Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone Quotes

We live under an elective dictatorship, absolute in theory if hitherto thought tolerable in practice. How far it is still tolerable is the question I want to raise.

I have never believed in peace at any price.

What is urgently needed is some limitation on this nominally elected dictatorship. It is here that I join hands with the conventional Bill of Rights enthusiasts, of whom...I am not one.

On the debate on the occupation of the Ruhr (Hansard, 13th–15th February 1923) the whole Left attacked France as "militaristic", "obsessed by fears which are largely the result of its own reactionary policy", "immoral", and aimed "at the complete destruction of Germany". The diehards did not take the same view. Lt.-Col. Croft (Bournemouth) (now Lord Croft): "I think Germany has shown pretty clearly that she is not going to do more than she can [help]. She is going to try and convince us that she cannot do anything like as much as we ask." Sir F. Banbury (whose pride was that he had only once voted for an Act of Parliament in his life): "I believe that if the Germans were given time to recover they would use that time in order again to commence a European war." Mr. Remer: "Our past policy has encouraged Germany to make defaults."
I mention these views, not because they are my own; they are not. But they are a great deal nearer truth than the stuff the Left was talking at this time.

The whole position is a crystal clear example of the proposition that commitments and power must be balanced. Failure to balance them leads to bankruptcy, moral, political, and diplomatic. Neither Britain nor America was capable of paying the debt of honour.
Why?
Not because we did not support the League. Not because we did not believe in collective security. Not because we loved the Japanese. The reason is much simpler. Years of pacifism, disarmament, and false economy had deprived us of the power to do so.

The fundamental principle of all foreign policy is that enunciated by Mr. Walter Lippmann, when he writes that you must balance commitments with power. To fail to do this is not brave, moral, "realistic", "idealistic", "progressive", or "reactionary". It is merely silly. To incur commitments without building up power to discharge them and to call this practice collective security is at the worst political chicanery and at the best self-deception, and leads inevitably to bankruptcy, military, political, and moral. This was consistently the policy of the Left in the years 1919–39.

The British people must be strong. If we talk we must be ready to act. We must speak with the authority of the strong because our voice is practically the only voice in the world which will speak out with authority for right.

Some armaments for Great Britain are necessary on any view of collective security... "collective security", so far from being an excuse exonerating our country from possessing armaments, is in fact a commitment demanding a higher degree of preparation for war than the mere defence of its shores would entail. The Left never understood that their foreign policy was inconsistent with their defence policy, and so must be held responsible for our weakness. But responsibility does not end there. To carry on war (and this is what we should have had to do to vindicate "collective security") it is not enough to have arms. It is necessary to possess a higher degree of national unity than a single democratic party can afford. How on earth could we expect to defy Japan, or even miserable Italy, when for years—and even at the very time when it called for the use of "sanctions"—the Labour movement had been declaring that should sanctions lead to war, even a "so-called defensive" war, they should oppose its prosecution and call a general strike?

The period immediately after the war came to an end with the French occupation of the Ruhr. Only Lord Rothermere ran a series of articles entitled "Hats off to France". The Left was furious. Even the moderate Right would not co-operate.
Yet if one thing is certain, it is clear that the occupation of the Ruhr was justified by the event. Germany had defaulted in her payments, claimed inability to pay. The French occupied the Ruhr, took over the coal mines, and worked them as a security for the debt. The Germans retaliated with their first inflation and with an attempt at a general strike. They tried to pretend that the inflation was involuntary. We now know better than that. When it was decided to reverse the policy Dr. Schacht put an end to the inflation in a matter of forty-eight hours. The general strike failed. The French occupied the Ruhr for a period of nine months. At the end of this time Germany capitulated, and the French had won. The six years succeeding this decisive event (1923–9) were the only peaceful years the Continent really knew between the wars. Whatever might be said by the friends of Germany the occupation of the Ruhr was a success.

The truth which the Left would not face—and will not face, even now—is that from 1932 and probably from 1929 collective security was moribund, owing to the re-emergence of a Germany determined to destroy it, and the existence of a Japan which had never really believed in it. It could only rise from the dead by the development of a system of armaments in the hands of the peace-loving nations capable of defeating and destroying the governments in the aggressor countries. The only future of the League lay through rearmament, and not through opposition to it.

The second principle is that a nation should know what its interests are and should then ascertain what military power is required to defend them. A nation which fails to do this does not thereby escape the necessity of fighting for its legitimate interests; it only ensures that when it does have to fight it will not have the power to fight successfully. The Left consistently denied this principle. The argument used amounted to the pretence that the protection by fair means of a legitimate interest was not a moral or righteous purpose in foreign policy. This delusion is based on the double fallacy of supposing that interests are always immoral things which it is wrong to defend and of supposing that interests which are not defended by those who possess them will ever be preserved by anyone else. To this day this fallacy permeates nearly all left-wing propaganda in domestic and foreign policy alike.

If the British public falls for this, I think it would be stark, staring bonkers.

[T]he Disarmament Conference met early in 1932. Under the Presidency of good Arthur Henderson, whose Naval Disarmament Conference in London had been such a success for the Japanese, the only fear in the heart of every good Leftist was, of course, that the wicked Tories with their insane love of armaments might sabotage the whole affair.

It is an excellent thing that Mr Powell has joined the Ulster Unionists. They have found a new leader to desert, and he a fresh cause to betray.

Moderation is the hallmark of our country and the burden of our Conservative faith. ... [I]n an age of violence the Conservative watchwords must be law, justice, moderation and humanity.