THE FUTURE OF THE EMPIRE : IV. IMPERIAL DEFENCE
By GENERAL SIR JOHN BURNETT-STUART [This is the fourth of a series of six articles on the problems that face the constituent parts of the British Commonwealth today. In next week's SPECTATOR Mr. Ernest Bevin will write on "A Commonwealth Assembly "1 IN a great commonwealth which has no aggressive designs and no military aim except its own internal and external security, and in which all service in the Defence Forces in normal times is by voluntary enlistment, there should at least be a general understanding of the principles on which those forces are to be used. Is the British soldier still to believe that his " frontier is on the Rhine "? and are the Dominion soldiers still to believe that it will probably be their lot to join him there? It would be both comforting and useful to learn that the Great War mentality which has survived so long in our high military circles is at last yielding to the insistence of British vital security needs and of British present-day conditions.
Two great principles underlie modern British Imperial Defence needs. The first is command of the sea—or at least, security on the seas. This is not so much a principle as a condition. All our Imperial Defence is built up behind the shield of sea power; our food and our trade are sea- borne; the Empire is linked up by sea communications; the Dominions and Colonies have sea frontiers; and last but not least, the sea still separates Great Britain from the Continent of Europe.
The second principle is that in a war of the conscript masses of Europe the floor of the Continental arena is no place for us. We may sail round it, fly over it, and perhaps undertake subsidiary operations on the outskirts; but the moment we enter it we lose our freedom of action and we forgo the protection which the narrow strip of sea between us and Europe affords. The massed land warfare of Europe is not our business, and not until our home front is secure and our situation at sea assured can we think of taking part in it—and then only if we have an army capable of making its entry effective—and not even then if we can by any means keep out of it.
The dominating factor in Imperial Defence is the security of the United Kingdom. The Dominions—and India to an almost equal degree in defence matters—are Sovereign States, and there is no single authority which can lay down what form their contribution to Imperial Defence should take. But since the United Kingdom is the master-factor in Commonwealth security, and because of the close touch between the Staffs, it is inevitable that the provision made by the Dominions both for their local security and as a con- tribution to the common cause should be, if not conditioned, at least influenced by the Defence policy of the United King- dom and the provision made to meet it. What is Great Britain's policy?
The last war brought us two great experiences. The first experience was the realisation of what a vast and unlimited liability the commitment of an army, however small at first, to a Continental theatre of war under modern conditions must be. The second great experience was the rise of air power.
These two experiences have profoundly altered our de- fence problems and the nature of our provision to meet them. In pre-war days, when there were only two Services, the British Expeditionary Force was the only instrument available for prompt intervention on land outside our own borders, and on the Continent of Europe in defence of what we then conceived to be, and still conceive to be, our strategic interests on that Continent. We no longer have an army available for such immediate and effective intervention, since we cannot afford to keep three Services at equal maxima of strength; their respective strengths must be strictly propor- tioned to our own vital security needs. An efficient Regular Army we must have; our frontiers, garrisons and bases have to be manned, internal security at home and in our oversea possessions has to be assured, and an organised Field Force has to be maintained as an immediate central reserve. With these tasks our Regular Army is fully occupied; nor can the Air Force relieve it of them. But for actual and immediate intervention on the Continent itself the Air Force is now our instrument—though such use of it will necessarily depend either on whether such distant action serves also the purposes of our Home Defence (as it usually will) or on how much of it we can spare from the requirements of our Home Defence.
The effect of the rise of air-power on our defence problem is twofold. On the one hand Great Britain is now for the first time in her history liable to bombardment in a devastat- ing form, and a great and expensive organisation has now to be built up, largely at the expense of the army, as part of her provision against air-attack; though we are still, as long as we hold the narrow seas, immune from invasion.
On the other hand, the development of air-power has put into our hands, if our provision is adequate, an instrument better suited to our needs than any we have ever had before. Air action is not a commitment in the sense that land action is a commitment ; each air operation is carried out from its own bases and is complete in itself. Air action is immediate. Air action is selective ; it can choose any objective within its range, and can switch at the last moment from one objective to another. Air action is punitive and destructive; it is not acquisitive—though it can prevent the occupation of an area by an enemy if it has command of the air over that area. And above all, air action is based on machine-power and manufacturing power operated by a small expert fighting personnel and not on the man power of masses.
It is on the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force that our Home Defence primarily depends, with behind them the static coastal and air raid defences of the country. The Regular Army's immediate task is oversea defence. The Territorial Field Army is not capable of immediate action. If then we are to promise prompt co-operation with a Con- tinental ally it can only be in the form of naval or air action, and an ally who relies on our co-operation must adjust his own provision accordingly. It is no mean contribution that we offer.
If this is a true appreciation of the position of the United Kingdom, what is the position of the Dominions? Obviously their first obligation is to make their own Home Defence secure. As this • is done behind the shield of the Royal Navy's world dispositions, and as the threat of serious direct attack is remote, it is no great task. An obvious extension lies in the development of their naval forces beyond their own Home Defence requirements so as to relieve the Royal Navy of some of its responsibilities in distant seas. But if the Dominions are prepared to co-operate whole-heartedly in Imperial Defence they can do much more than that.
The impression .gained at the British Commonwealth Relations Conference held at Sydney last September was that the Dominions still think of this further contribution in terms of marching men sent to a distant European theatre as in the last war. It would seem that the time has come for them to abandon that conception, or at least to relegate it to the background of their policy. Both the status of the Dominions and the requirements of modern Imperial Defence seem now to demand a more decentralised policy, each Dominion working outwards from the central point of its own Home Defence so as to cover a much larger region, and making that region its sphere of military study, of military rein- forcement and action in wartime, and eventually of a share of military responsibility in times of peace ; and incidentally increasing the depth of its own Home Defence in the process.
For example, Australia and New Zealand, working together, might extend their sphere outwards to cover the Pacific Islands and northwards as far as Singapore and Hongkong; the Union of South Africa might extend its sphere over the African continent, establishing liaison with the forces of the British African Colonies, and reaching up eventually to the Suez Canal ; Canada (which, thanks to the direct protection of the Royal Navy and the indirect pro- tection of the United States Navy, is the least exposed to attack) might extend her sphere to include Bermuda and the British possessions round the Caribbean Sea, concen- trating at the same time on the development of her Air Forces for more distant action, and cultivating a dose liaison with the military forces of her great neighbour; India (whose development toward Dominion status is only a matter of time) already has direct military interests extend- ing from the Persian Gulf through Burma to Singapore: she might extend her sphere to include Iraq ; Ireland is inevitably in the United Kingdom sphere. And every Dominion must develop its secondary industries so as to be capable of maintaining the forces which it provides.
This is but the briefest outline. But under some such system each Dominion would have a task both suited to its own national status and constituting a valuable share in the security of the British Commonwealth of Nations. And so there might be brought into being a real world-fabric of British Empire security, in which geographical dispersion would become a source of strength rather than of weakness, and in which each Dominion would have responsibilities in which it could take a national interest, which its national forces were well fitted to discharge, and which would go far towards lightening the Mother Country's Imperial burden.
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