Orders of the Day — Foreign Affairs.

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 14 March 1934.

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Photo of Mr Herbert Samuel Mr Herbert Samuel , Darwen

Then the Opposition are certainly absolved from criticism. I am sorry the arrangement could not be made to postpone the Debate, because then we might have had a much more effective discussion, and there would have been greater interest in it in the House and in the country. Still, the occasion having arisen, the House must avail itself of the opportunity to express the feelings which are uppermost in the minds of hon. Members. I regard this as an occasion on which it is right that we should express our very grave concern that it should appear that the race of armaments is again beginning. The cost is likely to be enormous. We read that France is now allocating an additional sum of £28,000,000 to her defences, including £750,000 for the provision of gas masks for the population. We know that Japan has been spending enormously upon armaments, and the United States are devoting a, further immense sum to armaments, while our own Defence Estimates have increased this year by £4,500,000, and we were told to-day at Question Time that, if we are to have the parity in the air for which some right hon. and hon. Members are pleading, that will involve a further addition of £8,000,000 to our Estimates.

All this must be a matter of grave concern, not only to the House of Commons but to the whole country, because everyone knows that these resources are needed for other purposes. They are needed for many measures of social amelioration, touching very directly the lives of great masses of the population. They are needed also for the relief of taxation, for we have had impressed upon us again and again that it is essential for the development of industry and the restoration of prosperity that the enormous burden of taxation, still equal, or nearly equal, to what we were bearing in the War, should be lightened. But, if this race of armaments is to proceed, and further millions year by year are to be devoted to this purpose, all hopes of reduction of taxation or amelioration of social conditions must vanish.

When the Disarmament Conference first met, everyone said that it must not fail, that it dare not fail, that its failure would be a confession of the world's bankruptcy of statesmanship; and yet at this moment it is on the very edge of failure, and its failure will be a declaration of bankruptcy of the world's statesmanship. Such an event must undermine the confidence of the great mass of ordinary people—such confidence as they may have—in their rulers. In our great population of 40,000,000 there are vast numbers of people who are sorely tried, whose lives are very hard, and who know that our social system treats them harshly. They are subjected to grinding poverty, and to unemployment from time to time; they live in evil environments. All those people will revolt against the idea that tens of millions, increasingly year by year, are to be devoted by Parliament merely to the piling up of more and more competitive armaments, and at the end we shall have no greater security than at the beginning. As the Lord Privy Seal said to-day in his wise and able speech, if I may venture so to term it, "competitive armaments are no guarantee of security." That is an absolute truth, and it is well to hear it from the Treasury Bench. I only wish that my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) would realise the truth of that statement. He seems to be under the delusion that two neighbouring Powers can both obtain security by each of them being stronger than the other.