From Mr William Terrell Sir: Most people who endured Hitler's
war would agree that becoming an American satellite was preferable to a Europe controlled by Hitler. But it is fair to ask whether or not those two choices were the only ones. When Hitler attacked Russia in July 1941, Britain's strength and military capacity were steadily increasing and being increased by lend-lease. At the same time the Japanese threat to the empire in the east was too patent to be ignored. British material aid to Russia could only be a marginal influence in the titanic clash of Continental armies. Even half of the 1,000 fighter aeroplanes sent to Russia before the end of 1941 would have prevented the conquest of Malaya and Singapore. But Churchill's choice of strategy preferred the dramatic gesture of aid, including the newly arriving lend-lease supplies, to another monstrous tyranny. He gambled that Japan would not attack, a gamble that the then very apparent risk did not justify. There can be no doubt that had he given the same attention to the Far East as he did to other theatres, the British empire would not have been destroyed at Singapore, and that at the Tehran conference he would not have represented a donkey between a bear and a buffalo. The futile dispatch of HMS Prince of Wales and Repulse was an unacknowledged admission of the mistake that had been made.
To say this is only to record that the greatest of human beings can make mistakes. Sixty years on, Churchill's strategy in 1941 has left Britain less in command of her own destiny than she was 60 years after the achievements of Wellington, Chatham and his own Marlborough. It needs also to be asked to what extent he was prejudiced, by having an American mother, into believing that American interests were always identical with those of Britain. In fact the most substantial long-term achievement of American foreign policy during the 20th century was the elimination of the British empire and the downgrading of Britain to a second-rate power. But it would appear that even today these truths are too raw to be acceptable.
William Terrell
London SW6
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