WHY IT FELL

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 1, 7 September 1942, Page 5

WHY IT FELL

SINGAPORE AND AFTER"

CAMPAIGN IN PACIFIC

"Singapore and After" is the first of what promises to be a veritable flood of books criticising, or merely explaining the United Nations' disastrous failure to halt the enemy at sea, on land, or in the air. Lord Strabolgi is reasonably well qualified to undertake this ambitious "study of the Pacific campaign," for he knows the China waters and west ern Pacific through service as a naval officer and in 1939, before the outbreak of war, he visited: the area of hostilities, including Australia (writes William Titler, Sydney Morning Herald correspondent in London). He is trenchant in his criticism of British politicians, jmst and present, and the general direction, of the various military campaigns, but pays less attention to naval strategy, his own particular field, upon which his opinions would have been more authoritative. He pillories Sir Joihn (now Lord) Simon for his "work behind the scenes" in Geneva to prevent League of Nations sanctions against Japan after her Manchuriaii invasion—the "gigantic blunder, to put the matter generously, from which many tragedies followed." His analysis of the Singapore de>fence system and the reasons for its failure is excellent. He "belonged to the school of naval strategists who unsuccessfully tried to have Singapore made a cruiser, submarine and air base, with the main base for 'the British Eastern fleet in Australia, as opposed to the adopted plan o£ Singapore as a first-class naval base and dockyard. The weakness of this plan was the defence of the Malay Peninsula, which itself was dependent on allies in French IndoChina guarding the back door, where New South Wa'les provided a better climate than Singapore, and "a large and growing engineering industry," for the main base with the Australian Army as its natural guardians. Politicians Blamed For the loss, of the Battle of Malaya Lord Strabolgi places responsi-. bility on: "Firstly, the officials of the Colonial Office in London and their successive political chiefs (which means the British Cabinet); secondly, the Committee of Imperial Defence (which was supposed to advise . . . and which, strange as it may sound, was wound-up at the beginning of the European war); and thirdly, the Colonial Government in Malaya itself. It was the duty of ; the man on the spot, the Governor-General, to recognise the weakness of the positiom, to present it to the authorities at- home, and, if the representations were ignored, to resign . . . We should appoint younger, fresher and more vigorous minds to key positions of this importance . . . Whenever the permanent officials of the Colonial Office can contrive it, they appoint a. gentleman they consider 'safe.' one unlikely to introduce innovations." • Lord Strabolgi has drawn large-, ly upon newspaper correspondents' dispatches and communiques for his accounts of the several actions into which the campaign falls—Pearl Harbour, the defence of Hong Kong ("exposed in all its rottenness"), the battle for Malaya, and the fall of Singapore, the Philippines struggle, the overrunning of the outlying Dutch East Indies, the finad battle of Java, and the early stages of the Burma fighting. Pie a new detail here and there, but the melancholy story of defeat after defeat is substantially as it was told in the day-to-day cablegrams from -the battlefields. Collected within the space of 150 pages,, it represents one of the sorriest accovints of unpi-eparedness to combat aggressi«n ever laid at the door of any nation—a veritable tex l-book on how to k>se an empire. It is relieved only by tales of the incredible fortitude and heroism of outnumbered and inadequately-arm-ed Allied forces.