Goodwill Visit

Late last week, exactly five days after Secretary of State Cordell Hull had categorically denied that there was any written or implied agreement of any sort between the British and U. S. fleets (TIME, Feb. 14), three modern U. S. cruisers, Trenton, Milwaukee and Memphis, steamed into narrow Singapore Strait and dropped anchor to the boom of welcoming salutes from British shore batteries.

One of the hottest and most humid ports in the world is equatorial Singapore, where sallow white skins seldom stop perspiring, never suntan. To make the welcome as warm and damp as possible, the messes of every British ship prepared long pink rows of Singapore Gin Slings for U. S. officers.* The city of Singapore and the British Government voted 2,000 Straits dollars ($1,200) for the entertainment of the U. S. crews. Wrote the Singapore Free Press: "The most casual observer can see that the decision to send three American cruisers to Singapore was actuated by more than a desire to repeat those goodwill visits which have featured Singapore's naval life in recent years."

It was not in the cards, the citizens of Singapore thought, that three Yankee cruisers had come 4,500 miles just to watch a squad of British officials break the ribbon stretched across the entrance to the island's huge new naval dockyard. Singapore and Britons the world over preferred to believe they were there to show Japan that at least two Western nations vitally interested in the Pacific were reaching the end of their patience with Japanese aggression in the Far East, to hint gravely that in the event of a general war in the Pacific the navies of Britain and the U. S. will be able to make use of Singapore, now the greatest naval base, greatest fortress in the East.

Crossroads of Empire. All shipping from the Mediterranean and India to the Far East, all shipping from Britain to Australia must pass through the narrow Strait of Malacca, which was controlled by the Portuguese, the Dutch, and finally by the British after 1824. But the island of Singapore (in Malayan "Lion City''), a feverish mush of mangrove roots and black mud 27 miles long by 14 broad, was practically uninhabited until far-sighted Sir Stamford Raffles set up a trading settlement on the island in 1819. had the whole island ceded to the East India Co. five years later.

Talk of fortifying Singapore started almost as soon as Britain gained control of the island, but it came to little until the breakdown of the Anglo-Japanese alliance in 1921. Almost simultaneously Prime Minister David Lloyd George announced that a major naval base would be built at Singapore, years of puttering about with surveyors and dredging machines followed, but not until 1928 did work really begin. Later Australia and New Zealand, the Federated Malay States and the swarthy Sultan of Johore, whose land lies just beyond Singapore island, became sufficiently alarmed at Japanese imperialism to come through with contributions. Work progressed rapidly, 14 miles away from the city of Singapore on the opposite side of the island.

To this new base was towed the third largest floating drydock in the world, a lumbering catamaran big enough to hold a 50,000-ton battleship. Land batteries were strategically placed. To Singapore went the only three 18-inch guns military experts now know of. Sixty feet long, weighing 150 tons apiece and firing a 3,333-lb. shell, they were much too heavy for the World War cruisers for which they were designed, lay about London dockyards until emplacements ready to hold them were built on the Strait of Johore. Since then they have cracked many ceilings in Singapore with the crash of their firing. It took 15 years of work and $100,000,000 to build the greatest fortress east of Suez, though in the meantime the dank heat and corroding tropic waters had rendered the giant floating dock almost useless. Therefore, a permanent stone drydock was necessary, for which much granite was ferried all the way from Scotland. On its broad bottom there is room for two full-size football fields.

Strategy. The British naval defense lines from Gibraltar to Darwin and from Hong Kong to Simonstown cross at Singapore. Hence the defense of Australia, New Zealand and British interests in the Far East is all based on the supposed "impregnability" of Singapore. That strong point of Empire is strategically buttressed by its position at the apex of the defensive triangle between the bases at Colombo and Darwin. But although Singapore can now accommodate a fleet of more than 100 warships, Britain has as yet no battleships to spare to be based permanently at Singapore. Darwin, in barren North Australia, is as yet little more than a fueling station. Nightmare of Britons Out East pictures Japan thrusting at Singapore or Darwin, or even Colombo, should the Japanese persuade easily persuadable Siam to permit them to cut a canal across the Malay Peninsula at Kra. To gain time for part of the Mediterranean fleet to reach Singapore in the event of such thrusts is the job of Britain's secondary base at Hong Kong and the small China Fleet stationed there. British strategists do not expect Hong Kong to be able to withstand a major Japanese attack for more than three weeks, but think that should be time enough.

Britain is not the only Western nation interested in the defensive potentiality of Singapore. Neither French Indo-China nor The Netherlands Indies, which now sells the Japanese Navy some of its fuel oil, would be able to withstand a Japanese naval attack. A defensive line, Saigon-Singapore-Surabaya, is thus a strategic likelihood. If there is a defensive alliance now in effect, however, it is not admitted.

Test. To give the British Far East defenses the most thorough possible test, there ended last week the greatest maneuvers Singapore has ever seen. Twenty-five warships, including the aircraft carrier Eagle which has been continuously exercising about the numerous China Sea islands lately, and three escort vessels of the Royal Indian Navy formed the attacking force under Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Ramsay. Ten thousand troops, mostly heavy artillerymen, and no planes formed the defense under the military commander of Malaya, Major General W. G. S. Dobbie, who has his son for his aide-de-camp, fills his War Office reports with biblical quotations, and holds weekly Bible classes for his staff. No reporters or photographers were allowed to see much of what happened during the next four days. They reclined in a comfortable press room in Singapore where twice daily Army officers handed out official reports of what had been going on, and bundles of censored photographs, taken by Army photographers. On the fourth day, as the maneuvers came to an end, the city prepared for a simulated air raid that was to black out every street lamp in Singapore.

* Subject to innumerable variations, the Singapore Gin Sling is basically a Tom Collins spiked with cherry brandy.

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