Speech by James Keer Hardy. 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 Icy Jumbo. Speech given to the House of Commons on the 18th of May 1905 by James Keer Hardy. It is not my purpose to write a learned dissertation, or even an elaborate essay on the woman question. This has been done by men and women well qualified for the task, and doubtless will be again. My present object is to restate in plain and homely language the case for woman's suffrage. To deal with the woman question as a whole would involve a long inquiry into the causes responsible for the differences in the status of the sexes, including woman's economic position, the marriage laws, and our social polity. These are all subjects interwoven with the position of women, but they are beyond the scope of my ability, and for the moment I leave them aside and confine myself to the one question of their political enfranchisement. I do so mainly because that is a question ripe for settlement by legislation. The other questions hinted at may be left to evolve their own solution as time and chance determine. None of them are within the ken of politics, nor should they be brought into the political arena until women are in a position to influence equally with men the creation of opinion upon them, and, where necessary, the legislation which may be required to assist in solving them. John Stuart Mill declared it to have been one of his earliest, as it remained one of his strongest, convictions, that the principles which regulate the existing social relations between the two sexes, the legal subordination of one sex to the other, is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement, and that it ought to be replaced by principles of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side nor disability on the other. I hold it to be true with those who say that the foundation upon which this equality is to be reared is the political enfranchisement of women. In sentiment we have advanced somewhat since 1790 when a learned writer of the period explained that people who should not be included in the county franchise were those who lie under natural incapacities and therefore cannot exercise a sound discretion, or who are so much under the influence of others that they cannot have a will of their own in the choice of candidates. Of the former description are women, infants, idiots, lunatics. Of the latter, persons receiving arms and revenue offices. We do not now speak of women as being in the same category as idiots and lunatics, but for political purposes we treat them as if they were. No one seeks to deny the existence of differences between the sexes, differences subtle, deep-seated and ineradicable, but these being admitted afford no justification for the usurpation by man of the right to say what duties and responsibilities women may be allowed to undertake, and what must be withheld from her because of her sex. Such a theory can only be upheld on the old tradition of the East that women is one of the lower animals over whom lordly man was given dominion. The harem is the logical outcome of this belief. It is only by removing the disabilities and restraints imposed upon women, and permitting her to enter freely into competition with man in every sphere of human activity that her true position and function in the economy of life will ultimately be settled. We can at present form no conception of what woman is capable of being or doing. We have no data upon which to base any real conclusions. Nowhere is woman treated as the free and equal companion of man. Amongst coloured peoples living in a state of nature and in a tribal environment which has evolved itself and wherein custom is the only law, the woman, though far from being the degraded creature which she has so often been pictured by superficial observers, is still her husband's drudge, and frequently a part of his wealth. In the military state of social evolution, or the age of chivalry as it has been dubbed by persons of a poetic temperament and a vivid imagination, woman is the weaker and more spiritualised sex, requiring to be protected by her lord and almost worshipped as a superior creation.  This is but a perverted way of declaring her inferiority. The homage paid to her is much like that we should pay to a child. In no sense is it a recognition of equality. Very often it is the exact opposite. In modern life we get back to the savage stage. Woman of the working class is again the drudge who does the menial work. Her husband works for and is dependent for the opportunity to work upon a master. His wife works for, and is dependent for her livelihood too, a husband. That there are varying degrees of this feeling of subjection goes without saying, and I think it could be shown that the position of women, as of most other things, has always been better, more near an equality with man, in Celtic than in non-Celtic races or tribes. Thus in Scotland a woman speaks of her husband as her man, whilst in Staffordshire he is always spoken of as the master. The universality of this subjection of women is assumed by many as an infallible testimony to the truth of the theory that woman must in some way be inferior to man. Were it not so, say these quidnunks, there would be some exceptions to prove the contrary. They overlook the one obvious explanation which explains everything—motherhood. In the early days of the race, the days of the huntsmen and the warrior, when the spoils of war and the trophies of the chase were the only wealth of nations, childbearing must have been a serious handicap to the woman. Add to this the fact that war meant prisoners, and that from the very first, probably, even when men captured in warfare were killed as an incumbrance, women, for reasons which will be understood without being stated, were spared by their captors, and coming down to later times, when men captives were made slaves and women raiding became a favourite pastime, we can see explanation enough of the position which in process of time woman came to occupy, and from which she is only now slowly and toilsomely emerging. Already we see how the intensity of the struggle for political recognition is developing, in individual cases, those qualities of mind and brain which man has been wont to assume as being his special monopoly, and from these cases we may infer how richly endowed the field of human thought will become when enriched by the products of the brains of men and women working together on terms of equality, and free from the debasing and sinister influences which subjection, in any form, imposes a like upon the subdued and the subduer. So true is it that one end of the chain which binds the slave is fastened round the life of his master, that the emancipation of women will also infallibly give freedom to the man. Curious are the changes which a quarter of a century produces in the political horizon. Questions arise no larger than a man's hand at first, and are driven by the force of agitation nearer the arena in which the political strife of the day is waged, and keep gathering size as they approach, until they obscure everything else. They are debated, wrangled over, and made leading issues at general elections, and even whilst the strife which they're coming has caused waxes hot, they begin to move away from sight without having been resolved. Disestablishment and republicanism are questions which illustrate my meaning here, but so also does woman's suffrage. In the days of the franchise agitations, the enfranchisement of women, promoted by Mill and strenuously supported by Fawcett, Dr. Pankhurst, and other leaders of reform, promised to become a question of first political importance, but with the passing of the one and then of the other of these friends of the movement, leaving no successors to carry on their tradition, it gradually passed into semi-obscurity. As it is again emerging and showing fresh vitality, it may not be amiss to briefly record its history, particularly as it connects itself with the various reform bills. In the Reform Act of 1832 the word male was interpolated before persons. Never before and never since has the phrase male persons appeared in any statute of the realm. By this act therefore women were legally disenfranchised for the first time in the history of the English Constitution. In 1851 Lord Braum's Act was passed, providing that the word man should always include woman except where otherwise stated. That seemed to clear the ground and give women the same legal status as men. But alas! In 1867 the representation of the People Act came before the House. John Stuart Mill's amendment that it should be made expressly to include women was defeated, but so also was the amendment that the phrase male persons of 1832 should be replaced. The word man was used instead. During the discussion the Honourable John Denman, Justice of the Common Please, asked the following question. Why, instead of the words male person of the Act of 1832, the word man had been substituted in the present bill? In the Fifth Clause he found that after saying that every man should be entitled to be registered it proceeds to say or a male person in any university who has passed any senior middle examination. In the Light of Lord Braum's Act, if the Court of Queen's Bench had to decide tomorrow on the construction of these clauses, they would be constrained to hold that they conferred the suffrage on female persons as well as on males. The Government did not answer this question and passed the bill as it stood. It was thought therefore that women were now entitled to vote and in Manchester 5347 women got on the register as voters. In Salford 1,500 about were registered and large numbers in other places. Great uncertainty prevailed as to how to treat them, but most revising barristers threw them out. The Manchester women consolidated their claims and appealed against the decision and the case of Chalton v. Lings was heard in 1868. The case was tried in the Court of Common Pleas with Mr. Coleridge, afterwards Lord Coleridge, and the late Dr. Pankhurst representing the women. It was argued that inasmuch as women had in the Middle Ages been recognised as voters by the State, and as that right had never been expressly taken away, therefore they had a prima facie right to vote. Further, it was contended that under Lord Braum's Act referred to above, the Franchise Act of 1867 must apply to women, since the term used was men and not male persons as in the Act of 1832. Despite this pleading, the judges decided that women had no statutory right to be recognised as citizens, and that until that right was expressly conferred upon them by Act of Parliament, they must remain outside the pale of the Franchise. In 1884 Mr. Gladstone procured the rejection of the amendment to his County Franchise Bill, which would have enfranchised women, by threatening to abandon the bill if the amendment was carried. In 1889 came the case of Beresford Hope v. Lady Sandhurst, in which it was decided that women are incapacitated from being elected members of a county council. The case is important from the point of view of the Franchise Parliamentary Question, because the judges quoted, approved, and confirmed the decision in the case of Chalton v. Lings. One of the judges, Lord Esha, master of the roles, in delivering his judgment, said, I take the first proposition to be that laid down by Justice Wills in the case of Chalton v. Lings. I take it that by neither the common law nor the constitution of this country from the beginning of the common law until now can a woman be entitled to exercise any public function. Justice Wills said so in that case, and a more learned judge never lived. He took notice of the case of the Countess of Pembroke in the County of Westmoreland, who was Hereditary Sheriff, which he says was an exceptional case. The cases of an overseer and a constable were before him, and what I deduced from his judgment is that for such somewhat obscure offices as these, exercised often in a remote part of the country where nobody else could have been found who could exercise them, women had been admitted into them by way of exception, and that striking out those exceptions, the act of voting in such matters being a public function, a common law, a woman cannot exercise it. But that case goes further. It says that this being the common law of England, when you have a statute which deals with the exercise of public functions, unless that statute expressly gives power to women to exercise them, it is to be taken that the true construction is that the powers given are confined to men, and that Lord Braum's act does not apply. The judges had in this case to interpret the Municipal Corporations Act, in which the word person is used throughout. In addition, there is an interpretation clause, sixty-third section, which provides that for all purposes connected with and having reference to the right to vote at municipal election, words in this act importing the masculine gender include women. It was held that the right to be elected was not conferred by the act, but only the right to vote, the word person not being regarded by the judges as including women. Lord Justice Pry going so far as to say, I regard the sixty-third section ascertaining both affirmatively and negatively the rights which have been conferred upon women, ascertaining them affirmatively by express statement, and ascertaining them negatively by the right to vote. What is given to them is the right to vote. What is denied by the necessary implication are all the other rights which may be conferred by the statute. I do not regard the negative implication arising from that section, sixty-third, as applying to the whole act, as applying to crimes or to the obligations on the duties of witnesses or matters of that sort, but I regard it as applying to the rights granted by that statute. In Miss Hall's case, nineteen-hundred, the right of a woman to become a law agent in Scotland was denied by the judges on the ground that person, when it is a case of exercising a public function, means male person. The judges relied on the case of Chalton v. Lings as the ground of their decision. Now, in view of the fact that the right to vote was a woman v. Lings as the ground of their decision, now in view of these decisions the situation is quite clear. A woman, for the purposes of citizenship, has no legal existence in England and has to be created before she can be enfranchised. To the uninitiated this may appear absurd and ridiculous, but it is the plain unvarnished truth none the less. A woman may be a criminal, a be a criminal, a queen, a tax and rate payer, and owner of property, but she may not be a citizen of Great Britain and Ireland until a right to become such has been created by act of parliament. If only people would bear this fact in mind they would be saved from much error when considering her claims to the franchise. During the past two sessions of parliament a measure has been introduced at the instigation of the Independent Labour Party having this for its object. It is a bill of one clause which reads as follows. In all acts relating to the qualifications and registration of voters or persons entitled or claiming to be registered and to vote in the election of members of parliament, wherever words occur which import the masculine gender the same shall be held to include women for all purposes connected with and having reference to the right to be registered as voters and to vote in such election any law or usage to the contrary notwithstanding. There are those who see in this innocent looking measure a sinister attempt to extend and strengthen the property qualification and by enfranchising property women enable these to range themselves on the side of the reactionaries in opposing the enfranchisement of working class women. Just to add a strong section of the liberal press adopts and enforces this misstatement with all the ingenuity which a fertile and untrained imagination can lend to a bad cause. One would have thought the record of the liberal party in connection with woman suffrage would have chastened the ardour of these organs of liberalism which are opposing this bill in the interests of true female suffrage. But the gift of perspective is rare in politics, and a strict desire for accuracy and inconvenient failing when there are party ends to serve. The late Mr. Gladstone, as already stated, threatened to abandon his reform bill in 1884 if the women's enfranchisement amendment were carried. There have been three conservative premiers who have publicly committed themselves, in speech at least, none of them have acted, to this reform which has yet to find the first liberal premier who will say a word in its favour. Anyone who takes the trouble to read the bill quoted above will note that it does not propose any franchise qualification, but asks that whatever the qualification women shall enjoy the franchise on the same basis as men. It is a bill which only proposes to do one thing, and that is to remove the sex disability which debiles a woman, because she is a woman, from becoming a voter. If the qualification for men be a property one, it shall be the same for women, no more and no less. And if it be manhood suffrage, it shall also be a womanhood.  And now let us ascertain, if we can, what women would be enfranchised under the terms of the bill quoted above. There are four main heads under which the franchise qualifications fall to be grouped. One, owners of property. Two, householders. Three, lodgers. Four, service. One set of opponents of the woman's enfranchisement bill say that it would be from classes one and three that the new citizens would be drawn, which, if true, would leave working-class women out in the cold. Few working women own property, and not many earn wages enough to pay the four shillings a week for unfurnished apartments, which is necessary to qualify for the lodger franchise. Rich men, they assert, would be able to put their wives and daughters on as voters and out-voters, which would tend to greatly increase an evil which is already of sufficient magnitude. Fortunately we already have an index to guide us as to the extent to which this statement is true, even were the worst fears of our opponents to be realized. There are, roughly, seven million electors in Great Britain, of whom two hundred and twenty thousand are lodger-voters. A very large proportion of these are workmen, and it is doubtful whether rich men's sons, qualifying from their father's property, account for more than twenty thousand of the whole. Even were a like number of daughters to be put upon the voter's role, they would not save in those few constituencies where the property-vote is already overwhelming, and where, therefore, they could do no harm, save in these few cases, I say, they would not constitute an appreciable fraction of any constituency. As for the out-voters, we may surely anticipate, with some degree of assurance, that the coming liberal government will at least put an end to their existence, and so we need not worry ourselves about them one way or the other. Insofar as the service franchise will give women the right to vote, those brought in will be working women, and we may pit these against the daughters of the rich. It will, I think, be concluded that the great bulk of those who will be enfranchised by the bill will be householders, and here, I repeat, we have reliable data upon which to base our conclusions. Women may not be elected to a town or borough council, but she may vote in the election of such councils. Owing to a difference of opinion in the ranks of the Independent Labour Party over the Woman's Enfranchisement Bill, it was decided to make a serious effort to obtain from the municipal registers some guidance as to the class of women already registered as municipal voters, and who would be entitled to be placed upon the parliamentary list should the bill become law. Accordingly, a circular was issued to every branch of the party, some three hundred in all, containing the following instructions. We address to your branch a very urgent request to ascertain from your local voting registers the following particulars. First, the total number of electors in the ward. Second, number of women voters. Third, number of women voters of the working class. Fourth, number of women voters not of the working class. It is impossible to lay down a strict definition of the term working class, but for this purpose it will be sufficient to regard as working class women those who work for wages, who are domestically employed, or who are supported by the earnings of wage-earning children. The returns to hand are not yet complete, but they comprise fifty towns or parts of towns, and show the following results. Total electors on the municipal registers 372,321. Total women voters 59,920. Working women voters as defined above 49,410. Non-working women voters 10,510. Percentage of working women voters 82.5. As will be seen at a glance, the proportion of women voters on the registers tested for the purposes of the above return, and these were not in any way selected, but were included because they were in the ward or parish within which the branch was situated, is equal to one-sixth of the whole. Assuming, as we may fairly do, that the same proportion obtains for the country as a whole, it would give us one million two hundred and fifty thousand women voters, of whom eighty-two percent are working women, and every one of whom would at once be placed upon the parliamentary register where the bill now before Parliament to become law. Here, then, we have it proved beyond cavill or question that whatever the woman's enfranchisement bill might do for propertyed women it would for a certainty and at once put eight hundred and fifty thousand working women on the parliamentary voters' roles of Great Britain and alike proportion in Ireland. The fact speaks for itself. The woman's enfranchisement bill does not concern itself with franchise qualifications. It is for the removal of the sex disqualification only, and yet on the present franchise qualifications and reactionary registration laws it would at once lift one million two hundred and fifty thousand British women from the political sphere to which idiots, lunatics and paupers are consigned, and transform them into free citizens, and open wide the door whereby in the future every man and every woman may march side by side into the full enjoyment of adult suffrage. Here, too, I have been dealing with those opponents whose objection to the bill is that it does not go far enough, and who prefer waiting for a measure of adult suffrage under which every man and every woman, married and singular like, shall be enfranchised at one stroke. Now I have had some experience of politics and of political methods, and I give it as my deliberate opinion that nothing would so much hasten the coming of that much-to-be-desired time as would the passing of the woman's enfranchisement bill. If the workers were prepared to lay every other reform on the shelf and begin an agitation for adult suffrage, they might, if specially fortunate, be successful in getting it about the year nineteen twenty-nine. Manhood suffrage could probably be secured almost at once and for the asking, but the complete enfranchisement of all men and all women at once would be resisted bitterly by all parties, and the main difficulty in the way would be the enfranchisement of all women, married and living with their husbands, as well as single. The leap from what is now to what this proposes is too great for the mind of the British elector to grasp, and not by any means the least of the opposition would come from the working classes. Reformers gain nothing by shutting their eyes to facts which stare up at them from every part. I speak what most people know to be true when I say that the chief obstacle to reform of any kind in England is the conservative, plodding, timid mind of the average man, hence the reason why all our reforms have come to us not leaping and bounding, but slowly and hesitatingly. Even the franchise, such as it is, has been dribbled out to us in almost homeopathic doses. This difficulty applies to women's enfranchisement in a special degree. The male man, even he of the working classes, will not likely, or all at once, part with the authority which has so long been his, and admit that the wife of his bosom is his political equal. But once women are admitted to citizenship, and some women become voters, the male mind will insensibly accustom itself to the idea of woman citizenship, and the way be thus prepared for adult suffrage, complete and unrestricted by sex, poverty, or marriage. To those who are opposed on principle to women having the vote at all, I have little to say. These I find easier to pity than to reason with. But when they foresee the deluge following upon the enfranchisement of women, I refer them to the colonies. There women are citizens and voters, but they have not because of that cease to be wives, even housewives or mothers. Their outlook on life has been a little broadened by the possession of the vote which willy-nilly forces them to interest themselves somewhat in political and social questions. They are thus in a fair way to become better companions to their husbands, and, and I say this with deep conviction, better mothers.  Broaden the outlook of the mother, and you open a new world for childhood to grow in, and bind many a wild wayward youth to his home-life, who is now driven out into the hard world for lack of that sympathetic, intelligent companionship which an educated and enlightened mother can alone supply. Colonial statesmen and social reformers all admit that women's influence in the sphere of politics has been healthy and quickening, and, as it has been there, so undoubtedly would it be here. The half-angel, half-idiot period is over in the woman's world. She is fighting her way into every sphere of human activity. Her labour is coming into competition with that of man in nearly every department of industry. In the learned professions she is forcing herself to the front by sheer determination and force of intellect in a way that will not be denied. Sooner or later men will be compelled to treat with her and recognise her as a co-worker, and they could not begin better than by admitting her right to be a co-voter. Those who pray so plibly of adult suffrage might surely learn something of men's opinion of women by taking note of the way in which lawyers and doctors are resisting her encroachments upon their preserves. A woman may be Queen of England, but she may not enter the profession from which Lord Chancellors are drawn. The enfranchisement of women is not a party question. Its supporters and opponents are distributed over all parties. The measure is again coming well within the sphere of practical politics, and it is for women to see that it is kept there until a settlement is reached. If they will, as I think they should, make it not a test but THE test question at elections, and resolutely refuse to work for, or in any way countenance any candidate who is not wholeheartedly with them, they will, if not in this Parliament, then certainly in the next, secure the passage of a measure through the House of Commons at least, which will place them on terms of political equality with men. If this comes as part of a measure for giving complete adult suffrage, well and good, but political equality they should insist upon whatever the conditions of that equality may be. Disraeli, speaking on this question in the House of Commons, said, I say that in a country governed by a woman, where you allow women to form part of the other estate of the realm, peeresses in their own right, for example, where you allow a woman not only to hold land, but to be a lady of the manner and hold legal courts, where a woman by law may be a church warden and overseer of the poor, I do not see where she has so much to do with estate and church, on what reasons if you come to right she has not a right to vote. And with these words I conclude. End of speech. I know a little better now than to appeal to the Minister of Health on grounds of pity and humanity, but I feel that we have a right to get from the Minister the strict observance of the law. The Minister is very fond of appealing to the law when boards of guardians step a little beyond the law, moved by motives of philanthropy and charity. That is right and as it should be, but what I have to complain about is that the Minister encourages the West Ham Board of Guardians habitually to break the law of England with regards to outdoor relief. The law is clear and plain. Fathers and mothers must maintain their children, children must maintain their parents, but there is no obligation of any kind upon brothers to maintain brothers or upon sisters to maintain sisters. But the whole policy of this Board of Guardians is to attach the earnings of brothers and sisters to keep other members of the family who are not legally dependent upon them. If these people knew their job they could get out of it, but they trade upon the benevolent feelings of brothers and sisters and cast the whole care of maintaining the younger members of the family upon the sisters and brothers. There are the children of soldiers who have been killed in the war, to whom the Government have given pensions, and this Board of Guardians have thrown them upon the maintenance of their step-brothers, step-sisters and step-fathers. When the Government were deciding what we ought to give to the children of men who died in the service of the country, they considered very carefully what was the proper sum to give so that these children could get a proper upbringing. I will give two cases. Those cases I brought to the notice of the Minister, and he knows they are perfectly genuine. There were four children of a soldier who was killed, and the Government gave the children pensions. One of them died, and there are three of them left. They have, in the form of pensions, twenty-three chillings and sixpence a week, while one of them is earning twelve chillings a week. Later the mother married, and there are two children of the later marriage. To the father, the mother and the two younger children, the Guardians give eight chillings in kind, and five chillings in money, thirteen chillings altogether. The orphans of the soldier have to maintain their mother, their step-father, and the two step-children. One of the bedrooms they have sublet for four chillings and sixpence a week because they have so little money for food, and therefore the soldier's children have nothing like the bedroom's base which would make children happy and healthy. The bedrooms of the soldier's orphans have been taken away from them in order that the other members of the family may have enough to eat. There is another case of a similar kind where the three orphans of a soldier have seventeen chillings and sixpence a week as pensions, and earn ten chillings a week. The mother married, and there is another child of the second marriage. They get four chillings a week in kind from the Guardians, and four chillings a week in cash, and the rent is four chillings and tuppence a week. They let one of the rooms, and again the sleeping accommodation of a soldier's orphans has been filched from them because there is no money to feed the rest of the family. When the country voted all that amount of taxation in order that soldiers' orphans should be properly treated, it did not mean that they should be all herded into one room. This is the more wicked on the part of the minister, because the members of the former Board of Guardians faced up to cases of this kind. In 1922 they communicated with the Ministry of Pensions, and the Minister of Pensions wrote a letter to them which determined their policy. He said, the pensions for the children of the soldier should be expended for their sole benefit. That was not what the Labour Minister said, but what the Conservative Minister said in 1922, and that is the common sense of the matter. This money was never voted to go in indiscriminate relief to the relations of soldiers' orphans. We voted this money in order that the children of men who died in the war might be decently and healthily brought up. Here, in those two cases, the money is being filched from them, and they are being housed in a way which is not wholesome and decent. That is what the Minister is doing. I now come to more general matters. The Minister is very fond of saying, when certain cases are brought before him, that he cannot interfere with the discretion of the Boards of Guardians. But we know that the Minister has power to issue general regulations. The old West Ham Board of Guardians, when they had to deal with an old person, gave fifteen shillings a week. You cannot get a room in West Ham for less than five shillings, or four shillings and sixpence a week. The new Board of Guardians have cut down the maximum scale for single persons to eleven shillings a week. If you have to pay five shillings, or four shillings and sixpence a week, for a room, how can you live and obtain food, firing and clothing, and everything else, on the balance of eleven shillings? It is not possible to do it. I knew some of these cases, and I know that people are suffering from hunger, and that in the winter they were suffering from cold, as a direct result of the regulations laid down by the present Board of Guardians. Sometime or other these people will take a chill, they will not have the strength to throw it off, and though the medical certificate will be that death was caused by pneumonia or bronchitis, the real cause will be starvation because of regulations carried out under the auspices of the Minister of Health. I have got here in my hand the report of the West Ham Union, which has been printed in His Majesty's stationery office. I do not know what authority Parliament gives to the Minister of Health to print the reports of local government authorities. It is certainly a nice way for the local authorities to save money. If he would consider extending that to the Poplar Borough Council, it would take a bit off the Poplar rates and we would feel greatly obliged to him. They draw the attention of the world in general to the amount which they have saved in salaries and wages. They have saved something like fifteen thousand pounds in salaries, and they have done it, partly, by making the nurses work longer hours than any women engaged in nursing ought to do. When I challenged the Minister about this, the Minister denied it, and then I put a question to him and he had to admit that what I said was true. It is put down also in the report of the West Ham Board of Guardians. The nurses used to have, at the central infirmary, not everywhere, but at the central infirmary where the work is very heavy, they used to have a forty-eight hour week, which meant that they had a day off to recuperate. The new Board of Guardians have given the nurses a fifty-six hour week, which means that they do not get a clear day. The West Ham Board of Guardians did not, as they ought to have done, give all the nurses in all their institutions a forty-eight hour week. At Whips Cross the nurses have worked more than forty-eight hours a week, but in the central infirmary where the heavy case is unearthed, they had only a forty-eight hour week. I want the committee to remember that there is no such heavy nursing as the nursing in a workhouse infirmary. At West Ham the nursing is very much heavier than in London, because in London the poor law guardians send the very distressful cases to the sick asylums of the Metropolitan Asylums Board. They do not keep in the workhouses in London the cancer cases and the cases of venereal disease. West Ham does, and in these extreme cancer cases it is not merely that the patient is dying from cancer, but very heavy work is demanded of the nurses. If a person dying from cancer is of any weight, the nurses have to shift the patient continually or the poor wretch is tormented with bed sores as well as with cancer, so that a nurse who is nursing a dying cancer case has not merely the ordinary work of nursing, but a great deal of heavy lifting and moving, and, if that work is not done, the patient suffers very acutely and painfully. Nurses and sick attendants are only human beings, and in that atmosphere of death, because there is nothing so depressing to the mind of a woman or a man as to be dealing with chronic cases that cannot recover, that only leave the institution by death to be replaced by fresh chronic cases who in three or four months will die too, there is no work so dispiriting. And if the nurses do not have a short working week they cannot give the care and attention that they should, they cannot give the patients those little attentions that are so necessary, they cannot keep up the sort of atmosphere of hopefulness which it is their duty to keep up. Of all the things that the minister has done I think one of the most petty, one of the economies which is most bitter today is the lengthening of the working week of the nurses at the central institution from forty-eight to fifty-six hours. This is not the first time that the minister has heard about it. It is in the report here it was put to him in this house, it was put to him by question and answer. He knows all about it and he knows that the unions representing these nurses and sick attendants came to him and argued the case. They pointed out that in other boards of guardians where the work was not so heavy, in London boards of guardians, in Hackney I think and some others, because the nursing work is by its nature dispiriting and because women cannot keep up a proper attitude of mind and a proper condition of body, in other workhouse infirmaries in London they have a forty-eight hour week, though they do not have this number of patients. It is getting very common. The London County Council nurses have a forty-eight hour week, all good institutions where the work is heavy have a forty-eight hour week, and to reimpose a fifty-six hour week does mean a callousness on the part of the minister that I for one cannot understand. The ingenious cruelty of this board of guardians is terrible. Let me take the case of what is done with regards to dock labourers. A dock labourer, if he is a superior sort of man, has a tally, and the tally means that he gets work when work is going. He has to go to the employment exchange twice a day to sign on if he does not get work, and he has to go twice a day to the docks, which are at the other end of the district, to look for a job. This present board of guardians have passed a rule that if a man has a brass tally, he is only to be relieved as and when relief is applied for, because they say that if they give him anything like a regular wage, if they make an order, some day or other he may slip down to the docks and get half a day's work, and they will not know about it. I will give particulars of case which I investigated, and which I think has been to the minister. During six weeks, the man in question who was getting unemployment benefit had the following out-relief. One week he had fourteen shillings in kind, the next week he had twenty-nine shillings in kind, then there was a gap, and then he had twenty-two shillings regularly for three weeks, then on the thirteenth of December he got a day's work and earned nineteen shillings. He got seven shillings and relief, and of course lost his unemployment benefit. Then people say that the poor do not want to work. This man, by going to the docks, got a day's work and earned nineteen shillings. His relief was cut down to seven shillings and he lost his unemployment benefit. These are the inducements that we have to give to the poor. This man is lame. He spends the whole of his time going backwards and forwards twice a day to the docks, twice a day to the employment exchange, and round again to the relieving officer. He is a good attender at the docks, and once in about six weeks, with the depression at the docks, and because he is lame, he gets a job, and he has to pay fares. He spends the whole of his life crawling around on that unceasing journey up to the employment exchange, because the minister will not have an employment exchange at the docks, though we have asked him often enough. This man goes up to the employment exchange at one end of East Ham, down to the docks to look for work, back to the employment exchange to sign on, again down to the docks, and now without a penny in the cupboard, round to the relieving officer. What makes me more angry even than the suffering of this family is their contempt with which the poor are treated. The minister of labour will not have a room at the docks in order to spare this double daily trudge up to the other end of the borough. A man may be a dock-labourer and lame at that. What is the good of considering him?  That is the sort of life you give the people. And people do not understand the depression, the misery, the unhappiness which settles down upon a family when they have to live in that sort of way. The wife said to me that they cannot bear it. This perpetual walking and no job, with a little crumb thrown by the relieving officer, is breaking the men's hearts, and is breaking the women's hearts too. I say we ought not to treat the poor so despitefully. I cannot help what the West Ham board of guardians do, but to make some decent arrangement whereby this man is not kept walking round and round with his lame leg in bad weather is, I think, the very least thing the guardians ought to do. I want now to ask the minister a few questions. The last report of the West Ham guardians spoke about the wonderful economies they made, and one of the wonderful economies they made was to cut down the loan repayments for the half-year from £127,000 to £58,000. The old board, which was so hardly spoken of, did at any rate pay back its interest and part of the principle, which the minister quite properly accepted. In the last recorded half-year they paid £127,000 for interest and part of the principle. The minister is uncommonly kind to the new board in the first half-year, and has let them off the repayment of part of the principle, so that the saving they have made is merely that they are keeping back money that the Exchequer ought to have. We should all like to make savings of that sort. We could all make very large private savings at the expense of the amount the Exchequer is entitled to demand from us. I should like to ask what arrangement is entered into with this board of guardians with regard to the repayment of the debt they owe and the amount they are to repay in the future, and whether the arrangements the minister will no doubt outline are peculiar to this board of guardians, or whether he proposes to extend the same kind, liberal, and generous treatment to the destitute boards of guardians in the mining and industrial areas, and if not, what justification has he for treating his own children so very much better than his steppe children, the other boards of guardians? It is a lamentable thing that in West Ham alone the infantile mortality figures for this year are so much worse than last. A good many things have been said about Poplar, but Poplar's vital statistics compare extraordinarily favourably with those of West Ham, and it seems to be forgotten that the object for which guardians were instituted was that people who were hungry and unemployed should have some definite standard of living. Judged by any of these humane standards, the West Ham board of guardians are in a very inferior position. I should like to make one more general reflection, which ought to come home to the minister of health, and that is the extraordinary amount of subletting. East Ham is a horribly crowded place. I have known families of six, seven, and eight in a room. The place is so crowded that any room can be let almost at once, and where relief has been cut down the people have very commonly adopted the plan of all huddling together into one room and letting the second bedroom to some lodger in order to bring in a few shillings a week. The minister and the West Ham guardians have, to my knowledge, least the unbearable and indecent crowding in the borough I represent. I have been to the board of guardians about a family where the father has consumption. Two children have caught it, and the rest are in great danger. They are living in one room, and if a decent amount of out-relief were given they could get another room. There is not enough money to pay for the rent, even in tuberculosis cases, to separate the people who are healthy from those who are diseased. If you could have the loss of life due to overcrowding, the crowding together in some places of tubercular and healthy people, the loss of life due to debility caused by underfeeding, and the general human misery caused by the operations of the West Ham board of guardians. If I had eloquence, I could move the house. But we are not all eloquent, and we can only put the plain story before the minister. I am not putting it before him, really. I do not think it is much use. I am putting it before the house, so that what we have to say may be recorded in the official report, and compassionate people up and down the country may speak not to the minister, but to their members of Parliament, and ask them to put some form of pressure upon the minister. I do not propose to say many words tonight. The time has come when action rather than speech is required. Eighteen months ago in this house I prayed that the responsibility might not fall upon me to ask this country to accept the lawful arbitrement of war. I fear that I may not be able to avoid that responsibility. But at any rate I cannot wish for conditions in which such a burden should fall upon me, in which I should feel clearer than I do today as to where my duty lies. No man can say that the government could have done more to try to keep open the way for an honourable and equitable settlement of the dispute between Germany and Poland. Nor have we neglected any means of making it crystal clear to the German government that if they insisted on using force again in the manner in which they had used it in the past, we were resolved to oppose them by force. Now that all the relevant documents are being made public, we shall stand at the bar of history, knowing that the responsibility for this terrible catastrophe lies on the shoulders of one man, the German Chancellor, who is not hesitated to plunge the world into misery in order to serve his own senseless ambitions. Only last night the Polish Ambassador did see the German Foreign Secretary, Herr von Ribbentrupp. Once again he expressed to him what indeed the Polish government had already said publicly that they were willing to negotiate with Germany about their disputes on an equal basis. What was the reply of the German government? The reply was that without another word the German troops crossed the Polish frontier this morning at dawn and are since reported to be bombing open towns. In these circumstances there is only one course open to us. His Majesty's Ambassador in Berlin and the French Ambassador have been instructed to hand to the German government the following document. Early this morning the German Chancellor issued a proclamation to the German Army which indicated that he was about to attack Poland. Information which has reached his Majesty's government in the United Kingdom and the French government indicates that attacks upon Polish towns are proceeding. In these circumstances it appears to the governments of the United Kingdom and France that by their action the German government have created conditions namely an aggressive act of force against Poland threatening the independence of Poland which call for the implementation by the government of the United Kingdom and France of the undertaking to Poland to come to her assistance. I am accordingly to inform your Excellency that unless the German government are prepared to give his Majesty's government satisfactory assurances that the German government have suspended all aggressive action against Poland and are prepared promptly to withdraw their forces from Polish territory his Majesty's government in the United Kingdom will without hesitation fulfill their obligations to Poland. If a reply to this last warning is unfavorable and I do not suggest that it is likely to be otherwise his Majesty's Ambassador is instructed to ask for his passports in that case we are ready. Yesterday we took further steps towards the completion of our defensive preparation. This morning we ordered complete mobilization of the whole of the Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force. We have also taken a number of other measures both at home and abroad which the house will not perhaps expect me to specify in detail. Briefly they represent the final steps in accordance with prearranged plans. These last can be put into force rapidly and are of such a nature that they can be deferred until war seems inevitable. Steps have also been taken under the powers conferred by the house last week to safeguard the position in regard to stocks of commodities of various kinds. The thoughts of many of us must at this moment inevitably be turning back to 1914 and to a comparison of our position now with that which existed then. How do we stand this time? The answer is that all three services are ready and that the situation in all directions is far more favorable and reassuring than in 1914, while behind the fighting services we have built up a vast organization of civil defense under our scheme of air raid precautions. As regards the immediate manpower requirements, the Royal Navy, the Army and the Air Force are in the fortunate position of having almost as many men as they can conveniently handle at this moment. There are, however, certain categories of service in which men are immediately required, both for military and civil defense. These will be announced in detail through the press and the BBC. The main and most satisfactory point to observe is that there is today no need to make an appeal in a general way for recruits such as was issued by Lord Kitchener 25 years ago. That appeal has been anticipated by many months and the men are already available, so much for the immediate present. Now we must look to the future. It is essential in the face of the tremendous task which confronts us, more especially in view of our past experiences in this matter, to organize our manpower this time upon as methodical, equitable and economical a basis as possible. We therefore propose immediately to introduce legislation directed to that end. A bill will be laid before you which, for all practical purposes, will amount to an expansion of the Military Training Act. Under its operation, all fit men between the ages of 18 and 41 will be rendered liable to military service if and when called upon. It is not intended at the outset that any considerable number of men other than those already liable shall be called up, and steps will be taken to ensure that the manpower essentially required by the industry shall not be taken away. There is one other illusion which I should like to make before I end my speech, and that is to record my satisfaction of his Majesty's Government, that throughout these last days of crisis, Sr. Mussolini also has been doing his best to reach a solution. It now only remains for us to set our teeth and to enter upon this struggle, which we ourselves earnestly endeavored to avoid, with determination to see it through to the end. We shall enter it with a clear conscience, with the support of the Dominions and the British Empire, and the moral approval of the greater part of the world.  As long as that Government exists, and pursues the methods it has so persistently followed during the last two years, there will be no peace in Europe. We shall merely pass from one crisis to another, and see one country after another attacked by methods which have now become familiar to us in their sickening technique. We are resolved that these methods must come to an end. If out of the struggle we again re-establish in the world the rules of good faith and the renunciation of force, why, then even, the sacrifices that will be entailed upon us will find their fullest justification. All LibreVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibreVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simseville, South Carolina. What follows is the speech by Winston Churchill, entitled We Shall Fight on the Beaches, delivered in the House of Commons, June 4, 1940. From the moment that the French defences at Sedan and on the Meuse were broken, at the end of the second week of May, only a rapid retreat to Amiens and the South could have saved the British and French armies who had entered Belgium at the appeal of the Belgian King. But this strategic fact was not immediately realized. The French High Command hoped that they would be able to close the gap, and the armies of the North were under their orders. Moreover, a retirement of this kind would have involved almost certainly the destruction of the fine Belgian army of over twenty divisions on the abandonment of the whole of Belgium. Therefore, when the force and scope of the German penetration were realized, and when a new French General Lissimo, General Weigand, assumed command in place of General Gamelin, an effort was made by the French and British armies in Belgium to keep on holding the right hand of the Belgians and to give their own right hand to a newly created French army, which was to have advanced across the Somme in great strength to grasp it. However, the German eruption swept like a sharp scythe around the right and rear of the armies of the North. Eight or nine armored divisions, each of about four hundred armored vehicles of different kinds, but carefully assorted to be complementary and divisible into small self-contained units, cut off all communications between us and the main French armies. It severed our own communications for food and ammunition, which ran first to Amiens and afterwards to Abbeville, and it sure its way up the coast to Boulogne and Calais and almost to Dunkirk. Behind this armored and mechanized onslaught came a number of German divisions in Lores, and behind them again they're plotted comparatively slowly the dull brute mass of the ordinary German army and German people, always so ready to be led to the trampling down in other lands of liberties and comforts which they have never known in their own. I have said this armored scythe stroke almost reached Dunkirk, almost, but not quite. Boulogne and Calais were the scenes of desperate fighting. The guards defended Boulogne for a while and were then withdrawn by orders from this country. The rifle brigade, the sixtieth rifles, and the Queen Victoria's rifles were the battalion of British tanks and one thousand Frenchmen in all about four thousand strong, defended Calais to the last. The British Brigadier was given an hour to surrender. He spurned the offer and four days of intense street fighting passed before silence reigned over Calais, which marked the end of a memorable resistance. Only thirty unwounded survivors were brought off by the Navy, and we do not know the fate of their comrades. Their sacrifice, however, was not in vain. At least two armored divisions, which otherwise would have been turned against the British expeditionary force, had to be sent to overcome them. They have added another page to the glories of the light divisions, and the time gained enabled the grave-line water lines to be flooded and to be held by the French troops. Thus it was that the port of Dunkirk was kept open, when it was found impossible for the armies of the North to reopen their communications to Armier with the main French armies. Only one choice remained. It seemed indeed forlorn. The Belgian, British and French armies were almost surrounded. Their sole line of retreat was to a single port and to its neighboring beaches. They were pressed on every side by heavy attacks and far outnumbered in the air. When, a week ago today, I asked the House to fix this afternoon as the occasion for a statement, I feared it would be my hard lot to announce the greatest military disaster in our long history. I thought, and some good judges agreed with me, that perhaps twenty thousand or thirty thousand men might be re-embarked. But it certainly seemed that the whole of the French First Army and the whole of the British expeditionary force, north of the Amiens Abbeyville Gap, would be broken up in the open field, or else would have to capitulate for lack of food and ammunition. These were the hard and heavy tidings for which I called upon the House and the nation to prepare themselves a week ago. The whole root and core and brain of the British army, on which and around which we were to build, and are to build, the great British armies in the later years of the war, seemed about to perish upon the field or to be led into an agnominous and starving captivity. That was the prospect a week ago, but another blow, which might well have proved final, was yet to fall upon us. The King of the Belgians had called upon us to come to his aid. Had not this ruler and his government severed themselves from the Allies, who rescued their country from extinction in the late war, and had they not sought refuge in what was proved to be a fatal neutrality, the French and British armies might well at the outset have saved not only Belgium, but perhaps even Poland. Yet at the last moment, when Belgium was already invaded, King Leopold called upon us to come to his aid, and even at the last moment we came. He and his brave efficient army, nearly half a million strong, guarded our left flank, and thus kept open our only line of retreat to the sea. Suddenly, without prior consultation, with the least possible notice, without the advice of his ministers and upon his own personal act, he sent a plenipotentiary to the German command, surrendered his army, and exposed our whole flank and means of retreat. I asked the House a week ago to suspend its judgment because the facts were not clear, but I do not feel that any reason now exists why we should not form our own opinions upon this pitiful episode. The surrender of the Belgian army compelled the British at the shortest notice to cover a flank to the sea, more than 30 miles in length. Otherwise all would have been cut off, and all would have shared the fate to which King Leopold had condemned the finest army his country had ever formed. So in doing this, and exposing this flank, as anyone who followed the operations on the map will see, contact was lost between the British and two out of the three corps forming the first French army, who were still farther from the coast than we were, and it seemed impossible that any large number of Allied troops could reach the coast. The enemy attacked on all sides with great strength and fierceness and their main power, the power of their far more numerous air force, was thrown into the battle or else concentrated upon Dunkirk and the beaches. Pressing in upon the narrow exit, both from the east and from the west, the enemy began to fire with cannon upon the beaches, by which alone the shipping could approach or depart. They sowed magnetic mines in the channels and seas. They sent repeated waves of hostile aircraft, sometimes more than one hundred strong in one formation, to cast their bombs upon the single pier that remained and upon the sand dunes upon which the troops had their eyes foreshelter. Their U-boats, one of which was sunk and their motor launches, took their toll of the vast traffic which now began. For four or five days an intense struggle reigned. All their armored divisions, or what was left of them, together with great masses of infantry and artillery, hurled themselves in vain upon the Avro narrowing, ever contracting appendix within which the British and French armies fought. Meanwhile, the Royal Navy, with a willing help of countless merchant seamen, strained every nerve to embark the British and Allied troops. Two hundred twenty light warships and six hundred fifty other vessels were engaged. They had to operate upon the difficult coast, often in adverse weather, under an almost ceaseless hail of bombs and an increasing concentration of artillery fire. Nor were the seas, as I have said, themselves free from mines and torpedoes. It was in conditions such as these that our men carried on, with little or no rest, for days and nights on end, making trip after trip across the dangerous waters, bringing with them always men whom they had rescued. The numbers they have brought back are the measure of their devotion and their courage. The hospital ships, which brought off many thousands of British and French wounded, being so plainly marked, were a special target for Nazi bombs. But the men and women on board them never faltered in their duty. Meanwhile, the Royal Air Force, which had already been intervening in the battle, so far as its range would allow, from home bases, now used part of its main metropolitan fighter strength and struck at the German bombers and at the fighters, which in large numbers protected them. This struggle was protracted in fierce. Suddenly, the scene has cleared. The crash and thunder has, for the moment, but only for the moment, died away. A miracle of deliverance, achieved by valor, by perseverance, by perfect discipline, by faultless service, by resource, by skill, by unconquerable fidelity, is manifest to us all. The enemy was hurled back by the retreating British and French troops. He was so roughly handled that he did not hurry their departure seriously. The Royal Air Force engaged the main strength of the German Air Force and inflicted upon them losses of at least four to one. And the Navy, using nearly one thousand ships of all kinds, carried over three hundred thirty-five thousand men, French and British, out of the jaws of death and shame, to their native land and to the tasks which lie immediately ahead. We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations, but there was a victory inside this deliverance which should be noted. It was gained by the Air Force. Many of our soldiers coming back have not seen the Air Force at work. They saw only the bombers which escaped its protective attack. They underrated its achievements. I have heard much talk of this, and that is why I go out of my way to say this. I will tell you about it. This was a great trial of strength between the British and German Air Forces. Can you conceive a greater objective for the Germans in the Air than to make evacuation from these beaches impossible, and to sink all these ships which were displayed almost to the extent of thousands? Could there have been an objective of greater military importance and significance for the whole purpose of the war than this? They tried hard, and they were beaten back. They were frustrated in their task. We got the army away, and they have paid fourfold for any losses which they have inflicted. Very large formations of German aeroplanes, and we know that they are a very brave race, have turned on several occasions from the attack of one quarter of their number of the Royal Air Force, and have dispersed in different directions. Twelve aeroplanes have been haunted by two. One aeroplane was driven into the water and cast away by the mere charge of a British aeroplane which had no more ammunition. All of our types, the Hurricane, the Spitfire, and the New Defiant, and all our pilots have been vindicated as superior to what they have at present to face. When we consider how much greater would be our advantage in defending the air above this island against an overseas attack, I must say that I find in these facts a sure basis upon which practical and reassuring thoughts may rest. I will pay my tribute to these young airmen. The great French army was very largely for the time being cast back and disturbed by the enrush of a few thousands of armored vehicles. May it not also be that the civilization itself will be defended by the skill and devotion of a few thousand airmen. There never has been, I suppose, in all the world, in all the history of war such an opportunity for youth. The knights of the round table, the crusaders, all fall back into the past, not only distant but prosaic. These young men going forth every morning to guard their native land and all that we stand for holding in their hands these instruments of colossal and shattering power of which it may be said that every morn brought forth a noble chance and every chance brought forth a noble night. Deserve our gratitude as do all the brave men who, in so many ways and on so many occasions, are ready and continue ready to give life and all for their native land. I return to the army. In the long series of very fierce battles, now on this front, now on that, fighting on three fronts at once, battles fought by two or three divisions against an equal or somewhat larger number of the enemy, and fought fiercely on some of the old grounds that so many of us knew so well. In these battles, our losses in men have exceeded 30,000 killed, wounded, and missing. I take occasion to express the sympathy of the house to all who have suffered bereavement or who are still anxious. The president of the Board of Trade, Sir Andrew Duncan, is not here today. His son has been killed, and many in the house have felt the bangs of affliction in the sharpest form. But I will say this about the missing. We have had a large number of wounded come home safely to this country, but I would say about the missing, that there may be very many reported missing who will come back home someday in one way or another. In the confusion of this fight, it is inevitable that many have been left in positions where honor required no further resistance from them. Against this loss of over 30,000 men, we can set a far heavier loss certainly inflicted upon the enemy. But our losses in material are enormous. We have perhaps lost one-third of the men we lost in the opening days of the Battle of March 21, 1918. But we have lost nearly as many guns, nearly 1,000, and all our transport, all the armored vehicles that were with the army in the north. This loss will impose a further delay on the expansion of our military strength. That expansion had not been proceeding as far as we had hoped. The best of all we had to give had gone to the British expeditionary force, and although they had not the numbers of tanks and some articles of equipment which were desirable, they were a very well and finely equipped army. They had the first fruits of all that our industry had to give, and that is gone. And now here is this further delay. How long it will be, how long it will last depends upon the exertions which we make in this island. An effort the like of which has never been seen in our records is now being made. Workers proceeding everywhere, night and day, Sundays and weekdays. Capital and labor have cast aside their interests, rights and customs, and put them into the common stock. Already the flow of munitions has leaped forward. There is no reason why we should not in a few months overtake the sudden and serious loss that has come upon us without retarding the development of our general program. Nevertheless, our thankfulness at the escape of our army and so many men whose loved ones have passed through an agonizing week was not blind us to the fact that what has happened in France and Belgium is a colossal military disaster. The French army has been weakened. The Belgian army has been lost. A large part of those fortified lines upon which so much faith have been reposed is gone. Many valuable mining districts and factories have passed into the enemy's possession. The whole of the channeled ports are in his hands with all the tragic consequences that follow from that. And we must expect another blow to be struck almost immediately at us or at France. We are told that Herr Hitler has a plan for invading the British Isles. This has often been thought of before. When Napoleon lay at Bologna for a year with his flat-bottom boats and his grand army, he was told by someone there are bitter weeds in England. There are certainly a great many more of them since the British expeditionary force returned. The whole question of home defense against invasion is, of course, powerfully affected by the fact that we have, for the time being in this island, incomparably more powerful military forces than we have ever had at any moment in this war or the last. But this will not continue. We shall not be content with the defensive war. We have our duty to our ally. We have to reconstitute and build up the British expeditionary force once again under its gallant commander-in-chief, Lord Gort. All this is in train. But in the interval, we must put our defenses in this island into such a high-state of organization that the fewest possible numbers will be required to give effective security and that the largest possible potential level offensive effort may be realized. On this, we are now engaged. It will be very convenient if it be the desire of the house to enter upon this subject in a secret session. Not that the government would necessarily be able to reveal in very great detail military secrets, but we like to have our discussions free without the restraint imposed by the fact that they will be read the next day by the enemy. And the government would benefit by views freely expressed in all parts of the house by members with their knowledge of so many different parts of the country. I understand that some request is to be made upon this subject, which will be readily acceded to by His Majesty's government. We have found it necessary to take measures of increasing stringency, not only against enemy aliens and suspicious characters of other nationalities, but also against British subjects who may become a danger or a nuisance should the war be transported to the United Kingdom. I know there are great many people affected by the orders which we have made who are the passionate enemies of Nazi Germany. I am very sorry for them, but we cannot at the present time and under the present stress draw all the distinctions which we should like to do. If parachute landings were attempted and fierce fighting attended upon them followed, these unfortunate people would be far better out of the way for their own sakes as well as for ours. There is, however, another class for which I feel not the slightest sympathy. Parliament has given us the powers to put down fifth column activities with a strong hand, and we shall use those powers subject to the supervision and correction of the house. Without the slightest hesitation until we are satisfied and more than satisfied that this malignancy in our midst has been effectively stamped out. Turning once more, and this time more generally, to the question of invasion, I would observe that there has never been a period in all these long centuries of which we boast when an absolute guarantee against invasion still less against serious raids could have been given to our people. In the days of Napoleon, the same wind which would have carried his transports across the channel might have driven away the blockading fleet. There was always the chance, and it is that chance which has excited and befooled the imaginations of many continental tyrants. Many are the tales that are told. We are assured that novel methods will be adopted, and when we see the originality of malice, the ingenuity of aggression, which our enemy displays, we may certainly prepare ourselves for every kind of novel stratagem and every kind of brutal and treacherous maneuver. I think that no idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered unviewed with a searching, but at the same time my hope with a steady eye. We must never forget the solid assurances of sea power and those which belong to air power if it can be locally exercised. I have myself full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected and if the best arrangements are made as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our island home, to ride out the storm of war and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary, for years, if necessary, alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty's government, every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous states have fallen, or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France. We shall fight on the seas and oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender. And even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it was subjugated and starving, then our empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British fleet, would carry on the struggle, until in God's good time, the New World, with all its power it might, steps forth to the rescue where the liberation of the old end of speech. The speech to which we have just listened is the last of a long succession that the right honourable gentleman, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, has made to the House in the last few months, and, if I may be allowed to say so, I congratulate him upon having survived so far. He appears to be in possession of vigorous health, which is obviously not enjoyed by all his colleagues and he appears to be exempted from those Freudian lapses which have distinguished the speeches of the Lord Privy Seal, and therefore he has survived so far with complete vigour. However, I am bound to say that the speech by the right honourable gentleman today carries the least conviction of all. I have been looking through the various objectives and reasons that the Government have given to the House of Commons for making war on Egypt, and it really is desirable that when a nation makes war upon another nation it should be quite clear why it does so. It should not keep changing the reasons as time goes on. There is in fact no correspondence whatever between the reasons given today and the reasons set out by the Prime Minister at the beginning. The reasons have changed all the time. I have got a list of them here, and for the sake of the record I propose to read it. I admit that I found some difficulty in organising a speech with any coherence because of the incoherence of the reasons. They are very varied. On the 30th of October the Prime Minister said that the purpose was first to seek to separate the combatants, and second to remove the risk to free passage through the canal. The speech we have heard today is the first speech in which that subject has been dropped. Every other statement made on the matter since the beginning has always contained a reference to the future of the canal as one of Her Majesty's government's objectives, in fact, as an objective war to coerce Egypt. Indeed, that is exactly what Honourable and Right Honourable Gentleman Opposite believed it was all about. Honourable members do not do themselves justice. One does not fire in order merely to have a ceasefire. One would have thought that the ceasefire was consequent upon having fired in the first place. It could have been accomplished without starting. The other objective set out on the 30th of October was to reduce the risk to those voyaging through the canal. We have heard from the Right Honourable and Learned Gentleman today a statement which I am quite certain all the world will read with astonishment. He has said that when we landed in Port Said there was already every reason to believe that both Egypt and Israel had agreed to ceasefire. The Minister shakes his head. If he will recollect what his Right Honourable and Learned Friends said, it was that there was still a doubt about the Israeli reply. Are we really now telling this country and the world that all these calamitous consequences have been brought down upon us merely because of a doubt? That is what he said. Surely there was no need. We had, of course, done the bombing, but our ships were still going through the Mediterranean. We had not arrived at Port Said. The exertions of the United Nations had already gone far enough to be able to secure from Israel and Egypt a promise to ceasefire, and all that remained to be cleared up was an ambiguity about the Israeli reply. In these conditions, and against the background of these events, the invasion of Egypt still continued. In the history of nations there is no example of such frivolity. When I have looked at this chronicle of events during the last few days with every desire in the world to understand it, I just have not been able to understand, and do not yet understand, the mentality of the government. If the Right Honourable and Learned Gentleman wishes to deny what I have said, I will give him a chance of doing so. If his words remain as they are now, we are telling the nation and the world that, having decided upon the course, we went on with it despite the fact that the objective we had set ourselves had already been achieved, namely, the separation of the combatants. As to the objective of removing the risk to free passage through the canal, I must confess that I have been astonished at this also. We sent an ultimatum to Egypt, by which we told her that unless she agreed to our landing Ismailia, Suez and Port Said, we should make war upon her. We knew very well, did we not, that Nasser could not possibly comply? Did we really believe that Nasser was going to give in at once? Is our information from Egypt so bad that we did not know that an ultimatum of that sort was bound to consolidate his position in Egypt and in the whole Arab world? We knew at the time, on the 29th and 30th of October, that long before we could have occupied Port Said, Ismailia and Suez, Nasser would have been in a position to make his repost. So wonderfully organised was this expedition, which apparently has been a miracle of military genius, that long after we had delivered our ultimatum and bombed Port Said, our ships were still plowing through the Mediterranean, leaving the enemy still in possession of all the main objectives which we said we wanted. Did we really believe that Nasser was going to wait for us to arrive? He did what anybody would have thought he would do, and if the government did not think he would do it, on that account alone they ought to resign. He sank ships in the canal, the wicked man. What did honorable gentleman opposite expect him to do? The result is that, in fact, the first objective realised was the opposite of the one we set out to achieve. The canal was blocked and it is still blocked. The only other interpretation of the government's mind is that they expected, for some reason or other, that their ultimatum would bring about disorder in Egypt and the collapse of the Nasser regime. None of us believed that. If honorable gentleman opposite would only reason about other people as they reason amongst themselves, they would realise that a government cannot possibly surrender to a threat of that sort and keep any self-respect. We should not, should we? If somebody held a pistol at our heads and said, you do this or we fire, should we? Of course not. Why on earth do not honorable members opposite sometimes believe that other people have the same courage and independence as they themselves possess? Nasser behaved exactly as any reasonable man would expect him to behave. The other objective was to reduce the risk to those voyaging through the canal. That was a rhetorical statement and one does not know what it means. I am sorry the right honorable gentleman the Prime Minister is not here. I appreciate why he is not here, but it is very hard to reply to him when he is not in the house, and I hope honorable members opposite will acquit me of trying to attack him in his absence. On the 31st of October, the Prime Minister said that our objective was to secure a lasting settlement and to protect our nationals. What do we think of that? In the meantime, our nationals were living in Egypt while we were murdering Egyptians at Port Said. We left our nationals in Egypt at the mercy of what might have been merciless riots throughout the whole country with no possibility whatever of our coming to their help. We were still voyaging through the Mediterranean after having exposed them to risk by our own behaviour. What does the house believe that the country will think when it really comes to understand all this? On the 1st of November, we were told the reason was to stop hostilities and prevent a resumption of them. But hostilities had already been practically stopped. On the 3rd of November, our objectives became much more ambitious to deal with all the outstanding problems in the Middle East. In the famous book Madame Bovary, there is a story of a woman who goes from one sin to another a long story of moral decline. In this case, our ambitions saw the farther away we are from realising them. Our objective was to deal with all the outstanding problems in the Middle East. After having outraged our friends, after having insulted the United States, after having affronted all our friends in the Commonwealth, after having driven the whole of the Arab world into one solid phalanx, at least for the moment, behind NASA, we were then going to deal with all the outstanding problems in the Middle East. The next objective of which we were told was to ensure that the Israeli forces withdrew from Egyptian territory. That, I understand, is what we were there for. We went into Egyptian territory in order to establish our moral right to make the Israelis clear out of Egyptian territory. That is a remarkable war aim, is it not? In order that we might get Israel out, we went in. To establish our case before the eyes of the world, Israel being the wicked invader, we, of course, being the nice friend of Egypt, went to protect her from the Israelis, but, unfortunately, we had to bomb the Egyptians first. On the 6th of November, the Prime Minister said, the action we took has been an essential condition for a United Nations force to come into the canal zone itself. That is one of the most remarkable claims of all, and it is one of the main claims made by the right Honourable and Honourable Members opposite. It is, of course, exactly the same claim which might have been made, if they had thought about it in time, by Mussolini and Hitler, that they made war on the world in order to call the United Nations into being. If it were possible for bacteria to argue with each other, they would be able to say that, of course, their chief justification was the advancement of medical science. As the Times has pointed out, the arrival of the United Nations force could not be regarded as a war aim by the Government, it called it an inadvertence. That is not my description, it is the Times. It was a by-product of the action not of Her Majesty's Government, but of the United Nations itself. Let me ask Honourable Members opposite to listen to this case. The right Honourable and learned gentleman was spending most of his time in America trying to persuade the United States, that is, after we were in Egypt, to make the control of the canal one of the conditions of our withdrawal. On Thursday last he himself said here, I mention these facts to the House, because obviously the build-up of this force must have important relationship to a phased withdrawal of our own and the French troops. There are, however, other important matters to be considered, such as the speedy clearance of the canal and negotiation of a final settlement with regard to the operation of the canal. On every single occasion, and Honourable Members opposite expected this, when he went upstairs to tell his Honourable Friends that he had come back empty-handed, what did they say? Why did we start this operation? We started this operation in order to give Nasser a black eye, if we could, to overthrow him, but in any case to secure control of the canal. The United Nations force was in Egypt as a result of a resolution of the United Nations for the purposes of the Charter. All along, the United States and all the other nations attached to the United Nations resolutely refused to allow the future of the canal to be tied up with the existence of the force. But the right Honourable and learned gentleman, in order to have some trophy to wave in the faces of his Honourable Friends, wanted to bring from across the Atlantic an undertaking which would have destroyed the United Nations. Because if the United Nations had agreed that the future of the canal should also be contingent upon the withdrawal of British troops, then the United Nations force would no longer have been a United Nations force, but an instrument of the rump of the United Nations, that is, the Western powers. I put it again to the right Honourable and learned gentleman, that if Honourable Members opposite had succeeded in what they wanted to do, they would have ruined the United Nations, because the very essence of the United Nations force is that it is not attempting to impose upon Egypt any settlement of the canal. I hope that Honourable Members opposite will realise that the argument is a really serious one. It was seen to be so serious by the United States that despite what I believe to be the desire on the part of a very large number of Americans to help us in these difficulties, it was clear to President Eisenhower, as it should be clear to anybody, that a settlement of that sort was bound to be resented by the whole of the Arab world and Egypt. It was bound to be resented by the Commonwealth, because it would make it appear that Her Majesty's Government were using the United Nations to obtain an objective that we set ourselves as far back as last August. Therefore, if the right Honourable and learned gentlemen had succeeded, if the future of the canal had been tied up with our withdrawal, the United Nations force in Egypt would no longer have been a police force for the world, but would have been a means of coercing Egypt to accept our terms about the canal. Of course, the Government did not support the United Nations force. We all know that. Nevertheless, in this retrospective exercise that we are having from the other side of the House, it is possible for us to deal with the seriousness of the whole case. The right Honourable and learned gentlemen is sufficiently aware of the seriousness of it, to start his speech today with collusion. If collusion can be established, the whole fabric of the Government's case falls to the ground, and they know this. It is the most serious of all the charges. It is believed in the United States, and it is believed by large numbers of people in Great Britain, that we were well aware that Israel was going to make the attack on Egypt. In fact, very few of the activities at the beginning of October are credible, except upon the assumption that the French and British Governments knew that something was going to happen in Egypt. Indeed, the right Honourable and learned gentlemen has not been frank with the House. We have asked him over and over again. He has said, Ah, we did not conspire with France and Israel. We never said that the Government might have conspired. What we said was that they might have known about it. The right Honourable and learned gentlemen gave the House the impression that at no time had he ever warned Israel against an attack on Egypt. Even today he hinged the warning we gave to Jordan on the possibility of the other Arab States being involved in any attack on Jordan. We understand from the right Honourable and learned gentlemen that at no time did the Government warn Israel against an attack on Egypt. If we apprehend trouble of these dimensions, we are not dealing with small matters, if we apprehend that the opening phase of a Third World War might start or turn upon an attack by Israel on anyone, why did we not make it quite clear to Israel that we would take the same view of an attack on Egypt as we took of an attack on Jordan? The fact is that all these long telephone conversations and conferences between Michel Guignmollet, Michel Pinot and the Prime Minister are intelligible only on the assumption that something was being cooked up. All that was left to do, as far as we knew from the fact at the time, was to pick up negotiations at Geneva about the future of the Canal as had been arranged by the United Nations. But all the time there was this coming and going between ourselves and the French Government. Did the French know? It is believed that France and the French knew about the Israeli intention. If the French knew, did they tell the British Government? We would like to know. Did Michel Guignmollet on the 16th of October tell the British Prime Minister that he expected that there was to be an attack on Egypt? Every circumstantial fact that we know points to that conclusion, for instance, Mr. Ben-Gurion, the Israeli Prime Minister, had already made it clear in the Knesset on several occasions that Israel regarded Egypt as the real enemy and not Jordan. Therefore, a warning not to attack Jordan was not relevant. At the same time, many Israelis were saying that at last Israel had got a reliable friend. What happened? Did Marianne take John Bull to an unknown rendezvous? Did Marianne say to John Bull that there was a forest fire going to start? And did John Bull then say, we ought to put it out, but Marianne said, no, let us warm our hands by it. It is a nice fire. Did Marianne deceive John Bull? Or seduce him? Now, of course, we come to the ultimate end. It is at the end of all these discussions that the war aim of the Government now becomes known. Of course, we knew it all the time. We knew where they would land. After this long voyaging, getting almost wrecked several times, they have come to safe harbour. It was a red peril all the time. It was Russia all the time. It was not to save the canal. It was not the canal. It was the red peril which they had unmasked. The Government suspected it before, said the Right Honourable and Learned Gentleman, about the arms to Egypt. We on this side knew it. We did not suspect it. But the Right Honourable and Learned Gentleman suspected it, so he said, at the very time when he was informing the House that he thought there was a proper balance of arms between Egypt and Israel. What will the Israelis think of this when they read the Right Honourable and Learned Gentleman's words? Or are we to understand that the Israelis have got as many arms as the Egyptians have? We understand that they were fully armed at the time, because the Right Honourable and Learned Gentleman suspected that the Egyptians had these arms. I am not in the least surprised by this situation. That the Russians have provided these arms to the Egyptians, we accept, of course they did. It is a curious thing. I may be frivolous, but I am not frightened by it. And I will tell the House why. The Russians have a habit, curiously enough it seems to me, of not knowing what is happening in other nations. They do not even know what is happening in Poland or Hungary, and it does not seem to have occurred to the Russians that there was no military advantage in providing weapons that the Egyptians could not use. The fact of the matter is that these great modern weapons are practically useless in the hands of backward nations. Do not, however, let Honourable Members push the argument too far. I am not for one moment seeking to justify the Russian supply of arms to Egypt. I think it was a wicked thing to do, and I think it is an equally wicked thing for us to supply arms. That area is much too combustible, far too inflammatory. This is now the end of 1956, when very many things have happened in the Middle East, when it is more dangerous than ever. I think that the Russians ought not to have done it, and I will say further that I think NASA ought not to have invited them. It seems to me, and here I probably shall carry Honourable Members opposite with me, that NASA has not been behaving in the spirit of the Bandoen Conference, which he joined, because what he did was not to try to reduce the temperature of the Cold War, what he did was to exploit it for Egyptian purposes. Therefore, NASA's hands are not clean by any means. I have said this before, I said it in Trafalgar Square. We must not believe that because the Prime Minister is wrong, NASA is right. That is not the view of this side of the House. What has deeply offended us is that such wrongs as NASA has done, and such faults as he has, have been covered by the bigger blunders of the British Government. That is what vexes us. We are satisfied that the arts of diplomacy would have brought NASA to where we wanted to get him, which was to agree about the free passage of ships through the canal, on the civilised ground that a riparian nation has got no absolute rights over a great waterway like the canal. That is a principle which has been accepted by India, and by America, and by most other nations. We have never taken the position that in the exercise of sovereign rights, Egypt has the right to inflict a mortal wound upon the commerce of the world. Do not let honourable members now bring to the forefront of the argument the fact that Egypt had not been allowing Israeli ships to go through the canal. If they thought so much of the seriousness of that, why did they not even invite Israel to the conference? It is not good enough to bring these things forward all the time, as though they were the main objectives. Of course, we take the view that Egypt should permit the ships of all nations to pass through the canal, and we hope that that objective will still be insisted upon. We are satisfied that those objectives could have been realised by negotiation. Not only have they not been realised by the action taken by the government, but the opposite has been realised. It has been clear to us, and it is now becoming clear to the nation, that for many months past honourable members opposite have been harboring designs of this sort. One of the reasons why we could not get a civilised solution of the Cyprus problem was that the government were harboring designs to use Cyprus in the Middle East, unilaterally or in conjunction with France. Whenever we put to this house questions to the right honourable gentleman, asking him why he did not answer whether he wanted a base on Cyprus or Cyprus as a base, he answered quite frankly that we might want to activate the base on Cyprus independently of our allies. That was the answer. Well, we have activated it, and look at us. We have had all these murders, and all this terror, and we have had all this unfriendship over Cyprus between ourselves and Greece, and we have been held up to derision in all the world merely because we contemplated using Cyprus as a base for going it alone in the Middle East, and we did go it alone. Look at the result. Was it not obvious to honourable members opposite that Great Britain could not possibly engage in a major military adventure without involving our NATO allies? Was it not very clear, if we did contemplate any adventure at all, that it would have to be in conjunction with them? No. It is a sad and bitter story. We hope that at least one beneficial by-product of it will be a settlement of the Cyprus question very soon indeed. Now, I would conclude by saying this. I do not believe that any of us yet, I say any of us yet, have realised the complete change that has taken place in the relationship between nations and between governments and peoples. These were objectives I do beg honourable members to reflect, that were not realisable by the means that we adopted. These civil, social and political objectives in modern society are not attainable by armed force. Even if we had occupied Egypt by armed force, we could not have secured the freedom of passage through the canal. It is clear that there is such xenophobia, that there is such passion, that there is such bitter feeling against Western imperialism, rightly or wrongly, I am not arguing the merits at the moment, among millions of people, that they are not prepared to keep the arteries of European commerce alive and intact if they themselves want to cut them. We could not keep ships going through the canal. The canal is too easily sabotaged, if Egypt wants to sabotage it. Why on earth did we imagine that the objectives could be realised in that way in the middle of the 20th century? The social furniture of modern society is so complicated and fragile, that it cannot support the jack boot. We cannot run the process of modern society by attempting to impose our will upon nations by armed force. If we have not learned that, we have learned nothing. Therefore, from our point of view here, whatever may have been the morality of the government's action, and about that there is no doubt, there is no doubt about its imbecility. There is not the slightest shadow of doubt that we have attempted to use the methods which were bound to destroy the objectives we had, and of course, this is what we have discovered. I commend to honourable members, if they have not seen it, a very fine cartoon in punch by Illingworth and called Desert Victory. There we see a black ominous sinister background and a pipeline broken, pouring oil into the desert sands. How on earth do honourable members opposite? Imagine that hundreds of miles of pipeline can be kept open if the Arabs do not want it to be kept open. It is enough to say that there are large numbers of Arabs who want the pipeline to be kept open because they live by it. It has been proved over and over again, now in the modern world, that men and women are often prepared to put up with material losses for things they really think worthwhile. It has been shown in Budapest, and it could be shown in the Middle East. That is why I beg honourable members to turn their backs on this most ugly chapter and realise that if we are to live in the world and are to be regarded as a decent nation, decent citizens in the world, we have to act up to different standards than the one that we have been following in the last few weeks. I resent most bitterly this unconcerned for the lives of innocent men and women. It may be that the dead in Port Said are a hundred, two hundred, or three hundred. If it is only one, we had no business to take it. Do honourable members begin to realise how this is going to revolt the world when it passes into the imagination of men and women everywhere, and in this country? That we, with eight million here in London, the biggest single civilian target in the world, with our crowded island exposed, as no nation in the world is exposed, to the barbarism of modern weapons. We ourselves set the example. We ourselves conscript our boys and put guns and aeroplanes in their hands and say, Bomb there! Really, this is so appalling that human language can hardly describe it. And for what? The government resorted to epic weapons for squalid and trivial ends. And that is why all through this unhappy period ministers, all of them, have spoken and argued and debated well below their proper form. Because they have been synthetic villains, they are not really villains, they have only set off on a villainous course and they cannot even use the language of villainy. Therefore, in conclusion, I say that it is no use honourable members consoling themselves that they have more support in the country than many of them feared they might have. Of course they have support in the country. They have support among many of the unthinking and unreflective who still react to traditional values who still think that we can solve all these problems in the old ways. Of course they have. Not all the human race has grown to adult state yet, but do not let them take comfort in that thought. The right honourable member for Woodford has warned them before. In the first volume of his Second World War he writes about the situation before the war and he says this, Thus an administration more disastrous than any in our history saw all its errors and shortcomings acclaimed by the nation. There was, however, a bill to be paid, and it took the new House of Commons nearly ten years to pay it. It will take as many years to live down what we have done. It will take as many years to pay the price. I know that tomorrow evening honourable and right honourable members will probably, as they have done before, give the government a vote of confidence, but they know in their heart of heart that it is a vote which the government do not deserve. End of speech.