 Churchill's Maiden's Speech. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Eugene Smith. Speech given by Winston Churchill to the House of Commons, 18 February 1901. I understood that the Honourable Member to whose speech the House has just listened had intended to move an amendment to the address. The text of the amendment, which had appeared in the papers, was singularly mild and moderate in tone, but mild and moderate as it was, neither the Honourable Member nor his political friends had cared to expose it to criticism or to challenge a division upon it. Indeed, when we compare the moderation of the amendment with the very bitter speech which the Honourable Member has just delivered, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the moderation of the amendment was the moderation of the Honourable Member's political friends and leaders and that the bitterness of his speech is all his own. It has been suggested to me that it might perhaps have been better upon the whole if the Honourable Member, instead of making his speech without moving his amendment, had moved his amendment without making his speech. I would not complain of any remarks of the Honourable Member, were I called upon to do so. In my opinion, based upon the experience of the most famous men whose names have adorned the records of the House, no national emergency short, let us say, of the actual invasion of this country itself, ought in any way to restrict or prevent the entire freedom of parliamentary discussion. Moreover, I do not believe that the Boers would attach particular importance to the utterances of the Honourable Member. No people in the world received so much verbal sympathy and so little practical support as the Boers. If I were a Boer fighting in the field, I would not allow myself to be taken in by any message of sympathy, not even if it were signed by a hundred Honourable Members. The Honourable Member dwelt at great length upon the question of farm-burning. I do not propose to discuss the ethics of farm-burning now, but Honourable Members should, I think, cast their eyes back to the fact that no considerations of humanity prevented the German army from throwing its shells into dwelling houses in Paris and starving the inhabitants of that great city to the extent that they had to live upon rats and like atrocious foods in order to compel the garrison to surrender. I venture to think His Majesty's government would not have been justified in restricting their commanders in the field from any methods of warfare which are justified by presidents set by European and American generals during the last 50 or 60 years. I do not agree very fully with the charges of treachery on the one side and barbarity on the other. From what I saw of the war, and I sometimes saw something of it, I believe that as compared with other wars, especially those in which a civil population took part, this war in South Africa has been on the whole carried on with unusual humanity and generosity. The Honourable Member for Carnivon Burroughs has drawn attention to the case of one general officer, and although I deprecate debates upon the characters of individual general officers who are serving the country at this moment, because I know personally General Bruce Hamilton, whom the Honourable Member with Admiral Burroughs described as General Brute Hamilton, I feel unable to address the House without offering my humble testimony to the fact that in all His Majesty's army there are few men with better feeling, more kindness of heart, or with higher courage than General Bruce Hamilton. There is a point of difference which has been raised by the right Honourable Gentleman, the Leader of the Opposition upon the question of the policy to be pursued in South Africa after this war has been brought to a conclusion. So far as I have been able to make out the difference between the government and the opposition on this question is that whereas His Majesty's government proposed that when hostilities are brought to a conclusion there shall be an interval of civil government before full representative rights are extended to the peoples of these countries. On the other hand, the right Honourable Gentleman, the Leader of the Opposition, believes that these representative institutions will be more quickly obtained if the military government be prolonged as a temporary measure and no interval of civil government be interposed. I hope I am not misinterpreting the right Honourable Gentleman in any way. If I am, I trust He will not hesitate to correct me because I should be very sorry in any way to misstate His views. If that is the situation, I will respectfully ask the House to allow me to examine these alternative propositions. I do not wish myself to lay down the law or thrust my views upon Honourable Members. I have travelled a good deal about South Africa during the last ten months under varying circumstances and I should like to lay before the House all the considerations which have been very forcibly borne in upon me during that period. In the first place, I would like to look back to the original cause for which we went to war. We went to war, I mean, of course, we were gone to war with, in connection with the extension of the franchise. We began negotiation with the Boers in order to extend the franchise to the people of the Transvaal. When I say the people of the Transvaal, I mean the whole people of the Transvaal and not necessarily those who arrived there first. At that time, there were nearly two-and-a-half times as many British and non-Dutch as there were Boers, but during the few weeks before the outbreak of the war, every train was crowded with British subjects who were endeavouring to escape from the approaching conflict and so it was that the wheatlanders were scattered all over the world. It seems to me that when the war is over, we ought not to forget the original object with which we undertook the negotiations which led to the war. If I may lay down anything, I would ask the House to establish the principle that they ought not to extend any representative institutions to the people of the Transvaal until such time as the population has regained its ordinary level. What could be more dangerous, ridiculous, futile than to throw the responsible government of a ruined country on that remnant of the population, that particular section of the population, which is actively hostile to the fundamental institutions of the state? I think there ought to be no doubt and no difference of opinion on the point that between the firing of the last shot and the casting of the first vote, there must be an appreciable interval that must be filled by a government of some kind or another. I invite the House to consider which form of government, civil government or military government, is most likely to be conducive to the restoration of the banished prosperity of the country, and most likely to encourage the return of the population now scattered far and wide. I understand that there are honorable members who are in hopes that representative institutions may directly follow military government, but I think they cannot realize thoroughly how very irksome such military government is. I have the greatest respect for British officers, and when I hear them attacked, as some honorable members have done in their speeches, it makes me very sorry and very angry, too. Although I regard British officers in the field of war and in dealing with native races as the best officers in the world, I do not believe that either their training or their habits of thought qualify them to exercise arbitrary authority over civil populations of European race. I have often myself been very much ashamed to see respectable old boar farmers. The boar is a curious combination of the squire and the peasant, and under the rough coat of the farmer there are very often to be found the instincts of the squire. I have been ashamed to see such men ordered about peremptorily by young subaltern officers as if they were private soldiers. I do not hesitate to say that as long as you have anything like direct military government, there will be no revival of trade, no return of the Wheatlander population, no influx of immigrants from other parts of the world, nothing but despair and discontent on the part of the boar population, and growing resentment on the part of our own British settlers. If there was a system of civil government, on the other hand, which I think we have an absolute moral right to establish if only from the fact that this country through the imperial ex-checker will have to provide the money, if you had a civil government under such an administrator as Sir Alfred Milner, it is not for me to eulogize that distinguished administrator. I am sure he enjoys the confidence of the whole of a conservative party, and there are great many members on the other side of the house who do not find it convenient in some minds to disregard Sir Alfred Milner's deliberate opinion on South African affairs. As soon as it is known that there is in the Transvaal a government under which property and liberty are secure, so soon as it is known that in these countries one can live freely and safely, there would be a rush of immigrants from all parts of the world to develop the country and to profit by the great revival of trade which usually follows the war of all kinds. If I may judge by my own experience, there are many members of this house who have received letters from their constituents asking whether it was advisable to go out to South Africa. When this policy of immigration is well advanced, we shall again have the great majority of the people of the Transvaal firmly attached and devoted to the imperial connection, and when you can extend representative institutions to them, you will find them reposing securely upon the broad basis of the consent of the governed while the rights of the minority will be effectively protected and preserved by the tactful and judicious intervention of the imperial authority. May I say that it was this prospect of a loyal and anglicized Transvaal turning of the scale in our favor in South Africa which must have been the original Good Hope from which the Cape has taken its name. I may be to criticize the proposals which come from such a distinguished authority as the leader of the opposition, but I find it impossible not to say that in comparing these two alternative plans, one with the other, I must proclaim my strong preference for the course His Majesty's government proposed to adopt. I pass now from the question of the ultimate settlement of the two late republics to the immediate necessities of the situation. What ought to be the present policy of the government? I take it that there is a pretty general consensus of opinion in this house that it ought to be to make it easy and honorable for the boars to surrender and painful and perilous for them to continue in the field. Let the government proceed on both those lines concurrently and at full speed. I sympathize very heartily with my honorable friend, the senior member from Oldham, who in a speech delivered last year showed great anxiety that everything should be done to make the boars understand exactly what terms were offered to them. And I earnestly hope that the right honorable gentleman, the colonial secretary, will leave nothing undone to bring home to those brave and unhappy men who are fighting in the field that whenever they are prepared to recognize that their small independence of the British Empire there will be a full guarantee for the security of their property and religion, an assurance of equal rights, a promise of representative institutions. And last of all, but not least of all, what the British army would most readily accord to a brave and enduring foe, all the honors of war. I hope the right honorable gentleman will not allow himself to be discouraged by any rebuffs which his envoys may meet with, but will persevere in endeavoring to bring before these people the conditions on which at any moment they may obtain peace and the friendship of Great Britain. Of course, we can only promise, and it rests with the boars whether they will accept our conditions. They may refuse the generous terms offered them and stand or fall by their old cry, death or independence. I do not see anything to rejoice at in that prospect because if it be so, the war will enter upon a very sad and gloomy phase. If the boars remain deaf to the voice of reason and blind to the hand of friendship, if they refuse all overtures and disdain all terms, then while we cannot help admiring their determination and endurance we can only hope that our own race in the pursuit of what they feel to be a righteous cause will show determination as strong and endurance as lasting. It is wonderful that honourable members who form the Irish party should find it in their hearts to speak and act as they do in regard to a war in which so much has been accomplished by the courage and sacrifices and above all by the military capacity of Irishmen. There is a practical reason that members will not think it presumptuous in me to bring to their notice is that they would be well advised cordially to cooperate with His Majesty's government in bringing the war to a speedy conclusion because they must know that no Irish question or agitation can possibly take any hold on the imagination of the people of Great Britain so long as all our thoughts are with the soldiers who are fighting in South Africa. What are the military measures we ought to take? I have no doubt that other opportunities will be presented to the House to discuss them, but so far as I have been able to understand the whispers I have heard in the air there are on the whole considerable signs of possible improvement in the South African situation. There are appearances that the boars are weakening and that the desperate and feverish efforts they have made so long cannot be indefinitely sustained. If that be so, now is the time for the government and the army to redouble their efforts. It is incumbent on members like myself who represent large working class constituencies to bring home to the government the fact that the country does not want to count the cost of the war until it is won. I think we all rejoiced to see the announcement in the papers that 30,000 more mounted men were being dispatched to South Africa. I cannot help noticing with intense satisfaction that not content with sending large numbers of men, the Secretary of State for War has found some excellent Indian officers, prominent among whom is Sir Bindan Blood, who will go out to South Africa and bring their knowledge of guerrilla warfare on the Indian frontier to bear on the peculiar kind of warfare, I will not call it guerrilla warfare, now going on in South Africa. I shall always indulge the hope that great as these preparations are, they will not be all and that some fine afternoon the Secretary of State for War will come down to the House with a brand new scheme not only for sending all the reinforcements necessary for keeping the army up to a fixed standard of 250,000 men in spite of the losses by battle and disease but also for increasing it by a regular monthly quota of 2,000 or 3,000 men so that the bores will be compelled with ever diminishing resources to make head against ever increasing difficulties and will not only be exposed to the beating of the waves but to the force of the rising tide. Some honorable members have seen fit either in this place or elsewhere to stigmatize this war as a war of greed. I regret that I feel bound to repudiate that pleasant suggestion if there were persons who rejoiced in this war and went out with hopes of excitement or the lust of conflict they have had enough and more than enough today. If, as the honorable member for North Hampton has several times suggested certain capitalists spent money in bringing on this war in the hope that it would increase the value of their mining properties they know now that they made an uncommonly bad bargain with the mass of the nation with the whole people of the country this war from beginning to end has only been a war of duty. They believe and they have shown in the most remarkable matter that they believe that His Majesty's government and the colonial secretary have throughout been actuated by the same high and patriotic motives they know that no other inspiration could sustain and animate the regulars and volunteers through all these hard months have had to bear the brunt of the public contention. They may indeed have to regret as I myself have the loss of a great many good friends in the war. We cannot help feeling sorry for many of the incidents of the war but for all of that I do not find it possible on reflection to accuse the general policy which led to the war. We have no cause to be ashamed or have we any right to be doleful or lugubrious. I think if any honorable members are feeling unhappy about the stave affairs in South Africa I would recommend them a receipt from which I myself derive much exhilaration. Let them look to the other great dependencies and colonies of the British Empire and see what the effect of the war has been there. Whatever we may have lost in doubtful friends in Cape Colony 10 times or perhaps 20 times over in Canada and Australia where the people down to the humblest farmer in the most distant provinces have by their effective participation in the conflict been able to realize as they never could realize before that they belong to the empire and that the empire belongs to them. I cannot sit down without seeing how very grateful I am for the kindness and patience with which the house has heard me and which have been extended to me I well know not on my own account but because of a certain splendid memory which many honorable members still preserve end of speech. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Lisa Cho Speech given by Winston Churchill to the House of Commons 13th May 1901 I find myself differing on this occasion from the right honorable Baronet the member for the forest of Dean and although we are on different sides of the house I regret that I do not differ from him in the right way at all he is very anxious to increase the cost of the army I have put the words down I understand he is anxious to increase the cost of the army in some respects and he has delivered a speech which is a very great weight coming as it does from one who is justly entitled to be considered a military expert I think that the right honorable Baronet is also a remarkable instance of a very peculiar phenomenon. I have always noticed that whenever a radical takes to imperialism touches it in a very acute form that perhaps explains the vigorous manner in which the right honorable Baronet has defended further military expenditure at this juncture I have no doubt the house has been powerfully impressed by the speech delivered on this side by my right honorable friend the chief secretary for Ireland I think we may congratulate ourselves on the return of the chief secretary to the theatre of war in which he had previously earned such a distinguished reputation we have heard from him a very illuminating and comprehensive speech on the army question and I for one have always regarded it as rather unfair that my right honorable friend who more than any other minister was responsible for encouraging the nation to embark on this course of military expenditure should escape into the secluded tranquility of the Irish office and leave to the secretary for war the duty of facing the storm that this expenditure has excited and is arousing but I cannot follow my right honorable friend on this occasion as I have followed him in the past and as I hope to follow him in the future I wish to complain very respectfully but most urgently that the army estimates involved by the scheme lately explained by the secretary of state for war are much too high and ought to be reduced if not this year certainly at the conclusion of the South African campaign I regarded as a grave mistake in imperial policy to spend 30 millions a year on the army I hold that the continued increase in army expenditure cannot be viewed by supporters of the government without the greatest alarm and apprehension and my members who represent working class constituencies without extreme dislike I desire to urge considerations of economy on his majesty's government and as a practical step that the number of soldiers which they propose to keep ready for expeditionary purposes should be substantially reduced first of all I exclude altogether from this discussion the cost of the South African war once you are so unfortunate as to be drawn into a war no price is too great to pay for an early and victorious piece all economy of soldiers or supplies is the worst extravagance in war I am concerned only with the estimates for the ordinary service of the year which are increasing at such a rate that it is impossible to view them without alarm does the house realize what British expenditure on armaments amounts to see how our army estimates have grown 17 millions in 1894 18 in 1897 19 in 1899 24 in 1900 and finally in the present year no less than 29 millions 800,000 indeed we are moving rapidly but in what direction sir I see in this accelerating increase the momentum of a falling body and a downward course I do not wish to reproach the secretary of state for war for the enormous estimates now presented he is not to blame the secretary of state for war does not usually direct or even powerfully influence the policy of a government he is concerned with his own department and it is his business to get all he can for that department I must say the right honorable gentleman appears to have done his work remarkably well indeed if the capacity of a war minister may be measured in any way but the amount of money he can obtain from his colleagues for military purposes the right honorable gentleman will most certainly go down to history as the greatest war minister this country has ever had I think this house ought to take a wider view of our imperial responsibilities than is perhaps possible from the windows of the war office if I might be allowed to revive a half forgotten episode it is half forgotten because it has passed into that period of twilight which intervenes between the bright glare of newspaper controversy and the calm rays of the lamp of history I would recall that once on a time a conservative and a unionist administration came into power supported by a large majority nearly as powerful and much more cohesive than that which now supports his majesty's government and when the time came round to consider the estimates the usual struggle took place between the great spending departments and the treasury I say usual at least it used to be so I do not know whether it is so now the government of the day threw their weight on the side of the great spending departments and the chancellor of the exchequer resigned the controversy was bitter the struggle uncertain but in the end the government triumphed and the chancellor of the exchequer went down forever and with him as it now seems there fell also the cause of retrenchment and economy so that the very memory thereof seems to have perished the words themselves have a curiously old fashioned ring about them I suppose that was a lesson which chancellors of the exchequer were not likely to forget in a hurry I should like if I might be permitted to read the passage which appears extremely relevant to the question now before the house writing from the Carlton club on the 22nd of December 1886 the chancellor of the exchequer and resigning his office wrote to Lord Salisbury who had pointed out the desperate state of Europe and the possibilities of immediate war very much in the same way as he has done recently the chancellor of the exchequer replied as follows the great question of public expenditure is not so technical or departmental as might be supposed by a superficial critic foreign policy and free expenditure upon armaments act and react upon one another that has been said before in this debate and it is what the chief secretary for Ireland called a hack need tag I think with as much reason you might also call the ten commandments a hack need tag a wise foreign policy will extricate England from continental struggles and keep her outside of German, Russian, French Austrian disputes I have for some time observed a tendency in the government attitude to pursue a different line of action which I have not been able to modify or check this tendency is certain to be accentuated if large estimates are presented to and voted by parliament the possession of a very sharp sword offers a temptation which becomes irresistible to demonstrate the efficiency of the weapon in a powerful manner I remember the vulnerable and scattered character of the empire the universality of our commerce the peaceful tendencies of our democratic electorate the hard times, the pressure of competition and the high taxation now imposed and with these facts vividly before me I declined to be a party to encouraging the military and militant circle of the war office and admiralty high and desperate stakes which other nations seem to be forced to risk wise words sir stand the test of time and I am very glad the house has allowed me after an interval of 15 years to lift again the tattered flag I found lying on a stricken field but what was the amount of the annual estimates on which this desperate battle was fought it may be difficult for the house to get it though it is within the memory of so many honorable members the estimates for the year said the chancellor of the exchequer in resigning for the two services amount to no less than 31 million pounds and I cannot consent to that what are the estimates we are asked to vote now we are now asked to vote quite irrespective of the drain of a costly war still in progress than 59 millions for the ordinary service of the year this incident which I have been bringing to the mind of the house did not happen a century ago it is quite recent history the leader of the house was already a famous minister the present chancellor had already been leader of the house lord salisbury was already prime minister when 31 millions was considered by the treasury a demand which ought to be resisted tooth and nail what has happened in the meanwhile to explain this astonishing increase has the wealth of the country doubled has the population of the empire doubled have the armies of Europe doubled is the commercial competition of foreign nations so much reduced are we become the undisputed master in the markets of the world is there no poverty at home has the english channel dried up and are we no longer in island is the revenue so easily raised that we do not know how to spend it are the treasury buildings pulled down and all our financiers fled what has happened to explain this extraordinary change during the few weeks I have been a member of this house I have heard honorable members advocate many causes but no voices raised in the cause of economy the financial secretary to the war office who above all should keep some eye on the purse strings speaking the other night at some dinner boasted that he was not animated by any niggardly spirit of economy not one voice is raised for reduced expenditure and enlightening the public burden if I may accept in order to be quite correct the protests raised the economy from the irish benches economy of money not economy of time and even through the irish protest for economy I am sorry to say there ran the melancholy dirge and how much is ireland going to get out of it how can this tendency to extravagant expenditure be checked the opposition can do nothing of course we shall out vote them the house has no control whatever oversupply the treasury can do nothing against the great spending departments and in view of the fate that befell the last chancellor of the exchequer who was obdurate can we wonder that the present distinguished occupant of that office has been compelled to bow before the storm the chancellor of the exchequer gave an extraordinary reason for not objecting to but supporting this military expenditure he said it had been demanded that it was popular expenditure always is popular the only unpopular part about it is the raising of the money to pay the expenditure but if that is an extraordinary reason it is nothing to that put forward by my right honorable friend tonight who asked pathetically what are we to do with our generals when they come home from South Africa with no more worlds to conquer they must keep their hands in and they must be provided with an army even if it does cost 30 millions a year to enable them to keep their hands in and to save them from getting out of practice I am I know a very young man but I confess I never heard anything like that before I had always been led to believe that the generals existed for the army and not the army for the generals the phrase happy go lucky self indulgence which was used by my honorable friend seems to me to come in very appropriately somewhere about here my right honorable friend is content to army with a blunderboss well a blunderboss is a traditional weapon with which the British householder defends himself from those who seek to plunder him though it is a very antiquated and obsolete weapon yet close quarters at about the range at which my right honorable friend is sitting now it has been found very effective I stand here to plead the cause of economy I think it is about time that a voice was heard from this side of the house pleading that unpopular cause that someone not on the bench opposite but a conservative by tradition whose fortunes are linked indissolubly to the Tory party who knows something of the majesty and power of Britain beyond the seas upon whom rests no taint of cosmopolitanism should stand forward and say what he can to protest against the policy of daily increasing the public burden if such a one is to stand forward in such a cause then I say it humbly but with I hope becoming pride no one has a better right than I have for this is a cause I have inherited and a cause for which the late lord Randolph Churchill made the greatest sacrifice of any minister of modern times now bearing all that in mind I come to the scheme of the secretary of state I do not propose to consider that scheme in detail that would be an interminable labor when the right honorable gentlemen introduced the scheme in a speech of surpassing clearness it looked genuine but in the weeks that have passed since he disclosed it to the house it has been sadly knocked about crush in the press and exploded in the magazines and has excited nothing but doubt in the country the number of amendments on the paper shows the feeling of the house and I know what some of the soldiers say about it I do not feel equal to repeating their expressions here but I shall be delighted to inform any honorable member desiring information privately it is no good mincing matters this is not the best scheme that could be devised I do not say that it does not contain any wise and ingenious provisions nor that it will not give strength to the army material strength is expected even in this country to follow great expenditure of money but if the truth must be told although the scheme involves an expenditure of nearly 30 million pounds a year with further increases in prospect it nevertheless leaves most of the great questions connected with army reform almost entirely untouched but what could be expected the ordinary duties of a minister are I have always understood sufficiently arduous the war office is a particularly hard job even in peacetime but we are at war not only has the secretary of state to defend in this house every act of military policy big or little but he has also to see I hope it will not escape his attention that an army of more than 200,000 men with the enemy lacks nothing that wealth or science can produce now that ought to be enough for the energy even of the right honorable gentlemen why sir the labors of Hercules are nothing to it but all this is not enough for the insatiable industry of the right honorable gentlemen he must for suit rearrange the internal mechanism of the war office to pieces while the ship is beating up under full steam against the gale that is not all no in the few moments of leisure that fall to a public man in this country he must thoroughly reorganize and reform the whole system of the army who can wonder that he has increased the quantity of his output only to the detriment of the quality as happens to literary men I had put down an amendment which it will not be in order now to move which to my mind possesses advantages over that we are now discussing in the first place it removed the question from the party sphere in which it now lies and in which it must now be decided in the second place it provided the government with a means of retreat from the very uncomfortable position in which they have managed to get themselves I do not expect honorable members on this side will agree with me and I recognize that I am putting considerable strain upon their forbearance by the view I take of this matter but I ask them for their indulgence while I state my view my view is that we should have gone on with ordinary reforms which do not involve a large increase of expenditure either of money or men the better selection and promotion of officers a question which the Secretary of State has shown himself willing to carry out with unflinching courage the provision of better arms and the gradual adoption of new military material and weapons what is called in the times this morning the grandiose that is the word for which I have been looking the grandiose portion of the scheme should be postponed until such time as the South African war has assumed its true proportions in our eyes and the men now in South Africa best qualified to do so have come home to give their attention to the reorganization of the army and until those managing the war office are relieved from the high pressure at which they are now working that is a tale that has not been unfolded and this question is now before the house on party lines I confess I am unable to support the resolution of the government but the amendment of the leader of the opposition does not attract me anymore his differences are differences of detail not of principle my objections are objections of principle I hold it is unwise to have no regard to the fact that in this reform we are diverting national resources from their proper channels of development it may be argued that if other nations increase their armed force so must we if you look into the tangled mass of figures on this subject you will find that while other nations during the last 15 years have been increasing their navies we have been increasing our expenditure on our army which is not after all our most important weapon I am pleading the cause of economy first of all but I have got two strings to my bell or perhaps I should say two barrels to my blunderbuss failing economy let us have wise expenditure my contention is that we are spending too much money on armaments and so may impair our industries but that if the money has to be spent then it would be better to spend it on the fleet than on the army of course we must have an army not only as a training school for our garrisons abroad but because it would be unhealthy and even immoral for the people of Great Britain to live sleek, timid and secure protected by a circle of ironclad ships it would have been a pleasant task to examine some of the wise and ingenious provisions which the scheme of the secretary of state for war contains but I have assumed a more melancholy duty tonight one perhaps which would be more fittingly discharged by some honorable member on the other side of the house I contend that to spend 30 millions a year on the British army is an unwise policy against which the house must protest sir, at the last election I placarded army reform as large as anyone I am pledged to the hilt to army reform but what is army reform I take it to be one of two things either it means the same efficiency at a reduced cost or increased efficiency for the same cost perhaps it might mean greatly increased efficiency for a slightly increased cost but the one thing it certainly does not mean is a larger number of regular soldiers that is not army reform but army increase in the last four years the present ministers have added no fewer than 37,000 men to the regular standing army a further increase disguised in various ways is contemplated in the present scheme sir, it is against this army increase that I protest first in the interest of economy secondly in the interest of the fleet I complain of the increase in regular soldiers and particularly of the provision of the three army corps which are to be kept ready I contend that they ought to be reduced by two army corps on the ground that one is quite enough to fight savages and three are not enough even to begin to fight Europeans I hope the house will let me elaborate this the enormous and varied frontiers of the empire and our many points of contact with barbarous peoples will surely in the future as in the past draw us into frequent little wars our military system must therefore be adapted for dealing with these minor emergencies smoothly and conveniently but we must not expect to meet the great civilized powers in this easy fashion we must not regard war with a modern power as a kind of game in which we may take a hand and with good lock and good management may play adroitly for an evening and come save home with our winnings it is not that and I rejoice that it cannot be that a European war cannot be anything but a cruel heart-rending struggle which if we are ever to enjoy the bitter fruits of victory must demand perhaps for several years the whole manhood of the nation the entire suspension of peaceful industries and the concentrating to one end of every vital energy in the community I have frequently been astonished since I have been in this house to hear with what composure and how glibly members and even ministers talk of a European war I will not expatiate on the horrors of war but there has been a great change which the house should not omit to notice in former days when wars arose from individual causes from the policy of a minister or the passion of a king when they were fought by small regular armies of professional soldiers and when their course was retarded by the difficulties of communication and supply and often suspended by the winter season it was possible to limit the liabilities of the combatants but now when mighty populations are impelled on each other each individual severally embittered and inflamed when the resources of science and civilization sweep away everything that might mitigate their fury a European war can only end in the ruin of the vanquished and the scarcely less fatal commercial dislocation and exhaustion of the conquerors democracy is more vindictive than cabinets the wars of peoples will be more terrible than those of kings why then it may be said that finally we must neglect nothing to make ourselves secure let us vote this 30 millions without more ado if this vast expenditure on the army were going to make us absolutely secure much though I hate unproductive expenditure I would not complain but it will do no such thing the secretary for war knows none better than he that it will not make us secure if we went to war with any great power his three army corps would scarcely serve as a vanguard if we are hated they will not make us loved they are a broken reed to trust to if we are in danger they will not make us safe they are enough to irritate they are not enough to overaw they cannot make us invulnerable but they may very likely make us venturesome a prudent man insures his house against fire we are often told this military expenditure is an insurance premium while there is no doubt about the premium we are paying that all right but I would respectfully remind the house that the premium has been put up during the last five years and is in fact so high now that so far as I can calculate in order to make our insurance policy a good bargain we should have to have a war equal to the boar war every 15 years but do we get the insurance in putting our trust in an army are we not investing in a shaky concern in a firm that could not meet its obligations when called on it may be said that it is not a mere question of pounds shillings and pens but that it is a question of the honor and security of the empire I do not agree the honor and security of the british empire do not depend and can never depend on the british army the admiralty is the only office strong enough to insure the british empire and it can only be strong enough to do so because it has hitherto enjoyed the preferential monopoly of the sea moreover the provision of these three army corps ready to embark and attack anybody anywhere is undoubtedly most provocative to the other powers no other nation makes or has ever made such a provision and what of its effect on us it is quite true that foreign nations possess gigantic armies and have lived at peace for 30 years foreign nations know what war is there is scarcely a capital in europe which has not been taken in the last 100 years and it is the lively realization of the awful consequences of war which maintains the peace of europe we do not know what war is we have had a glimpse of it in south africa even in miniature it is hideous and appalling but for all our experience war to us does not mean what it means to the frenchman or the german or the austrian are we not arming ourselves with their weapons without being under their restraints what I fear is that these three costly and beautiful army corps which are to be kept ready almost at a moment's notice for foreign war will develop in the country if they need developing feelings of pride and power which will not only be founded in actual military superiority but only on the appearance of it and in these days when popular newspapers appealing with authority to countless readers are prepared almost every morning to urge us into war against one or other and sometimes several of the great powers of the earth surely we ought not to make it seem so easy and even attractive to embark on such terrible enterprises or to think that with the land forces at our disposal we may safely intermeddle with our European game what is our weapon then the only weapon with which we can expect to cope with great nations is the navy this is what the chief secretary to the lord lieutenant calls trust to luck and the navy policy I confess I do trust the navy this new distrust of the navy a kind of shrinking from our natural element the blue water on which we have ruled so long is the most symptom of the military hydrophobia with which we are afflicted without a supreme navy whatever military arrangements we may make whether for foreign expeditions or home defense must be utterly vain and futile with such a navy we may hold any antagonist at arms length and feed ourselves in the meantime until if we find it necessary we can turn every city in the country into an arsenal and the whole male population into an army sir the superiority of the navy is vital to our national existence that has been said before no one will deny that or thank me for repeating the obvious yet this tremendous army expenditure directly challenges the principal and those who advocated are false to the principal they so loudly proclaim for the main reason that enables us to maintain the finest navy in the world is that whereas every European power has to support a vast army first of all we in this fortunate happy island relieved by our insular position of a double burden may turn our undivided efforts and attention to the fleet why should we sacrifice a game in which we are sure to win to play a game in which we are bound to lose for the same role most certainly has a converse application and just as foreign powers by reason of their pressing land responsibilities must be inferior to us at sea so we whatever our effort whatever our expenditure by reason of our paramount see responsibilities must be inferior to them on land and surely to adopt the double policy of equal effort both on the army and navy spending 30 millions on each to combine the disadvantages and dangers of all courses without the advantages or security of any and to run the risk of crashing to the ground between two stools with a navy uselessly weak and an army uselessly strong we are told we have commitments not a very cheerful expression in three continents and that it is in consequence of these commitments that we must keep three army corps ready for immediate expeditionary purposes on what principle are there to be three rather than two or eight I had hoped that the formulation of some definite principle governing our military needs would be a prominent feature of any scheme of army reform submitted to the nation I suppose the principle on which the army corps have been selected is one continent one army corps well sir I should like to look into that in the first place there is Asia what is our danger there of course it is an Anglo-Russian war on the frontier of India but if anyone takes Lord Salisbury's advice and sometimes he gives very good advice to use large scale maps of Central Asia they will see that any Russian enterprise against India would either have to be made with a small force in which case our Indian army would be sufficient to resist it or else railways would have to be built just as Lord Kitchener had to build a railway to Khartoum to feed the great invading forces in the barren lands through which they must march in which case we should have plenty of time to levy and train as many British troops as we might think fit then we have a commitment in North America a commitment which is growing more able to take care of itself every day not a commitment about which we need feel much anxiety sir we must not however shrink from the responsibility of course the danger which might assail us in this quarter of the globe would only be a war with the great friendly commercial nation to the southward evil would be the counsellors dark would be the day when we embarked on that most foolish, futile and fatal of all wars a war with United States but is such a fit of madness should attack the Anglo-Saxon family then I say both nations having long enjoyed a glorious immunity from the curse of militarism would be similarly placed and no decisive events could be looked for until the war had been in progress for a year or two and enormous armies had been raised by both sides and in this war as in any other war of this kind your three army corps would be merely the first few drops of the thundershower we shall be told the lesson of the South African war must not be forgotten we must profit by our experience in South Africa and be prepared next time for all eventualities the present scheme of army increase is justified mainly on the ground of our experience in South Africa we must be ready next time says the man in the street not for worlds would I speak disrespectfully of the man in the street but sir in the first place I cannot help hoping next time may be a long way off I trust the government do not contemplate fighting these wars in South Africa subtenially I trust they will finish this one in such a style that future recurrence will be utterly impossible and that an end will be made once and for all of dangers from within that continent dangers from without can never exist in that quarter so long as we preserve our naval supremacy once that is lost such dangers would be dwarfed by greater catastrophes at home but I will not look only to the future I have no hesitation in asserting that even if this scheme had been carried into effect five years ago and we had had our three expeditionary army corps ready for foreign service in October 1899 even then the course of the South African war would not have been materially different you would have had your three army corps ready but with the possession of those three army corps have told the intelligence officers and the general staff and the committee of national defense that more than one army corps was needed and even if they had advised that three army corps should be sent forthwith that would not have been enough for as we know to our cost three army corps were needed but six see what inadequate security this scheme provides if we are to embark on land enterprises against civilized peoples the boars were the smallest of all civilized nations yet this precious army scheme in spite of the 30 millions a year it is to cost does not provide half the troops needed to conquer them and if this scheme were carried into effect many people think it cannot be carried into effect and the South African war were to begin over again you would again have to call on volunteers yeomanry and militia to alter their original contract with the state and serve beyond the seas yes against this the smallest of all civilized nations we should have to fall back in these emergencies on the power of unrestricted sea communication the wealth of a commercial country the patriotic and war-like impulses of a people not weary of the military yoke the armies of Europe are bigger than those of the boars and cheaper than our own France in this present year for an expenditure of 28 millions can mobilize 20 army corps Germany for 26 millions gets 22 army corps Russia for 32 millions can set on foot including 23 regular army corps a total force estimated at over 3 millions of men and what can Great Britain do taught by the experience of the South African war rich in her commerce and the generosity of her people guided by the unfailing instinct of the war office Great Britain would be defended after this scheme has been carried into effect by no fewer 3 trained army corps and 3 partly trained army corps and for this she must pay 2 millions a year more than France 4 millions a year more than Germany and within 2 millions of the total cost of the whole great Russian army but in spite of every explanatory circumstance after every allowance has been made one great truth glows and glares in our faces veil it how we may standing armies which abound on the European continent are not indigenous to the British soil they do not flourish in our climate they are not suited to our national character and though with artificial care and at a huge and disproportionate cost we may cultivate and preserve them they will after all only be poor, stunted sickly plans of foreign origin the empire which has grown up around these islands is essentially commercial and marine the whole course of our history the geography of the country all the evidences of the present situation proclaim beyond doubt that our power and prosperity alike and together depend on the economic command of markets and the naval command of the sea and from the highest sentimental reasons not less than from the most ordinary practical considerations we must avoid a servile imitation of the clanking military empires of the European continent by which we cannot obtain the military predominance and security which is desired but only impair and vitiate the natural sources of our strength and vigor there is a higher reason still there is a moral force the divine foundation of power which as the human race advances will more and more strengthen and protect those who enjoy it which would have protected the boars better than all their cannon and brave commandos if instead of being ignorant, aggressive and corrupt they had enjoyed that high moral reputation which protected us in the dark days of the war from European interference for in spite of every calamity and lie the truth comes to the top and it is known alike by peoples and by rulers that on the whole British influence is healthy and kindly and makes for the general happiness and welfare of mankind and we shall make a fatal bargain if we allow the moral force which this country has so long exerted to become diminished or perhaps even destroyed for the sake of the costly trumpery dangerous military play things on which the secretary of state for war has set his heart End of speech 8th of July 1920 I think it may make for the convenience of the debate if I speak at this early period in the 5pm afternoon in order to put the committee in possession of the views taken by the war office and to offer a full explanation of the course they have adopted I shall certainly endeavour to follow very carefully the advice which my right honourable friend who has just spoken has given that we should approach this subject in a calm spirit avoiding passion and avoiding attempts to excite prejudice that we should address ourselves to the subject with a desire to do today what is most in accordance with a long view of the general interests of the British Empire there has not been I suppose for many years a case of this kind which has raised so many grave and wide issues are in regard to which a right and wise decision is so necessary in the general interest there is the intensity of racial feeling which has been aroused on both sides of India every word we speak ought to have regard to that there are the difficulties of military officers who in these turbulent times have been or are likely to be called upon to handle their troops in the suppression of civil disturbance there are the requirements of justice and fair play towards an individual there are the moral and humanitarian conceptions which are involved all these combined make the task of the government and of the committee one of exceptional seriousness delicacy and responsibility I will deal first with the action of the army council for which I accept full responsibility the conduct of a military officer may be dealt with in three perfectly distinct spheres first of all he may be removed from his employment or his appointment relegated to half pay and told that he has no prospects of being employed again this may be done to him by a simple administrative act it is sufficient for the competent superior authority to decide that the interests of the public service would be better served if someone else were appointed in his stead to justify and complete the taking of such a step the officer in question has no redress he has no claim to a court or inquiry or a court marshal he has no protection of any kind against being deprived of his appointment and being informed that he has no further prospects for another this procedure may seem somewhat harsh but a little reflection will show that it is inevitable there is no excuse for superior authority not choosing the most suitable agents for particular duties and not removing unsuitable agents from particular duties during the war the committee knows hundreds and probably thousands of officers have been so dealt with by their superiors and since the war the tremendous contraction of the army has imposed similar hardships on hundreds and possibly thousands of officers against whom not one word of reproach could be uttered and whose careers in many cases have been careers of real distinction and of invariable good service this applies to all appointments in the army and I have no doubt in the navy too and it applies with increasing severity in proportion as the appointments are high ones from the humble lance corporal who reverts to private by a stroke of the pen from the regimental adjutant if the colonel thinks he would prefer some other subaltern up to the highest general of field marshal all officers are amenable to this procedure in regard to the appointments which they hold the procedure is well understood it is hardly ever challenged it is not challenged by general Dyer in his statement it is accepted with soldierly fortitude because it is believed on the whole that the administration of these great responsibilities is carried out in a fair and honest spirit indeed when one thinks of the hundreds of officers of high rank who in the last year have had their professional careers brought abruptly and finally to a close and the patience good temper and dignity with which this great personal misfortune has been born one cannot help feeling a great admiration for the profession of arms to which those officers belong that is the first method by which military officers may be dealt with under it the officer reverts automatically to half pay in a very large proportion of cases having reverted to half pay he applies to be placed on retired pay because especially in the case of senior officers retired pay is often appreciably higher than half pay I now come to the second method the second method is of a more serious character and it affects the employment of an officer but his status at his rank here it is not a question of choosing the right man for a particular job but of retiring an officer compulsorily from the service or imposing on him some reduction of forfeiture in his pension or retired pay in this case the officer is protected under article 527 of the royal warrant by the fact that it is necessary for three members of the army council to approve the proceeding and by certain rights of laying his case before them or the same the secretary of state for the time being by virtue of his office has the power to make a submission direct to the crown and advise that an officer is required compulsorily or simply that his name be removed from the list his majesty having no further use for his services Mr. Bottomley what has all this to do with general dire I mean with the specific case we're dealing with I have great respect for the committee and I do not believe it will refuse to allow a minister or a government to unfold a reasoned and solid argument to its attention and I am surprised that my honourable friend who himself takes a not undistinguished part in debates should not appreciate the fact and should not be willing to facilitate my doing so I was saying that that is the second method in which the personal reputation of an officer is undoubtedly affected the third method is of a definitely penal character liberty, life are affected casheering, imprisonment or the death penalty may be involved and for this third category of course the whole resources and protection which judicial procedure lawful tribunals and British justice accord to an accused person are brought into play those are the three different levels of procedure in regard to the treatment of the conduct of officers although my honourable friend has not seen the relevance of it I think it right at the outset to unfold these distinctions very carefully to the committee and to ask the committee to bear them attentively in mind coming to the case of General Dyer it will be seen that he was removed from his appointment by the commander in chief in India that he was passed over by the selection board in India for promotion that he was informed as hundreds of officers are being and have been informed that there was no prospect of further employment for him under the government of India and that in consequence he reverted automatically to half pay these proceedings were brought formally to the notice of the army council by letter from the India office which recommended further that he should be retired from the army and by a telegram from the commander in chief in India which similarly recommended that he should be ordered to retire Mr. Gwyn what was the date that was about a month ago at a later date the board publicly to the notice of the army council by the published dispatch of the secretary of state for India which stated that the circumstances of the case had been referred to the army council the first step taken by the army council was to direct General Dyer we had an application from him that he desired to take this course to submit a statement of his case for their consideration that statement is I think in the possession of the committee at the present time we asked him to make that statement and we accepted his request that he should be allowed to make it because we felt that if any action was to be taken against General Dyer apart from removing him from his appointments and employment in India which is a matter of selection if any action under the second of the three methods I have described was to be taken against him it was essential that he should furnish a statement in his own behalf and should be judged upon that and not upon evidence which he had given as a witness in an inquiry before which he had been summoned without having any reason to believe that he was cited as an incriminating party the conclusions of the hunter committee might furnish the fullest justification for removing him from his appointment Commander Belair's no, no I am expressing my opinion when my honourable and gallant friend is called he will express his opinion that is the process which we call debate but if any question of retiring General Dyer from the army was to be examined under article 527 a direct statement from him in his own defence was indispensable I read yesterday to the house the conclusion which was reached by the army council it was a conclusion which was reached unanimously and it speaks for itself it must be remembered however that the army council must deal with these matters primarily and indeed mainly from a military point of view they have to consider the rights and interests of officers of the army and they have to consider the effect of any decision which they may come to upon the confidence with which officers will do their duty in the kind of extremely difficult and tragical circumstances in which General Dyer and I am sorry to say a good many other officers of the army have in recent times been placed the army council have to express an opinion of General Dyer's conduct from what is primarily a service standpoint their function is one of greater responsibility but at the same time it is one of a limited and special responsibility nothing could be more unjust than to represent the army council as seeking to raise a constitutional issue or as setting themselves up against the paramount authority of the government of the country I very much regret to have seen that that suggestion has been made it is quite unmerited and uncalled for ask to express their opinion they were bound to give it sincerely and plainly from their special standpoint their conclusion in no way affected the final freedom of action of the cabinet the cabinet has many interests to consider far outside and beyond the scope and authority of a body like the army council which as an administrative body a subordinate body and which is not at the same time a judicial tribunal if the cabinet with their superior authority and more general outlook took the view that further action was required against general Dyer beyond the loss of employment beyond the censure pronounced by the hunter commission by the government of India and by the secretary of state's despatch which was a cabinet document bearing the considered opinion of the government if it was thought further action of a disciplinary character was required the cabinet were perfectly free to take it without any conflict of powers arising between the subordinate administrative army council and the supreme executive council of state I made it perfectly clear to my colleagues on the army council that in assenting to the conclusion to which we came as an army council I held myself perfectly free if I thought right and if the cabinet so decided to make a further submission to the crown for the retirement of general Dyer from the army Lieutenant Colonel Croft and the converse may be true also the cabinet may upset the whole decision also in the other direction certainly the cabinet can certainly alter the employment of any officer I now come to explain and to justify the decision of the cabinet this is the question I have been asking myself and which I think the house should consider were we right in accepting as we have done the conclusion of the army council as terminating the matter so far as general Dyer was concerned or ought we to have taken further action of a disciplinary or quasi-disciplinary character against him here for the first time I shall permit myself to enter to some extent upon certain aspects of the merits of the case however we may dwell upon the difficulties of general Dyer during the Amritsar riots upon the anxious and critical situation in the Punjab upon the danger to Europeans throughout the province upon the long delays which have taken place in reaching a decision about this officer upon the procedure that was at this point or at that point adopted however we may dwell upon all this one tremendous fact stands out I mean the slaughter of nearly four hundred persons and the wounding of probably three to four times as many at the Jalyan Wallabarg on 13th of April that is an episode which appears to me to be without precedent or parallel in the modern history of the British Empire it is an event of an entirely different order from any of those tragical occurrences which take place when troops are brought into collision with the civil population it is an extraordinary event a monstrous event an event which stands in singular and sinister isolation collisions between troops and native populations have been painfully frequent in the melancholy aftermath of the great war my right honourable friend has reminded the house that in this particular series of disturbances there were 36 or 37 cases of firing upon the crowd in India at this particular time and there have been numerous cases in Egypt in all these cases the officer in command is placed in a most painful and difficult position I agree absolutely with what my right honourable friend has said and the opinion he has quoted of the adjutant general in India of the distasteful painful embarrassing torturing situation mental and moral British officer in command of troops is placed when he is called upon to decide whether or not he opens fire not upon the enemies of his countrymen or who are citizens of our common empire no words can be employed which would exaggerate those difficulties but there are certain broad lines by which I think an officer in such cases should be guided first of all I think he may ask himself is the crowd attacking anything or anybody surely that is the first question are they trying to force their way forward to the attack of some building or some cordon of troops or police or are they attempting to attack some band of persons or some individual who has excited their hostility is the crowd attacking that is the first question which would naturally arise the second question is this is the crowd armed that is surely another great simple fundamental question by armed I mean armed with lethal weapons Sir W. joints and Hicks how could they be in India men who take up arms against the state must expect at any moment to be fired upon men who take up arms unlawfully cannot expect that the troops will wait until they are quite ready to begin the conflict Mr. Donald what about Ireland I agree and it is in regard to Ireland that I am specially making this remark or until they have actually begun fighting armed men are in a category absolutely different from unarmed men an unarmed crowd stands in a totally different position from an armed crowd at Amritsar the crowd was neither armed nor attacking I carefully said that when I used the word armed I meant armed with lethal weapons or with firearms there is no dispute between us on that point I was confronted says General Dyer by a revolutionary army what is the chief characteristic of an army surely it is that it is armed this crowd was unarmed these are simple tests which it is not too much to expect officers in these difficult situations to apply Sir W. Davidson how many men had General Dyer with him my honourable friend is as closely acquainted with the case as I am I have read all the papers on the subject when he rises to continue the debate he can perfectly well bring that forward but there is another test which is not quite so simple but which nevertheless has often served as a good guide I mean the doctrine that no more force should be used than is necessary to secure compliance with the law there is also a fourth consideration by which an officer should be guided he should confine himself to a limited and definite objective that is to say to preventing a crowd doing something which they ought not to do ought to complying them to do something which they ought to do all these are good guides for officers placed in the difficult and painful situation in which General Dyer stood my right honourable friend will say it is easy enough to talk like this and to lay down these principles here in safe and comfortable England in the calm atmosphere of the House of Commons or in your armchairs in Downing Street or Whitehall but it is quite a different business on the spot in a great emergency confronted with a howling mob with a great city or a whole province quivering all around with excitement I quite agree still these are good guides and sound simple tests and I believe it is not too much to ask of our officers to observe and consider them after all they are accustomed to accomplish more difficult tasks than that over and over again we have seen British officers and soldiers storm in trenchments under the heaviest fire with half their number shot down before they entered the position of the enemy the certainty of a long bloody day before them a tremendous bombardment crashing all around we have seen them in these circumstances taking out their maps and watches and adjusting their calculations with a most minute detail and we have seen them show not merely mercy but kindness to prisoners observing restraint in the treatment of them punishing those who deserve to be punished by the hard laws of war and sparing those who might claim to be admitted to the clemency of the conqueror we have seen them exerting themselves to show pity and to help even at their own peril though wounded they have done it thousands of times and in requiring them in moments of crisis dealing with civil riots when the danger is incomparably less to consider these broad simple guides really I do not think we are taxing them beyond their proved strength Commander Beller's what about the women and children Lieutenant Colonel Croft there are no women and children in the trenches I am bound to say I do not see to what part of my argument that remark applies I say I do not think it is too much to ask a British officer in this painful agonising position to pause and consider these broad simple guides I do not even call them rules before he decides upon his course of conduct under circumstances in my opinion infinitely more trying they have shown themselves capable of arriving at right decisions if we offer these broad guides to our officers in these anxious and dangerous times if there are guides of a positive character there is surely one guide which we can offer them in order there is surely one general prohibition which we can make I mean a prohibition against what is called frightfulness what I mean by frightfulness is the inflicting of great slaughter or massacre upon a particular crowd of people with the intention of terrorising not merely the rest of the crowd but the whole district or the whole country Lieutenant Colonel Croft was not the frightfulness started three days before was not the frightfulness on the other side the deputy chairman Sir E. Cornwall honourable members will have an opportunity of catching my eye and I would ask them to wait and not try to deliver their speeches in fragments we cannot admit this doctrine in any form frightfulness is not a remedy known to the British pharmacopoeia I yield to no one in my detestation of Bolshevism and of the revolutionary violence which precedes it I share with my right honourable and learned friend Sir E. Carson many of his sentiments as to the worldwide character of the revolutionary movement with which we are confronted but my hatred of Bolshevism and Bolsheviks is not founded on their silly system of economics or their absurd doctrine of an impossible equality it arises from the bloody and devastating terrorism which they practice in every land into which they have broken and by which alone their criminal regime can be maintained I have heard the honourable member for how speak on this subject his doctrine and his policy is to support and palliate every form of terrorism as long as it is the terrorism of revolutionaries against the forces of law, loyalty and order governments who have seized upon power by violence and by user-patient have often resorted to keep what they have stolen but the august and venerable structure of the British Empire where lawful authority descends from hand to hand and generation after generation does not need such aid such ideas are absolutely foreign to the British way of doing things these observations are mainly of a general character but their relevance to the case under discussion can be well understood and they lead me to the specific circumstances of the fuselade at the Jalyanwala bag let me marshal the facts the crowd was unarmed except with bludgeons it was not attacking any body or anything it was holding a seditious meeting when fire had been opened upon it to disperse it it tried to run away pinned up in a narrow place considerably smaller than Trafalgar Square with hardly any exits and packed together so that one bullet would drive through three or four bodies the people ran madly this way and the other when the fire was directed upon the centre they ran to the sides the fire was then directed to the sides many threw themselves down on the ground then the fire was then directed down on the ground this was continued for eight to ten minutes and it stopped only when the ammunition had reached the point of exhaustion it stopped only when it was on the point of exhaustion enough ammunition being retained to provide for the safety of the force on its return journey if more troops had been available says this officer their casualties would have been greater in proportion if the road had not been so narrow the machine guns and the armoured cars would have joined in finally, when the ammunition had reached the point that only enough remained to allow for the safe return of the troops and after 379 persons which is about the number gathered together in this chamber today had been killed and when most certainly 1200 or more had been wounded the troops at whom not even a stone had been thrown swung round and marched away I deeply regret to find myself in a difference of opinion for many of those with whom on the general drift of the world's affairs at the present time I feel myself in the strongest sympathy but I do not think it is in the interests of the British Empire or of the British Army for us to take a load of that sort for all time on our backs we have to make it absolutely clear some way or another that this is not the British way of doing the business I shall be told that it saved India I do not believe it for a moment the British power in India does not stand on such foundations it stands on much stronger foundations I am going to refer to the material foundations of our power very bluntly take the mutiny as the datum line in those days there were normally 40,000 British troops in the country and the ratio of British troops to Native troops was one to five the Native Indian Army had a powerful artillery of which they made tremendous use there were no railways no modern appliances and yet the mutiny was effectively suppressed by the use of a military power far inferior to that which we now possess in India since then the British troops have been raised to 70,000 and upwards and the ratio of British to Native troops in one to two there is no Native artillery of any kind the power and the importance of the artillery has increased in the meantime 10 and perhaps 20 fold since then a whole series of wonderful and powerful war inventions have come into being and the whole apparatus of scientific war is at the disposal of the British government in India machine guns magazine rifle cordite ammunition which cannot be manufactured as gunpowder was manufactured except by scientific power at which is all stored in the magazines under the control of the white troops then there have been the great developments which have followed the conquest of the air and the evolution of the aeroplane even if the railways and the telegraphs were cut or rendered useless by a strike motor lorries and wireless telegraphy would give increasingly the means of concentrating troops and taking them about the country with an extraordinary and almost undreamed of facility when one contemplates these solid material facts there is no need for foolish panic or talk of its being necessary to produce a situation like that at Jalyanwala bag in order to save India on the contrary as we contemplate the great physical forces and the power at the disposal of the British government in their relations with the native population of India we ought to remember the words of McCauley and then was seen what we believe to be the most frightful of all spectacles the strength of civilization without its mercy our reign in India or anywhere else has never stood on the basis of physical force alone and it would be fatal to the British empire if we were to try to base ourselves only upon it the British way of doing things as my right honourable friend the secretary of state for India who feels intensely upon this subject has pointed out has always meant and implied close and effectual cooperation with the people of the country in every part of the British empire that has been our aim and in no part have we arrived at such success as in India whose princes spent their treasure in our cause whose brave soldiers fought side by side with our own men whose intelligent and gifted people are cooperating at the present moment with us in every sphere of government and of industry it is quite true that in Egypt last year there was a complete breakdown of the relations between the British and the Egyptian people every class and every profession seemed united against us what are we doing we are trying to rebuild that relationship for months Lord Milner has been in Egypt and now we are endeavouring laboriously and patiently to rebuild from the bottom that relation between the British administration and the people of Egypt which we have always enjoyed in the past and which was so painful for us to feel had been so suddenly ruptured it is not a question of force we had plenty of force if force were all that was needed what we want is cooperation and goodwill and I beseech honourable and right honourable gentlemen to look at the whole of this fast question and not merely at one part of it if the disastrous breakdown which has occurred in a comparatively small country like Egypt if this absolute rupture between the British administration and the people of the country had taken place throughout the mighty regions of our Indian empire it would have constituted one of the most melancholy events in the history of the world that it has not taken place up to the present is I think largely due to the constructive policy of His Majesty's Government to which my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for India has made so great a personal contribution I was astonished by my right honourable friend's sense of detachment when in the supreme crisis of the war he calmly journeyed to India and remained for many months absorbed and buried in Indian affairs it was not until I saw what happened in Egypt and if you like what is going on in Ireland today that I appreciated the enormous utility of such service from the point of view of the national interests of the British empire in helping to keep alive that spirit of comradeship that sense of unity and of progress in cooperation which must ever ally and bind together the British and Indian peoples I do not conceal from the house my sincere personal opinion that General Dyer's conduct deserved not only the loss of employment from which so many officers are suffering at the present time not only from the measure of censorship which the government have pronounced but also that it should be marked by a distinct disciplinary act namely his being placed compulsorily upon the retired list but we have only to turn to page 20 of the statement of General Dyer we have only to cast our mind back to the most powerful passage in the speech of my right honourable and learned friend that such a course was barred it is quite true that General Dyer's conduct has been approved by a succession of superiors above him who pronounced his defence and that at different stages events have taken place which it may well be argued amount to virtual condemnation so far as a penal or disciplinary action is concerned General Dyer may have done wrong but at any rate he has his rights and I do not see how in face of such virtual condemnation as is set out on page 20 of this able document it would have been possible or could have been considered right to take disciplinary action against him for these reasons the cabinet found themselves in agreement with the conclusions of the army council and to those moderate conclusions we confidently invite the ascent of the house end of speech