expressed his strong objection to exchange stability, I thought he was interpreting exchange stability as if it meant exchange rigidity, which, of course, is not what the plan means, and is, in fact, what the plan is designed to avoid. I come now to certain points with which I have not dealt, in the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Edinburgh. I found myself, speaking personally, very largely in agreement with what he said. He dearly favors strongly the multilateral approach, as contrasted with the bilateral. That is my view, always provided that there is nothing in the plan which will prevent us from entering into reciprocal trade agreements with other countries or groups of countries, either in the monetary or in the economic field. I say quite categorically to the House that, in considering this plan, we considered it-we have made it clear to the representatives of the United States-subject to that stipulation. Only if that understanding can be given effect to, shall we be prepared to enter into it. Gold Not the Only Standard , No one could attach more importance than I do to the maintenance of our traditional relations with countries which have stood by us in the past and which, I know, are eager to stand by us in the future. I did not quite agree with my right hon. Friend when he expressed the view that this matter takes us a long way- I think that is what he said-or goes a long way, towards gold. International Monetary Policy Of course the scheme recognizes gold as a valuable commodity and as the basis of important world currencies, notably of dollars. We cannot get away from that. We cannot suggest to the United States that they should abandon their gold basis. I say quite frankly to the House that it is very important, and it is going to be very important in our further examination of this plan, or any development of this plan, that every possible care should be taken to guard against any tendency in the working out of the plan to favor a currency just because it rests on gold rather than a currency like sterling, which rests on what most of us would regard, I am sure, as an equally stable foundation of good repute and standard of probity in those responsible for the management of sterling currency. There will be a gold measure but not a fixed gold measure. There must be. How can we engage in international trade unless we have a rate of exchange? In any circumstances you must have a rate of exchange between sterling and dollars, and if dollars are on gold quite obviously there must be a parity between sterling and gold. My right hon. Friend asked me how far is this going to tie us to the United States. We want to be in friendly collaboration with the United States, but we do not want to be in a position in which if unhappily some disaster befell the United States we should similarly have to go down and suffer in common with them; we do not want to be tied in that way. But we do believe that by having international relations in this monetary field we shall in practice greatly lessen the risk of disasters occurring, as we know they occurred for reasons with which many of us are familiar, during the inter-war period. There is no doubt at all that in these matters there are, and must always be, many factors of doubt and uncertainty. I ask, as my right lion. Friend opposite asked, if we have no scheme in this country, what is the alternative? Should we be better off? I think the answer to that is certainly, no. We ought to go on. I believe hon. Members in all quarters of the House take the view we ought to go on, with these discussions. I think myself that in various respects the scheme can be adjusted and improved. I am sure it is most important that we should enlarge the range of discussions in a way in which they have not yet been enlarged and bring in the representatives of other nations. I was not responsible for the statement about the number of nations' experts who have been consulted. As to formal consultation, I think we should proceed. The Government are in no way committed with regard to this scheme. The Government do not propose to enter into any commitments at this stage. What they would propose to do if this Motion is carried, as I believe it will be, is to pursue discussions with the view, as stated in the Motion, of arriving at international monetary arrangements. I think we shall be fortified in the further stages through which this matter must pass by the Debate that has taken place today, and that we shall advance with the goodwill of the House towards what has been described as a free fertile economic policy for the postwar world. [House of Commons Debates) British Speeches of the Day RT. HON. OLIVER LYTTELTON Minister of Production At Cambridge, May 19, 1944 [Extracts] We must assume, I think, although it is an assumption which might of course be falsified by facts, that Germany is beaten by Japan. I am now going to talk about the so-called transitional period and it is necessary to say that the transitional period covers both the interval between the end of the war with Germany and the end of the war with Japan, and also the phase during which general peace and normal conditions are being re-established after both wars are over. The other day the flat which I share with the Minister of Works was burnt out, and I went to look at what was left a day or two afterwards. The lares et penates were in very bad shape. All that was left were a few blackened walls, some twisted girders, and the flames had consumed the whole of my clothes and shoes, and some furniture and a carpet or two. The flat was a microcosm of what Europe will be after the Nazi conflagrations have passed through it, and have been extinguished. Everything has to be restored. I am not going to speak tonight of the terrible persecutions which the peoples of Europe have suffered. I am going to deal with the economic aspects of the subject. Take, for instance, clothes and shoes. I suppose that no such situation has ever been witnessed in the world before. Certainly from Siberia to Ireland there are not enough textiles being produced to meet the current demand, and the shelves are entirely bare of stocks. It is indeed difficult for us to realize what the European scene really is behind the curtain which separates us. For over four years the vampire of Nazi power has battened on the blood of Europe. All sources of food and materials, of transport and of communications have been twisted and distorted to feed the vampire, and the last chapter of this dreadful story has not yet been written. If the Germans retreat slowly they may scorch what is left. The problems of setting Europe into any kind of shape will be enormous. Facts and Figures We ourselves have, of course, suffered not only from enemy attacks, but also from the very severe and drastic measures to which we have voluntarily submitted in order to produce our full weight in the war. And I think it is well to recapitulate for a moment some of the striking facts and figures which tell our story. First, imports and exports. Our total imports other than food have fallen to less than 50 per cent, and those which go to civilian consumption to about 10 per cent, one-tenth of the pre-war average. At the same time our exports have been drastically cut down as compared with what they were before the war. Now here is a figure which you will find it difficult to believe, and I will repeat it to you very slowly. Imports of raw materials, that is the raw materials for industry, in 1943, were down to about 40 per cent of the average pre-war year, say 1938, and yet the total industrial production of the United Kingdom was about 40 per cent higher than it was in 1938. I think this is the most striking testimonial to the intensive work, the conservation of raw materials and the use of our home grown products. It is a startling achievement. Second, work. The total working hours of all British industry in a normal working week have gone up by 25 per cent. This sounds rather a dull figure, but The Transitional Period it means that the man who was working eight hours a day, is now working ten hours a day. Third, mobilization. In this island, the base first of the defense and now of the attack, there is no one who is not in some sense a soldier. Some are nearer the front line than others. All men and women are in some sense soldiers. Only 35 per cent of our population is not in the Forces, or munition factories, or working in some way for the Government, and this 35 per cent represents the whole of the labor force which now maintains the civilian population and makes our few remaining exports. It is a higher degree of mobilization than has been achieved by any of our Allies, or by Germany herself, and I need hardly say the highest degree of mobilization which has ever been reached in any country in any war at any time. Fourth, consumption. Less than half the total personal incomes of the country were spent on consumption in 1943, compared with nearly three-quarters in 1938. Before the war personal savings were 7 per cent of the national income. The figure now is 20 per cent. Controls After the War There is no further mobilization, human or material, that we can undertake. We have no reserves from which to draw and I mention this as showing that a war economy will still be necessary to bring the greatest impact to bear in the war against Japan, and for the further task of occupying Europe to maintain peace. It is most important that we should begin to habituate ourselves to the feeling that something of the same kind of regimented economy will be necessary. I have no fears that the people of this country, who have fought in their history in every part of the globe, will give way to a feeling of relaxation or holiday when Germany is beaten. Imagine what would have happened if we had never been at war with Germany, but now in 1944 we are about to take our true place beside our American Allies in a war which they were already fighting with Japan. The psychological effects upon us all, and we are all human, when the lights go up will be great. No one will object to a holiday spirit for a few days. It mustn't be longer. We are well on with our plans for new weapons which the vast distances and amphibious nature of the operations in the Pacific demand. All have been studied, .3ome are in production, others are ready for production, and a vast amount of work has been done to prepare. We cannot, however, take all these plans to the last letter of the alphabet until we are certain when the war with Germany will be won, and when we can see where the great amphibious operations undertaken by the Americans have carried them. So to return to the transitional period. Our first aim must be to bring to bear the maximum possible impact upon Japan, and that impact is governed by space and by physical conditions. Everything that can be brought to bear will be brought to bear, but great fleets have to have bases and floating docks and repair ships. Aircraft have to have aerodromes and repair depots, and the mechanized Armies of today require immense base installations. These cannot be quickly improvised, and the scale of the war which we can carry to Japan will be governed by these physical conditions and not by our wishes. Limitations are imposed upon us by what we now call logistics. Consequently there will be some in the Armed Forces and in the munitions industries who cannot be used either in the war against Japan or for occupying Europe. This will mean that we shall have something to spare, though it will be little enough, for civilian consumption, for export, and for the relief of Europe. Let me say again that we shall need continued control both of consumption and British Speeches of the Day of investment expenditure, to prevent inflation and the waste of scarce materials and still scarcer labor. Some speakers that I have heard have talked about the necessity for building two million houses in the first year after the war with Germany, or it may have been after the war with Japan, was over. Such a program would call for the work of about three million men, which we have not got, and would absorb such a large part of the national income that inflation would be not a fear but a certainty. We shall have to continue to license building for some time so that the population of the blitzed towns can be re-housed as quickly as possible, and so that there will be homes waiting for our soldiers, and all this must be done before we can indulge in any larger schemes of building for public purposes. We may need, too, to continue Government purchases of imports to ensure that we receive the most vital materials and goods at a time when shipping and materials will still be in short supply. Even when this is becoming easier the fact that we have sold more than 1,000 millions of our foreign invest ents may make it impossible to pay for all that we should like, and we must concentrate our reduced international balances upon the purchases of those things which are of the most use to us in re-establishing our economy, and that of our friends. [Official Release] THE RT. HON. WILLIAM MABANE Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food At the Opening of a Lecture Course on International Food Administration, May 22, 1944 This is an impressive occasion. ... Twelve Allied Governments are represented. Representatives of the United States Embassy, the Mission of Economic Affairs, the London Office of U.N.R.R.A. and the British and American Civil Affairs Directorates are here, as well as the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces. We also received a request from the British Council of Voluntary Workers for Relief Abroad to take part, and that organization now has with us this morning a number of field workers. A glance at the syllabus reveals the complexity of the problem with which any food administrator in the modern world has to deal. There are to be twenty-nine lectures and each is concerned with a matter of major importance and you have not much time for each. Tomorrow morning, for example, you are invited to dispose of "International Planning of Food Supplies and Distribution" in the space of an hour and three-quarters. While our experience is based on British conditions, the lectures have been designed with special reference to the problems likely to be encountered in areas liberated from enemy occupation. I suggest that fundamentally the principles which have guided British food administration, tried and tested during nearly five years of war, can be profitably applied wherever food administration has to be undertaken. There need only be variations in the detailed application of those principles. The orderly and efficient administration and distribution of food supplies in liberated areas is a matter of first-class importance to the nationals of those areas, Problems of an International Food Administration and to those who, during the process of liberation, will be charged with military responsibility. Remember too that the Grand Alliance of the United Nations has been formed in pursuit of a continuing purpose. We are all, in the words of St. Paul, members of one another. We draw our food from a common pool. On all of us therefore there is a duty to husband our resources economically. We must each use our resources well in the interests of all. We in these Islands are, and must remain, a great food importing country. We have not merely got through but we have maintained our civilian population at a standard of health far higher than any could have hoped on an importation far lower than any would have believed possible. There can be no doubt that this could not have been done had our food ad- ministration not been orderly and efficient. It could not have been done had we not been determined-and been able to carry our determination into effect-that however thinly our butter might be spread it would be spread evenly. The Problems Whatever we have had has gone into the common pool, and from that common pool has gone out to all according to their needs. With no more than the most minor and unimportant exceptions we can claim that there are no areas in this country, no classes in this country, enjoying surpluses of food while others go short. We have done all that is humanly possible to prevent food following money. We have stamped on the black market with all the rigors of the law. Parliament has provided, and the Courts have imposed, penalties for the abuse of food regu- lations far heavier than any would have thought possible before the war began. Fortunately those offenses are as rare as the punishments are exemplary. Next, we have substantially overcome the problem that faces every food ad- ministrator; that is to secure the willing surrender by the agricultural producer of his surplus produce to the benefit of the urban population. It is impossible to pay too high a tribute to the farmers and the fishermen for the manner in which they have, for a patriotic purpose, altered their methods, adjusted their production, to suit the program prepared by the Ministry of Food, and for the way in which they have submitted to our often arduous requirements for the collection from them of the produce when harvested. I have ventured to make these observations because they are very relevant to the problems with which you will be concerned. Distress, hunger, want are not always the consequence of a deficiency in the total supplies of food. They are often a consequence of mal-administration and mal-distribution. Not once but many times, in the modern history of the world, populations have gone hungry either because producers have been reluctant to surrender their produce or because administrative inefficiency has prevented the collection and equal distribution of the hard won harvest of the producers. These two problems are indeed central in the task with which you will be faced. Statistics, False and True Many if not all countries will require at the outset, and probably for some time ahead, supplies from outside their boundaries. Those of you who represent countries to be liberated know, I think, full well that the generous impulse of the people of the British Commonwealth of Nations, of the United States of America and indeed of all of the United Nations will impel them to come to your aid. When the war in Europe is over a heavy burden will lie mainly to be carried by the British Commonwealth and the United States to conquer the Japanese. Yet at the same time you will require, and you will receive, supplies from the United British Speeches of the Day Nations pool, but unless the two problems to which I have referred are tackled with firmness and success you will not know either what you want or how much you want. On the one hand, you might be faced with a statistical table showing that of this or that foodstuff you had sufficient in total for your needs, while on the other hand the facts before you might reveal that there were many in your countries seriously deficient of the very foodstuffs for which your statistics, at once truthful and lying, showed you to have enough. Please acquit me of any desire to boast. The Ministry of Food has had long experience. When, for example, we look at the figures of our bacon supplies and we see that those figures are sufficient to provide 4 ozs. of bacon for every civilian in these Islands, we know at the same time that every civilian will get the 4 ozs. of bacon. I have asked you to acquit me of any desire to boast for I want to make it plain that our problem has, in many respects, been easier than the problem would have been in almost every other country in the world. We have, for example, a far smaller percentage of our population engaged in food production than in many countries, thus the problem of securing from the agricultural producer his produce has been simpler. A high proportion of our major foodstuffs are imported. That fact has enabled us to take these supplies into our direct control at the moment they enter the country and the experience of the Ministry of Food convinces us that the efficient control of the distribution of any foodstuff depends substantially on being able to pass that foodstuff at some point through a bottle-neck. A Blessed Word The word "bottle-neck" is in disrepute. It is commonly a term of abuse.. It has often occurred to me that it would be an interesting exercise to write an essay in defense of the bottle-neck. Claret is precious. To pour it from a bowl into a beaker is an unsatisfactory proceeding. Hats off to the man who invented the bottle-neck to save this precious liquor! And when we can similarly pass foodstuffs through a bottle-neck we are able to secure that the flow is where we want it to be. Without the bottle-neck there is a good deal of spilling over. As I say your difficulties in many respects are likely to be greater than ours but you will certainly be able to bottle-neck your imported supplies and if you can secure similar control of locally grown produce you will be in a much better position. Planned Consumption, Planned Production This is the more important for undoubtedly the supplies available will be less than any would wish. For that reason it will be necessary to concentrate attention on two other matters I would like to mention. The first matter is nutritional. With limited supplies it becomes very much more important that the dietetic value of all foods should be most carefully con- sidered. The science of dietetics has made great strides in the last decade or two. Minimum rations are not now fixed in a slap-dash fashion. Dietetic knowledge enables the scientist to determine a ration which may appear to be much smaller than any would think adequate but yet which provides nutritional sufficiency. Sir Jack Drummond, of whom we at the Ministry of Food are very proud, will be talking to you on dietetics and what he rightly calls the fundamentals of nutrition. The supplies available may mean that some will have to be asked to change their food habits. We have so persuaded people here. It can, I am confident, be Foreign Affairs 37 done elsewhere. It cannot be done without effort or without publicity. That is why I am glad, and I hope you are glad, that Mr. Shelton-Smith, our very able Director of Public Relations, is to talk to you about publicity. The second matter is the increase of domestic production in liberated areas. You all, I am sure, are aware of the importance of increasing production. It is no less important that production should be increased in the right direction and degree. Producers must work to a program. In this country the Ministry of Food is the customer of the Ministry of Agri- culture. Sir Jack Drummond and his colleagues tell us what are our total needs. We then ask the Agricultural Departments to produce as large a proportion as we think practicable and we plan to import the balance. The Agricultural Depart- ments co-operate to the full and in consequence every farmer in this country, al- though he may not be fully aware of it, is ploughing his land, sowing his seed, taking his harvest to a nutritional pattern. He is, as it were, like the trombonist of whom it is said that, tired of contributing his unmelodic "poops," asked for a night off which he employed in listening to the orchestra, and was astonished to hear the melody. [Official Release] RT. HON. WINSTON CHURCHILL Prime Minister House of Commons, May 24, 1944 The meeting of Dominion Prime Ministers, which covered the best part of three weeks, has now concluded, and very full statements to Parliament and the public have been made, individually by the Prime Ministers themselves, and collectively by the declaration to which we have all subscribed. I could not pretend that we have arrived at hard and fast conclusions, or precise decisions upon all the questions which torment this afflicted globe, but it can fairly be said that, having discussed a great many of them, there was revealed a core of agreement which will enable the British Empire and Commonwealth to meet in discussion with other great organisms in the world in a firmly-knit array. We have advanced from vague generalities to more precise points of agreement, and we are in a position to carry on discussions with other countries, within the limits which we have imposed upon ourselves. Object of Foreign Policy in Wartime But this is a Debate upon Foreign Affairs, and nothing was more remarkable than the cordial agreement which was expressed by every one of the Dominion Prime Ministers on the general conduct of our Foreign Affairs and on the principles which govern that conduct, nor, I should add, on the skill and consistency with which they have been treated by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary. The utmost confidence was expressed in him and in his handling of all those very difficult affairs, in spite of the complications by which they are surrounded, and, in spite of the need for prompt action which so often arises-for prompt action by the Mother Country before there is time to have full consultation. In spite of all these difficulties, the fullest confidence and pleasure was expressed in the work which my right hon. Friend has done. We therefore embark upon the present Debate with the backing of their goodwill from all these representatives of the Commonwealth and Empire-the word "Empire" is permitted to be used, which British Speeches of the Day may be a great shock to certain strains of intellectual opinion. And we embark upon the present Debate not only with this backing of hearty goodwill, but with the feeling that this meeting of Prime Ministers from all over the Empire and the representatives of India in the midst of a second deadly war is in fact the highest pinnacle to which our world-wide family association has yet reached. At this time, in policy and in war, our objective is the same, namely, to beat the enem3 as soon as possible; and I am not aware of any action or of any studied inaction for which His Majesty's Government are responsible that has not been directly related to that single and dominant purpose. The duty of all persons responsible for the conduct of Foreign Affairs in a world war of this deadly character and of all who, in different ways, exercise influence is to help the fighting men to perform the heavy tasks entrusted to them and to ensure them all possible ease in execution and advantage in victory Every- one in a position to guide public opinion, like Members of this House or of another place, or newspaper editors, broadcasters, calumnists-or columnists-I remember a tendency to throw the accent forward-and others-all of these should keep this very clear duty before their eyes. They should always think of the soldier in the battle and ask themselves whether what they say or write will make his task easier or harder. We long for the. day to come when this slaughter will be over and then this additional restraint which imposes itself on every conscientious man in wartime can be relaxed or will vanish away entirely. I must make my acknowledgments, first of all, to the very great degree with which these precepts are followed among those who accept the task of guiding public opinion, and especially in the House of Commons, which is always so careful of the public interest and which in other ways has shown itself to be possessed of those steadfast and unyielding qualities in the face of danger and fatigue for which it has always been renowned, but never more renowned than now. I shall try to practise what I have been preaching in the remarks I have to make, and I am sure the Committee will remember how many different audiences I have to address at the same moment, not only here but out of doors and not only in this Island, but throughout the Empire, not only among our Allies, great and small, west or east, but finally, among our enemies, besides, of course, satellites and neutrals of various hues. I must, therefore, pick my way among heated ploughshares, and in this ordeal the only guides are singleness and simplicity of purpose and a good or, at any rate, a well trained conscience. The Case of Turkey Since I last spoke here on Foreign Affairs, just about three months ago, almost all the purposes which I mentioned to you have prospered, severally and collectively. First of all, let us survey the Mediterranean and the Balkan spheres. The great disappointment which I had last October, when I was not able to procure the necessary forces for gaining the command of the Aegean Sea following upon the collapse of Italy and gaining possession of the principal Italian islands, has, of course, been accompanied by an exaggerated attitude of caution on the part of Turkey. The hopes we cherished of Turkey boldly entering the war in February or March, or at least according us the necessary bases for air action-those hopes faded. After giving 20,000,000 worth of British and American arms to Turkey in 1943 alone, we have suspended the process and ceased to exhort Turkey to range herself with the victorious United Powers, with whom she has freq ently declared that her sympathies lie, and with whom, I think, there is no doubt that her sympathies do lie. The Turks at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, magnified their .dangers. Their military men took the gloomiest view of Russian prospects in South Russia and in the Crimea. Foreign Affairs They never dreamed that by the early Summer, the Red Army would be on the slopes of the Carpathians, drawn up along the Pruth and Serret Rivers, or that Odessa and Sevastopol would have been liberated and regained by the extraordi- nary valor, might and energy of the Soviet onslaught. Consequently the Turks did not measure with sufficient accuracy what might have occurred, or would occur, in Rumania and Bulgaria or, I may add, Hungary, what would be the result on all those countries of these tremendous Russian hammer blows struck, even in months which are particularly unsuitable for operations in these regions and which normally would be devoted to the process of replenishing the advancing front for future action. Having overrated their dangers, our Turkish friends increased their demands for supplies to such a point that, having regard to the means of com- munication and transport alone, the war would probably be over before these supplies, could reach them. We have, therefore, with great regret, discontinued the process of arming Tur- key because it looks probable that, in spite of our disappointment in the Aegean, the great Allies will be able to win the war in the Balkans and generally throughout Southeastern Europe without Turkey being involved now at all, though, of course, the aid of Turkey would be a great help and acceleration of that process. This, of course, is a decision for Turkey to take. We have put no pressure upon them, other than the pressure of argument and of not giving the supplies we need for ourselves and other nations that are fighting. But the course which is being taken, and has been taken so far, by Turkey will not, in my view, procure for the Turks the strong position at the peace which would attend their joining the Allies. I must, however, note the good service and significant gesture rendered to us by the Turkish Government quite recently, and it is said that it has been rendered to us on the personal initiative of Turkey's honored President, General Inonu, namely the complete cessation of all chrome exports to Germany. It is not too much to expect that the assistance given us in respect of chrome will also shortly be extended to cover other commodities, the export of which, even if of less importance than chrome, is of material assistance to the enemy. If so, we shall endeavor to compensate the Turkish people for the sacrifice which their co-operative action might entail by other means of importation. I thought it right to speak bluntly. Turkey and Britain have a long history. They entered into relations with us before the war when things looked very black. They did their best through difficult times. I have thought it better to put things bluntly today, but I cannot conclude, notwithstanding anything I have said in criticism, without saying that we hope with increasing confidence that a still better day will dawn for the relations of Turkey with Britain and, indeed, with all the great Allies. Always in recent decades there has been in the Mediterranean a certain tension between Turkey and Italy on account of Italian ambitions in the Greek Islands and, also, possibly in the Adana Province of Turkey. The Turks could never be sure which way the Italian dictator would turn his would-be conquering sword. On that score Turkish anxiety has certainly been largely removed. The Fate of Italy The fate of Italy is indeed terrible, and I personally find it very difficult to nourish animosity against the Italian people. The overwhelming mass of the nation rejoiced in the idea of being delivered from the subtle tyranny of the Fascists, and they wished, when Mussolini was overthrown, to take their place as speedily as possible by the side of the British and American armies who, it was expected, would quickly rid the country of the Germans. However, this did not happen. All the Italian forces which could have defended Italy had either been squandered by Mussolini in the African desert or by Hitler amid the Russian British Speeches of the Day snows, or they were widely dispersed combatting, in a halfhearted way, tl e patriots of Yugoslavia. Hitler decided to make great exertions to retain Italy, just as he has decided to make great exertions to gain the mighty battle which is at the moment at its climax to the south of Rome. It may be that after the fall of Mussolini our action might have been more swift and audacious. As I have said before, it is no part of my submission to the House that no mistakes are made by us or by the common action of our Allies; but, anyhow, here is this beautiful country suffering: the worst horrors of war, with the larger part still in the cruel and vengeful grip of the Nazis, and with a hideous prospect of the red-hot rake of the battle-line being drawn from sea to sea right up the whole length of the peninsula. The Italian Government It is clear that the Germans will be driven out of Italy by the Allies, but what will happen on the moving battle fronts and what the Germans will do on their way out in the way of destruction to a people they hate and despise, and who, they allege, have betrayed them, cannot be imagined or forecast. All I can say is that we shall do our utmost to make the ordeal as short and as little destructive as possible. We have great hopes that the city of Rome may be preserved from the area of struggle of our armies. The House will recall that when I last spoke on foreign matters I expressed the view that it would be best that King Victor Emmanuel, and above all Marshal Badoglio, should remain at the head of the Executive of the Italian nation and Armed Forces until we reached Rome, when it was agreed by all that a general review of the position must be made. Such a policy naturally entailed differences of opinion which were reflected not only among the Allied Governments but inside every Allied country. However, I am happy to say that after various unexpected happenings and many twists and turns the situation is now exactly what I ventured to suggest and as I described it to the House three months ago. In addition, far beyond my hopes, an Italian Government has been formed, of a broadly based character, around the King and Badoglio, and the King himself has decided that on the capture of Rome he will retire into private life forever and transfer his constitutional functions to his eldest son, the Prince of Piedmont, with the title of Lieutenant of the Realm. I have good confidence in this new Italian Government which has been formed. It will require further strengthening and broadening, especially as we come more closely into touch with the populous industrial areas of the North-that is essential -but, at any rate, it is facing its responsibilities manfully and doing all in its power to aid the Allies in their advance. Here I may say we are doing our best to equip the Italian forces, who are eager to fight with us and not in the power of the Germans. They have played their part in the line on more than one occasion. Their fleet is discharging a most useful and important service for us not only in the Mediterranean but in the Atlantic; and the loyal Italian Air Force has also fought so well that I am making special efforts to supply them with improved aircraft of British manufacture. We are also doing our best to assist the Italian Government to grapple with the difficult financial and economic conditions which 'they inherited from Fascism and the war and which, though improving, are still severe behind the line of the Army. It is understood throughout Italy, and it is the firm intention of the United Nations, that Italy, like all other countries which are now associated with us, shall have a fair and free opportunity, as soon as the Germans are driven out and tranquility is restored, of deciding whatever form of democratic Govern- ment, whether monarchical or republican, they desire. They can choose freely for themselves. I emphasize, however, the word "democratic," because it is quite clear that we should not allow any form of Fascism to be restored or set up in any country with whom we have been at war. Foreign Affairs The Case of Spain From Italy one turns naturally to Spain, once the most famous Empire in the world and down to this day a strong community in a wide land, with a marked personality and distinguished culture among the nations of Europe. Some people think that our foreign policy towards Spain is best expressed by drawing comical or even rude caricatures of General Franco; but I think there is more to it than that. When our present Ambassador to Spain, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Chelsea (Sir S. Hoare), went to Madrid almost exactly four years ago to a month, we arranged to keep his airplane waiting on the airfield, as it seemed almost certain that Spain, whose dominant party were under the influence of Germany because Germany had helped them so vigorously in the recently- ended civil war, would follow the example of Italy and join the victorious Germans in the war against Great Britain. Indeed, at this time the Germans proposed to the Spanish Government that triumphal marches of German troops should be held in the principal Spanish cities, and I have no doubt that they suggested to them that the Germans would undertake, in return for the virtual occupation of their country, the seizure of Gibraltar, which would then be handed back to a Germanized Spain. This last feature would have been easier said than done. There is no doubf that if Spain had yielded to German blandishments and pressure at that juncture our burden would have been much heavier. The Straits of Gibraltar would have been closed and all access to Malta would have been cut off from the west. All the Spanish coast would have become the nesting place of German U-boats. I certainly did not feel at the time that I should like to see any of those things happen and none of them did happen. Our Ambassador deserves credit for the influence he rapidly acquired and which continually grew. In his work he was assisted by a gifted man, Mr. Yencken, whose sudden death by airplane accident is a loss which I am sure has been noted by the House. But the main credit is undoubtedly due to the Spanish resolve to keep out of the war. They had had enough of war and they wished to keep out of it. [An HON. MEMBER: That is a matter of opinion.] Yes, I think so, and that is why my main principle of beating the enemy as soon as possible should be steadily followed. But they had had enough, and I think some of the sentiment may have been due to the fact that, Jooking back, the Spanish people, who are a people who do look back, could remember that Britain had helped Spain to free herself from the Napoleonic tyranny of 130 years ago. At any rate the critical moment passed; the Battle of Britain was won; the Island power which was expected to be ruined and subjugated in a few months was seen that very winter not only intact and far stronger in the homeland but also advancing by giant strides, under Wavell's guidance, along the African shore, taking perhaps a quarter of a million Italian prisoners on the way. But another very serious crisis occurred in our relations with Spain before the operation designated "Torch," that is to say the descent of the United States and British forces upon North-West Africa, was begun. Before that operation was begun Spain's power to injure us was at its very highest. For a long time before this we had been steadily extending our airfield at Gibraltar and building it out into the sea, and for a month before zero hour, on 7th November, 1942, we had sometimes 600 airplanes crowded on this airfield in full range and in full view of the Spanish batteries. It was very difficult for the Spaniards to believe that these airplanes were intended to reinforce Malta, and I can assure the House that the passage of those critical days was very anxious indeed. However, the Spaniards continued absolutely friendly and tranquil. They asked no questions, they raised no inconveniences. British Speeches of the Day Kindly Words If, in some directions, they have taken an indulgent view of German Uboats in distress, or continued active exportations to Germany, they made amends on this occasion, in my view, so far as our advantage was concerned, for these irregularities by completely ignoring the situation at Gibraltar, where, apart from aircraft, enormous numbers of ships were anchored far outside the neutral waters inside the Bay of Algeciras, always under the command of Spanish shore guns. We should have suffered the greatest inconvenience if we had been ordered to move those ships. Indeed, I do not know how the vast convoys would have been marshaled and assembled. I must say that I shall always consider a service was rendered at this time by Spain, not only to the United Kingdom and to the British Empire and Commonwealth, but to the cause of the United Nations. I ha e, there- fore, no sympathy with those who think it clever, and even funny, to insult and abuse the Government of Spain whenever occasion serves. I have had the responsibility of guiding the Government while we have passed through mortal perils, and, therefore, I think I have some means of forming a correct judgment about the values of events at critical moments as thty occur. I am very glad now that, after prolonged negotiations, a still better arrangement has been made with Spain, which deals in a satisfactory manner with the Italian ships which have taken refuge in Spanish harbors, and has led to the hauling down of the German flag in Tangier and the breaking of the shield over the Consulate, and which will, in a few days, be followed by the complete departure of the German representatives from Tangier, although they apparently still remain in Dublin. Finally, it has led to the agreement about Spanish wolfram, which has been reached without any affront to Spanish dignity, and has reduced the export of wolfram from Spain to Germany during the coming critical months to a few lorry-loads a month. It is true that this agreement has been helped by the continuous victories of the Allies in many parts of the world, and especially in North Africa and Itly, and also by the immense threat by which the Germans conceive themselves to be menaced, by all this talk of an invasion across the Channel. This, for what it is worth, has made it quite impossible for Hitler to consider reprisals on Spain. All his troops have had to be moved away from the frontier, and he has no inclina- tion to face bitter guerrilla warfare, because he has got quite enough to satisfy himself in so many other countries which he is holding down by brute force. As I am here today speaking kindly words about Spain, let me add that I hope she will be a strong influence for the peace of the Mediterranean after the war. Internal political problems in Spain are a matter for the Spaniards themselves. It is not for us-that is the Government-to meddle in such affairs- [MR. SHINWELL (Seaham): Why then in Italy? My right hon. Friend did remark, as regards the restoration of the Government in Italy, that it could not be Fascist. That was his declaration. Why not in Spain?) The reason is that Italy attacked us. We were at war with Italy. We struck Italy down. My hon. Friend, I am sure, will see that a very clear line of distinction can be drawn between nations we go to war with, and nations who leave us alone. [DR. HADEN GUEST (Islington, North): Is not a Fascist Government anywhere, a preparation for an attack?] I presume we do not include in our program of world renovation any forcible action against any Government whose internal form of administration does not come up to our own ideas, and any remarks I have made on that subject referred only to enemy Powers and their satellites who will have been struck down by force of arms. They are the ones who have ventured into the open and they Foreign Affairs are the ones whom we shall not allow to become, again, the expression of those peculiar doctrines associated with Fascism and Nazism, which have, undoubtedly, brought about the terrible struggle in which we are engaged. Surely, anyone could see the difference between the one and the other. There is all the difference in the world between a man who knocks you down and a man who leaves you alone. You may, conceivably, take an active interest in what happens to the former in case his inclination should recur, but we pass many people in the ordinary daily round of life about whose internal affairs and private quarrels we do not feel ourselves called upon to make continued inquiry. Well, I say we speak the same words to the Spaniards in the hour of our strength as we did in the hour of our weakness. I look forward to increasingly good relations with Spain and to an extremely fertile trade between Spain and this country which will, I trust, grow even during the war and will expand after the peace. The iron from Bilbao and the North of Spain is of great value to this country both in war and peace. Our Ambassador now goes back to Spain for further important duties, and I have no doubt he goes with the good wishes of the large majority of the House and of all thoughtful and unprejudiced persons. I am sure that no one more than my hon. Friend opposite would wish that he should be successful in any work for the common cause. My hon. Friend has been often a vigiliant and severe critic of His Majesty's Government, but as a real Opposition figure he has failed, because he never can conceal his satisfaction when we win-and we sometimes do. The Case of Greece I am happy to announce a hopeful turn in Greek affairs. When I spoke last on this I described them as the saddest case of all. We have passed through a crisis of a serious character since then. A Greek brigade and a large proportion of the Greek Navy mutinied, declaring themselves, in one way or other, on the side of the organization called E.A.M., the Greek freedom movement, and, of course, against the King and his Government. The King of Greece, who was in London, was advised by nearly everyone concerned in Cairo not to go back and warned that his life would be in danger. He returned the next day. The situation was then most serious. The Greek brigade was encircled by British forces some thirty miles away from Alexandria, and the Greek ships which had mutinied in Alexandria harbor were lying under the guns both of the shore batteries and of our superior naval forces which had rapidly gathered. This tension lasted for nearly three weeks. In due course the mutinies in the Fleet were suppressed. The disorderly ships were boarded by Greeks, under the orders of the Greek Government, and, with about fifty killed and wounded, the mutineers were collected and sent ashore. The mutinous brigade in the desert was assaulted by superior British forces, which captured the eminences commanding the camp, and the 4,000 men there sur- rendered. There were no casualties among the Greeks, but one British officer was killed in the attack upon the eminences. This is a matter which cannot be over- looked. The greatest patience and tact were shown by the British military and naval authorities involved, and, for some weeks past, order has been firmly estab- lished and the Greek forces who were misled into evil deeds by subversive move- ments have been interned for the time being. The then Prime Minister, M. Tsouderos, had already tried, before these things happened, to arrange a meeting of all representatives of Greek opinion and to construct his administration so as to include them. He acquitted himself with dignity and was helped by M. Venizelos, the son of the great Vinizelos whom we all esteemed so highly in the first world war. At this moment there emerged upon the scene M. Papandreou, a man greatly respected, who had lived throughout the war in Athens and was known as a man of remarkable character and one who British Speeches of the Day would not be swayed by party interests, his own party being a very small one. M. Papandreou became the King's new Prime Minister, but before forming his Gov- ernment he called a conference which met last week in the Lebanon. Every party in Greek life was represented there, including E.A.M., the Communists ind others -a dozen parties or more. The fullest debate took place and all expressed their feelings freely. This disclosed an appalling situation in Greece. The excesses of E.L.A.S., which is the military body operating under E.A.M., had so alienated the popula- tion in many parts that the Germans had been able to form security battalions of Greeks to fight the E.A.M. These security battalions were made up of men, in many cases, who would far rather have been out in the hills maintaining the guerrilla warfare. They had been completely alienated. At the same time, the state of hostility and suspicion which led last autumn to an actual civil war, existed between E.A.M. and the other resistance organizations, especially the E.D.E.S. under Colonel Zervas, a leader who commands the undivided support of the civilian population in his area and has always shown the strictest compliance with the orders sent him from G.H.Q., Middle East, under whom all his forces have been placed. Thus it seemed to be a question of all against all, and no one but the Germans rejoicing. Complete Unity After prolonged discussion complete unity was reached at the Lebanon Con- ference and all parties will be represented in the new Government which will devote itself to what is after all the only purpose worthy of consideration, namely the forming of a national army in which all the guerrilla bands will be incorporated and the driving, with this army, of the enemy from the country or, better still, destroying the enemy where he stands. On Monday there was published in the newspapers the very agreeable letter which I received from the leaders of the Communists-that is more than I have ever received from the hon. Member for West Fife (Mr. Gallacher) ; perhaps he might write me one, to tell me that he confirms it-and the extreme Left wing party. There is published today in the papers the letter I have received from M. Papandreou, and another one to my right hon. Friend expressing the hopes which he has for the future of his Government, and thanks for the assistance we have given in getting round these troubles-what I call the diseases of defeat which Greece has now a chance of shaking off. I believe that the present situation -I hope and pray that it may be so-indicates that a new and fair start will come to Greece in her struggle to cleanse her native soil from the foreign invader. I have, therefore, to report to the House that a very marked and beneficial change has occurred in the situation in Greece, which is more than I could say when I last spoke upon this subject. There was trouble with the destroyer we were giving the Greeks here, and while matters remained so uncertain, we were not able to hand her over, but I have been in correspondence with the Admiralty, and I hope that as a result of this reconstructecdgovernment, and the new start that has been made, this ship will soon be manned and go to strengthen the Greek Navy as it returns to discipline and duty. The Case of Yugoslavia I gave some lengthy account last time of the position in Yugoslavia and of our relations with the different jurisdictions there. The difficulty and magnitude of this business are very great, and it must be remembered that not only three strongly marked races-the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes-are involved but, further south, the Albanians are also making a bold bid for freedom from German rule. But they, too, at the present time are split into several competing and even antago- Foreign Affairs nistic groups. Nothing is easier than to espouse any one of the various causes in these different countries, with all their claims and counter-claims, and one can find complete satisfaction in telling the tale from that particular standpoint. The best and easiest kind of speech to make is to take a particluar cause and run it home on a single-track mind without any consideration of anything else, but we have to think of policy as well as oratory, and we have to think of the problem as a whole, and also to relate our action to the main purpose which I proclaimed at the beginning of my speech, namely, beating the enemy as soon as possible and to gather all forces for that purpose in priority to any other purpose. I can only tell the Committee today the further positions which have been reached in Yugoslavia as the result of the unremitting exertions of our foreign policy. They are, in my opinion, far more satisfactory than they were. I have received a message from King Peter that he has accepted the resignation of Mr. Puric and his Cabinet and is in process of forming a new and smaller Cabinet with the purpose of assisting active resistance in Yugoslavia and of uniting as far as possible all fighting elements in the country. I understand that this process of forming the new Government, involves the severance from the Royal Yugoslav Government of General Mihailovitch in his capacity as Minister of War. I under- stand also that the Ban of Croatia is an important factor in the new political arrangements, around whom, or beside whom certain other elements may group themselves for the purpose of beating the enemy and uniting Yugoslavia. This, of course, has the support of His Majesty's Government. We do not know what will happen in the Serbian part of Yugoslavia. The reason why we have ceased to supply Mihailovitch with arms and sup- port is a simple one. He has not been fighting the enemy and, moreover, some of his subordinates have made accommodations with the enemy from which have arisen armed conflicts with the forces of Marshal Tito, accompanied by many charges and counter-charges, and the loss of patriot lives to the German advan- tage. Mihailovitch certainly holds a powerful position locally as Commander-in- Chief, and it does not mean that his ceasing to be Minister of War will rob him of his local influence. We cannot predict what he will do or what will happen. We have proclaimed ourselves the strong supporters of Marshal Tito because of his heroic and massive struggle against the German armies. We are sending, and planning to send, the largest possible supplies of weapons to him and to make the closest contacts with him. I had the advantage on Monday of a long conversa- tion with General Velebit who has been over here on a military mission from Marshal Tito, and it has been arranged among other things that Marshal Tito shall send here a personal military representative in order that we may be kept in the closest touch with all that is being done and with the effect of it in Yugoslavia. This is, of course, additional to the contacts established with Marshal Tito at General Wilson's headquarters in Algiers and will, of course, be co-ordinated therewith. The Serbian Peasants It must be remembered, however, that this question does not turn on Mihailo- vitch alone; there is also a very large body, amounting to perhaps 200,000, of Serbian peasant proprietors who are anti-German but strongly Serbian and who naturally hold the views of a peasant ownership community in regard to prop- erty, less enthusiastic in regard to communism than some of those in Croatia or Slovenia. Marshal Tito has largely sunk his communist aspect in his character as a Yugoslav patriot leader. He repeatedly proclaims he has no intention of reversing the property and social systems which prevail in Serbia, but these facts are not accepted yet by the other side. The Serbians are a race with an historic past; it 46 British Speeches of the Day was from Serbia came the spark which fired the explosion of the first world war. We remember their historic retreat over the mountains. A very large number of Serbians are fighting with Marshal Tito's forces. Our object is that all forces in Yugoslavia, and the whole united strength of Serbia, may be made to work together under the military direction of Marshal Tito for a united, independent Yugoslavia which will expel from native soil the Hitlerite murderers and invaders, and destroy them until not one remains. The cruelties and atrocities of the Ger- mans in Greece and in Yugoslavia exceed anything that we have heard, and we have heard terrible things, but the resistance of these historic mountaineers has been one of the most splendid features of the war. It will long be honored in history, and I am sure that children will read the romance of this struggle and' will have imprinted on their minds that love of freedom, that readiness to give away life and comfort, and all there is around one, in order to gain the right to live unmolested on your native heath. All I can say is that we must be given a little reasonable latitude to work to- gether for this union. It would be quite easy, as I said just now, to take whole- heartedly one side or the other. I have made it very plain where my sympathies lie, but nothing would give greater pleasure to the Germans than to see all these hearty moutaineers engaged in intestine strife against one another. We can- not afford at this crisis to neglect anything which may obstruct a real unity through- out wide regions in which at present upwards of twelve German divisions are gripped in Yugoslavia alone and twenty in all-that is another eight in the Bal- kans and the Aegean Islands. All eyes must be turned upon the common foe. Perhaps we have-had some success in this direction in Greece. At any rate it sums up our policy towards Yugoslavia, and the House will note that all questions of monarchy or republic or Leftism or Rightism are strictly subordinate to the main purpose which we have in mind. In one place we support a king, in another a Communist-there is no attempt by us to enforce particular ideologies. We only want to beat the enemy and then, with a happy and serene peace, let the best ex- pression be given to the will of the people in every way. The Russo-Polish Case For a long time past the Foreign Secretary and I have labored with all our strength to try to bring about a resumption of relations between the Soviet Gov- ernment and the Polish Government which we recognize. Which we have always recognized since the days of General Sikorski. We were conscious of the difficulty of our task and some may say we should have been wiser not to attempt it. Well, we cannot accept that view. We are the Ally of both countries. We went to war because Germany made an unprovoked attack upon our Ally, Poland. We have signed a twenty years' Treaty with our Ally, the Soviet Union, and this Treaty is the foundation of our policy. Polish forces are fighting with our armies and have recently distinguished themselves remarkably well. Polish forces under Rus- sian guidance are also fighting with the Soviet army against the common enemy. Our effort to bring about a renewal of relations between the Polish Govern- ment and Russia in London has not succeeded. We deeply regret that fact, and we must take care to say nothing that would make agreement more difficult in the future. I must repeat that the essential part of any arrangement is regulation of the Polish eastern frontier, and that, in return for any withdrawal made by Poland in that quarter, she should receive other territories at the expense of Germany, which will give her an ample seaboard and a good, adequate and reasonable home- land in which the Polish nation may safely dwell. We must trust that, when we all engage in the struggle with the common foe, when nothing can surpass the bravery of our Polish Allies in Italy and daily on the sea, and in the air, and in the heroic resistance of the underground movement to the Germans. I have seen here men Foreign Affairs who came a few days ago out of Poland, who told me about it, and who are in relation with, and under the orders of, the present Polish Government in Lon- don. They are most anxious that this underground movement should not clash with the advancing Russian Army, but should help it, and orders have been sent by the Polish Government in London that the underground movement is to help the Russian A)rmies in as many ways as possible. There are many ways possible in which guerrillas can be successful, and we must trust that statesmanship will yet find some way through. I have the impression-and it is no more than an impression-that things are not so bad as they may appear on the surface between Russia and Poland. I need not say that we-and I think I may certainly add, the United States-would welcome any arrangement between Russia and Poland, however it was brought about, whether directly between the Powers concerned, or with the help of His Majesty's Government, or any other Government. There is no question of pride on our part, only of sincere goodwill to both, and earnest and anxious aspirations to a solution of problems fraught with grave consequences to Europe and the harmony of the Grand Alliance. In the meantime, our relations, both with the Polish and the Soviet Governments, remain regulated by the public statements which have been made and repeated from time to time from this bench during the present war. There I leave this question, and I trust that if it is dealt with in Debate those who deal with it will always consider what we want, namely, the united action of all Poles, with all Russians, against all Germans. The French National Committee We have to rejoice at the brilliant and skilful fighting of the French Moroccan and Algerian Divisions, and the brilliant leading they have had by their officers in the heart-shaking battle to which I have referred, and which is now at its climax. The French Committee of National Liberation, in Algiers, has the credit of having prepared these troops, which were armed and equipped by the United States under President Roosevelt's personal decision. The French Committee also places at the full service of the Allies, a powerful Navy including, in the Richelieu, one of the finest battleships in the world. They guide and govern a vast Empire, all of whose strategic points are freely placed at the disposal of the United Nations. They have a numerous and powerful underground army in France, sometimes called the Maquis, and sometimes the French Army of the Interior, which may be called upon to play an important part before the end of the war. There is no doubt that this political entity, the French Committee of National Liberation, presides over, and directs, forces at the present time which, in the struggle against Hitler in Europe, give it the fourth place in the Grand Alliance. The reason why the United States and Great Britain has not been able to recog- nize it yet as the Government of France, or even as the Provisional Government of France, is because we are not sure that it represents the French nation in the same way as the Governments of Britain, the United States and Soviet Russia represent the whole body of their people. The Committee will, of course, exercise the leadership to establish law and order in the liberated areas of France under the supervision, while the military exigency lasts, of the supreme Allied Commander, but we do not wish to commit ourselves at this stage to imposing the Government of the French Committee upon all of France which might fall under our con- trol without more knowledge than we now possess of the situation in the interior of France. At the same time I must make it clear that we shall have no dealings with the Vichy Government, or any one tainted with that association because they have decided to follow the path of collaboration with our enemies. Many of them have definitely desired, and worked for, a German victory. British Speeches of the Day In Norway and the Low Countries it is different. If we go there we shall find that continuity of lawful government is maintained by the Governments which we recognize, and with which we are in intimate relations. The Governments of King Haakon and Queen Wilhelmina are the lawfully founded Governments of those States, with perfect and unbroken continuity, and should our liberating Armies enter those countries we feel we should deal with them and also, as far as possible, with the Belgian and Danish Governments, although their Sovereigns are prisoners, but with whose countries we have the closest ties. On the other hand, we are not able to take a decision at this time to treat the Flench Committee of National Liberation, or the French Provisional Government, as it has bten called, as the full, final, and lawful embodiment of the French Republic. It may be that the Committee itself may be able to aid us in the solution of th se riddles and I must say that I think their decree governing their future action constitutes a most forceful and helpful step in that direction. With the full approval of the President of the United States I have invited General de Gaulle to pay us a visit over here in the near future and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has just showed me a telegram from Mr. Duff Cooper, in Algiers, saying that he will be very glad to come. There is nothing like talking things over, and seeing where we can get to. I hope he will bring some members of his Government with him so that the whole matter can be reviewed. The Disappearing Ideologies As this war has progressed, it has become less ideological in its character, in my opinion. The Fascist power in Italy has been overthrown and will, in a reason- able period of time, be completely expunged, mainly by the Italian democracy themselves. If there is anything left over for the future we will look after it. Pro- found changes have taken place in Soviet Russia, the Trotskyite form of Commun- ism has been completely wiped out. The victories of the Russian Armies have been attended by a great rise in the strength of the Russian State, and a remarkable broadening of its views. The religious side of Russian life has had a wonderful rebirth. The discipline and military etiquette of the Russian Armies are unsur- passed. . There is a new National Anthem, the music of which Premier Stalin sent me, which I asked the B.B.C. to play on the frequent occasions when there are great Russian victories to celebrate. The terms offered by Russia to Rumania make no suggestion of altering the standards of society in that country and were in many respects, if not in all, remarkably generous. Russia has been very patient with Finland. The Comintern has been abolished, which Is some- times forgotten. Quite recently, some of our representatives from the Ministry of Information were allowed to make a considerable tour in Russia, and found opportunities of seeing for themselves what they liked. They found an atmosphere of candid friendliness and a keen desire to see British films, and hear about our country and what it was doing in the war. The children in the schools were being informed about the war on the seas, and of its difficulties and its perils, and how the Northern convoys got through to Russia. There seemed a great desire among the people that Britain and Russia should be friends. These are very marked de- partures from the conceptions which were held some years ago, for reasons which we can all understand. We have no need to look back into the past and add up the tale and tally of recrimination. Many terrible things have happened. But we began thirty years ago to march forward with the Russians in the battle against the German tyranny of the Kaiser and we are now marching with them, and I trust we shall until all forms of German tyranny have been extirpated. As to Nazism, tle other ideology, we intend to wipe that out utterly, however drastic may be the methods required. We are all agreed on that in this House, whatever our political views Foreign Affairs and doctrines may be. Throughout the whole of the British Dominions and the United States, and all the United Nations, there is only one opinion about that and for the rest, whatever may be said as to former differences, there is nothing that has occurred which should in any way make us regret the twenty years' Treaty which we have signed with the Russians, and which will be the dominating factor in the relations which we shall have with them. The Grand Alliance I see that in some quarters I am expected today to lay out, quite plainly and decisively, the future plan of world organization, and also to set the Atlantic Charter in its exact and true relation to subsequent declarations and current events. It is easier to ask such questions than to answer them. We are working with thirty-three United Nations and, in particular, with two great Allies who, in some forms of power, far exceed the British Empire. Taking everything into considera- tion, including men and money, war effort, expanse of territory, we can claim to be an equal to those great Powers, but not, in my view, a superior. It would be a great mistake for me, as head of the British Government, or, I may add- speaking to this Committee as a most respected institution-the Grand Alliance, or for the House, to take it upon ourselves, to lay down the law to all those dif- ferent countries, including the two great Powers with which we have to work, if the world is to be brought back into a good condition. This small Island and this marvellous structure of States and dependencies which have gathered round it, will, if we all hold together, occupy a worthy place in the vanguard of the nations. It is idle to suppose that we are the only people who are to prescribe what all other countries, for their own good, are to do. Many other ideas and forces come into play and nothing could be more unwise than for the meeting of Prime Ministers, for instance, to attempt to prescribe for all countries the way they should go. Consultations are always proceeding between the three great Powers and others, and every effort is being made to explore the future, to resolve difficulties and to obtain the greatest measure of common agree- ment on levels below the Ministerial level in a way which does not commit the Government. A few things have already become quite clear and very prominent at the Conference which has just concluded. The first is that we will fight on all to- gether until Germany is forced to capitulate and until Nazism is extirpated and the Nazi party are stripped of all continuing power of doing evil. The next is that the Atlantic Charter remains a guiding signpost, expressing a vast body of opinion amongst all the Powers now fighting together against tyranny. The third point is that the Atlantic Charter in no way binds us about the future of Ger- many, nor is it a bargain or contract with our enemies. It has no quality of an offer to our enemy. It was no offer to the Germans to surrender. If it had been an offer, that offer was rejected. But the principle of unconditional surrender, which has also been promulgated, will be adhered to as far as Nazi Germany and Japan are concerned, and that principle itself wipes away the danger of anything like Mr. Wilson's Fourteen Points being brought up by the Germans after their defeat, claiming that they surrendered in consideration of them. Retribution and Lasting Peace I have repeatedly said that unconditional surrender gives the enemy no rights but relieves us from no duties. Justice will have to be done and retribution will fall upon the wicked and the cruel. The miscreants who set out to subjugate first Europe and then the world must be punished, and so must their agents who, in so many countries, have perpetrated horrible crimes and who must be brought British Speeches of the Day back to face the judgment of the population, very likely in the very scenes of their atrocities. There is no question of Germany enjoying any guarantee that she will not undergo territorial changes if it should seem that the making of such changes renders more secure and more lasting the peace of Europe. Scarred and armed with experience we intend to take better measures this time than could ever previously have been conceived in order to prevent a re- newal, in the lifetime of our children or our grandchildren at least, of the horrible destruction of human values which has marked the last and the present world wars. We intend to set up a world order and organization, equipped with all the necessary attributes of power, in order to prevent the breaking out of future wars, or the long planning of them in advance, by restless and ambitious nations. For this purpose there must be a World Council, a controlling council, comprising the greatest States which emerge victorious from this war, who will be obligated to keep in being a certain minimum standard of armaments for the purpose of preserving peace. There must also be a world assembly of all Powers, whose rela- tion to the world Executive, or controlling power, for the purpose of maintaining peace I am in no position to define. I cannot say. If I did, I should only be stepping outside the bounds which are proper to us. The shape of these bodies, and their relations to each other can only be settled after the formidable foes we are now facing have been beaten down and reduced to complete submission. It would be presumption for any one Power to pre- scribe in detail exactly what solution will be found. Anyone can see how many different alternatives there are. A mere attempt on our part to do so, or to put forward what is a majority view on this or that, might prejudice us in gaining consideration for our arguments when the time comes. Questions Not Unanswerable I shall not even attempt to parade the many questions of difficulty which will arise and which are present in our minds. Anyone can write down on paper at least a dozen large questions of this kind-should there be united forces of nations, or should there be a world police, and so on. There are other matters of a highly interesting character which should be discussed. But it would be stepping out of our place in the forward march for us to go beyond the gradual formulation of opinion, and ideas which are constantly going on inside the British Common- wealth and in contact with our principal Allies. It must not be supposed, how- ever, that these questions cannot be answered and the difficulties cannot be over- come and that a complete victory will not be a powerful aid to the solution of all problems, and that the good will and practical common sense which exist in the majority of men and in the majority of nations will not find its full expression in the new structure which must regulate the affairs of every people in so far as they may clash with another people's. The future towards which we are march- ing, across bloody fields and frightful manifestations of destruction, must surely be based upon the broad- and simple virtues and upon the nobility of mankind. It must be based upon a reign of law which upholds the principles of justice and fair play and which protects the weak against the strong if the weak have justice on their side. There must be an end to predatory exploitation and nationalistic ambitions. This does not mean that nations should not be entitled to rejoice in their tradi- tions and achievements, but they will not be allowed, by armed force, to gratify appetites of aggrandizement at the expense of other countries merely because they are smaller or weaker or less well prepared, and measures will be taken to have ample Armies, Fleets and Air Forces available to prevent anything like that coming about. We must undoubtedly in our world structure embody a great part of all that was gained to the world by the structure and formation of the League of Foreign Affairs 51 Nations. But we must arm our world organization and make sure that, within the limits assigned to it, it has overwhelming military power. We must remember that we shall be hard put to it to gain our living, to repair the devastation that has been wrought and to give back that wider and more comfortable life which is so deeply desired. We must strive to preserve the reasonable rights and liberties of the individual. We must respect the rights and opinions of others, while hold- ing firmly to our own faith and convictions. There must be room in this new great structure of the world for the happiness and prosperity of all and in the end it must be capable of bringing happiness and prosperity even to the guilty and vanquished nations. There must be room within the great world organization for organisms like the British Empire and Common- wealth, as we now call it, and I trust that there will be room also for the fraternal association of the British Commonwealth and the United States. We are bound by our twenty years' Treaty with Russia, and besides this- I, for my part, hope to deserve to be called a good European-to try to raise the glorious continent of Europe, the parent of so many powerful States, from its present miserable condition as a kind of volcano of strife and tumult to its old glory of a family of nations and a vital expression of Christendom. I am sure these great entities which I have mentioned-the British Empire, the conception of a Europe truly united, the fraternal associations with the United States-will in no way disturb the general purposes of the world organization. In fact, they may help powerfully to make it run. I hope and pray that all this may be estab- lished and that we may be led to exert ourselves to secure these permanent and glorious achievements which alone can make amends to mankind for all the miseries and toil which have been their, lot and for all the heroism and sacrifice which have been their glory. [House of Commons Debates] RT. HON. ANTHONY EDEN Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs House of Commons, May 25, 1944 As I listened to this two-day debate I had the impression that there was a growing note of confidence about ourselves in the speeches. No doubt there are reasons for that outside these walls. Military events at the moment and good lews from our armies would account for it. But I thought there was more to it .han that. I think there was also the increased sense of unity which the meeting of the Prime Ministers of the Empire has given us. I felt an echo when the hon. Gentleman the Member for Seaham (Mr. Shinwell) said that international unity was difficult to achieve. I could not agree with him more wholeheartedly. I hap- pened to be reading in a history the other day about one of my illustrious prede- cessors who had one period of office of about eighteen months. History just noted the term of office of Lord-by saying "No event of any international significance occurred." I thought that that was a time when I would have liked to be Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. We live in very different times. Unity Beyond Logic I would like at the beginning of my remarks to say something about the meet- ing of the Empire Prime Ministers. Many comments have been made in this British Speeches of the Day Debate about that meeting, and I think it is right to say that it was probably at once the most successful and the most significant meeting of that kind which has ever been held. Both the men and the moment served to bring that about. Here were gathered together five statesmen of widely different character and ex- perience but all united with the one purpose of trying to maintain and strengthen this Empire and Commonwealth and to ensure that the world should have the benefit of the service we could render it together. Of course that is the note as I conceive it, the only purpose of the British Commonwealth and Empire. We are not an exclusive organization, but-we do think-and I make no apology for saying this-that we are the one really successful experiment in international co-operation that there has ever been. Out of that, we may suggest with becoming modesty to others, there may be something to be learned. As I attended these proceedings I detected more than once what a strange, indefinable and, if you like, what an illogical thing this British Empire is. Some- times, the links that hold it together seem so frail as to be almost nonexistent, or so frail that they would snap at the first pressure. That is the mistake which foreigners often make. It is the mistake that Ribbentrop made, though God knows I and others tried hard enough to make him believe it was wrong. This demonstra- tion of reality of the strength of that relationship comes at a moment when it may be of real service to the world. Anyhow, it has so happened that in two world struggles in one generation, the British Commonwealth has shown itself to have a unity which nothing can break. In the second of these struggles it stood alone for a year or more. How difficult it is to try to explain what brings these men together from these many corners of the world and leads them to feel such deep loyalty towards the British Empire. I cannot pretend to describe it, but perhaps like all really deep forces that move mankind, there is an element of mystery in it that cannot be put into words. I believe that to be true. Of this meeting, I must say that it owed its special character more than anything else to the leadership given it by our own Prime Minister. Sometimes here, within this Island with our vast controversies and frequent debates, it is difficult to stand back and view matters as they are seen in perspective by other lands and other peoples. Certain it is that the immense advantage of my right hon. Friend's position in the world was of quite invaluable aid in leadership in those discussions. There is another advantage. In the stress of war-and there is still a stress of war-nothing is more difficult than to avoid becoming immersed in the daily details of one's particular task, be it on foreign affairs, economic affairs, the Treasury, or whatever it is, and the burden is such that when you have a moment in which you are not occupied with your own affairs the Cabinet is discussing somebody else's affairs that are just a degree more tiresome than your own. When one is living like that, it is invaluable to be able to look at the problems which we have to face in company with a man like the Prime Minister. It is then that his experience is more valuable still. I can only say for myself that that experience was one that gave the greatest encouragement. There was, it occurred to me, a feature in our meetings this time which I had not perceived before. I was privileged to attend the Imperial Conference in 1937. Since then we have developed to a very large extent the practice of sending the greatest possible amount of information to the Governments of all the Dominions so that today it is not merely a question of consulting them from time to time and asking their advice on some particular problem that arises, but it is the practice to give them fully all information that we have on day-to-day developments of foreign policy. The growth of that practice was immeasurably helpful at these meetings because the whole background of knowledge was present to an equal extent in the minds of all the men round the table. It may be there Foreign Affairs is more we can do in that regard. If there is we will gladly do it, for I am confident that this exchange of information is an indispensable element in true co-operation between the Dominions and ourselves. If as a result of that we get from time to time, when we give information about foreign affairs or whatever it may be, replies, questions, even criticism, we welcome them because they are all elements of strength to the British Commonwealth. No Secret Agreements Having made those remarks on that aspect of our work, I want to plunge into the details of some matters which were discussed. More than one hon. Member in the Debate, talking about foreign affairs, has said that in wartime, of-course, foreign policy must take second place to immediate military needs, and that is true. In wartime the Foreign Office has two duties: to help the Military arm, and as part of that help, to maintain, as far as lies in our power, unity among those who are fighting the common enemy. Also, so far as we can during wartime, it is to lay the foundations for co-operation afterwards. Those are the tasks on which we are engaged now. In wartime it sometimes happens that military needs may even conflict with political needs. I will put it another way--you may have to take decisions for short-term advantage which in the light of long-term policy you would prefer not to take-that sometimes does happen; but there is one aspect of the work we have done to which I would draw the attention of the Committee Despite all those difficulties, and I may say temptations, in this respect ifi wartime, we have not on any occasion in these four years of conflict entered into any secret engagement of any kind with anybody. I want the Committee to under- stand the importance of that; hon. Members like the hon. Member for West Leicester (Mr. H. Nicolson) who were present when the Treaty of Versailles was negotiated will remember what embarrassment was caused when secret treaties were pulled out of pockets, and engagements-often conflicting engage- ments-were all put on the table together. There is nothing of that kind on our part this time. To that extent we shall have an advantage. I have said that one of our tasks is to try to help the Armed Forces. I will give briefly some examples of what I mean by that; for example, the negotiations with Portugal about the Azores, the negotiations with Spain over wolfram, the handling of our affairs with Turkey which led to the stoppage of chrome. I had, as one or two hon. Members have remarked in this Debate, the task of lending help to our Allies, among others, in trying to smooth out differences which arise even between Allies. Those are our tasks. Here let me say one word about the neutral powers. My hon. Friend, the Member for West Leicester, was, I think, rather hard on us about the neutrals. He was inclined to criticize us for our treatment of them. I know they may sometimes regard our methods as harsh and arbitrary, and think that we take too little account of the rights of small nations. If they do, I can say truly we regret it. I can also say we have asked no nation to take any step which violates its neutrality and we have asked no neutral who is also an Ally-of whom there are some-to take any step beyond that which is specifically within our rights according to the terms of our alliance, and we must insist to the limit on what are our rights. It is our duty to do everything in our power to shorten this struggle. And therefore, to the neutrals themselves I say, if sometimes we have seemed outspoken and urgent in our demands I regret it, but it is a fact that such action as we ask them to take is in their own interests, as anyone in this hour can see, if only it shortens the conflict which they as much as we wish to see brought to an end. British Speeches of the Day The Occupied Countries I must say that my sympathies and thoughts are more at the present time with occupied countries. I felt that the members of the Committee were many times right when they recalled the staunch Allies whom we have in Europe today. I think that at a time like this the Committee would like to send a message to those occupied countries-the smaller occupied countries of Europe-a message of encouragement and hope that their liberation may not be long delayed. I would like to speak of one or two of these countries. We had a remarkable speech just now-there were not quite so many Members present-from my hon. and gallant Friend, the Member for Blackpool (Wing Commander Robinson), just back from firsthand experience in the Balkans and Mediterranean. He told us of his experiences in a Greek ship, and how its sailors had twenty-four to twenty-five times taken that ship back into the Anzio Beachhead. We are greatly encouraged at the political unity which the Greek nation has at last achieved. We can neither forget the past of that country nor its own amazing achievements in this conflict at an earlier stage. After all, the Greeks were the first to debunk Mussolini. It was not we who did that. They defeated him and repelled him from their land. And we of this Committee would like to tell the Greek people we hope they are now united and that they will be able to work together and re-establish their reputation in the world .... I wish to mention one or two others of these countries-Yugoslavia, Poland and Czechoslovakia. The suffering of all these countries has been great and the prayer for liberation is there. In particular I want to say a word about the northwestern countries, if I may so call them, which have been referred to in one or two speeches-Belgium, Norway and the Netherlands. Within the last few days we have signed agreements with the Governments of all three of them. The hon. Member for Kidderminster (Sir John Wardlaw Milne), asked whether we could perhaps make them public. We considered that in conjunction with our Allies who have signed similar agreements and we have found a difficulty in it because these agreements are not only political; they also contain military clauses affecting the action which must be taken if and when these countries are liberated .. It is quite proper. A secret agreement disposing of somebody else's belongings would be most improper, but if it is a secret agreement arranging how by military means you are going to free a country, I think that it is not very shocking. That is what they are. I can tell the hon. Member to relieve him from any strain of anxiety that so far as the political clauses are concerned, what they are designed to do is to give the Governments of those countries the full control of their own affairs at the earliest possible moment. France Now I come to a country which has been mentioned several times in this discussion-France. There is no part of our policy to which we attach more importance than the restoration of the independence and greatness of France. France is our nearest neighbor; for more than one thousand years our histories have been interlocked, sometimes in conflict. Sometimes the French got help from our northern neighbors, if I may speak as an Englishman for just one moment. But I think that as inhabitants of this Island we would acknowledge that no country has contributed more to the civilization of Europe, in the best sense of that term. For the future, we know that the French people will have their part to play in Europe, and we shall need them as they will need us if confidence and security are to live again in Europe. In the meanwhile, I would like, on behalf of the Government, and I hope of the Committee, to pay tribute to the spirit of resistance which the French people are showing, all the more despite the Foreign Affairs necessary bombardments which we are unhappily compelled to inflict upon them. I agree with what was said by the hon. Member for Bridgewater (Mr. Bartlett) yesterday. He said we must hand over the full responsibility for the Government of France to the French people as soon as is possible. I agree; there is no difference about that. There is not the least intention in our minds to inflict an AMGOT, as it is called, upon France or indeed upon any Allied country whatever, though, incidentally it is not in the least the kind of machine which the hon. Baronet, the Member for Barnstaple (Sir Richard Asland), so eloquently imagined yesterday. But be AMGOT good or ill, it has no connection with France or any Allied country when they are liberated. In the light of these observations, I come to the special problem of recognition. I would like to try to put it in its true perspective. I regret that there is some misunderstanding as to the extent of recognition already accorded to the French Committee of National Liberation. For instance the hon. Gentleman the Member for Maldon asked why we did not recognize the Committee, as though there was no recognition at all. Of course that is not the position at present. We welcomed the untiy of the Committee last year at Algiers. We were happy to recognize them last August as the body qualified to conduct the French effort in the war. We have gone much further than that since. We have dealt with the Committee as if they were the legitimate Government of all the French overseas territories. We have made agreements with them-financial agreements, economic agreements- on that basis. Our representative in Algiers has been given the rank of Ambassador and the French representative here, Monsieur Vienot, who is doing such good work, has been given a similar rank. More than that, we have dealt with the French Committee not only as if they were the Government in the territory where their writ runs already, but we are also dealing with them in matters which concern the metropolitan territory of France and as the French authority which will exercise leadership in France as her liberation proceeds. Now I come to where I think the difficulty lies. In connection with these discussions, certain conversations have been necessary and these conversations and the progress of them have unhappily been interfered with by the restrictions which we felt compelled to institute over a wide area as a security measure on account of forthcoming operations. I say frankly that those restrictions are extremely troublesome to the conduct of foreign affairs, not in respect of one country alone. I would like to say at this box how grateful the Government are for the spirit in which the Diplomatic Corps as a whole have taken these quite unprecedented measures. But the House will understand, as I am sure our French friends will understand, that vexatious as these restrictions are, the needs of absolute military security must come first. That being so, we think that the best way to deal with the question of civil administration in France is to have direct conversations. It is for this purpose that the Prime Minister has invited General De Gaulle to come here. General De Gaulle has accepted. He will receive, I know, a warm welcome from all of us here. I feel confident nothing but good will come out of that meeting, and that when the whole situation can be surveyed we shall be able to clear away all misunderstandings, however formidable they may seem now. At least that is what we wish to do. No Spheres of Influence I will turn for a moment to another matter, to which I want to refer because of one or two speeches which were made about our attitude to Europe. I do not know whether hon. Members happened to see the two-column article which appeared in the Times on the 13th May containing an analysis of German propaganda. If not, I commend it as quite good reading. That analysis showed British Speeches of the Day German propaganda had just two themes. One was that the Empire was breaking up. That is not working awfully well just now. The other was that we were disinteresting ourselves in certain parts of Europe: in other words, that at some place or other never specified-it may be Moscow, it may be Teheran--we had done a deal, it may be with Soviet Government or it may be with somebody else, by which we would cease to interest ourselves in certain parts of Europe. That is absolutely and categorically untrue. I would like to go further. In the first place, no arrangement of such a kind has been come to. In the second place, no arrangement of such a kind was suggested to us. In the third place, if anybody had suggested such an arrangement to us we would not have agreed to it. Otherwise, the report is approximately accurate. It is, of course, true that there are certain parts of Europe-Western Europe and the Mediterranean-where our interests are more directly concerned than others. But as the right hon. Gentleman, the Member for Devonport (Mr. Hore Belisha) emphasized in his speech we are above all Europeans, and our interest in Europe is not limited to any single part of Europe. What we seek is the security of the Continent which has suffered so much but which has given so much light and leading to the world in the past and could do it again if only it could recover its unity and prosperity. I am confident that the Governments of the Dominions perfectly well understand our position in this respect and that they endorse it. No great country should attempt to do more in its foreign policy than its strength will allow. But having said that, I think I can add, that as a result of this meeting and as a result of events in the war, the British Commonwealth's authority and influence in the world is at least as high as it has ever been; and that influence we should use, can use, and will use to promote the prosperity and the unity of Europe. What do we want to achieve in our foreign policy? I would put it like this. We want in our relations with other countries to try to maintain a standard of honesty, of fair dealing and of international good faith. Foreign affairs are really not so very different in those respects from domestic affairs. Human intercourse is based on good faith, on the keeping of promises, on honoring the pledged word between man and man. I agree so much with what my noble Friend the Member for Lanark (Lord Dunglass) said yesterday-we are very glad, all of us, to welcome him back-about the consequences of the lowering of international standards. I remember myself venturing to make, some years ago, a speech in this House in which I said that I thought we were in the presence of the progressive deterioration of international standards. I say frankly that I think that process was one of the main contributory causes of the outbreak of this war. Why did the war become inevitable? It was because Hitler and Mussolini refused to observe the ordinary standards of international conduct in the day-to-day conduct of international affairs. It was more than that, because they used the desire of other nations to maintain those standards to obtain concessions, to profit by those concessions, and then to proceed to their next demand. They were encouraged by the desire of the peace- loving countries to avoid war if ever they could. The German Technique I remember an occasion in a conversation with Hitler-I think it was in .1933 or thereabouts-when he spoke to me of the Versailles Treaty, and he explained how the Treaty had been imposed on Germany, and how, therefore, he could never accept it. I said "What about the Treaty of Locarno?" He said "That is another thing. That was a freely negotiated Treaty. Germany signed that of her own free will. By that I stand"-or words to that effect. He said it with a fervor and an eloquence, which I confess entirely convinced me. I came back Foreign Affairs thinking "that is not such an unreasonable attitude" and so forth. Eighteen months after that, Locarno had gone the same way as the Treaty of Versailles. That was the method, that was the technique of those men. If those methods and those techniques are practised, whoever practises them, there cannot be enduring peace. So I say to the Committee: We cannot say to the world "You have got to do this; you have got to do that." That is beyond the power of forty-five million. But what we can do is in our own conduct and by our own leadership to try to establish and maintain those standards of international conduct without which there cannot be peace. That I conceive to be the duty of British foreign policy. May I for a moment or two look a little into the future? When victory is won, the first task will be close collaboration between the British Commonwealth, the United States, the Soviet Union and China-but in the main, as far as Europe is concerned, between the first three-to ensure that Germany cannot start this business again. I want to speak for a moment about co-operation between these three in particular-ourselves, the United States and the Soviet Union. If I emphasize it, it is because I am convinced that if we can establish real understanding all else, though difficult, will be possible. But if we cannot establish that under- standing, then the future is very dark indeed. Having said that I am not suggesting these three Powers should seek to impose some three-Power dictatorship on the world. That would be bad, very bad. But what they should do is serve the world in assuring at least for the outset that these two particular aggressors with whom we are now dealing are not in a military position to repeat in a few years' time what they did before. I hope I shall carry the Committee with me in that. There is nothing exclusive in our desire to work together. It is indispensable that we should so work together. May I mention the suggestion about co-operation in Western Europe? I think it may be desirable that we should have close, intimate and friendly relations with other countries in Western Europe, but neither my hon. Friend nor anybody else would suggest that on such a foundation alone such lasting security could be founded. We have to stretch wider than that. I would like to say a word about our relations with these two Powers. My right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut-Colonel Elliot) spoke about our relative size-our forty-five millions, and these two countries, one with one hundred forty millions and the other with two hundred millions. That is true, but on the other hand, I must tell the Committee that though I have been in many negotiations with these two Powers alone I have never felt any sense of inferiority, and I honestly don't believe that they felt any particular sense of superiority. I don't mean individually toward me, but towards this country. The reason is, of course, that though we are only forty-five millions, we have in this Island, a unique geographical position and a rather remarkable experience, because we are the center of a great Empire. I would suggest we need not over stress the size of our partners or underestimate our own significance. At any rate, of all our international troubles, that is the one that worries me least. Relations with the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. About the United States I think I can say that at this time our relations are as close and cordial as they have ever been. We had the other day the experience of a visit from Mr. Stettinius, the Undersecretary of State, who I think spoke to the hon. Members upstairs. That visit was remarkable, not only because of his own personality but because he brought with him a large number of representatives of the State Department, and they worked together with our own representatives in the Foreign Office with the result that apart from understanding at a higher level, there is now interlocked at every stage understanding by each of the other's policy. That is something quite new in our experience with the United States, or 58 British Speeches of the Day indeed with any country, and I think it will be of great service because although decisions must be taken by Ministers, it is good that all those down the hierarchy should understand each other's point of view. Recently we have had both from the President and Mr. Hull statements that show American leaders are thinking on broad courageous and good neighborly lines. Now I turn to our relations with the other great Power-our Ally Russia. There is in our minds no reservation when we say that we wish to work with the Soviet Union in the fullest and closest collaboration, but it is also in the interests of our two countries that we should accept the fact that there are certain difficulties in this task, and I agree with the righ hon. Gentleman, the Member for Wakefield (Mr. A. Greenwood) that we do not gain much by ignoring them. There is first the legacy of suspicion difficult to describe and quite impossible to exaggerate. It is a suspicion which is not as many think, of modern growth, but which dates back to, and existed in the days of Tsarist Russia and will be found many times in the records of the Congress of Vienna and so forth .Unhappily, it has always played its part in Anglo-Russian relations and it has a habit of accumulating suspicions on their side which produce 'counter-suspicions on ours, and before we know where we are a mountain of suspicion is the result. For that there is only one cure-that bit by bit our peoples get to know each other better. We are ready, I say to our Soviet friends, to do anything in our power at any time to further that result. There are other things-differences in form of government, differences in attitude to the individual, to the press, and so on. These are all pretty wide divergencies, and I repeat, that we do better to face them frankly. But on the other side there is something else to put in the scale. There is the fact that in three great world convulsions, in the Napoleonic war, in the last great war, and in this war, we have found ourselves allied and fighting together for the same purpose-to stop one man or one power dominating the whole of Europe. On each of the last occasions when we fought together we fell aside quickly soon after, but this time we have got to do better. We have an absolute conviction here in this country that the Soviet Union means to see this struggle through to the end. We have the same intention. I have been asked about the extent of our collabora- tion now. For instance, are we consulted on such matters as Soviet peace terms to Rumania, and the negotiations with Finland? The answer is we were consulted on both questions. In respect to Rumania we thought Mr. Molotov's speech, and the offer made, fair and just to Rumania. In respect to Finland, we deplored the fact that the Finnish Government had turned down the peace terms. On both these matters we were consulted. I do not want to belittle the extent of the effort which has got to be made in both these countries to make of this Tweaty-Year Treaty a lasting reality of value to our two countries and to the world, but surely the Committee will feel that the stakes for the future in this matter are so huge that both of us must make every effort that we may succeed. Personally I believe we shall succeed. China and the Far East I have been asked several questions about the situation in the Far East, particularly by the hon. Member for Kidderminster, the hon. and gallant Member for Renfrew (Major Lloyd) and many others. I think we are all conscious of the heavy burdens that China carries just now. We in this country are in our fifth year of war and, looking back on it, it seems a pretty long period. China is, however you reckon it, at least in her eighth year of war. Her people have suffered greatly, and many of her cities have been destroyed. We have been unable to carry to her all the help we would like to carry, and it is only by the remarkable Foreign Affairs efforts of the Air Force--quite unique efforts-in crossing the Himalayas that any assistance has reached her at all. Her ordeals have been long and stern. We pledge ourselves anew that we will not rest until Japan is defeated and China has restored to her all those territories wrongly seized from her. An hon. Member has asked me about supplies. In the main, of course, the supplies have to be for the United States Air Force which has been built up in China and for the needs of the Chinese armies under General Stilwell's leadership, but whatever space is left over, it is for the Chinese Government to say what priority they want for the goods that are sent to them. We all wish we could send more, but we are sending already to the limit of our capacity. While speaking of the Far East I would like to make a statement upon the position of- our prisoners in the hands of the Japanese. What I am now going to tell the Committee arose from a suggestion made, I think, by the hon. Member for Seaham on the 28th of January, when I spoke about the Japanese treatment of our prisoners, and it was suggested that the Soviet Government might be asked to make representations to the Japanese Government on behalf of these prisoners. I communicated later with his Majesty's Ambassador in Moscow and he recently approached the Soviet Government and explained to them our anxiety. There were three points on which we particularly wanted satisfaction from the Japanese Government. They were, first of all, that the right should be recognized of a protecting Power, in this case Switzerland, and of the International Red Cross, to visit all the camps wherein British subjects were held and report freely and frankly on conditions prevailing. [An hon. Member: And civilians?] Yes. Secondly, we should be given complete lists of our prisoners of war and internees in their hands, together with a list of those who had died; and, thirdly, the Japanese Government should agree to receive Red Cross supplies which would be sent at regular intervals in neutral ships to Japanese ports and facilities should be given to distribute those supplies. The Soviet Government replied that while these matters fell directly within the competence of the protecting Power, they were nevertheless prepared to approach the Japanese Government in regard to them, and they have now done so, and I want to thank them and to express the thanks of the Government for their action. I ought to add that this action does not in any way express any lack of confidence in Switzerland as the protecting Power. We know that our Swiss friends have done everything in their power, and we hope this additional action may assist them in their work in this connection and in what they will do for us hereafter. Looking Into the Future My time is nearly up. I want to say a word on economic affairs. I want to tell my hon. Friends that it is true that the Foreign Office has taken over certain fresh activities in the economic field. We have not snatched them, as an hon. Gentleman suggested-the Foreign Office never snatches-but we have negotiated. We have these additional opportunities now. We shall need them, I am confident, and perhaps in a later Debate I may be able to describe the set-up for dealing with these activities to anybody else, either to the United States or anybody. We maintain our organization in that respect. As a result of this arrangement we shall receive at the Foreign Office now the economic intelligence which used to go to the Ministry of Economic Warfare. That will be of great value to us in our political work; and also, a new Department which I am setting up will be able to make use of the economic intelligence that we receive. There will be, as a result, a closer relation between our political and economic policies as a whole, and I British Speeches of the Day hasten to add, it does not mean that I am attempting to take any duties away from my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade or my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. But it is the truth that foreign policy and economic policy are now more closely related; or perhaps, what is more probable, there is a better understanding now than there used to be of how closely they are related. But however we express it, there is no doubt of the need for an organization such as I have described and which I would like to describe more fully at a later time .... I want for a few minutes . to look in to the future, as some of the hon. Members have done. There has been much said about the League of Nations, where it succeeded, and where it failed. I am not going to argue that now. There is not time, and even if there were it would take many hours of discussion, and there would be many divergent opinions. The Prime Minister explained yesterday that we do not want to impose upon others in detail whatever our ide&.s may be; at the same time we are entitled to say what our general ideas are about world organization. I would like to leave with the Committee just a few principles on which we suggest this future organization should be based. They are these: first, that the world organization must be designed in the first instance to prevent a recurrence of aggression by Germany and Japan and must be fully equipped with Forces to meet, the purpose; secondly, that to ensure this, there must be close political and military co-operation between the United States, the Soviet Union, the British Commonwealth and China . and other Powers; thirdly, that the responsibility in any future world organization must be related to power, and consequently the world organization should be constructed on and around the four great Powers I have mentioned and all other peace loving States should come in to play their part in the structure; fourthly, that the world organization should be flexible and not rigid, that is to say it should grow by practice and not try straight away to work to a fixed and rigid code or rule; and, fifthly, all Powers great and small, included in the world organization, should strive for economic as well as for political collaboration. I understand only too well the difficulties in any attempt to translate into practical experience the principles I have outlined. What I can say is that we have already begun informal conversations with other Powers about these proposi- tions and I hope that in coming months we shall be able to make more progress with them. At least, we are convinced that it is only by translating into the period of peace the confidence which we have built up and the machinery we have built up for collaboration as Allies in war that we can hope to save the world from a repetition of those conflicts which twice in our generation have caused so much misery to mankind. I have tried to give the Committee some account of our policy, and I can only repeat as I began that, despite the difficulties to which the hon. Members have referred, we shall persist in our course and do so with a greater measure of hope as a result of the meetings of the Prime Ministers held in London in these last weeks. 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