PEERS AND PACIFISM

DEBATE IN THE LORDS

PEACE BY NEGOTIATION.

Lord Denbigh’s motion in the House of Lords yesterday, calling on the Government to take stronger measures against the insidious activities of the Pacifists in this country, led to an important discussion, and produced speeches of great personal interest from some of his brother Peers, who had fallen under his specific censure. For Lord Denbigh plied the lash very vigorously, and in the long and exhaustive catalogue of Pacifists which he presented to the House he directly alluded to Lord Beauchamp, Lord Loreburn, Lord Haldane, and Lord Lansdowne. All these in their turn got up and defended themselves against his strictures by presenting their individual points of view – which are, of course, very different from those of the more aggressive Pacifists. But the latter have no representatives or mouthpieces in the House of Lords, where Pacifism wears a decorous and philosophic aspect. Lord Denbigh, who has played a very manly and active part throughout the war, as a soldier and as a propagandist, spoke with much vehemence of the ignorance of great masses of the people as to the real causes of the war and with equal impatience of the supineness of the Government, the Episcopal Bench, and Parliament in not having grappled with it more effectually. He gave their lordships a sort of sample résumé of his own popular lectures, which was listened to with close attention. The censure was certainly a little indiscriminate. “Simple peace by process of surrender,” as Lord Lansdowne showed, is not a fair description of the objects of all those who favour the idea of “peace by negotiation”; nor was he fair to the Episcopal Bench, to whose members he referred contemptuously, as though they were a pack of Pacifists. But it was a good, healthy, vigorous speech, the moral of which was that “the Hun has to be fought as strenuously at home as in the field”.

HOME PROPAGANDA.

Lord Beaverbrook, as Minister of Information, defended the Government from the charge of supineness in the matter of home propaganda, and gave an account of what his department is doing, though it is the War Aims Committee, and not the Ministry, which is chiefly responsible for propaganda in England. The Ministry, however, has taken over the cinematographic and photographic side of home propaganda, and it is hoped that twelve million people weekly will soon be witnessing the special films. Lord Beaverbrook also said that the demand for the Lichnowsky “Memoirs” had amounted already to four million copies. He promised renewed and constant activity, but it is the Home Office which has to do with the suppression of Pacifism, and the Home Office only moves when there has been flagrant violation of the law. No change whatsoever in the policy of the Government in this respect was indicated, a fact which pleased Lord Haldane, who took the line that no great danger was to be apprehended from Pacifists, unless their freedom of speech is interfered with. Lord Haldane reproached Lord Denbigh with only touching the fringe of his subject in his propagandist lectures. He ought to warn the people, he said, not only as to the meaning of the German schemes in the Middle East, but as to the methods of German penetration and the reason of its success, viz., their superior education and organisation. Lord Haldane, however, laid open his own flank to an ironic shaft from Lord Curzon, who reminded him of the efforts which he had made to awaken the Government, of which Lord Haldane was a member, to the dangers of the Baghdad Railway scheme, and of the absolutely deaf ear which they had turned to his warnings. But then Lord Haldane habitually forgets all his past record in respect of Germany, except his academic warnings as to her real strength lying in her superior scientific organisation. Over all else he has passed the sponge of oblivion.

LORD LANSDOWNE’S PROTESTS.

His views, however, as to the military position in the West are noteworthy, for they are so grave that he disapproves of any attempt being made to overthrow the present Government – an obiter dictum of special value at this moment. Lord Beauchamp had expressed his confidence that Prussian militarism would fail again, as it had always failed, except where aided by treachery, with the one exception at Tannenberg; Lord Haldane was far more reserved, and described the situation as “most critical”. Then came an earnest speech from Lord Lansdowne, who told the House that he had taken no part in the private meetings and conferences addressed by Lord Beauchamp, to which allusion had been made. Lord Lansdowne went on to emphasise his view that peace by negotiation is the only way whereby the war can be honourably and safely ended, seeing that the only alternative is the policy of the knock-out blow, though by whom, when, and at what cost that is to be delivered, no one could say.