Orders of the Day — Consolidated Fund (Appropriation) Bill.

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 12 July 1932.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Colonel Josiah Wedgwood Colonel Josiah Wedgwood , Newcastle-under-Lyme

I have heard a great many maiden speeches, but never before a maiden speech of a lady Member, and I must say that the speech to which we have just listened is a speech for which the House has been waiting for 25 years. I am not alluding to the part dealing with the Navy and to her traditional spirit of the Navy, but I am alluding to the hon. Member's demand for the Palmerstonian touch about the conduct of our foreign affairs. How often have I prayed for Palmerston. Now I have an ally. The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs may perhaps now listen to that old Liberal principle of doing justice and making Britain act for justice whatever the risks that may be involved. I hope that we shall hear more of the hon. Lady in this House, and that she will not confine herself to a maiden speech, but will lead more the benches from which she speaks on foreign affairs. I only hope that she may agree with the speech which I am going to deliver on the Lausanne Conference.

I welcome, as I think everyone must, not only the end of reparations, but the position that has been taken up by the British Prime Minister in bringing about this agreement. We have ended reparations, but we have not cancelled debts, and I am a little nervous because of what the French Press tells us. It appears that, all unknown to the White Paper, there has come into being at Lausanne a "united front." A united front against whom? A united front of what Powers? A united front presupposes someone against whom that front is to be used. I do not wish to have any allies, however excellent, in dealing with America. Our debt to America is not merely one of cash. I know enough of America to say that she is more likely to deal with a situation such as she is faced with to-day as we should have dealt with it had we been in the same position. Yielding to threats and coercion is not part of American philosophy, any more than it is ours. I dread to see a united front used not by England but used by the other partners to the front.

8.0 p.m.

We owe America a good deal, and not only money. I ask the House to observe that the money we owe to America is not an ordinary debt but a debt of honour. It is a debt which cannot be claimed by legal process. America cannot send her fleet over here to blockade our ports and impound our Customs. We can, if we like, refuse to pay the next instalment of that debt quite safely. Nothing would happen if we did except that we should earn our own contempt and the contempt of other people. Why a united front? So that the other nations may say, "Well England did it, so why should not we?" I do not want that said about England. This House is a new House of Commons. I wish I could transport hon. Members back in memory to that House of responsibility which fought the great War and show them the straits through which we passed then. I remember how we pledged our credit to America, how we took every dollar security we had and pledged it to the Americans. Then America came into the War and they asked no more security. Conditions before they came in had come to such a pass that I remember suggesting that we should pledge with them the ground rents of London. There was nothing further that could be offered in the spring of 1917. Then they came into the War and they took our word. It is true that much of the money lent to us and Much of the stores bought upon our credit went to our Allies, but it is no defence to a debt of honour to plead that the money which you borrowed, you spent upon your friends. In that House we were very thankful when America came in. I think there have been only two occasions in my life when I have gone down on my knees and thanked God—a God in whose personality I cannot believe—once, when Bulgaria collapsed and I knew that the end had come, and once when America came into the War and I knew that we were saved. Do not let us in these days forget or descend to huckstering in alien company when to our own flesh and blood we owe so much.

That old House has gone. Some names are inscribed up there of those Members who have gone for good. None of them wanted to go. They were not professional soldiers. They were all horribly afraid as everyone who has been under fire knows. They went without any advertisement, and they died without a word of recognition here. Why did they go? Just on a little point of honour, just to set the right. Example—"Ad majorem Dei gioriam"—for the greater glory of the House of Commons. Not many Members of that House are here to-day. I have survived, and I am almost ashamed that I have survived. I have survived to tell this House that if they would do their duty by those who formed this House in the great days, who helped to shape the policy of this country and the world, there is one thing that they must support at all costs, and that is the honour of the House of Commons. What does it matter to us how "the lesser breeds without the law" deal with problems such as these? It is so easy when you are hard pressed to ally yourself with other debtors and compound. I had sooner sell the National Gallery, sell the British Museum. I had sooner sell our incomparable British fleet, aye, sell up England, lock stock and barrel, than default on the debt that we owe to America. If there is anything that must be said about a situation such as this, it is that the first hint of remission must come from America and not from us.

I am glad that the Senator for Oklahoma did make a suggestion the other day indicating at any rate the possibility of some other way of meeting the debt than in gold. He suggested that we should hand over or transfer the West Indies to America. The West Indies are not ours to transfer. The West Indies are self-governing Colonies, populated by coloured people and they are I fear the one section of the British Empire which would resent and resist most bitterly annexation to the United States where coloured people are not so happy. The West Indies are, perhaps, the only countries in the world where coloured people are proud of their British citizenship. We cannot say that of the coloured people in Africa.

The proposal to which I refer went further than that. The Senator suggested that the mandated territories which we administer might be transferred to America. I should welcome that proposal. At any rate the natives in the mandated territories would be looked after by America quite as well as by us and the natives in South-West Africa a good deal better. The natives in Tanganyika would be looked after quite as well and I am certain that Palestine Would welcome the change. Possibilities he in that direction and if we are faced with the question of the future career of the British Empire, a career which I think the hon. Lady and myself agree consists only too largely in carrying the black man's burden until the black man is able to carry it himself, I could wish for no better partners than the American people. I have even contemplated the possibility that we might offer them half India—not a physical half but half control with alternate Viceroys and recruitment of the Indian Civil Service in America. I look forward to the union of the Anglo-Saxon race and I think that union could not start better than by a willing honourable conclusion of the debt; coupled with co-operation in the gigantic task which the British Empire has before it.

However that may be, there must be some way out beside repudiation, besides going pathetically to those who lent and saying: "We cannot pay you; do let us off." We can pay them in goods, if we cannot pay them in gold, we can pay them in Cunarders, yes, and we can pay them in crockery. Once the Americans recognise that in some way or other we intend to meet that debt we shall find people there who wish to meet us on friendly terms. We shall find people there who will say that in Europe there remains one nation which understands an honourable bargain, not based upon force. We are here, the rank and file of the Commons of England, for a few years only. We do not find our way into Westminster Abbey or into the Dictionary of National Biography. We are soon forgotten but we are part of an institution which is 700 years old and we are in our time the governors of this country.

This House is as we shape it. British policy is as we shape it. We have had ups and downs in the past, but we are proud, on the whole, of the part Parliament has played. We are the torchbearers. The torch through the ages has blazed and flickered from age to age. It is our duty in the short time that we are here to see that the torch of honour that we took from our predecessors is passed on to the next generation burning as brightly as ever. Those men who sat in this House in the past, who sat on these benches here, on those benches there, have gone and are almost forgotten. But they all did their part and I do beg of the Government now to see that the English Parliament is not let down and that they do theirs. I do not know what the Prime Minister means to do. I do not suppose anybody else does, but we have this guarantee. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bewdley (Mr. Baldwin) has made his proofs. He paid £100,000 for his country. He is no longer a rich man, but I think that he would resign out of this Government before he would go back upon the honourable settlement which he signed. He has been abused by all the irresponsible Press; he has been abused on every platform in this country for doing the right thing. It is very rarely that anyone does the right thing and gets credit for it. He did not bargain, he could not bargain, and the Government of which he is a member had better not try bargaining when British honour is at stake.