The Grand Alliance (117 page)

704

The Duce speaks of freeing Bizerta as the only
means of overcoming transport difficulties. The occupation of Malta is not possible. He does not believe that
Libya can be held much longer without supply through
Tunisia. The situation for the Axis in the Mediterranean
and North Africa is critical because the supply routes
were not kept open in time. Past decisions have been
strongly influenced by the campaign against Russia.

The Fleet was at all times a vital factor in the Desert war.

By destroying Axis supplies and sustaining the Eighth Army in its advance, the Royal Navy as well as the Royal Air Force had helped to bring Rommel’s armies to the brink of ruin. But now at this crucial moment our naval power in the Eastern Mediterranean was virtually destroyed by a series of disasters.

The impact of the U-boats in the Mediterranean was heavy.

The
Ark Royal
was gone. A fortnight later the
Barham
was struck by three torpedoes and capsized in as many minutes with the loss of over five hundred men. More was to follow.

On the night of December 18 an Italian submarine approached Alexandria and launched three “human torpedoes,” each controlled by two men. They penetrated the harbour while the boom-gate was open for the passage of ships. They fixed time-bombs, which detonated early on the morning of the 19th under the, battleships
Queen
Elizabeth
and
Valiant.
Both ships were heavily damaged and became a useless burden for months. Thus in the course of a few weeks the whole of our Eastern battle fleet was eliminated as a fighting force. I have yet to tell of the loss in another theatre of the
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse.

We were successful in concealing the damage to the battle The Grand Alliance

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fleet for some time. In secret session a good deal later I said to the House of Commons: “In a few weeks we lost, or had put out of action for a long time, seven great ships, or more than a third of our battleships and battle-cruisers.”

But “Force K” was also stricken. On the very day of the Alexandria disaster news reached Malta of an important enemy convoy heading for Tripoli. The cruisers
Neptune,
Aurora,
and
Penelope,
with four destroyers, at once went out to catch them. Approaching Tripoli our ships ran into a new minefield. The
Neptune
was hard hit, and both the other cruisers were damaged, but were able to steam away. Presently the destroyer
Kandahar
entered the minefield to rescue the crew of the
Neptune,
but she too struck a mine and became helpless. The
Neptune,
drifting in the minefield, struck two more mines and sank. Only one man of her crew of over seven hundred survived – and he as a prisoner of war after four days on a raft, on which his captain, R. C. O’Connor, and thirteen others perished. The
Kandahar
remained afloat and eventually drifted clear of the minefield, and the next night the destroyer
Jaguar
found her, and saved most of her company.

The German Staff comment on this incident is instructive.

The sinking of the
Neptune
may be of decisive importance for holding Tripolitania. Without this the British force would probably have destroyed the Italian convoy. There is no doubt that the loss of these supplies at the peak of the crisis would have had the severest consequences.

Thus was extinguished the light of “Force K.” The cruiser
Galatea
had also been sunk by a German U-boat. All that remained of the British Eastern Mediterranean Fleet was a few destroyers and the three cruisers of Admiral Vian’s squadron.

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Up to the end of November our combined efforts by land, sea, and air had prevailed in the Mediterranean. We had now suffered fearful naval losses. And now on December 5

Hitler, realising at last Rommel’s mortal peril, ordered the transfer of a whole air corps from Russia to Sicily and North Africa. A new air offensive against Malta was launched under General Kesselring’s direction. The attacks on the island reached a new peak, and Malta could do no more than struggle for life. By the end of the year it was the Luftwaffe who held the mastery over the sea routes to Tripoli, and thus made possible the refit of Rommel’s armies after their defeat. Seldom has the interaction of sea, air, and land warfare been so strikingly illustrated as in the events of these few months.

But now all paled under the stroke of world events.

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11

Japan

Japan and the Nineteenth Century
—
A Prodigy of
Adaptation
—
Old Japan Veiled
—
Inscrutable —

The Hierarchy of the Japanese Army — And of
the Navy — German and British Tuition — The
Commercial Classes
—
The Japanese Constitution of
1889
— The “New Genro” — The Anti-Comintern Pact,
1936
— The Hitler-Stalin Non-Aggression Pact of August,
1939
— Japanese
Tensions after the Fall of France
—
Prince
Konoye at the Helm — The Tripartite Pact
—

Winter Reflections on British Resistance — The
Ferment Grows — The Emperor and the Imperial
Princes

—

The

Effect

of

Anglo-American

Economic Sanctions of July
26, 1941
— British
Constant Anxieties — Our Danger of Having to
Fight Japan Alone — My Minutes of August
25

and
29
— Naval Dispositions — My Report to
Australia and New Zealand of August
30
— Prince
Konoye Resigns, October,
1941
— General Tojo
in Command
—
Appeal from Chiang Kai
-
shek
—

My Telegram to President Roosevelt of November
5 —
And His Reply — My Telegram to General
Smuts, November
9
— Speech at the Guildhall,
November
10
— My Minute to the Foreign Secretary, November
23
— The President’s Account of
His Negotiations — The Modus Vivendi and the
Ten-Point Note — Mr. Hull’s Decision
—
Limitations of British Knowledge — “Magics
”
— My
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Telegram of November
30, 1941
— The Die is
Cast, December
1
— My Minute of December
2, 1941
— Threat to the Kra Isthmus
—
A Tremendous Episode in American History
—
Unity of the
American Leaders
— “
The Lord Hath Delivered
Them into Our Hands
” —
Guilt of Japan
—
One Ad
vantage of Madness.

T
HE MOMENT had come when in the long, romantic history of Japan the most fearful plunge was to be made. Not since 1592, when the war lord Hideyoshi resolved to embark on mortal conflict with China and used sea power to invade Korea, had any such fateful step been taken. A strong continuity of tradition and custom had guided the redoubtable islanders of the Far East across the centuries.

Valour, discipline, and national spirit, never divorced from the mystic, had maintained the stamina of this stern and hardy Asiatic race. Europe had first heard of their existence from Marco Polo about A.D. 1300. The religion of the Japanese nation was a form of Buddhism. The later incursion of the Christian missionaries, the devotion of their converts, and their fierce-fought extermination had been an episode little noticed in Europe. The merciless slaughter of the Christian population, numbering over a quarter of a million, took twenty-four years, and was finished around the year 1638. After this deed Japan plunged into strict seclusion, and had remained almost unknown for many generations when the nineteenth century with its own strident challenges broke upon the world. There had been a spell of complete isolation. The arts, culture, and faith of the Japanese had supported a rigid structure of society.

Science, machinery, and Western philosophies did not exist for them.

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But the steam engine altered the proportions of the globe, and about a hundred years ago ships arrived from across the ocean spaces and knocked at the well-barred feudal doors of Japan with weapons and ideas. For some time after Commodore Perry’s American squadron had paid its unwelcome visit in 1853 a British or American gunboat could enforce the will of a British or American Government upon the external behaviour of the Japanese State. With the foreign warships came the revelation of the wonderful tricks which the White Man had found out, and which he was prepared to teach or sell. The gaunt and grave civilisation of the thirteenth century was presented with that of the nineteenth, grinning, prosperous, and well armed.

Uncle Sam and Britannia were the godparents of the new Japan. In less than two generations, with no background but the remote past, the Japanese people advanced from the two-handed sword of the Samurai to the ironclad ship, the rifled cannon, the torpedo, and the Maxim gun; and a similar revolution took place in industry. The transition of Japan under British and American guidance from the Middle Ages to modern times was swift and violent. China was surpassed and smitten. It was with amazement that the world saw in 1905 the defeat of Czarist Russia, not only on the sea, but by great armies transported to the mainland and winning enormous battles in Manchuria. Japan now took her place among the Great Powers. The Japanese were themselves astonished at the respect with which they were viewed. “When we sent you the beautiful products of our ancient arts and culture you despised and laughed at us; but since we have got a first-class Navy and Army with good weapons we are regarded as a highly civilised nation.”

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But all they had added was the trappings and panoply of applied science. All was on the surface. Behind stood Old Japan. I remember how in my youth the British caricaturists were wont to depict Japan as a smart, spruce, uniformed messenger-boy. Once I saw an American cartoon in quite a different style. An aged priestly warrior towered up, august and formidable, with his hand upon his dagger.

I do not pretend to have studied Japan, ancient or modern, except as presented to me by the newspapers and a few books and in the official documents I saw in the many departments of State in which I have served. I was on her side in the Russo-Japanese War. I welcomed the Anglo-Japanese Treaty which had preceded it. At the Admiralty during the First World War I rejoiced in the Japanese accession to the Allies and at the extirpation of Germany from the Far East. It was with sorrow that in 1921 I became a party to the ending of the British alliance with Japan, from which we derived both strength and advantage. But as we had to choose between Japanese and American friendship I had no doubts what our course should be.