SINGAPORE BASE

Evening Post, Issue 29, 4 February 1935, Page 9

SINGAPORE BASE

"DAILY MAIL" ATTACK

EMPIRE WHITE ELEPHANT

LONDON, February 2.

Mr. Ward Price, in an article in the "Daily Mail," points .out that £6,500,000 has been expended on the "Empire's costliest white elephant," the Singapore naval base, and that £ 4,000,000 more will go the.same way in the next three years.

Britain, while her own unemployed stand idle, maintains 3000 coolies to transform jungle, backwaters into a harbour requiring 8,000,000 cubic yards of excavation, 5,000,000 cubic yards ot dredging, and 1,000,000 cubic yards of concrete for a mile-long granite-faced waterfront where the Navy's three most powerful ships' may come ,8000 miles for. repairs in a- £ 1,200,000 floating dock, while the crews, numbering 1300 apiece, swelter in the barracks.

"The only; foreign; warships within 2500 miles are a few old Dutch gunboats at Java and an occasional American ship at Manila., .. ,"

"The base owes its existence to fantastic f earf ulness such. as - led Lewis Carroll's White Knight 'to keep a rattrap on his horse's back. Even in the event of an Anglo-Japanese w.ar ,no Government would send a battle_ fleet to the other end of Asia, risking a thrust at the Empire's heart by European nations on the sudden declaration of an alliance with Japan. \

"The fleet would not ,go beyond Singapore. , A British naval offensive in Japanese • waters' would demand a threefold superiority of the fleet, and could not protect Australia because the Japanese route thither would be 4000 miles further east. Australia, for a fraction of the cost of the Singapore base, could be equipped with an air force capable of destroying hostile warships and transports 500 miles from the coast. v ,

"The construction of Singapore was a major blunder which Japan regards with, resentment."

The "Daily MaiT'^forsome time past has been strongly to British policy in the Far .East, urging a free hand to Japan in Manchuria and an amicable understanding elsewhere; The Singapore base is not designed for the protection of Australia "alone, but of all British interests in the East