Evening Post THURSDAY, JANUARY 29, 1942. RESTRAINED DIPLOMACY IN 1940-41

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 24, 29 January 1942, Page 6

Evening Post THURSDAY, JANUARY 29, 1942. RESTRAINED DIPLOMACY IN 1940-41

Macaulay's gift, panoramic history, is recalled in Mr. Churchill's panoramic pictures of the war. They embrace geography without a map, armaments without text-books, and the art of war without its technical complexities. In emphasising this Churchillian gift for making a penpicture of a world problem on which other writers waste millions of words, "The Times" notes that Mr. | Churchill's ability to explain to and to convince the public remains un- ! diminished. The public are not students of war; they do not study topographical maps of localities; they can absorb geography only in large areas, viewed from easy angles. And in this way the public acquire their own bird's-eye view of the far-flung hostilities, glimpsing, through the Churchill binoculars, problems and issues that cannot be made plain to them by diagrams and charts. A panoramic speech by the Prime Minister is a Cook's guide to the war operations near and far, as well as a balanced estimate of actual and impending events. No other statesman possesses that gift in the same degree. The British policy towards Japan between the Dunkirk disaster and Sunday, December 7, was immensely difficult and immensely' important. That policy was, in effect, a policy of pacification; yet it was first and foremost a military policy. Paradoxical as that statement may seem', it is amply sustained by the Prime Minister's avowals, in this as well as in other speeches. If Japan, like Italy, had pivoted her war action directly on the falling of Franceand, if after Dunkirk, Britain had found herself practically alone and in deadly conflict with Germany, Italy, and Japan, all the fears that possess Australia at this moment would have assailed her in 1940 and in circumstances of much greater desperation. Mr. Churchill in 1940----41 had to use all the resources of diplomacy to keep Japan out of the war unless and until Japan's entry should be balanced by America's. He admits that he had to stoop to things that otherwise he would not have stooped to:

It has been the policy of Cabinet, almost at all costs, to avoid disagreement with Japan unless we were sure that the United States would come in. We had to stoop to the closing of the Burma Road for some months. I remember that some of our critics were very angry about it, but we had to do it.

The closing of the Burma Road was an Asiatic Munich of which Mr. Churchill later made public explanation to Chiang Kai-shek, but not until America had taken the lead in Asiatic diplomacy. There came a time, fresh in memory, when the Prime Minister felt able to declare that if America came to be at war with Japan, Britain would declare war within an hour. That speech was a turning-point, a sign that the British stooping policy in the Far East was over. But critics should remember that, even had the Russian and the Middle East fronts been deprived of priority of supply, the reinforcing of Malaya on a pronounced scale late in 1940 and early in 1941 would have run counter to the temporary policy, dictated by necessity, of pacifying Japan. If diplomacy and military action were to run hand in hand, Britain's military hand in Malaya was not free, until America's advent was certain; and this fact enters materially into the reasons for deficiencies in Malayan defence.

When the moment arrived at which Britain could cease stooping, could face the possibility of war with Japan, and could say so openly, Britain was committed deeply to the supply of the Russian and the Libyan fronts, and found that the chief limiting factor affecting the reinforcing of Malaya was not men but ships. The Lord Privy Seal, Mr. Attlee, makes this clear in replying in the House of Commons to critics of the Government:

Reinforcements were sent on their way to the Far East at the earliest possible moment, though, of course, we cannot say what they were. They were drawn from those places and from those troops which were most readily available, and other troops and reinforcements are being sent; but we must remember the long distance that has to be covered and the limit of our shipping capacity and our escort capacity.

To put it in other words, when President Roosevelt at length shook off the American isolationists and was able to take over the diplomatic negotiations with Japan and to give Britain at last political freedom from the stooping policy, it was not physically possible to immediately execute the military changes that were appropriate to the political change. The President of the United States might strengthen his diplomatic hand in the Far East overnight; but it was not possible overnight to transport armies and material from one section of the globe to another. With the firm handling of Japan by President Roosevelt began a period in which Malayan defences might be improved, consistently with priority of supply to Russia and Libya; but Japan ended that period treacherously on December 7, because Japan realised that she had imported all that she possibly could of United States oil and war supplies, that concessions from Britain were no longer any more than a myth, and that the hour of Japan's big gamble had arrived. Reading the criticisms of local official blunders in Singapore against the changing political background candidly disclosed by Mr. Churchill-. it seems clear that even if Singapore officials did not do all they might have clone with the means at their

command, events beyond their control insuperably limited their means, and possibly also narrowed their outlook. As Britain's minor tone —the tone of the Japanese pacification period—rose to a major tone, Singapore military policy, so long under restraints, failed to develop proportionately. To look for official scapegoats now is waste of time. The need now is to get on with the job. The Churchill Government has shown realism in its replacement of military failures. If the same realism were shown with regard to political placeholders, within or without the Cabinet, most of the grounds of criticism of the Government would he removed or modified.