I find myself at the close of a most interesting debate which has been well worth while — I myself should not have regretted a second day — in which there have been a number of most interesting contributions, in profound agreement with one of two of the opening observations of Mr. Lansbury. Disarmament, in my view, will not stop war; it is a matter of the will to peace.
It is often said that two natural instincts make for the preservation of the race — reproduction of the species and the preservation of the species by fighting for safety. The right hon. gentleman is perfectly right. That fighting instinct, although he did not say it, is the oldest instinct we have in our nature; and that is what we are up against. I agree with him that the highest duty of statesmanship is to work to remove the causes of war. That is the difficult and the constant duty of statesmen, and that is where true statesmanship is shown.
But what you can do by disarmament, and what we all hope to do, is to make war more difficult. It is to make it more difficult to start; it is to make it pay less to continue; and to that I think we ought to direct our minds.
I have studied these matters myself for many years. My duty has made me Chairman for five years of the Committee of Imperial Defence. I have sat continuously for 10 years on that Committee, except during the period when the present Opposition were in power, and there is no subject that interests me more deeply nor which is more fraught with the ultimate well or ill being of the human race.
What the world suffers from is a sense of fear, a want of confidence; and it is a fear held instinctively and without knowledge very often. But my own view — and I have slowly and deliberately come to this conclusion — is that there is no one thing that is more responsible for that fear — and I am speaking of what Mr. Attlee called the common people, of whom I am the chief [Ministers: cheers] — than the fear of the air.
Up to the time of the last War civilians were exempt from the worst perils of war. They suffered sometimes from hunger, sometimes from the loss of sons and relatives serving in the Army. But now, in addition to this, they suffered from the constant fear not only of being killed themselves, but, what is perhaps worse for a man, of seeing his wife and children killed from the air. These feelings exist among the ordinary people throughout the whole of the civilized world, but I doubt if many of those who have that fear realize one or two things with reference to the cause of that fear.
That is the appalling speed which the air has brought into modern warfare; the speed of the attack. The speed of the attack, compared with the attack of an army, is as the speed of a motor-car to that of a four-in-hand. In the next war you will find that any town within reach of an aerodrome can be bombed within the first five minutes of war to an extent inconceivable in the last War, and the question is, Whose morale will be shattered quickest by that preliminary bombing?
I think it is well also for the man in the street to realize that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed, whatever people may tell him. The bomber will always get through, and it is very easy to understand that if you realize the area of space. Take any large town you like on this island or on the Continent within reach of an aerodrome. For the defence of that town and its suburbs you have to split up the air into sectors for defence. Calculate that the bombing aeroplanes will be at least 20,000ft. high in the air, and perhaps higher, and it is a matter of mathematical calculation that you will have sectors of from 10 to hundreds of cubic miles.
Imagine 100 cubic miles covered with cloud and fog, and you can calculate how many aeroplanes you would have to throw into that to have much chance of catching odd aeroplanes as they fly through it. It cannot be done, and there is no expert in Europe who will say that it can. The only defence is in offence, which means that you have got to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves. I mention that so that people may realize what is waiting for them when the next war comes.