The debates on the following days require little notice. A Committee of the Commons was appointed (Nov. 18) to deal with pensions and allowances to wounded soldiers, and to children and dependants of those killed in the war; and the Reports of Supply and the debates on the Consolidated Fund Bill provided opportunities for raising various questions connected with the war. It may be mentioned that Mr. Wedgwood (L.), who appeared in the House in uniform, asked the Government (Nov. 23) to direct the civil population what they were to do in the event of a German raid, improbable though such a contingency might be. He urged that every one ought to fight the Germans if they came. The Under-Secretary for War, however, replied that emergency committees to deal with the subject were being formed, but for the present it was undesirable to make public any instructions. [Such instructions were, however, issued privately to local authorities, parish clergy, and other prominent persons in certain districts.] We may mention also an emphatic protest by the Opposition leader against the restrictive interpretation put by the Solicitor-General on the powers of the Press Bureau (p. [233]); as the result, the Government two days later agreed to qualify considerably the clause in the Defence of the Realm Bill giving them powers "to prevent the spread of reports likely to cause disaffection or alarm," and the Solicitor-General also qualified his previous utterance.
On November 25 the House was informed through the medium of the Under-Secretary for India, that Colombia and Ecuador had failed to observe an attitude of strict neutrality. Colombia, in spite of representations from the British charge d'affaires, had allowed the wireless station at Cartagena to continue working with its German staff, nominally under censorship, really under German influence; and German steamers in Colombian ports, though their wireless installations had ostensibly been dismantled, had continued to use them with the attachment of a muffler. As to Ecuador, its Foreign Minister had informed the British and French representatives at Quito on October 4 that German warships had used the Galapagos Islands as a naval base, and the Ecuadorean Government had not complied with the request of the British and French legations to prevent the use of the wireless station at Guayaquil as an intelligence centre for belligerents. The Government had therefore decided to appeal, in conjunction with that of France, to the good offices of the United States Government. [This was a notable recognition of the Monroe doctrine, but both the offending States were likely, from their recent history, to be specially resentful of American interference.]
The day following (Nov. 26) was marked by a grave naval disaster. The battleship Bulwark, lying off Sheerness, blew up at 7.35 A.M., probably through an internal magazine explosion, and only fourteen men were saved out of a crew exceeding 750. No reason was discovered for supposing that the disaster was not due to accident, but its precise cause was not ascertainable. In announcing the disaster to the House, the First Lord said that the mere loss of the ship did not sensibly affect the military position, and expressed, on behalf of the House, its sorrow and its sympathy with the relatives and friends of the victims.
Next, the Under-Secretary for India moved a resolution sanctioning the application of Indian revenues to war expenditure outside India, but not in Europe. He mentioned that the Indian troops, besides their work at Tsingtau, Fao, and Basra, were in force in Egypt, took part in the landing at Sheikh Said and in the attack, against great odds, in East Africa, and had speedily adapted themselves to the novel conditions of fighting in France. Of their record both India and England would be proud. He mentioned again the zeal and munificence of the ruling Chiefs, the reasoned loyalty of the Indian educated classes, as well as the "wave of instructive and emotional loyalty" that had swept over India, and announced the creation of an Executive Council in the United Provinces, and he indicated the hope of increasing friendship throughout the Empire which was encouraged by comradeship in arms.
In the miscellaneous debate which followed on the Consolidated Fund Bill the matter of most general interest was the action of the Government with regard to spies and alien enemies. The Home Secretary explained that while his Department was generally regarded as responsible for public safety throughout the country, he had no real power outside the metropolitan area. In this, since the war began, 120,000 cases of suspicion had been investigated, 342 persons interned, and 6,000 houses ransacked. Complaints had been made of favouritism towards Baron Schroeder and other wealthy Germans, but had the Baron not been naturalised his firm, the largest accepting house in the City, would have closed its doors, and there would have been a great commercial disaster. To lock up all Germans and Austrians, as some people desired, might lead to reprisals, and many of them were only technically foreigners. On the question of internment, the military authority was the decisive authority under the Hague Conventions. The really dangerous spies were those of British nationality.
The spy peril had been dealt with in the other House on the previous day (Nov. 25). The Earl of Crawford then admitted that much had been done since his last speech (p. [231]), but the complaints in it had been substantiated, and a clear statement should be given of the legal responsibilities of the authorities concerned, and the policy of the Government should be codified and simplified. Lord Leith of Fyvie complained that money was coming from German sources to Germans in Great Britain, that favouritism was being shown to rich enemy aliens, and that coal was being supplied to German warships from the West of Scotland and Ireland. The Lord Chancellor asked for concrete instances, stating that there was no evidence of these supplies, explained the distribution of powers between the Home Office, the War Office, and the Admiralty, who were closely co-operating, and said that cases of espionage were being carefully followed up, but the difficulty of defeating it was enormous, and the worst offenders were probably English.
But the most interesting part of the proceedings in the Upper House was the further statement (Nov. 26) by Earl Kitchener on the progress of the war in the past six weeks. He mentioned that the delay caused by the British expedition to Antwerp in the release of its German besiegers just gave Sir John French time to prevent the Germans reaching the northern coast of France; that the British cavalry divisions, extended for seven miles of front in trenches, threw back the fierce attacks of a German Army Corps for more than two days; that Sir John French's position was attacked at one time by eleven army corps, and that on November 11 a supreme—but unsuccessful—effort was made by the Prussian Guard to force its way through the British lines, and carry them at all costs by sheer weight of numbers. The British troops before Ypres, after fourteen days and nights in the trenches, had been relieved by French reinforcements, and several Territorial battalions had joined. The British losses, though heavy, were slight in comparison with the German. He acknowledged the "tenacity and endurance," and the high fighting qualities of the French Army, and the pluck and gallantry of the Belgian Army and the King, and he mentioned that on the Eastern front the Russians had checked and defeated the Germans, inflicting on them heavier losses than they had ever sustained before. After referring to the operations against Turkey, he said that the publication of news must be governed by the needs of the French Army, the larger force, but the Government desired to keep nothing back which could not be utilised by the enemy. The difficulties of providing and equipping the new Army were being successfully met, and he felt confident that further calls on the manhood of England would be responded to in a manner and spirit which would ensure the prosecution of the war to its successful conclusion. Later, Earl Kitchener said that recruits were coming in at the rate of 30,000 weekly besides the regiments then being formed by different localities; and the Lord Chancellor promised that information should be given in the future as to the action of civilians during invasion.
On the Report of the War Loan Obligations Bill next day (Nov. 27) important statements were made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the First Lord of the Admiralty, reviewing the financial and naval position respectively. The former said that the Government had taken unprecedented responsibilities in the interest of the mechanism of international trade. In the Napoleonic wars practically all the countries were self-contained; Great Britain's total imports and exports amounted in value to some 86,000,000l.; in 1912 their value exceeded 1,400,000,000l. The international trade in the Napoleonic wars amounted to perhaps 200,000,000l.; in 1913 it was valued at 3,000,000,000l., and Great Britain provided the capital to raise and move the produce, and carried half the produce, of the world. Transactions between merchants in China and the United States, for instance, were paid for by bills of exchange on London. Very little of the business was done with gold; London in 1913 received 50,000,000l. in gold and paid out 45,000,000l. All this delicate paper machinery crashed into a war affecting two-thirds of the world. There was inevitable confusion, and a deadlock, due to a failure of remittances from abroad to cover bills representing 350,000,000l. to 400,000,000l. There was a complete breakdown of the exchanges, as if a shell had broken an aqueduct; Argentina owed Great Britain 400,000,000l., but the latter could not buy a single cargo of frozen meat. Had the machine been left broken, the general distress in Great Britain would have been unutterable. The Government had to save British industry, commerce, and labour. They had invited the assistance of men of great experience, and eventually had set up a permanent advisory Committee. He acknowledged the great assistance rendered by Mr. Chamberlain, Lords St. Aldwyn and Revelstoke, and the Lord Chief Justice, the latter, with Sir John Bradbury, constituting a Court of Appeal. They decided that something must be done at once to avert a run on the banks, and declared a limited moratorium, and then decided to advance to the banks Treasury notes up to 20 per cent. of their deposits. At first the banks availed themselves of this currency facility to the extent of 13,000,000l.; the sum outstanding was only 244,000l. The currency notes of 1l. and 10s. outstanding amounted to 33,892,000l., 25,696,000l. being in 1l. notes. Next, the Government guaranteed the payment of all bills accepted by British houses, giving them a reasonable time to collect them. Great Britain had assets of some 4,000,000,000l. of good foreign securities, and some 13,000,000,000l. worth of collieries, mines, factories, etc., at home; to allow its credit to remain doubtful for some 350,000,000l., all or nearly all owing to British subjects, would have been criminal. By these three steps the unimpeachable character of the British bill of exchange had been guaranteed, and a financial catastrophe, probably without parallel, avoided. But they had to discriminate between bills, and experts could do so instinctively; and for this reason facilities had been partly refused in the case of Mr. Crisp, of which Sir A. Markham (L., Notts) had complained earlier in the debate. Only one member of an accepting house had been on the Committee of the Bank of England which examined the bills, and his business was with a neutral country. They discounted 57,000l. of Mr. Crisp's bills, but as collateral security for another 200,000l. he tendered only securities worth 72,000l. Only 50,000,000l. of bills, or about one-ninth of the total, would have to be put aside as dealing with belligerent countries or for analogous reasons. The loss would depend on the length and the issue of the war. Before ending the moratorium they had to consider: (1) the business specially affected by the war, such as the Scottish fishing industry, whose case they met by the Courts (Emergency Powers) Bill (p. [196]); (2) the restoration of the foreign exchanges, which they effected by restoring the old-machinery, releasing the endorsers and drawers of Bills, and retaining simply the liability of the acceptors; (3) the restoration of the Stock Exchange, where the difficulty was that 70,000,000l. or 80,000,000l. of securities were hypothecated in respect of debts incurred before the war began. Had the banks pressed for these debts, the securities would have been placed on the market, their value would have been deplorably reduced, and the State, now the sole borrower, could have raised money only at incredible rates. The Government had left the banks to make their own arrangements with the Stock Exchange, but had agreed to advance 60 per cent. of the value of the securities on July 29 on condition that the banks undertook not to put their securities on the market till six months after the war; and had arranged that the Stock Exchange should only open with the sanction of the Treasury and under conditions to be imposed by it in the public interest. Not one application had been made for Government credit, either in respect of this arrangement or of a similar guarantee through which the Liverpool Cotton Exchange had been reopened. Provincial traders who had been sending goods to the Continent on credit, without receiving bills of exchange, had been promised Government assistance to the extent of 50 per cent. of the credit value of the interest, on condition that the local banks, who knew their men, undertook 25 per cent. Applications amounting to 16,000,000l. had come in in respect of these debts, and the Government hoped to do something at the earliest possible moment. Britain was still supreme in international commerce, its money market was better than any other, the gold at the Bank had risen during the war from 26,000,000l. to 85,500,000l. and they had raised in all 440,000,000l. with the Stock Exchange closed. The loan of 350,000,000l. (p. [236]) had been over-subscribed, and there had been nearly 100,000 applications for small amounts, so the sum had been raised without any of the German expedients for raising a smaller loan at a higher interest. Unemployment had gone down, confidence had been restored, British credit had stood the strain, the market had been less affected than any in the world. The raising of the loan gave him confidence that British credit was built on foundations that no foreseeable contingency could destroy.
In the subsequent debate Mr. Austen Chamberlain paid special tributes to the services of the Bank of England, its Governor, its ex-Governor (Mr. Cole), and Lord Revelstoke; the President of the Board of Agriculture gave particulars of a proposed scheme for the manufacture of aniline dyes, hitherto made exclusively in Germany—the consumers to subscribe 3,000,000l., the Government, subject to certain conditions as to control, to guarantee debenture interest on another 1,500,000l.; and Mr. Bonar Law endorsed this scheme and criticised, in moderate terms, the recent purchase by the Government of 18,000,000l. worth of sugar, and the total prohibition of the import of sugar in consequence. The Home Secretary explained that the sole aim was to prevent sugar coming from neutral countries and being replaced there by German sugar. The Bill was subsequently read a third time.
On the adjournment, Lord Charles Beresford (U.) commented favourably, on the whole, on the naval position. The First Lord of the Admiralty, in reply, said that it was useless to discuss particular incidents, such as the battle off Chile, the loss of the Aboukir and her consorts, and the expedition to Antwerp, without the disclosure, at present impossible, of all the orders and the entire situation. The only rule as to publishing information was that the publication should not interfere with the operations of the war; and he expressed the gratitude of the Admiralty for the reserve shown by the Press. The incidents seen were a very small part of the work going on all over the world. The British Navy had been confronted in the event of war by four main perils—(1) surprise before it was in its war stations [which had been averted by the assemblage at Spithead]; (2) the escape of fast armed liners of the enemy, but only 1.9 per cent. of the mercantile marine had been lost, against an estimate before the war of 5 per cent.; (3) mines, but the limits of that danger could now be discerned and it was being further restricted and controlled; (4) submarines, a novel and very grave danger, but British power in submarines was far greater than German, and the only reason it could not produce greater results was the rarity of a target for attack. A fifth danger, oversea invasion, he dismissed curtly as an enterprise perilous for the invaders. Of British shipping 97 per cent. was plying, of German shipping less than 11 per cent. was plying or unaccounted for, and only ten German ships, it was believed, were trading on the seas, while the Germans were becoming deficient in war material. The results of the German policy of attrition so far were not unsatisfactory to Great Britain. The losses of submarines had been equal, but the German loss proportionately was much larger, the British vessels being more numerous; of destroyers, the British loss was nil, the German eight or ten; of the older armoured cruisers, it was six to two, but the British were three or four times more numerous, and therefore more frequently exposed to attack; in fast modern light cruisers,—the most important class of modern vessels,—the proportion had been 36 to 25; Britain had lost one-eighteenth, Germany one-fourth. The British additions, recent and future, would make the British strength beyond comparison greater. In Dreadnoughts British superiority at the start was just under 60 per cent.—36 to 21; by the end of 1915 Germany could not possibly have more than three besides; Great Britain should have fifteen, including two taken over from Turkey, and one from Chile, and could afford to lose a super-Dreadnought a month and yet be in about as good a position as at first. There was no attrition by wear and tear. The health of the Fleet was twice as good as in time of peace, and the conduct of the men almost perfect. There was no reason whatever for nervousness, anxiety, or alarm. We had powerful Allies on the seas, but, even were we single-handed indefinitely, we might go on drawing our supplies and transporting our troops as we pleased.