Never Give In! (24 page)

My three main propositions are: First, that we must oppose the would-be dominator or potential aggressor. Secondly, that Germany under its present Nazi régime and with its prodigious armaments, so swiftly developing, fills unmistakably that part. Thirdly, that the League of Nations rallies many countries, and unites our own people here at home in the most effective way to control the would-be aggressor. I venture most respectfully to submit these main themes to your consideration. Everything else will follow from them.

It is always more easy to discover and proclaim general principles than to apply them. First, we ought to count our effective association with France. That does not mean that we should develop a needlessly hostile mood against Germany. It is a part of our duty and our interest to keep the temperature low between these two countries. We shall not have any difficulty in this so far as France is concerned. Like us, they are a parliamentary democracy with tremendous inhibitions against war, and, like us, under considerable drawbacks in preparing their defence. Therefore, I say we ought to regard our defensive association with France as fundamental. Everything else must be viewed in proper subordination now that the times have become so sharp and perilous. Those who are possessed of a definite body of doctrine and of deeply rooted convictions upon it will be in a much better position to deal with the shifts and surprises of daily affairs than those who are merely taking short views, and indulging their natural impulses as they are evoked by what they read from day to day. The first thing is to decide where you want to go. For myself, I am for the armed League of all Nations, or as many as you can get, against the potential aggressor, with England and France as the core of it. Let us neglect nothing in our power to establish the great international framework. If that should prove to be beyond our strength, or if it breaks down through the weakness or wrongdoing of others, then at least let us make sure that England and France, the two surviving free great countries of Europe, can together ride out any storm that may blow with good and reasonable hopes of once again coming safely into port.

THE JEWS: ‘THEIR BLOOD AND RACE DECLARED DEFILING AND ACCURSED’

24 March 1936

House of Commons

Churchill who, as Colonial Secretary, had defined the borders of Biblical Palestine and placed Emir Abdullah on the throne of Jordan, remained a constant champion of the Zionist cause and upholder of the Balfour Declaration, which proclaimed Palestine a ‘National Home’ for the Jews.

The right hon. Gentleman has assured us that the Mandate and the Balfour Declaration are safe, but I personally feel great doubts about that. If you have an Arab majority, undoubtedly you will have continued friction between the principle of the Balfour Declaration and the steps that must be taken day by day and month by month to give effect to that Declaration and the wishes of the Arab majority. I should have thought it would be a very great obstruction to the development of Jewish immigration into Palestine and to the development of the national home of the Jews there.

I have no hostility for the Arabs. I think I made most of the settlements over 14 years ago governing the Palestine situation. The Emir Abdullah is in Transjordania, where I put him one Sunday afternoon at Jerusalem. I acted upon the advice of that very great man Colonel Lawrence, who was at my side in making the arrangements, which I believe have stood the test of time and many changes of government throughout the Middle East. But I cannot conceive that you will be able to reconcile, at this juncture and at this time, the development of the policy of the Balfour Declaration with an Arab majority on the Legislative Council. I do not feel a bit convinced of it, even though Sir Andrew Walker may be of that opinion. I do not feel convinced when I see so many other people who have studied the matter, and who are friends of Palestine, friends of the Arabs, friends of the Jews, who view this departure at the present moment with the very greatest misgiving.

We are doing very fine work in Palestine at the present moment. When I travelled through the country a little more than a year ago I was enormously impressed with the order and smoothness with which the administration was being conducted. If you go into neighbouring countries, like Syria, you see that there is also order and progress, but enormous military forces are used. Scores of thousands of troops are maintained in the country. I always consider that our administration must be judged, in comparison with these countries, not by the fact that they can govern with overwhelming military forces – anyone can do that – but that we can conduct progressive administration with the comparatively small forces that we employ in those areas.

Do not be in a hurry to overturn the existing system. It is working very well. It is not as though it had got into such a state that you said that you could not go on any more with the present administration, and that, although your local government institutions have completely failed up to date, or have made no success of their experiment, nevertheless you must plunge into the larger field. That is not the position. You are in the full tide of a successful experiment in British administration and your local government is moving forward in a very slow manner. Surely, therefore, you can afford to wait for some other time. Does the right hon. Gentleman mean to say that if, under the advice of Parliament or under the persuasion which reaches him from any quarter, he decided that this matter could not go forward this year or next year, but that he would wait for some other time – does he suggest that he would feel himself guilty of a breach of faith, of a breaking of the pledge given to the League of Nations? It is absurd. I have not the slightest doubt that, if our representatives at Geneva explained the position as it has been explained in this House from every bench, they would get cordial support for not taking this step at the present moment, from the authority whom they have a right to consult.

I have been speaking of this matter in connection with Palestine, but, of course, there is in our minds an added emphasis upon this question of Jewish migration which comes from other quarters, at a time when the Jewish race in a great country is being subjected to most horrible, cold, scientific persecution, brutal persecution, a cold ‘pogrom’ as it has been called – people reduced from affluence to ruin, and then, even in that position, denied the opportunity of earning their daily bread, and cut out even from relief by grants to tide the destitute through the winter; their little children pilloried in the schools to which they have to go; their blood and race declared defiling and accursed; every form of concentrated human wickedness cast upon these people by overwhelming power, by vile tyranny. I say that, when that is the case, surely the House of Commons will not allow the one door which is open, the one door which allows some relief, some escape from these conditions, to be summarily closed, not even allow it to be suggested that it may be obstructed by the course which we take now.

‘GREAT HAMMERS DESCENDING DAY AND NIGHT IN GERMANY’

26 March 1936

House of Commons

On 7 March Hitler’s armies invaded the Rhineland in stark defiance of the Treaties of Versailles and Locarno – an event accepted with barely a protest by the British and French Governments. To Churchill it was confirmation of his warnings of the aggressive nature of Nazi Germany.

The violation of the Rhineland is serious from the point of view of the menace to which it exposes Holland, Belgium and France. It is also serious from the fact that when it is fortified – and I listened with apprehension to what the Secretary of State said about the Germans declining even to refrain from entrenching themselves during the period of negotiations; I listened with sorrow to that – when there is there a line of fortifications, as I suppose there will be in a very short time, it will produce great reactions on the European situation. It will be a barrier across Germany’s front-door, which will leave her free to sally out eastward and southward by the back door.

In spite of the seriousness which I attach to this reoccupation of the Rhineland, I must say that it seems to me the smallest part of the whole problem. What is the real problem, the real peril? It is not the reoccupation of the Rhineland, but this enormous process of the rearmament of Germany. There is the peril. My right hon. Friend opposite says that in the election I seemed to be haunted by this idea. I confess that I have been occupied with this idea of the great wheels revolving and the great hammers descending day and night in Germany, making the whole industry of that country an arsenal, making the whole of that gifted and valiant population into one great disciplined war machine. There is the problem that lies before you. There is what is bringing the war. This Rhineland business is but a step, is but a stage, is but an incident in this process. I agree very much with the spokesman of the official Labour Opposition when he said there was fear. There is fear, in every country, all round. Even here, in this country, with some protection from distance, there is fear, deep fear. It takes a deep fear to make the hon. Member for West Fife (Mr Gallacher) speak in terms which commend themselves to almost every one who was in the House. What is the fear and what is the question which arises from that fear? It is, ‘How are we going to stop this war which seems to be moving towards us in so many ways?’

There are, of course, two practical foreign policies for our country. The first is an alliance between Great Britain and France, the two surviving liberal democracies of the West, who, strongly armed, rich, powerful, with the seas at their disposal, with great air forces and great armies, would stand with their backs to the ocean and allow the explosion which may come in Europe to blast its way eastward or southward. There is a practical foreign policy, but I do hope that we shall not resign ourselves to that, without first an earnest effort to persevere in the other policy, namely, the establishment of real collective security under the League of Nations and of the reign of law and respect for international law throughout Europe. I venture to make a suggestion which I feel will not be entirely repugnant to those who sit opposite, namely, that, apart from this particular emergency and apart from the measures which the Foreign Secretary has taken, we should endeavour now with great resolution to establish effective collective security. In my view, all the nations and States that are alarmed at the growth of German armaments ought to combine for mutual aid, in pacts of mutual assistance, approved by the League of Nations and in accordance with the Covenant of the League.

We hear talk of the encirclement of Germany. I thought that the last speaker quite justly said that war encirclement would be intolerable, but peaceful, defensive encirclement may be inevitable, before the alarms of the nations are allayed. I say we would impose no encirclement on Germany that we would not submit to ourselves. It is not a case of the encirclement of Germany but of the encirclement of the potential aggressor. If we are the aggressors, let us be encircled and brought to reason by the pressure of other countries. If France is the aggressor, let her be restrained in the same way; and if it be Germany, let Germany take the measures meted out to her by countries who submit themselves to the law which they are prepared to take a share in enforcing. The first thing we ought to do is to make these pacts of mutual aid and assistance. My right hon. Friend the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr Lloyd George), who is not here now, spoke grave words of warning about military conventions. But you cannot have effective arrangements for mutual aid in contingencies of peril unless you have conventions. That is the first thing.

In the second place, I agree with what was said by the right hon. Gentleman who opened the Debate for the Opposition, that the Powers, once they are woven into this strong confederacy for defence and peace, should give to Germany an absolute guarantee of the inviolability of German soil and a promise that, if anyone invades her, all will turn against the offender and if she strikes at anyone, all will stand by and defend the victim. I am looking for peace. I am looking for a way to stop war, but you will not stop it by pious sentiments and appeals. You will only stop it by making practical arrangements. When you have these two conditions established firmly, when you have linked up the forces at the disposal of the League for defence, and when you have given that guarantee to Germany, then is the first moment when you should address Germany collectively, not only upon the minor question of the Rhine but upon the supreme question of German rearmament in relation to other countries – and they must not shirk presenting themselves to that test also. Further, at that moment you must invite Germany to state her grievances, to lay them on the council board and to let us have it out. But do not let us have it out as if we were a rabble flying before forces we dare not resist. Let us have it out on the basis that we are negotiating from strength and not from weakness; that we are negotiating from unity and not from division and isolation; that we are seeking to do justice, because we have power.

The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that when nations are strong they are not always just, and when they wish to be just they are often no longer strong. I desire to see the collective forces of the world invested with overwhelming power. If you are going to run this thing on a narrow margin and to depend on a very slight margin, one way or the other, you are going to have war. But if you get five or ten to one on one side, all bound rigorously by the Covenant and the conventions which they own, then, in my opinion, you have an opportunity of making a settlement which will heal the wounds of the world. Let us have this blessed union of power and of justice: