Never Give In! (28 page)

Now I come to the greatest matter of all, the air. We received on Tuesday night, from the First Lord of the Admiralty [Sir Samuel Hoare], the assurance that there is no foundation whatever for the statement that we are ‘vastly behindhand’ with our Air Force programme. It is clear from his words that we are behindhand. The only question is, what meaning does the First Lord attach to the word ‘vastly’? He also used the expression, about the progress of air expansion, that it was ‘not unsatisfactory’. One does not know what his standard is. His standards change from time to time. In that speech of the 11th of September about the League of Nations there was one standard, and in the Hoare–Laval Pact there was clearly another.

In August last some of us went in a deputation to the Prime Minister in order to express the anxieties which we felt about national defence, and to make a number of statements which we preferred not to be forced to make in public. I personally made a statement on the state of the Air Force, to the preparation of which I had devoted several weeks and which, I am sorry to say, took an hour to read. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister listened with his customary exemplary patience. I think I told him beforehand that he is a good listener, and perhaps he will retort that he learned to be when I was his colleague. At any rate, he listened with patience, and that is always something. During the three months that have passed since then I have checked those facts again in the light of current events and later knowledge, and were it not that foreign ears listen to all that is said here, or if we were in secret Session, I would repeat my statement here. And even if only one half were true I am sure the House would consider that a very grave state of emergency existed, and also, I regret to say, a state of things from which a certain suspicion of mismanagement cannot be excluded. I am not going into any of those details. I make it a rule, as far as I possibly can, to say nothing in this House upon matters which I am not sure are already known to the General Staffs of foreign countries; but there is one statement of very great importance which the Minister for the Coordination of Defence made in his speech on Tuesday [10 Nov. 1936]. He said:

The process of building up squadrons and forming new training units and skeleton squadrons is familiar to everybody connected with the Air Force. The number of squadrons in present circumstances at home today is eighty, and that figure includes sixteen auxiliary squadrons, but excludes the Fleet Air Arm, and, of course, does not include the squadrons abroad.

From that figure, and the reservations by which it was prefaced, it is possible for the House, and also for foreign countries, to deduce pretty accurately the progress of our Air Force expansion. I feel, therefore, at liberty to comment on it.

Parliament was promised a total of seventy-one new squadrons, making a total of 124 squadrons in the home defence force, by 31 March 1937. This was thought to be the minimum compatible with our safety. At the end of the last financial year our strength was fifty-three squadrons, including auxiliary squadrons. Therefore, in the thirty-two weeks which have passed since the financial year began we have added twenty-eight squadrons – that is to say, less than one new squadron each week. In order to make the progress which Parliament was promised, in order to maintain the programme which was put forward as the minimum, we shall have to add forty-three squadrons in the remaining twenty weeks, or over two squadrons a week. The rate at which new squadrons will have to be formed from now till the end of March will have to be nearly three times as fast as hitherto. I do not propose to analyse the composition of the eighty squadrons we now have, but the Minister, in his speech, used a suggestive expression, ‘skeleton squadrons’ – applying at least to a portion of them – but even if every one of the eighty squadrons had an average strength of twelve aeroplanes, each fined with war equipment, and the reserves upon which my right hon. Friend dwelt, we should only have a total of 960 first-line home-defence aircraft.

What is the comparable German strength? I am not going to give an estimate and say that the Germans have not got more than a certain number, but I will take it upon myself to say that they most certainly at this moment have not got less than a certain number. Most certainly they have not got less than 1500 first-line aeroplanes, comprised in not less than 130 or 140 squadrons, including auxiliary squadrons. It must also be remembered that Germany has not got in its squadrons any machine the design and construction of which is more than three years old. It must also be remembered that Germany has specialised in long-distance bombing aeroplanes and that her preponderance in that respect is far greater than any of these figures would suggest.

We were promised most solemnly by the Government that air parity with Germany would be maintained by the home defence forces. At the present time, putting everything at the very best, we are, upon the figures given by the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence, only about two-thirds as strong as the German air force, assuming that I am not very much understating their present strength. How then does the First Lord of the Admiralty [Sir Samuel Hoare] think it right to say:

On the whole, our forecast of the strength of other Air Forces proves to be accurate; on the other hand, our own estimates have also proved to be accurate.

I am authorised to say that the position is satisfactory.

I simply cannot understand it. Perhaps the Prime Minister will explain the position, I should like to remind the House that I have made no revelation affecting this country and that I have introduced no new fact in our air defence which does not arise from the figures given by the Minister and from the official estimates that have been published.

What ought we to do? I know of only one way in which this matter can be carried further. The House ought to demand a Parliamentary inquiry. It ought to appoint six, seven or eight independent Members, responsible, experienced, discreet Members, who have some acquaintance with these matters and are representative of all parties, to interview Ministers and to find out what are, in fact, the answers to a series of questions; then to make a brief report to the House, whether of reassurance or of suggestion for remedying the shortcomings. That, I think, is what any Parliament worthy of the name would do in these circumstances. Parliaments of the past days in which the greatness of our country was a building would never have hesitated. They would have felt they could not discharge their duty to their constituents if they did not satisfy themselves that the safety of the country was being effectively maintained.

The French Parliament, through its committees, has a very wide, deep knowledge of the state of national defence, and I am not aware that their secrets leak out in any exceptional way. There is no reason why our secrets should leak out in any exceptional way. It is because so many members of the French Parliament are associated in one way or another with the progress of the national defence that the French Government were induced to supply, six years ago, upward of £60,000,000 sterling to construct the Maginot Line of fortifications, when our Government was assuring them that wars were over and that France must not lag behind Britain in her disarmament. Even now I hope that Members of the House of Commons will rise above considerations of party discipline, and will insist upon knowing where we stand in a matter which affects our liberties and our lives. I should have thought that the Government, and above all the Prime Minister, whose load is so heavy, would have welcomed such a suggestion.

Owing to past neglect, in the face of the plainest warnings, we have now entered upon a period of danger greater than has befallen Britain since the U-boat campaign was crushed; perhaps, indeed, it is a more grievous period than that, because at that rime at least we were possessed of the means of securing ourselves and of defeating that campaign. Now we have no such assurance. The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences. We have entered a period in which for more than a year, or a year and a half, the considerable preparations which are now on foot in Britain will not, as the Minister clearly showed, yield results which can be effective in actual fighting strength; while during this very period Germany may well reach the culminating point of her gigantic military preparations, and be forced by financial and economic stringency to contemplate a sharp decline, or perhaps some other exit from her difficulties. It is this lamentable conjunction of events which seems to present the danger of Europe in its most disquieting form. We cannot avoid this period; we are in it now. Surely, if we can abridge it by even a few months, if we can shorten this period when the German Army will begin to be so much larger than the French Army, and before the British Air Force has come to play its complementary part, we may be the architects who build the peace of the world on sure foundations.

Two things, I confess, have staggered me, after a long Parliamentary experience, in these Debates. The first has been the dangers that have so swiftly come upon us in a few years, and have been transforming our position and the whole outlook of the world. Secondly, I have been staggered by the failure of the House of Commons to react effectively against those dangers. That, I am bound to say, I never expected. I never would have believed that we should have been allowed to go on getting into this plight, month by month and year by year, and that even the Government’s own confessions of error would have produced no concentration of Parliamentary opinion and force capable of lifting our efforts to the level of emergency. I say that unless the House resolves to find out the truth for itself it will have committed an act of abdication of duty without parallel in its long history.

‘EUROPE . . . IS NOW APPROACHING THE MOST DANGEROUS MOMENT IN HISTORY’

25 November 1936

New Commonwealth Society Luncheon,

Dorchester Hotel, London

Churchill saw, with greater clarity than any other parliamentarian, the new and cardinal importance of air power, as well as Britain’s acute vulnerability to this form of warfare.

Europe, and it might well be the world, is now approaching the most dangerous moment in history. The struggle which is now opening between rival forms of dictatorships threatens to disturb the internal peace of many countries and to range them against each other. That alone would bring us into grave danger. Yet I feel that danger can be surmounted and kept within bounds if it were not that in this self-same, ill-starred epoch men had learned to fly. The aeroplane has put all countries and all parts of every country simultaneously at the mercy of a sudden blasting attack. Already, helpless nations have accepted the bombing of open cities and the indiscriminate slaughter of civilian inhabitants as the inevitable commonplace of the routine of war. What has been planned and was being planned will certainly in time of war be carried into ruthless effect.

Attack from the air, moreover, requires no mobilisation of fleets and slow gathering of armies. It can be launched by mere word or gesture; and, once launched, will be irrevocable in its consequences. It is this conjunction of new air power with the rise of dictatorships that has brought all countries into a peril unknown in barbarous times, or even in the most brutal periods of human history. It seems very unlikely that the world will be able to preserve any semblance of civilisation unless bombing by air power is brought under complete control by international organisation.

It follows that, in present circumstances, we are bound to support all well-considered necessary measures to enable the country to defend itself and to bear its part in a combined defensive system against aggression. We view with the strongest reprehension activities like those of Mr Lansbury and Canon Sheppard, who are ceaselessly trying to dissuade the youth of this country from joining its defensive forces, and seek to impede and discourage the military preparations which the state of the world forces upon us.

If it is true, as the Prime Minister stated last week in a deplorable utterance, that ‘democracy is always two years behind the dictator’, then democracy will be destroyed. In the Great War it was the Parliamentary nations that conquered, and the autocratic Empires that fell to pieces without exception. If democracy in Great Britain and in other countries is in danger now, as perhaps it might be, it is not democracy that is at fault, but the leadership that it has received.

Who should say that Europe cannot save itself if it tries? If mankind means to have peace, its will can be made effective, but only if it acts upon a plan and obeys the law on which that plan is based. If only the people of Spain six months ago could have foreseen the horror that has overtaken them, how easy it would have been for them to stop it. When I brood on that tragedy, I ask myself whether it is not a portent to warn all Europe of the fate which might lie at no great distance from us all, upon a scale to which the Spanish horror would be but a small working model. I ask all who are concerned with peace to rise to the level of events, and to trifle no more on the edge of the abyss, but to embrace the sacrifices and discipline of mind and body which the cause requires.

‘THE ABDICATION OF KING EDWARD VIII’

10 December 1936

House of Commons

Churchill made himself even more unpopular and isolated by stepping forward as a champion of his friend, the new King, who wished to marry an American divorcee, Mrs Wallis Simpson.