ABSTRACT
Cunningham was a confirmed believer in the Mediterranean's strategic importance but, in event of a crisis in the Far East, the 'main fleet' would be despatched promptly to Singapore. Leader of a would-be great power, he was especially jealous of British and their historic domination of the Mediterranean and bore the Royal Navy a particular grudge for having forced him out of Corfu in 1923. Moreover, it was thought that Mediterranean would become unusable as a highway to the east; reinforcements would have to go via the time-consuming Cape route. When Cunningham returned to the Mediterranean in July 1937, he found the fleet deep in another international crisis, the Spanish Civil War. Chatfield nevertheless recognized that in a three-handed global conflagration, in which the Mediterranean Fleet was expected to move to Singapore, as in 1914, Britain would have to ask France to defend the imperial interests in the Mediterranean but he identified no absolutely vital concerns in the region.
