Column 1453, 16th November, 1927, Volume 21. He was speaking to an amendment to the Defence Forces (Temporary Provisions) (No. 2) Bill, 1927. The amendment which he proposed, and which was supported by every member of his Party in the division lobby, was to this effect:-
"To delete all the words after ‘That', and add the words: ‘The Dáil declines to give a Second Reading to a Bill having for its purpose the continuance of the Defence Forces (Temporary Provisions) Acts, 1923 to 1927, but is of opinion that the Defence Forces should be organised before March 31st, 1928, on a volunteer territorial basis, with a small permanent training and maintenance establishments.'"
That was the view of Deputy de Valera. That was the view of Deputy Lemass. That was the view expressed by every member of the then Fianna Fáil front bench who is a member of the Government or of the Government Party at the present moment. The view was that £1,000,000 extracted from the pockets of the people of this country, was unjustifiable, that the retention of an Army of a strength of 5,000 or 6,000 men was fantastic and suicidal, that a volunteer force, with a tiny maintenance corps as the centre, costing between £500,000 and £1,000,000 was the only reasonable defence policy for this State. Those speeches were made at a time when they were denouncing a Government that presumed to ask the Dáil for authority to maintain an Army of 6,000 men at a cost of £1,000,000 a year.
Now I want to ask the Minister: is there any sincerity in the game; is there any honesty in the game? Or is it that you were all so many stupid nonentities a few years ago and that you have come to the use of reason since? Or was this some cheap political play-acting in order to embarrass the Government responsible for the safety of this State at that time? When denouncing an Army of 5,000 men as being the height of extravagance, as being suicidal nonsense, did you deliberately mean to strip this country and leave it naked in defence? Or is it that you come of a race that would only reach the use of reason in the 40's or 50's and that you had not reached the use of reason at the time when these were given as considered statements and when Deputy Lemass, as he was then, went so far as to say: "Remember, we are not talking without giving this very full and very careful and very anxious consideration. When we are talking here we are talking from the book; we are talking as a result of study"? As I say, at that time their view was that a cost of £1,000,000 for an Army was too heavy to call on the taxpayers to pay, that the maintenance of an Army of 5,000 or 6,000 men was only inviting swift defeat and that the cost should be less and the strength less.
Now we are asked for a standing Army of 12,500 men or two and a half times the strength that was denounced. We are asked to grant the money and approve of that Army without getting any reason whatsoever, without its being stated that the Army which had been denounced as too large and too costly would be insufficient for the postwar years ahead; without giving any reason why it is necessary to increase the strength by two and a half times and, presumably, the cost by three or four times. We have the Minister introducing this Bill for the 23rd time, a Minister belonging to a Government which denounced the previous Government for having the audacity to introduce a Bill year after year, and which asked in the noisiest way for an assurance each time that it would be the last time they would be asked to re-enact that Bill. We had the Bill introduced in the speech you have just listened to, without any reference to policy, without any reference to cost, without any reference to plans; but just telling us the few extra things that are in the Bill, such as making provision for solicitors' apprentices to get some period off their apprenticeship and for county managers to do the work of the Army in dealing with offenders; making provision that in peace times this extensive Army of two and a half times the strength of the pre-war Army will not even face up to the soldier's task of dealing with deserters, but will call on the various county managers to ensure discipline in the Irish Army.
We are providing for the handling of deserters for the next seven years and providing for solicitors' apprentices for an unknown number of years ahead under an Army Act that has only a life of one year, according to the terms of the Act itself. We are making provision for longer terms of enlistment. My lay mind would prompt me to the belief that the legality is doubtful of attesting people for ten or 12 years under an Army Act that itself has only a life of one year. What contract can you make with any one of these men that you attest for 12 years? The Act under which you attest them has only a life of one year. You are attesting them for 12 years. You are proposing to build barracks that will take years to build, and you are proposing to spend money by the million as if the rivers of this country were running with gold.
Will the Minister in this debate follow up his expressed desire to give the House a full statement of Army policy? Was there not some common-sense in some of the speeches that were made from those benches many years ago? Was it all nonsense? Was there one grain of common-sense in what was enunciated as the considered judgment of Deputy de Valera; was there any common-sense at all uttered by Deputy Lemass; was Deputy MacEntee uttering cheap nonsense when they all expressed their considered views as to what we could afford to spend on defence and what type of defence we should have?
Let us go back with positions reversed. Let us start by trying whether we can find agreement, not whether we can find disagreement. We have had the experience of the last five years when Britain went through the greatest war that the world ever saw with all kinds of difficulties and embarrassments; when her greatest danger was her Atlantic lifeline; when at times she was hopelessly trudging along, and when the greatest optimist could not see the slightest sign of light or any hope of success; when the temptation to invade us, so as to protect her lifeline and have greater control of her surplus stores and her great production, must have been very great. However, all these years of strife and difficulty passed and we were left alone. There was no suggestion of invasion from there. As a result of that new experience gained since these speeches were made then, I would agree absolutely with Deputy Lemass, as he then was, that we are a tiny island with a small population, unfortunately even smaller than at the time when he made these speeches; that the likelihood of invasion from that quarter is most unlikely, and that anybody else that attempts to invade us has to be strong enough to burst its way through the British Navy, and, consequently, has to be a great power. Any power strong enough to carry out with success the operation of bursting through the British Navy would unquestionably be a strong, formidable power, one of such dimensions and of such equipment that even the greatest Army we could throw up, could not meet it and defeat it in pitched battles; that our Army policy should be a policy of a very tiny Army costing in the neighbourhood of £1,000,000 a year, very highly trained and very specialised, with the youngest soldier sufficiently trained to be a senior N.C.O., with reserves of one kind and another outside, so that the Army could be rapidly expanded if the necessity arose.
So far, we have agreement, at least between the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste and the rest of us over here on the assumption that those speeches were not merely roguish bits of political dishonesty, but were sincere and honest speeches made, as was stated, as the result of close study. The Taoiseach, the Minister for Local Government, the Tánaiste and ourselves over here are in agreement, but the present Minister for Defence disagrees totally with the whole lot of us. He comes along asking for four times the sum that was required pre-war, four times the sum that was denounced as an unfair and unjust burden of taxation on the backs of the people. He asks for two and a half times the strength of an Army that was denounced as twice too great. He does that without giving any reason for the change of front, without pointing out any real danger and without giving us any plan. Surely, every Minister for War in the whole world in coming along with his Army Act, and in outlining the strength of his permanent force, has some idea as to why it has so many divisions. It is because the army across the border has twice that number, and he is prepared to point out, if the situation arose, where the army is likely to be called upon to operate, who it is likely to be called upon to operate against, and who it is likely to co-operate with.
Military policy, as well as foreign and external policy in every country, are so closely related that they cannot be divorced. Is it because the Minister and his executives have not made up their minds with regard to external policy; is it because they do not, in fact, know what their foreign policy is, that there is such a marked reluctance to outline the military policy? The Minister can take this assurance in advance—the last five years should have taught it to him if he had any doubts about it—that whenever a sound military policy is put forward with the intention of safeguarding this State, its independence and safety, and the security of the homes and lives of the people living in it, it will get wholehearted support from the Opposition Parties in this House, and from the particular Party that I am now speaking for. The Minister need not have any hesitation in announcing his policy, if he has one, through fear that it will be opposed over here. He has got every assurance and pledge that that has never been our attitude since we went into Opposition. We have never approved of spending money merely for the sake of spending money, of taxing the people merely for the sake of doing so, or having at any time, in peace or war, an unrequired large Army. That is bad for young men. They could be more usefully employed outside learning a trade. It is bad for them to have them clicking heels and forming fours around a barrack square. That sort of thing eats into the lives of many young men, and expenditure of that sort is entirely unproductive. In nine cases out of ten it is a type of employment that leads nowhere.
We are not going to support an Army two and a half times the strength of the pre-war Army, merely for the sake of having an Army two and a half times as great. We are not going to support such an Army merely to spend four times as much money as we spent heretofore. We are not going to approve of an Army of these alarming dimensions, purely for the sake of increasing taxation on the people, at a time when you have crying destitution and absolute want. You have people, faced with black despair in their hearts and tears in their eyes, border jumping and boat crossing every time a boat leaves Dun Laoghaire. You have them going among strangers, many of whom regard them as their traditional enemies. That is not the type of emigration that we had 20 years ago when our people went out to a greater Ireland beyond the seas, out to join their own people, their own friends, their own county men, and people of their own religion. One could say that almost every time they went out they met a relative, a friend or a Catholic priest. The emigration in recent years has been such that the people have not gone away with hope and joy in their hearts. They did not go out to join friends or relatives or old-time neighbours. Our emigrants went out with black despair in their hearts because economic circumstances drove them from the homes they loved. They crossed over to mix with black strangers so that they might be able to send home 10/- or £1 a week to keep the roof over the heads of their parents.
You have that kind of black destitution and that economic drive from the country. Perhaps a lot of it could have been avoided by the expenditure of £1,000,000 or £2,000,000 a year to improve wages, stimulate industry and increase production, thereby uplifting the low maintenance rates in many homes. When those cases are brought before Parliament, when there is a demand for £3,000,000 or even £1,000,000 a year, we have crocodile tears from the Government Front Bench—they have all the sympathy in the world with those poor people, living in those houses, half starved, inadequately clothed, and with every form of disease running like a rampant cancer through their families as a result of malnutrition and want. As I say, we have those crocodile tears from the Government Front Bench, but every one of the statements they make wind up with the remark: "We should like to do this, but we have not the money, and if we were to meet your claim, it would mean that we would have to put an extra tax on the butter, the bread, the sugar and the tea of the people"—the same old litany every time. When, however, it comes to expanding the Army to two and a half times the force that was considered by the military intellectuals to be aping Imperial power, when it comes to expanding the Army to over twice what was required in this little island in pre-war days, then there is no talk about taxing tea, bread, sugar and butter.
I remember, in the early days of Fianna Fáil, before they reached the age of the use of reason, a Ministerial colleague of the present Minister boasting from the Front Bench over there that certain other countries were buying guns instead of butter, but that we in this country were going to give our people butter instead of guns. Is it too severe to remind the Minister of the considered views expressed by his own colleagues? Is it too severe to remind him of the considered views expressed by his own Leader; and is it in any way unorthodox or unusual when we find the Minister departing completely from the views that were then expressed, trampling on the past of his own Party, trampling on the policies preached by his own Leader, and doing a sudden somersault that is going to send the hand of the tax-gatherer into the pockets of even the poorest people in the land? Is it anything unusual to ask the Minister, in those circumstances, what is the reason for this? Would he be kind enough to give the Dáil the reason for this, or to tell the Dáil what is the new danger that was not there all the time, or what is the new menace to our liberty? Will he tell us why the barracks that housed our soldiers cleanly and decently, six, seven and ten years ago, are not adequate to provide housing for our soldiers in the future? Are we to build barracks for phantom armies, or to build playthings for ceremonial armies—particularly at a time when another Minister tells us that we cannot build a cottage for people who are living in lean-to shacks up and down the country?
The Minister said that we have to be realists, and Deputy Lemass opened that speech, to which I have referred, with the very same words: "We have to be realists". I am afraid that the time has come when every one of us will have to be realists. The time is coming when the false kind of diseased prosperity that reaches some countries as a result of a world blood-bath—that kind of temporary prosperity that reaches some countries because of the misfortunes of others—will cease. That kind of false prosperity will not last for ever, and I prophesy this—and it is not safe, generally, in politics, to be a prophet—that we may be reckless with regard to millions of pounds to-day, that we may just think of a barracks and build it, that we may think of a sum and double it, that we may walk blithely through those Lobbies here and vote glibly on whether an extra £2,000,000 or £3,000,000 of the people's money should be spent, but before this Parliament has reached the end of its legal existence, a sum of £100,000, or even £50,000, is going to cause as much heart-burning both inside and outside this Parliament as £2,000,000, £3,000,000, or £4,000,000 does to-day. If we commit ourselves to expenditure on the magnificent scale now demanded by the Minister then it will not be even rational to face up to a debate in this House as to whether old age pensioners are or are not getting a livelihood out of 10/- a week: it will be nonsense to attempt to discuss such a subject in two or three years' time, if we fire away money in this way—lashings of it—without any reasons being given, without any increase in our population being demonstrated, without any increased strength in our area being shown or any increase in our territory, and without its being shown that there is any new danger to be faced, and when it seems to be evident that this new expenditure is merely for the sake of pomp and ceremonial.
The Minister says that this is the considered opinion of the General Staff. Now, the General Staff is doing its duty; it always did its duty; but does the Minister, who, it seems, is breaking down on this matter, realise what is the function of the General Staff? The General Staff in this country, as is the case with the General Staff in every country in the world, and as is the case with every officer in any army, wants more and more men and more and more supplies of stores and equipment. There was a time when I resisted conscientiously, in doing my job, any reduction in the corps for which I was responsible, but the Minister above me who was not the representative of the taxpayers, had to go to his colleague, who was responsible for taxation, and ask for money for that service—money which had to be got out of the pockets of the people —and he laid down for me and for others the sum to which we would have to cut our cloth. Now, supposing that that Minister came to the House and said that it was the considered opinion of the General Staff that that money should be provided, what would be the reaction of the House in normal times? The General Staff of any army of any country in the world always wants to increase the strength of the army, but that kind of mumbo-jumbo, that kind of talk about invisible phantom armies, that kind of cheap talk about defending our country against all comers, will not carry weight with the people in a time of peace.
The Minister hesitated to mention any "comer" that we might have to face, and even if he had named that "comer" he refused to lay down what we would require in order to defend ourselves. Now, that kind of thing is out of date. The Minister cannot do as he did in the past when, under the shadow of an emergency, the Dáil patriotically agreed, whether they believed in it or not, to allow expenditure on the Army to go on unchecked, but depending all the time on the Minister, as head of the Army, to safeguard, in time, the interests of the ordinary people and to endeavour to work back to pre-war conditions. Certainly, if there is to be an increase in the Army and in Army expenditure, we want to be given the reasons, and very full reasons, for that, and we want a free and frank discussion on the matter, and not this kind of penny-book that we can read for ourselves but which tells us nothing as to what is in the Minister's mind or in the minds of the Government.
Notice taken that 20, Deputies were not present; House counted and, 20 Deputies being present.
