Lord Elton
Main Page: Lord Elton (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Lord Elton (Con)
My Lords, so many memories, so many dead. The question of my noble friend Lady Trumpington, however improperly asked, deserves an answer. Mesopotamia is an area watered by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It was the scene of an expedition headed for Baghdad, largely supplied by the Government of India under Westminster, with Indian troops but some British regiments, including the 4th Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment, in which my father served. Its central focus, from my point of view, was the siege and fall of Kut, in which trench warfare had all the horrors of the Western Front, plus regular flooding by the Tigris, plus starvation. The garrison was eventually starved into surrender, and horrible scenes followed for the other ranks, but we will not go into that now. The study of trench warfare and the warfare in that war is something that I find actively revolting, but it has not made me a pacifist.
I thank my noble friend the Minister for the very great service that he and his colleagues are doing for this country. It is very important that the commemorations are used for the right purpose. Like the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, I fear that there is a danger that they will be used improperly to glorify the heroic sacrifice of our ancestors. It was glorious, but it was also a terrible disaster. As I said, it has not made me a pacifist. The currency of war is death. War has changed its nature and is no longer a respecter of uniforms; the whole population of the country is involved. So much the more do we need to try to preserve life.
One thing that we can learn from that part of our history, and it is endorsed by many others, is that two things are necessary to prevent an aggressor delivering a threat. The first is to have sufficient power to make it apparent that if it was used it would make the implementation of that threat unacceptable to the aggressor. The second and equally important thing is that it must be clearly seen that our country must be ready and willing to use that power. The way to win peace is to be ready for war; the way to keep peace is to be ready to fight. I hope that that message will come through and that, when the sun goes down and we remember them again, that is also what they will wish to remember. It is a price that we must never again be called on to pay.