Stanley Baldwin

“ At any rate, if it does come we shall be too old to be of use to anyone. But what about the younger men, they who will have to fight out this bloody issue of warfare; it is really for them to decide. They are the majority on the earth. It touches them more closely. The instrument is in their hands. [House: “Hear, hear”.]
There are some instruments so terrible that mankind has resolved not to use them. I happen to know myself of at least three inventions deliberately proposed for use in the last War and which were never used. ”

“ As I say, the future is in their hands, but when the next war comes and European civilization is wiped out, as it will be and by no force more than by that force, then do not let them lay the blame on the old men, but let them remember that they principally and they alone are responsible for the terrors that have fallen on the earth. ”

“ I am firmly convinced, and have been for some time, that if it is possible the air forces of the world ought to be abolished, but if they are you have got civil aviation, and in civil aviation you have your potential bombers. ”

“ What more potent cause of fear can there be than this kind of thing that is going on on the Continent? And fear is a very dangerous thing. It is quite true that it may act as a deterrent in people’s minds against war, but it is much more likely to make them want to increase armaments to protect them against the terrors that they know may be launched against them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As far as the air is concerned there is, as has been most truly said, no way of complete disarmament except the abolition of flying. We have never known mankind to go back on a new invention. It might be a good thing for this world, as I heard some of the most distinguished men in the air service say, if men had never learned to fly. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ This is a question for young men far more than it is for us. They are the men who fly in the air, and future generations will fly in the air more and more. Few of my colleagues around me here will see another great war. ”

“ In my view, it is necessary for the nations of the world concerned to devote the whole of their mind to this question of civil aviation, to see if it is possible so to control civil aviation that such disarmament would be feasible. I say the nations concerned, because this is a subject on which no nation that has no air force or no air sense has any qualification to express a view ”

“ Potent to a degree and, indeed, I wondered at the conscience of the world. If the conscience of the young men will ever come to feel that in regard to this one instrument the thing will be done. But if they do not feel like that ... ”

“ He expressed a fear — a very natural and proper fear — lest we, with a comparatively small air force among the large air forces of the world, should disarm from that point, and the vast difference between our strength and that of some other countries would remain relatively as great as it was to-day. That kind of disarmament does not recommend itself to the Government. ”

“ We have made our investigations much more quietly, and hitherto without any publicity, but considering the years that are required to make preparations any Government of this country in the present circumstances of the world would have been guilty of criminal negligence had they neglected to make their preparations. ”