Evening Post SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1938.

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 36, 12 February 1938, Page 8

Evening Post SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1938.

SINGAPORE THE SHIELD

Singapore has been much in the news this week, and- much—almost too much—has been made of the strength of the Singapore Naval Base, now practically complete after a decade or more of work on a gigantic scale. This, according to the political correspondent of the Australian Associated Press, in a London message yesterday, is regarded by British naval expert opinion as "virtually impregnable" and as making it "exceedingly difficult for an enemy to attack Australia and New Zealand by sea or air." The proposition is developed in detail at some length in a manner calculated to lull the countries mentioned as coming under its aegis into what might very well, in the uncertainty of war, be a false sense of security. It is true that Australia and New Zealand have both contributed to the cost of constructing the Singapore Base, and to that extent may regard the base as part of their own outer defences in which they have a . substantial interest. But this does not mean that either country can afford, in uncertain times like the present, to neglect its own inner defences and their defenders, the trained and equipped forces, land, sea, and air, of its own citizenry. To rely absolutely on Singapore is no better than relying absolutely on the British Navy. Both are strong, but the circumstances of the world today are such that every nation must be prepared to defend itself to the utmost by its own efforts without trusting too mifch to assistance and protection from quarters that may be hard enough put to it, for the moment, to defend themselves. Singapore will be all the better shield for the South Pacific, if the peoples of the South Pacific .are ready to help personally in maintaining it as 'the first line of defence. It is only in comparatively recent years that Singapore has come to be regarded as naturally fittedto be a fortress for the protection of neighbouring countries. It was acquired by Britain, like many another spot on the surface of the earth, because it lay along what must in the course of time become a great trade route. In the case of Singapore this was the trade route to China and the Far East, and Singapore, set at the entrance of the Malacca Strait, was a natural gateway. Yet the foundation of Singapore, not much over a hundred years ago, was a stroke not only of luck, but of genius. Its founder was Sir Stamford Raffles, who during the Napoleonic War organised the conquest of Java from the Dutch, who were then the allies of France. From 1811 to 1816 Raffles ruled Java with remarkable success, removing the fetters imposed on trade and intercourse with the Javanese by Dutch'officialdom. He had intended to make Java the centre of an Eastern insular Empire, but that colony, with; Sumatra, was restored to the Netherlands, and Raffles found scope for his talents in the Malay Peninsula by the purchase of the island of Singapore from the Sultan of Johore. By this stroke of statecraft he established Britain firmly at the strategic point of Malaya, which in the years following gradually came under British influence through the Straits Settlements and the Federated Malay States. To all this territory and the surrounding seas Singapore is now the key and crown. The foundation and growth and development of Singapore constitute one of the romances of British energy and enterprise. When Raffles took it over it was just a tropical swamp beside a tropical sea. To make it a great seaport, the emporium of the Far East, involved the expenditure of vast capital and incredible labour. In one of his stories of the Malayan Seas, Joseph Conrad gives a vivid picture of the memory of an old sea-captain of early Singapore.

He remembered muddy shores, a harbour without quays, the one solitary wooden pier—a public work— jutting out crookedly, the first coalsheds erected on Monkey Point, that caught fire mysteriously and smouldered for days, so that amazed ships came into a roadstead full of sulphurous smoke, and the sun hung blood-red at midday. And there was the first patent slip for repairing small ships, on the edge of the forest, in a lonely bay three miles up the coast It was from that patent slip in a lonely wooded bay that had sprung the workshops of the Consolidated Docks Company, with its three graving basins carved out of solid rock, its wharves, its jetties, its electric light plant, its steam power-houses—with its gigantic sheer-legs, fit to lift the heaviest weight ever carried afloat, and whose head could be seen like

the top of a queer white monument peeping over bushy points of land and sandy promontories, as you approached the New Harbour from the west.

That was forty or fifty years ago. Since then Singapore has developed apace. It is now not only one of the great seaports of the world, but one of the greatest airports, with a magnificently equipped aerodrome built on a mangrove swamp with millions of yards of filling. Just as it is on one of the main sea routes, so it is on just as great an air route, between Europe, Australia, and the Far East, equipped for all types of aircraft, including the largest flyingboats. For many decades Singapore was a purely commercial creation, designed for the furtherance of seaborne trade of all nations, for it was a free port. It was only after the Great War and the change in the balance of power in the Far East that its immense strategic importance and the necessity for its defence were adequately realised. For a time work on it was suspended in order that Britain's motives in advocating and practising disarmament might not be misinterpreted. But Singapore could never be regarded as a weapon for offence or a stronghold of attack against any conceivable enemy. Its function is purely defensive. In this respect it resembles the other fortresses of the British Empire planted along the great trade routes, so that trade, the life-blood of Britain, can continue to circulate. Such are Gibraltar, Malta, and Aden. It was a similar instinct for the protection of a trade route that instigated .the acquisition of a controlling interest in the Suez Canal and a friendly suzerainty over Egypt. It is on record that even in the Great War these possessions were used for defence rather than offence. That a peaceful nation should hold these vital guard-houses of the channels of trade and that the Panama Canal, the gate of the New World, should be in the hands oil another great peaceful 'Power, the; United States, is one of the consolations and hopes of gloomy days. And Singapore the shield is not the least of these outposts of law and order in the world.