ABSTRACT
The mantra, ‘main fleet to Singapore’, guided the defence policies of the southern Dominions, Australia and New Zealand through the 1920s. The establishment in New Zealand of this ‘miniscule’ air force encouraged a muted debate among those who questioned reliance on imperial strategy and believed importance should be given to protecting New Zealand’s shores from invasion. The British reply to the feelers put out by the Australian High Commissioner in London on the possibility was that none of these gentlemen could be made available to visit Australia. The idea that Britain could simultaneously prepare against war with Germany and war with Japan was, he argued, ‘an impossibility’, nor was the prospect of building and sending out a fleet capable of containing the Japanese realistic.
