The renewal of military reinforcements expected will be absorbed in relief of tired front-line troops and will create little difference. British defence policy now concentrates greater part of fighter and anti-aircraft defence of Malaya on Singapore Island to protect naval base, starving forward troops of such defence, including the Australian Imperial Force.

Present measures for reinforcement of Malayan defences can from the practical viewpoint be little more than gestures. In my belief, [the] only thing that might save Singapore would be the immediate dispatch from the Middle East by air of powerful reinforcements, large numbers of the latest fighter aircraft, with ample operationally trained personnel. Reinforcements should be not in brigades but in divisions, and to be of use they must arrive urgently. Anything that is not powerful, modern, and immediate is futile. As things stand at present, the fall of Singapore is to my mind only [a]

matter of weeks. If Singapore and A.I.F. in Malaya are to be saved there must be very radical and effective action immediately.

[I] Doubt whether visit of an Australian Minister can now have any effect, as the plain fact is that without immediate air reinforcement Singapore must fall. Need for decision and action is matter of hours, not days.

Dr. Evatt added that in his judgment Bowden’s summary set out the position correctly. “If it cannot be met in the way he suggests, the worst can be expected.”

On December 27 Mr. Curtin wrote a signed article in the Melbourne Herald which was flaunted round the world by our enemies. Among other things he said: We refuse to accept the dictum that the Pacific struggle must be treated as a subordinate segment of The Hinge of Fate

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the general conflict. By that it is not meant that any one of the other theatres of war is of less importance than the Pacific, but that Australia asks for a concerted plan evoking the greatest strength at the Democracies’

disposal, determined upon hurling Japan back.

The Australian Government therefore regards the Pacific struggle as primarily one in which the United States and Australia must have the fullest say in the direction of the Democracies’ fighting plan.

Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links with the United Kingdom.

We know the problems that the United Kingdom faces. We know the constant threat of invasion. We know the dangers of dispersal of strength. But we know too that Australia can go, and Britain can still hold on.

We are therefore determined that Australia shall not go, and we shall exert all our energies toward the shaping of a plan, with the United States as its keystone, which will give to our country some confidence of being able to hold out until the tide of battle swings against the enemy.

Summed up, Australian external policy will be shaped toward obtaining Russian aid, and working out, with the United States, as the major factor, a plan of Pacific strategy, along with British, Chinese, and Dutch forces.

This produced the worst impression both in high American circles and in Canada. I was sure that these outpourings of anxiety, however understandable, did not represent Australian feeling. Mr. W. M.