This Squealing

A Review

By

R. W. Robson

THE British have been driven out of Hongkong, out of Singapore, out of Borneo, out of Burma—and driven out with some ignominy, beaten by a race of Asiatics, so that their prestige, for the moment, is destroyed, and in their fall they have left the heroic Dutch and the highspirited Australians isolated and almost unprotected. The Netherlands Indies already are lost. Australia, New Zealand, and all the South Pacific Territories are in the gravest danger.

Because of these things, an anti- British howling that is shrill and bitter beyond anything ever known in Empire history is heard in the South Seas. “England has betrayed us— they took our trade and our money for a hundred years, and then, when we wanted the help they had always promised, they collapsed like a rotten tree.” “Damnation to Churchill and his muddling strategy, and his Old School Tie!” “Finish with England—if Australia escapes the Japs we shall be American in future. And so on, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

It is a sentiment that one can understand; but it is based on cockeyed ignorance, and it is sadly and grotesquely wrong.

It is true that the South Seas countries grew to nationhood under the protective wing of British sea-power, true that we were encouraged—nay,

forced—to believe that the Old Man always would protect us in case of international bother; true that the Singapore Base was built to persuade the Japanese to stay North of Cancer, and to reassure the British communities South of Capricorn.

It is tragically true that, just at the moment when we most urgently needed Britain’s protection, Britain failed us—and failed us in circumstances that are a blot upon British colonial administration. another side to it Let K UT there is another sioe • " us try to see this .thing with wide vision of world strategy, and m the long focus of national history.

Then there may be less‘ about England s failure, sprtt:i g upon British statesmanship, les screeching for the cutting of the painter. . Perhaps we may start by remind mg ourselves that it is a miracle tha to-day we are free to babble and spit and screech us re< c gU events of 1940, when only the mcred ible courage and gallantry of the British people, m .the! face,of appar ently hopeless odds, saved the Empi e from heel of Hun and the greedy claw of the Jap, By every rule of war‘and c should have been d ®*®* ted M * be -crushed by the end 0f,1940. we can set against the traitorous

ineptitude of the Old School Tie in Malaya the magnificent courage of the common British masses in 1940- 41.

But, to get our focus right, we must go further back—back to the luxuri ous and softening decades which fol lowed the Peace of Versailles —decades in which the whole Anglo-American race abandoned itself to an orgy of money-making, and left to gangs o£ professional politicians, party pimps and twittering fools the responsibility for producing better government and a new order in international affairs.

In those mad, glad years the gentle men who have been aptly named “the guilty men” laid the foundations of the present war, and of the hor rors of the years still to come.

AS a journalist, in Europe and else where, between 1923 and 1931, I met many of the world’s “leaders”, and saw their weaknesses, and looked on while to an increasing degree they surrendered their authority to Inter national Money Power, and I watched the hamstringing and ultimate dis memberment of the League of Nations, which was mankind’s last hope against the re-establishment of jungle law. Britain tried, quite hon estly and sincerely, to effect general disarmament and world peace, and she herself disarmed to the point of lunacy, but her mediocre and incon spicuous leaders actually were but playthings in the hands of Fascist cliques and of International Money.

By the middle thirties, when the uprising of Hitler and Mussolini and the collapse of Geneva forced a re orientation of British policy, the damage had been done. The aggres sor nations already were so far ahead of us in rearmament, in the crea tion of a new war technique based on the tank and the aeroplane, in the regimentation of the masses for totalitarian war, that we never have been able to catch up. The explana tions of all our disasters since 1939 may be quite easily read in the terms of those simple facts. The First World War indicated, and the Second World War proved, that a great Power cannot, in merely a year or two, adapt its industrial and eco nomic organisation and train person nel for total war. Three or four years are needed. In the meantime, we can be defeated.

What applies to us applies in greater measure to the United States.

We both are peoples who hate war; and we foolishly tried to abolish it by ignoring it. Our people are courage ous, clever fighters; but we both are handicapped by our rotten political systems, by which we are deprived of leadership.

The wonder is not that Britain has been so frequently and disastrously defeated, but that she has survived at all; not that recently she had no men or arms to spare for Eastern Asia, but that she was able to keep her shores inviolate in Western Europe.

LET there be squealing, if you like; but let the squealing be directed at the pin-headed people (they are all around us, still—many in high and responsible posts) who, despite all warnings, ignored the menace of the “Madmen’s Axis”, and could not see that the stealthy, southwards creeping of Japan threatened every peaceful community in the Pacific.

This is no time for reproaches and revilings; but let us never forget these guilty men, so that we may deal with them as they deserve when the war is over.

AND when will the war be over?

Let us not delude ourselves with wishful thinking. The events of these last three black months mean that, if we are to achieve the victory that will restore to us our old way of life, the task now before us is far reaching and terrifying. It is the ultimate test of the racial qualities of the Anglo-American Powers.

If we really are what we think we are, we ultimately shall win, after bitter toil and cruel sacrifices. If centuries of good living have weak ened our fibres, we shall acquiesce in world leadership passing to another race.

We British can and will fight on, to the bitter end. But, alone, we can not win—we could hope, in the final wash-up, for a compromise peace.

Our fate is being decided on the Russo-German front, and in the workshops of America. If the Rus sians can break Hitlerism, and the United States can build (and man and fight) the 65,000 planes they

have promised in 1942, we can defeat the Axis, in spite of the enormous advantages it now holds through the resounding victories and conquests of Germany and Japan.

Germany may yet enter the Cau casus; Japan may (probably will) invade India, and raise those sub merged millions against us; Japan may attack Australia and spread her cruel tentacles far into Polynesia.

But an unbeaten Russia and a United States that is really united (and both provisos are hazardous) mean that the Nazi monster will be destroyed and our sun will shine again.

WE must put our faith in Britain and USA, While one, unhappily, still is being controlled by the Old School Tie, Hitler hopes to destroy the other by Fifth Column activities within (half the 130,000,000 of USA are of non-British blood).

Nevertheless, the fundamental urge towards survival soon must remove the last shackles from the fighting organisms of our two great democra cies, so that, even if Russia falls, and we cannot secure victory, we can at least ensure, in half the world, the maintenance of democratic freedom and Anglo-American standards of life.

These are the most critical days in the history of mankind. The future of “civilisation” will be decided within the next six months. It is no time for squealing at Britain—or at any other Anglo-Saxon institution which represents part of our protec tion against extermination by bar barians.