London, Mar. 12.
Introducing the Army Estimates in the House of Commons today the Secretary of State for War, Mr. Oliver Stanley, said it would be improper and undesirable for him to attempt to forecast in war, as his predecessors did in peace, what task the British Army might be called upon to fulfil in future.
Whatever it might be called upon to face, he said, the Army had not yet been subjected to the same intensive test as the Navy and Air Force.
After recalling how the idea of a Continental army had been bitterly opposed in Britain, Mr, Stanley said the nature of events which led up to Munich seemed to show some of them that if a conflict were not absolutely inevitable, it was dangerously near, and to show that if a connict had to come, what the nature of the conflict was to be. was obvious, the War Secretary continued, that in any clash to come Britain should be fighting on the side of France in the cause of liberty and justice. Therefore, the security of France would be bound up with the security and integrity of this country,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.