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SECRET

20

II.

Memorandum on the Strategic Relations existing between the United Kingdom and the Oversea Dominions and India.

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In theory, an insular country, or a continental country with a seaboard, can defend itself against invasion from the sea by naval force, or by military force, or by combination of both forces. In deciding how a country can best defend itself against such a contingency, there are certain important factors to be taken into account. First, there is the character of the country's population and industries, and the question whether it is self-supporting as regards food supply, or mainly dependent on supplies from oversea of food and raw material. Secondly, the distance of the country by sea from the assumed enemy, for the greater the distance the more difficult invasion from the sea becomes. Thirdly, the naval and military resources of the assumed invader as compared with those of the defender. Fourthly, the element of human nature, for as the large majority of the population of every country consists of landsmen, that majority cannot easily be taught to appreciate the effect of sea power and is apt to insist on land as well as sea defence, even in cases where land defence may be superfluous. These seem the main considerations. There are, no doubt, many others which in each case will influence the decision.

The problem is difficult enough for one country. It becomes much more complicated in the case of an Empire consisting of a number of widely separated countries, in which the governing factors are dissimilar.

In the British Empire, the principal State is the United Kingdom, which is insular, mainly manufacturing and commercial in its industries, and mainly dependent for its supplies of food and raw material on seaborne imports. Moreover, the United Kingdom being insular, and free inter-communication between it and the other countries included in the British Empire, as well as between those countries themselves, being only possible by sea, sea command is in any case essential, while its maintenance serves also to protect the seaborne trade of the United Kingdom and to guard the United Kingdom against organized invasion from the sea.

As regards the Dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa the first and fourth are continental States with extensive seaboards, while the second and third are insular. They are all self-supporting or nearly so in the matter of food supply, their main industries, except the production of gold and diamonds in South Africa, are agricultural, and they are exporters rather than importers.

So long as British superiority at sea remained unchallenged, the British Navy protected the oversea Dominions from attack from the sea at the cost of the British taxpayer. Of late years, however, the development of the navies of foreign Powers, especially of Germany and Japan, has brought home to the Dominions the necessity for a concerted scheme of Imperial defence, and this feeling has been intensified by their noticing that the British fleet in home waters is being gradually strengthened, our naval force in distant seas being simultaneously reduced,

Moreover, in, proportion as the Dominions have become strong and autonomous, an idea has sprung up that it is derogatory on their part to rely wholly on Great Britain for sea and land defence in the event of war, and that each Dominion ought as far as possible to render itself capable of self-defence. The rapid growth of Japan as a naval and military Power has caused special anxiety in Australia and New Zealand, while Canada as soon as she became autonomous took steps to organize local forces to guard her land frontier, which is conterminous with that of the United States.

In South Africa the recently formed Union Government is alive to the necessity of organizing local forces to guard against native risings and the possibility of hostile action based on German South-West Africa.

The case of India differs from that of the Dominions. India is self-supporting, or nearly so, in the matter of food supply, and her main industries are agricultural. ~~On

(B117) 60 4/11 H&S 149wo

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