BRITAIN’S BULWARK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 June 1941, Page 6

BRITAIN’S BULWARK

SINGAPORE’S ROLE IN EAST. BRICK WALL OF REALISM. When Lord Roberts lifted his eyes from the detail maps of South Africa after the Boer War to look at largerscale problems, he prophesied: “The history of the world will be decided some day at Singapore.” , Today this jungle island—Malay for Lion City—is the strongest fortified base in the world. It bristles with guns—l B-inch guns, some of the largest produced—that fire over a 25-mile circle. Its entire ocean front is ringed with machine-gun nests. Sufficient oil is kept (underground) to run an entire fleet for six months. It houses aeroplanes of the latest types. And clown its clammy streets march tough, sun-tanned Australian troops, whistling “The Wizard of Oz.” Singapore to you and me is a romantic name 1 redolent of the glamorous East, of gin slings at dusk, the soft pat-pat of feet of coolie ricksha boys, the colours, smells, silks and slums of polyglot races. To war chiefs, it stands out as the white man’s citadel among the yellow races. Shaped like a pumpkin-leaf, its fortifications cost the people of Britain 6s a head. The base took 15 years to build and represents a capital investment of £20.000,000. The naval works, which include the second largest graving dock in the world (the largest is at Southampton), alone cost £11.500,000.

Long-sighted legislators considered this a cheap price to pay for freedom. .Singapore, magnificently fortified, is Britain's bulwark in the Orient, a brick wall of realism amid Japanese bluff and blandishments.