Arms and the Covenant

Winston S. Churchill

• Publisher: RosettaBooks
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780795330377
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This inspiring collection of campaign speeches from the British prime minister bring his oratory brilliance and powers of persuasion to life.
 
Legendary politician and military strategist Sir Winston Churchill was a master not only of the battlefield, but of the page and the podium. Over the course of forty books and countless speeches, broadcasts, news items and more, he addressed a country at war and at peace, thrilling with victory but uneasy with its shifting role on the global stage. In 1953, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for "his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values." During his lifetime, he enthralled readers and brought crowds roaring to their feet; in the years since his death, his masterful writing has inspired generations of eager history buffs.
 
Well before Britain entered World War II, Winston Churchill warned his government about the growing Nazi threat, even as many European leaders were still urging caution and diplomacy. In this collection of forty-one speeches from 1928 to 1938, the great politician's prescience and political skill—vital to Britain's role as the first country to stand against Hitler—are clearly on display.
 
This collection, which includes the famous "Disarmament Fable" speech, presents a fascinating look at Churchill's campaign to mobilize Britian against the rising Nazi threat, and showcases his versatility and genius as one of the best orators of the twentieth century.

PART I
GERMANY DISARMED

A DISARMAMENT FABLE

October 25, 1928

Extract from a speech delivered at Aldersbrook Road, in the West Essex (or Epping) Division

October 25, 1928

A DISARMAMENT FABLE

Once upon a time all the animals in the Zoo decided that they would disarm, and they arranged to have a conference to arrange the matter. So the Rhinoceros said when he opened the proceedings that the use of teeth was barbarous and horrible and ought to be strictly prohibited by general consent. Horns, which were mainly defensive weapons, would, of course, have to be allowed. The Buffalo, the Stag, the Porcupine, and even the little Hedgehog all said they would vote with the Rhino, but the Lion and the Tiger took a different view. They defended teeth and even claws, which they described as honourable weapons of immemorial antiquity. The Panther, the Leopard, the Puma, and the whole tribe of small cats all supported the Lion and the Tiger. Then the Bear spoke. He proposed that both teeth and horns should be banned and never used again for fighting by any animal. It would be quite enough if animals were allowed to give each other a good hug when they quarrelled. No one could object to that. It was so fraternal, and that would be a great step towards peace. However, all the other animals were very offended with the Bear, and the Turkey fell into a perfect panic.

The discussion got so hot and angry, and all those animals began thinking so much about horns and teeth and hugging when they argued about the peaceful intentions that had brought them together that they began to look at one another in a very nasty way. Luckily the keepers were able to calm them down and persuade them to go back quietly to their cages, and they began to feel quite friendly with one another again.

DISARMAMENT PROBLEMS

May 13, 1932

Debate on the Adjournment

	1931
August 25.	Formation of the first National Government.
September 18.	Japanese seize Mukden.
September 20.	Gold Standard suspended.
October 20.	General Election.
November 5.	Formation of the second National Government.

	1932
February 18.	Japan proclaims establishment of Manchukuo.
April 6.	Four-Power Conference (Britain, France, Germany and Italy) to discuss which Powers should be invited to the forthcoming Danubian Conference.
April 8.	Conference adjourns indefinitely.
April 10.	German Presidential election (Field-Marshal von Hindenburg, 19,300,000 votes; Herr Hitler, 13,400,000 votes).

May 13, 1932

DISARMAMENT PROBLEMS

The speech of the Foreign Secretary [Sir John Simon] was depressing and disappointing to those who have attached high hopes to Disarmament Conferences. The Foreign Secretary began with an elaborate legal justification for holding the Conference at all—the Treaty of Versailles, the Treaty of Locarno, and so on. There is no need for legal justification. If by any means an abatement of the expense and sacrifice involved in maintaining large armies and navies could be achieved, we should not look back to the legal reasons which had brought the Conference into being. What we have to consider is whether any useful result is actually being obtained, or has been obtained. I confess I have always doubted the utility of these conferences on disarmament in the present condition of the world. I see that I said a year ago:

I believe that the armaments of the world to-day would be positively even smaller, certainly no greater, if none of these discussions had taken place at Geneva.

I said also:

They have been a positive cause of friction and ill-will, and have given an undue advertisement to naval and military affairs. They have concentrated the attention of Governments in all countries, many of them without the slightest reason for mutual apprehension or dispute, upon all sorts of hypothetical wars which certainly will never take place.

The Foreign Secretary pointed out to the House that, when you come to discuss quantitative disarmament, every nation asks itself, not “What is it that I am actually going to have in military instrumentalities?” but “What is the claim that I must peg out for myself in circumstances which I cannot foresee, and which may come upon me at any time in the next ten years?” Consequently, the whole tendency of these conferences—and they have been going on ceaselessly for six or seven years in one form or another—has been to lead the Governments of all countries, and the military, naval and air authorities behind the Governments of all countries, to state their claims at a maximum. Undoubtedly, also, the governing minds of the different countries have been continually concentrated upon the prospects and conditions of wars, with the result that we have now an organized, regimented opinion in all the Governments that are met together at Geneva, and all mean to make sure that no diminution of armaments is effected which runs counter to the strong opinions that their military and naval experts have taken up.

I believe that there has been no diminution of naval expense through any of the agreements which have been made since, possibly, the first Treaty of Washington. Economic pressure has led to great slowings down. I still believe that we are greatly weakened by the Treaty of London which was entered into last year. We have parted with our freedom of design. That is, to us, a very great loss, because having the leadership in design, we could ensure that such moneys as we could spare for naval defence were employed to the best possible advantage. We have parted with that, and we have also tied our hands in the defence of the Narrow Seas. I still hold that it would have been far better for us to have said to the United States, “Build whatever you will; your Navy is absolutely ruled out of our calculations except as a potential friend. Build whatever you will, and allow us to deal with our special problems.”

I come now to the proposals of qualitative disarmament about which the Foreign Secretary was so insistent. He told us that it was difficult to divide weapons into offensive and defensive categories. It certainly is, because almost every conceivable weapon may be used either in defence or offence; it all depends upon the circumstances; and every weapon, whether offensive or defensive, may be used either by an aggressor or by the innocent victim of his assault. My right hon. Friend said that he wished to make it more difficult for the invader, and for that reason, I gather, heavy guns, tanks and poison gas are to be relegated to the evil category of offensive weapons. The invasion of France by Germany in 1914, however, reached its climax without the employment of any of these weapons at all. The heavy gun is to be described as an offensive weapon. It is all right in a fortress; there it is virtuous and pacific in its character; but bring it out into the field—and, of course, if it were needed it would be brought out into the field—and it immediately becomes naughty, peccant, militaristic, and has to be placed under the ban of civilization. Take the tank. The Germans, having invaded France, entrenched themselves; and in a couple of years they shot down 1,500,000 French and British soldiers who were trying to free the soil of France. The tank was invented to overcome the fire of the machine-guns with which the Germans were maintaining themselves in France, and it saved a lot of lives in the process of eventually clearing the soil of the invader. Now, apparently, the machine-gun, which was the German weapon for holding on to thirteen provinces of France, is to be the virtuous, defensive machine-gun, and the tank, which was the means by which these lives were saved, is to be placed under the censure and obloquy of all just and righteous men.

There is also the question of gas. Nothing could be more repugnant to our feelings than the use of poison gas, but there is no logic at all behind the argument that it is quite proper in war to lay a man low with high-explosive shell, fragments of which inflict poisonous and festering wounds, and altogether immoral to give him a burn with corrosive gas or make him cough and sneeze or otherwise suffer through his respiratory organs. There is no logical distinction between the two. A great many of our friends are here to-day because they were fired at by German gas shells, which inflicted minor injuries upon them. Had it been high-explosive shell, they would in all human probability have been killed. The whole business of war is beyond all words horrible, and the nations are filled with the deepest loathing of it, but if wars are going to take place, it is by no means certain that the introduction of chemical warfare is bound to make them more horrible than they have been. The attitude of the British Government has always been to abhor the employment of poison gas. As I understand it, our only procedure is to keep alive such means of studying this subject as shall not put us at a hopeless disadvantage if, by any chance, it were used against us by other people.

I wish submarines had never been invented. Everyone who has been connected with the Royal Navy or the Admiralty would take that view. But a small country, with seaport towns within range of bombardment from the sea, feels very differently about having two or three submarines to keep bombarding squadrons at a respectful distance.

I have only mentioned these details in order to show the House how absurd is this attempt to distinguish between offensive and defensive weapons and how little prospect there is of any fruitful agreement being reached by it. These illustrations that I have given will be multiplied a hundredfold when the naval, military and air experts on the committees to whom this subject is to be remitted get to work. I am sure that nothing will emerge from their deliberations, which no doubt will be prolonged, except agreements to differ in one form or another.

A much truer line of classification might have been drawn if the Conference of all these nations at Geneva had set itself to ban the use of weapons which tend to be indiscriminate in their action and whose use entails death and wounds, not merely to the combatants in the fighting zones, but to the civil population, men, women and children, far removed from those areas. There indeed would be a direction in which the united nations assembled at Geneva might advance with hope. It may be said that in war no such conventions would be respected, and very few were respected in the Great War. We hope there will be no other wars, but even if there are wars in the future, we need not assume that they will be world wars involving all the Powers of the world, with no outside Powers to impose a restraint upon the passions of the belligerents or to judge of the merits of their cause. I do not at all despair of building up strong conventions and conceptions held by the great nations of the world against the use of weapons which fall upon enormous masses of non-combatant persons. Still more should I like to raise my voice in abhorrence of the idea, now almost accepted among so many leading authorities in different countries, that the bombing of open towns and the wholesale destruction of civilian life is compatible with any civilized decency. We are all allowing ourselves to be led step by step into contemplating such hideous episodes as part of the ordinary give-and-take of war, should a war ever come.

This attempt to employ the energies of Geneva upon discriminating between offensive and defensive weapons will only lead to rigmarole and delay, and is in itself a silly expedient. The adoption of such topics for discussion casts a certain air of insincerity over the proceedings at Geneva. I do not believe that the naval or military experts who meet to discuss these matters will have any doubt whatever that no practical advantage can be gained. As for the French scheme of security, that certainly is a logical proposition, and I do not know whether, in a quite different world from that in which we live, the relegation of the Air arm to a central police force might not conceivably be a means of providing a higher organization of society than anything that we can achieve. Here, again, is another one of these very complicated propositions which have been put forward, the only purpose of which it would seem is to afford for those fifty-three nations who have arrived together to discuss disarmament some provender upon which they could sustain themselves.

If you wish for disarmament, it will be necessary to go to the political and economic causes which lie behind the maintenance of armies and navies. There are very serious political and economic dangers at the present time, and antagonisms which are by no means assuaged. I should very much regret to see any approximation in military strength between Germany and France. Those who speak of that as though it were right, or even a mere question of fair dealing, altogether underrate the gravity of the European situation. I would say to those who would like to see Germany and France on an equal footing in armaments, “Do you wish for war?” For my part, I earnestly hope that no such approximation will take place during my lifetime or that of my children.² This does not in the least imply want of regard or admiration for the qualities of the German people, but I am sure that the thesis that they should be placed in an equal military position to France is one which, if it ever emerged in practice, would bring us within practical distance of almost measureless calamity.

We must also remember that the great mass of Russia, with its enormous armies and with its schools of ardent students of chemical warfare, its poison gas, its tanks and all its appliances, looms up all along the Eastern frontier of Europe, and that the whole row of small states, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland—not a small state, but for this purpose in the line—and Rumania, are under the continued preoccupation of this gigantic, and to them in many ways unfriendly, Russian power. It may well be that there is no danger, but I expect that if we lived there we should feel rather uncomfortable about it. These grave political dangers must be faced and recognized.

All these small nations look to France, and the French Army, as giving them a kind of central support. Although I should like to see European peace founded upon a more moral basis, I am very anxious that the present foundation should not be deranged until at any rate we have built up something satisfactory in its place. I hope and trust that the Foreign Secretary will continue his pious labours at Geneva, and that he will be able at some future date to give us a more favourable account of them. For my part, I shall continue to build my hopes upon the strong and ceaseless economic pressure of expense which is weighing upon all countries, to the growth of a greater confidence which a long peace must ensure, and to the patient and skilful removal of the political causes of antagonism which a wise foreign policy should eventually achieve.

REPARATIONS ABANDONED

July 11, 1932

Second Reading of the Consolidated Fund Bill

	1932
May 30.	Resignation of Dr Brüning.
June 1.	Herr von Papen appointed Chancellor.
June 11.	Mr MacDonald and Sir John Simon leave London for Lausanne.
June 22.	Hoover Disarmament Plan announced.
July 11.	Mr MacDonald returns from Lausanne Conference.

July 11, 1932

REPARATIONS ABANDONED

I cannot associate myself with the Socialist Opposition in applauding the settlement of Lausanne or joining in the apparent jubilation which that event has caused. Of course, anything which removes friction between Germany and France is to the good, and I congratulate the Prime Minister on that. But it seems to me that it is Germany which is most to be felicitated upon what has taken place. Within less than fifteen years of the Great War Germany has been virtually freed from all burden of repairing the awful injuries which she wrought upon her neighbours. True, there are 3,000,000,000 marks which are to be payable by Germany, but I notice that Herr Hitler, who is the moving impulse behind the German Government and may be more than that very soon, took occasion to state yesterday that within a few months that amount would not be worth three marks. That is an appalling statement to be made while the ink is yet damp upon the parchment of the Treaty. Therefore I say that Germany has been virtually freed from all reparations.

What, then, has become of the Carthaginian peace of which we used to hear so much? That has gone. Some of it may have been written down in the Versailles Treaty, but its clauses have never been put into operation. There has been no Carthaginian peace. Neither has there been any bleeding of Germany white by the conquerors. The exact opposite has taken place. The loans which Britain and the United States particularly, and also other countries, have poured into the lap of Germany since the firing stopped, far exceed the sum of reparations which she had paid; indeed, they have been nearly double. If the plight of Germany is hard—and the plight of every country is hard at the present time—it is not because there has been any drain of her life’s blood or of valuable commodities from Germany to the victors. On the contrary, the tide has flowed the other way. It is Germany that has received an infusion of blood from the nations with whom she went to war and by whom she was decisively defeated. Even these loans, which are almost double the payments Germany has made in reparations, are now in jeopardy. They are subject to a moratorium.

Let me give one striking instance which came to my notice when I was crossing the Atlantic Ocean. We and America took under the Peace Treaty three great liners from Germany. The Germans surrendered them at a valuation and then borrowed the money to build two very much better ones. They immediately captured the Blue Riband of the Atlantic, and they have it still. Now the loans with which the Germans built these ships are subject to a moratorium, while we are unable to go on with our new Cunarder because of our financial crisis. That is typical of what I mean when I say that Germany has not nearly so much reason to complain as some people suppose.

Absolved from all the burden of reparations, with a moratorium upon all commercial debts, with her factories equipped to the very latest point of science by British and American money, freed from internal debt, mortgages, fixed charges, debentures and so forth, by the original flight from the mark, Germany only awaits trade revival to gain an immense mercantile ascendancy throughout the world. I think that we are entitled to felicitate Germany on what has taken place, and I am sorry to see, as far as any information has reached us, that her only reaction is to ask for more.

England has not done quite so well out of the whole business. As usual, it has been our part to make the sacrifices; and we seem to have done it most thoroughly and most cheerfully. Not only did we pay for every farthing of our war expenditure, but we lent £2,000,000,000 to various all...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Part I: Germany Disarmed
• Part II: Germany Rearming
• Part III: Germany Armed
• Endnotes