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Miss Ruston
Reference your minute of May 1st about .
militarization.
1. I have taken a day or two to think it over and to discuss it with members of the Unit
I have also at a meeting called for the purpose. taken the opportunity of talking to members of other planning units.
2. I might as well say straight out that I have discovered no new arguments; I can only re-state the old in the light of added experience.
3. So good a judge as Colonel Turnbull
of the M.P.U. considers that the main argument for militarizing planning unit at the very earliest possible moment in its career lies in the fundamental importance of giving it the maximum time to settle into War Office ways, to accustom itself to War Office procedure and generally by
The trial and error to learn the military ropes. Unit will never function as an efficient part of Civil Affairs until it has learned these lessons. There is no quick way of achieving this essential knowledge and apparently no substitute for actual experience in the War Office.
4. General Hone told me some time ago that much of the planning done by H.P.U. in their civilian capacity had to be scrapped as soon as they entered
Mr.B the new world of the War Office. of the Borneo Unit told me the same thing in almost the same words. Part of the Burma Unit's alleged failure is generally ascribed to incomplete integration with the military machine. Taylor of C.A.4., newly returned from Australia, told me the other day when I asked him, that the moral for planning units, judged in the light of his experience of the Borneo Unit of whose affairs he has of course an intimate knowledge both here and in Australia, was keep close liaison with the
Colonel
Army and work as near to them as possible.
5. The opinion' of the best judges would therefore seem to be that the main justification for immediate militarization is to give the Planning Unit the maximum. chance of settling into
which its duties must the military machine under ultimately be carried out.
6. The object of our activities is to serve the Commander in Chief by preventing disease and unrest in liberated Hong Kong.
Delay in
militarization directly hampers preparations for the efficient discharge of this responsibility in regard to (a) supply and procurement, and (b) recruitment of personnel. Taking (a) first
typified