The danger which threatens us comes from Labour... Those who think that the Conservative or Unionist Party, standing as such and disavowing its Liber… - Austen Chamberlain

It is all very well for the hon. Member for Limehouse and the right hon. Member for Darwen to paint the horrors of war, or, rather, for the right hon. Member for Darwen—the hon. Member for Limehouse did not descend to that—to draw pictures of what you might do with the money that you could save if only you kept your Army in barracks in their present inadequate condition, if only you left your Air Force insufficient for the protection even of this capital, if only you left your Navy without any sort of protection against aircraft bombing. It is all very well to do that, but the country will not accept those excuses or those picas if the day of trial comes. It is the business of this House, of men of courage in it, to tell the country the truth, to call upon them to bear these sacrifices, to tell them that they are necessary for our own defence, and that our membership of the League of Nations, our promises to contribute to collective security, and our guarantees under Locarno, are worthless unless we put our forces in a proper condition and maintain a strength comparable to the dangers which we may have to meet.

Revision is a dangerous word. Revision should never appear, I venture to think, in the mouth of a statesman or in the policy of a Government until they are prepared to define very closely the limits within which they think revision should take place. The long history of this country has in one sense been a history of the revision of Treaties. We have revised and revised and what have we got for it? What concession once made has any longer kept the value it had before it was revised? Of which of these concessions can it be said at this present moment that it has tempered feeling in Germany, that it has produced that friendly spirit that those who made it desired to promote? What is passing in Germany seems to me to render this a singularly inopportune moment to talk about the revision of Treaties.

[I believe in] the throne...parliamentary institutions...private enterprise and individual opinion against the socialization of the state...equity in the distribution of public burdens and strict maintenance of public faith with the creditors of the state [and] a fresh guarantee of peace by an alliance with France and...Belgium for the defence of our common interests against unprovoked attack.