BRITISH BASES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 307, 28 December 1937, Page 10

BRITISH BASES

SINGAPORE CRITICISED GENERAL’S warning LONDON, Dec. 1. In an interview with a representative of the Australian Associated Press, General Sir lan Hamilton said that the Singapore base was too near Japan, who could certainly capture it. “The Japanese would not dare to think of sending an army against Australia if we had a fast fleet based on Trincomalee (Ceylon) able to harry their transports,” he added. The interview followed a speech Sir lan Hamilton made at a dinner of the Royal Scottish Corporation in which he said that Japan was on the way to Singapore, and said he had always urged that Trincomalee, not Singapore, should be Britain’s base in Lhe East.

“Nothing less than Europe can hold up the Emperor’s advance,” declared Sir lan Hamilton in his speech. Echoing A. E. Housman’s poem on the advance of the Persians into ancient Greece, he said: “The Emperor is marching from the island of the Rising Sun. His fighters drink up the great rivers of China and smoke from their bombs darkens the air. His loads are clearly marked —Hankow, Hong Kong, Singapore, Burma, Assam, ano Bengal. Some may thing that I talk wildly. I do not. “in the 1913 manoeuvres, as Inspector General of Overseas Forces,” he declared. “I put a brigade on board ship at Singapore. I sailed out of sight of land. No one knew where I had gone. In the small hours, I returned and captured the island with a loss of two sepoys, who were accidentally drowned. A land army can besiege and capture Singapore exactly as Port Arthur was captured. It is too near to Japan's main power and too far from ours. “Since my day,” ho added, “fortifications and searchlights have been improved beyond recognition, but sc have the means of attack.” Sir lan Hamilton, who is 84, was a British observer with the Japanese Army in the Russo-Japanese war, and wrote an account of the war entitled “A Staff Officer’s Scrap Book.”