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Otago Daily Times, Issue 26783, 28 May 1948, Page 5

prai 1 Tm" 1 revealed to-day in an article in the American magazine, (Jollier “ wTOIWP by the American playwright, Robert Sherwood, the article is based on the secret papers of the late Mr Harry Hopkins, President Roosevelt’s personal assistant. “Mr Churchill,” it says, “told Mr Roosevelt: ‘lf Britain goes down, I and the Government will perish with it.’” The article reveals the unqualified determination of the Royal Family, Mr Churchill and the entire British Government to stay in Britain and go down if necessary under a Nazi invasion.

Sherwood quotes Queen Elizabeth as declaring in response to a suggestion from the dominions that Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret should be evacuated: “The Princesses could never leave without me. I could never leave without the King, and, of course, the King would never leave.” The article says that Mr Churchill believed that if Britain fell, the Empire would be ended at least temporarily, and the leadership of the rest of the British Commonwealth would pass to Washington. Other dramatic disclosures of AngloAmerican relations in the crucial opening years of the war contained in Mr Hopkins’s papers were: First, Mr Churchill’s message to Mr Roosevelt in the middle of 1940, appealing to him to bring the United States into the war as the only means by which France could be saved; secondly, at the same time Mr Churchill asked Mr Roosevelt to send the United States Navy to take over Singapore; thirdly, the British Army would destroy the Suez Canal and the British Home Fleet would be liquidated 'in the defence of the. Homeland if a successful Nazi invasion occurred. Mr Churchill also requested American co-operation to persuade the Irish Free State to take measures to prevent a German invasion. “In a cable sent 10 days after the German invasion of the Low-' lands and France, Mr Churchill

warned Mr Roosevelt that if Britain went down he could not be responsible for the terms his cowed and defenceless successors might have to make with ’the Germans. “ They would have no choice but to make an abject surrender.” The article says that Mr Roosevelt's reply to Mr Churchill’s request for an American declaration of war was that he promised “ everything possible more than words, but short of war.’’ Mr Roosevelt had expressed the hope to Mr Churchill that if Britain was successfully invaded, the British Home Fleet would be disposed among bases such as Newfoundland, Aden, Cape Town and Singapore, and stated that America would be responsible for the defence of the Western Hemisphere, including Canada. , » Mr Churchill replied that the Royal Navy, or any part of it, would, of course, never surrender, and the Home Fleet would be totally destroyed in the defence of the British Isles. [Robert Sherwood is an American dramatist and a three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He left Harvard University i'n 1917 and enlisted in the Canadian Black Guard. He was one of the most vehement spokesmen for aid to Britain from the beginning of the Second World War. His principal works include “The Road to Rome,” “Waterloo Bridge,” “Idiot’s Delight,” and “There Shall Be No Night.”J '