THE DILEMMA OF DEFENCE
at first sight. ,, Any discussion of defence must begin not, as the Socialist amendment would have it, with a discussion of the proportion of national wealth it is right to devote to military require- Tents, but with the military requirements themselves. Unless will be proved that these have been inflated, or that they 1,141 break the back of the economy, they must be met. Last that debate proved neither. Indeed, the main criticism r.14,t must be made of the Conservatives is that they may not • extent have recognised, or presented forcefully enough, the defence to which this country is at present falling short of its _v_tenee responsibilities to itself and to the rest of the free 07ld. At this moment there is not a single field formation side of the Channel. In Europe the front is still exposed. Fa161_p_o■ver. said Mr. Birch on Tuesday, must be the dominant atomic in Western defence, but neither air power nor tactical r71_ le weapons can prevent enemy armies advancing on the But everybody agrees that if the Germans come in, it must either be through EDC or through some other framework which controls their power to commit aggression; and no framework has yet been designed which improves on EDC. Yet for EDC to work, even if by some miracle it is ratified by the French. Britain has got to commit herself to keeping troops on the continent, in sufficient strength to provide a counterpoise' to the Germans—indefinitely. And Britain is not prepared to enter such a commitment because, with no strategic reserve in the United Kingdom, she might not be able to honour it. (This, at least, is the best case that can be made for the British refusal to join EDC.) Thus rearming the Germans means increasing British military commitments to Europe, not reducing them. And this is, or ought to have been, the short answer to Labour's attack on the Government's defence policy. If national service were reduced to eighteen months, as Mr. Shinwell demanded, it would mean cutting the armed services by 60,000 men—which is about the size of, British forces at present on the confluent of Europe.
What, then, about those 80,000 men cooped up in the Canal Zone ? Labour is wrong when it argues that their withdrawal could make possible a cut in expenditure; for they will all be needed if we are to build up a strategic reserve and shoulder our European responsibilities. By the same token, those Tories who believe that we can afford to leave them in the Canal Zone are equally wrong. 4But if withdrawal from the Canal Zone meant taking a risk before last week's disturbances in Egypt and the Sudan, does it not now involve taking a criminal, and unjustifiable, risk
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