May 21, 2012

By Dr. John Maurer, Chair, Strategy and Policy Department, Naval War College

Abstract:

Winston Churchill served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Conservative government during the late 1920s. His goal as Chancellor was to renew Britain’s power in the world by reviving the British economy. His economic policies brought him into conflict with the leaders of Britain’s Royal Navy, who wanted to undertake an expensive buildup of British naval strength to balance against the rising power of Japan. In this article, John Maurer examines how Churchill sought to manage and reconcile the risks facing Britain in the economic sphere, in domestic politics, and in the international strategic environment. The article forms part of a larger study on which I have been working about Churchill and the decline of British power.

I. Introduction
II. Hedging against Japan’s Rising Power
III. Churchill and Japan
IV. Britain’s Defense Dilemma
V. Conclusion

I. Introduction

In the aftermath of World War I, Great Britain faced a serious strategic challenge in the emergence of imperial Japan as a rival naval power. The rapid growth in the strength of the Japanese Navy threatened the security and interests of Britain’s empire in Asia. At the center of British strategic decision making about how to respond to Japan’s naval challenge was Winston Churchill. As Chancellor of the Exchequer during the late 1920s, Churchill reviewed the spending requests of government departments, set priorities among competing requirements for scarce resources, sought revenue to pay for expenditures, put together a budget that reconciled income with outlays, helped to manage the country’s economic life, and defended the administration’s stewardship of the economy in the hurly-burly politics of the public arena. Determined to take an active role in directing Britain’s grand strategy, Churchill assessed the price tag and risk of alternative strategies for hedging against Japan’s rising power. Churchill downplayed the likelihood of war with Japan. In an oft quoted letter to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, Churchill wrote: ‘why should there be a war with Japan? I do not believe there is the slightest chance of it in our lifetime.’1 Instead of an impending clash between Britain and Japan, Churchill foresaw a ‘long peace, such as follows in the wake of great wars.’2 Of course, in a tragic irony of History, Churchill’s words would later come back to haunt him, fated as he was to serve as Britain’s prime minister when Japan attacked the British Empire in December 1941.

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Churchill’s views put him at odds with the Royal Navy’s civilian and uniformed leadership, who urged that Britain guard against a looming menace from Japan. In particular, Japan’s construction of a new generation of powerfully armed cruisers alarmed British naval planners. The Royal Navy wanted to counter Japan’s growing strength at sea by acquiring its own force of the latest generation of cruisers, as well as build up oil fuel supplies and develop bases to support naval operations in the Pacific. These programs, entailing major increases in naval spending, came at an inopportune time when Churchill, along with the British government and people, confronted some harsh economic realities. Britain’s economy suffered from anemic growth and high unemployment during the 1920s. Churchill hoped to revive the British economy and, along the way, his own political fortunes. In an attempt to stimulate economic growth by cutting taxes while at the same time balancing the government’s budget, Churchill sought to restrain defense spending. Churchill’s policy stance brought him into a bruising, drawn-out, interdepartmental struggle with the navy. The late Roy Jenkins viewed Churchill’s row with the Admiralty as the ‘most dangerous of the disputes’ that confronted him as Chancellor,3 as the Navy’s leadership, fired up by the forceful First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet Earl Beatty, threatened resignation en masse to protest against proposed cuts in warship construction. After one encounter with the Chancellor over the budget, an exasperated Admiral Beatty complained: ‘That extraordinary fellow Winston has gone mad, economically mad, and no sacrifice is too great to achieve what in his short-sightedness is the panacea for all evils, to take 1/- off the Income Tax. Nobody outside a lunatic asylum expects a shilling off the Income Tax this Budget.’4 A political associate of Churchill would later criticize him, saying that he was a ‘very bad Chancellor of the Exchequer … . His whole objective was to reduce the income tax by a shilling … . His passion to get the income tax down … . was the basis for our weakness in the 1930s. Churchill disarmed the country between 1925 and 1930 [sic] as nobody has ever disarmed this country before.’5
In this article I explore how the leaders of a global superpower contended with a rising naval challenger in Asia. Churchill and British decision makers confronted awkward political, economic, and strategic tradeoffs in attempting to manage the power transition taking place in the international system that accompanied the rise of imperial Japan. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates points to this lapse of strategic judgment on Churchill’s part to warn: ‘[O]ne cannot predict the future with any certainty … . In the 1920s, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he [Churchill] said there wasn’t the “slightest chance” of war with Japan in his lifetime. Today, rising and resurgent powers with new wealth and ambition are pursuing military modernization programs. They must be watched closely and hedged against.’6 That as sagacious a statesman as Churchill misjudged the danger of war with Japan, believing that Japanese leaders would act as responsible stakeholders on the international stage, highlights the pitfalls that can bedevil even the very best strategic assessments. Churchill, to be sure, erred in forecasting that Japan’s rulers would show greater wisdom in their foreign policy ambitions and prudence in their strategy; however, he was wrong for the right reasons.

This article also examines the impact of lackluster economic performance and tight defense budgets on a superpower’s ability to respond to rising challengers in the international arena. In facing ‘the rise of the rest’7 – that is, other great powers getting stronger economically and translating that strength into capabilities to fight in the maritime domain – successive British governments during the 1920s and early 1930s curtailed spending requests put forward by the Royal Navy. The combination of slow economic growth, high unemployment, growing entitlement costs, a heavy debt burden, and an overvalued currency that hurt international competitiveness put immense pressure on governments of this era to economize in defense spending. Admiral Beatty’s judgment that the Churchill tax cuts endangered Britain’s naval defense underscores the painful strategic and economic dilemmas confronting British decisionmakers. In this predicament, Britain’s political leaders determined that they would rather run risks in the strategic arena than jeopardize the economy’s prospects. By the 1920s, Britain had become a ‘frugal superpower’ that could ill afford an arms race against a rising power in Asia.8 It was Churchill’s hard lot, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, to face these economic and strategic realities.

II. Hedging against Japan’s Rising Power

At the beginning of the twentieth century, British statesmen saw in Japan a strategic partner that they could enlist to help manage the shifting international balance of power. In 1902, Britain and Japan entered into an alliance that served both countries’ strategic interests for over 20 years and through two major wars, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I. At the beginning of the 1920s, however, British decisionmakers faced a critical strategic question of whether to renew the alliance with Japan or allow it to lapse. This choice was not an easy one to make. Alienating Japan, turning a partner into a potential adversary by abruptly ending the alliance, would endanger Britain’s strategic position. After much deliberation, Britain’s leaders eventually found a way out of their strategic predicament at the Washington Conference during the winter of 1921–22. In place of the alliance, Britain concluded agreements with Japan and the United States that established a multilateral framework for cooperation to promote arms control and international stability in Asia.9

Despite the diplomatic success at Washington, the Admiralty saw a threat in Japan, an emerging near-peer competitor, an expansionist power, bent on upsetting the international status quo in Asia, arming itself for a coming showdown of strength.10 A Darwinian set of assumptions about international relations colored assessments by British naval planners of Japan’s foreign policy intentions and likely strategic courses of action. The Admiralty saw Japan’s rapidly growing population as driving its international behavior. Satisfying the economic demands of this growing population would entail that Japan acquire additional territory in East Asia to use for settlement. Since the British Dominions and the United States restricted Japanese immigration into their countries, Japan would have no recourse but to seize territory in East Asia. Japan’s increasing population was also forcing the country’s rapid industrial development, with exports providing a way to employ a growing number of Japanese workers. Since the Japanese home islands were so poor in natural resources, Japan’s industrial growth would generate an increased demand for imports of raw materials. This increased demand, in turn, would lead Japan to seek direct control over sources of supply by expansion in Asia.11

The Admiralty maintained: ‘the need of outlets for the population and for increased commerce and markets, especially new sources of self-supply, will probably be among the most compelling reasons for Japan to push a policy of penetration, expansion and aggression.’12 To British naval planners, Japan’s expansion, driven by an underlying search for economic security, was practically inevitable, and aggressive Japanese international behavior would ultimately produce a collision with Britain. Admiral Beatty feared: ‘by encouraging a revolt in India and raising the banner of Asia for the Asiatics, it would be no exaggeration to say that Japan would be able to wrest from us our position in India’.13 In the Admiralty’s estimation, containing Japanese expansion in a coming ‘clash of civilizations’14 called for a buildup of British naval power in Asia to deter Japan. Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, when serving as the deputy chief of naval staff, maintained that, unless Japan knew Britain was ‘in a position to resist her by force, she will gradually but remorselessly push forward her policy of expansion and domination in the Pacific, and always at the cost of the European races.’15

To find evidence for this bleak assessment, the Admiralty did not have to look far. In the immediate aftermath of the Washington Conference, Japan embarked on a program of warship construction that seemed to contradict the spirit of international cooperation represented by the treaty signed on arms control. The arms control agreement reached at Washington established a formula to limit the number of battleships and aircraft carriers possessed by the major naval powers. Britain and the United States agreed to parity with each other in battleships and aircraft carriers, while Japan reluctantly went along with a 60-per cent ratio of strength accorded to the American and British navies in these classes of warships. Although this famous five-five-three ratio system averted a costly arms competition in battleships, the negotiators at Washington failed to reach agreement on limitations for warships smaller than 10,000-tons displacement, carrying an armament of 8-inch caliber guns or less. Since the arms control treaty did not place numerical limitations on these classes of warships – principally, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines (also referred to as ‘auxiliary’ vessels) – and aircraft, each country could decide for itself how many they required for their security. Japanese naval planners viewed auxiliary vessels and aircraft as a way to help compensate for the inferior ratio accorded their navy in battleship strength.16 Japan’s naval buildup, to British naval planners, reflected the deeper, long-range Japanese ambition to dominate East Asia.

Japan’s growing cruiser strength alarmed the Admiralty. By virtue of being the largest and most heavily armed warships not limited in number by treaty, cruisers assumed a greater operational value for naval planners. At the end of 1922, the Japanese started building two cruisers of the Kako-class, carrying 8-inch guns. Another pair of cruisers belonging to this class followed two years later. In addition, Japan began four cruisers of the Nachi-class, which carried no fewer than ten 8-inch guns and 12 torpedo tubes. In starting these ships, Japan was setting the pace for a shipbuilding rivalry in large cruisers that emerged after the Washington Conference. The four Nachi-class cruisers were superior in design, speed, and armament to any existing British cruisers.17 By building 8-inch gunned cruisers, Japan was rendering obsolete Britain’s existing force of cruisers, none of which was armed with anything more powerful than a 7.5-inch gun, and most were armed with smaller caliber 5.5-inch and 6-inch guns. In Admiral Beatty’s opinion, ‘an 8-inch [gunned] ship is in a position to crush a 7.5-inch ship without laying herself open to be crushed in return, and obviously equally so with the 6-inch ship or the 5.5-inch ship. The advent of the 8-inch gun ship has made not only the 6-inch ship, but also the 7½-inch ship out of date, and if you pit a 7½-inch gun ship against an 8-inch ship you are courting disaster.’18 Japan’s construction of a new generation of large cruisers thus set a new standard of naval strength. To meet this challenge, the Admiralty pressed for a rapid response, with Britain acquiring its own force of 8-inch gun cruisers, to prevent Japan from possessing an outright superiority in this important class of warship. Since ‘the Japanese have announced a new programme of 10,000 ton cruisers,’ Admiral Keyes advocated that Britain needed to ‘get out a design of the most powerful … cruiser within the Washington Treaty terms.’19

In the Admiralty’s estimation, Britain required a force of at least 70 cruisers to provide for the security of the British Empire.20 British naval planners derived this requirement for 70 cruisers from an appraisal of the roles performed by cruisers in wartime. Cruisers carried out the crucial task of screening the main fleet’s force of battleships. The stakes at risk were high: the outcome of a major fleet action could depend on how well the screening force of cruisers protected the battleships and gathered tactical intelligence on enemy naval movements. Naval planners contended: ‘As on the success or otherwise of a Main Fleet action the whole safety of the Empire may depend, it is essential that on the day of battle we should have with the Main Fleet a number of Cruisers at least equal to the number of the enemy Fleet and individually equal or superior in “gun-hitting” power.’21

In addition to screening the actions of the main battle fleet, cruisers carried out offensive operations to sever an adversary’s sea lanes of communication and the vital defensive role of trade protection. British cruisers curtailed Germany’s ocean-going trade during World War I, showing the power of blockade to injure an enemy’s economy and morale on the home front. A future war in the Pacific would require that British naval forces restrict Japanese access to overseas sources of supply and cripple Japan’s economy. The Admiralty also never tired in asserting that Britain’s empire spanned the globe, and its unity depended on the Navy’s ability to keep open the sea lanes that linked it together. The Admiralty, for example, calculated Britain’s annual trade in the Pacific and Indian oceans as amounting to almost £900million. British trade with the Malay States alone amounted to £107million. Meanwhile, over 700 ocean-going ships plied eastern waters carrying British trade. Britain obtained from East Asia the important commodities of rubber, tin, zinc, wool, grain, and meat.22 This trade would be vulnerable to attack and disruption if war occurred with Japan. By the mid-1920s, then, the Admiralty had presented a strategic rationale and related force requirements to guide the steady modernization of the Royal Navy.23

III. Churchill and Japan

The Admiralty, in making the case for cruiser construction, faced a formidable critic in Churchill. In the Conservative government of the late 1920s, only the former prime minister and elder statesman Arthur Balfour possessed as impressive a set of credentials for strategic leadership as those of Churchill. Before becoming Chancellor, Churchill had already held key government positions involving high-level strategy and foreign policy decision-making. He served as First Lord of the Admiralty, the Navy’s civilian chief, at the outbreak of war in 1914. In that role, he had proved a dynamic leader, bringing to bear his powerful intellect, driving energy, forceful personality, power to communicate, and ambition to excel. Before the war, he aimed to transform the Navy, preparing it for a coming trial of strength with Germany.24 This experience meant that Churchill understood the guiding principles of maritime strategy and naval operations, the navy’s force structure requirements, and the fundamentals of warship design. During the war’s opening stages, he sought the vigorous prosecution of the naval war. Later in the conflict, he served as the Minister of Munitions, directing Britain’s armaments production. As the Secretary of State for War and Air, and the Colonial Secretary in the turbulent times that marked the conflict’s immediate aftermath, he played a major role in British strategic decision-making. Consequently, Churchill’s views were not those of an untested ‘amateur’,25 but those of a seasoned leader, accustomed to evaluating alternative high-stakes strategic options and weapons programs. In contesting the Admiralty’s views about strategy and weapons acquisition, Churchill’s behavior infuriated the Navy’s leadership. Arguing with Churchill caused Sir William Bridgeman, the First Lord of the Admiralty in the Conservative government, to be ‘worried to death over his cruisers.’26 Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, the future First Sea Lord, who served as one of the Royal Navy’s top strategic planners during the 1920s, found Churchill ‘to behave like a bully’ in discussions with British naval leaders, considering him ‘absolutely unreliable’ and ‘quite unscrupulous’ in dealing with the Admiralty.27

In Churchill’s view, the Admiralty wanted to portray Japan as menacing a naval rival of Britain as imperial Germany was before World War I. ‘It seems to me,’ Churchill wrote, ‘that the Admiralty imagine themselves confronted with the same sort of situation in regard Japan as we faced against Germany in the ten years before the war … . There is absolutely no resemblance between our relations with Japan and those we had with Germany before the war.’28 The Admiralty’s effort to meet the Japanese danger entailed a dramatic increase in the Navy’s budget so that, when adjusted for changes in prices over the preceding ten years, it would equal what Britain had spent on the eve of war to stay ahead of the German naval challenge. Churchill did not see Japan as posing a mortal danger to the British Empire. Churchill wrote Baldwin: ‘Japan is on the other end of the world. She cannot menace our vital security.’ Geography provided another difference from the strategic situation as it existed before 1914, when ‘Germany made a bold bid for naval supremacy, and we had to face this mighty power across the narrow North Sea with every feeling that our whole national existence was at stake.’29 Churchill did not deny that Japan would make for a dangerous adversary, difficult to defeat in war; only that Japanese forces were not in a position to deliver a knockout blow against the heart and center of the British Empire.

Churchill believed that it made no sense for Britain to fight Japan other than to defend against a Japanese attack on Australia and the British Empire in Southeast Asia. Churchill maintained: ‘The only war it would be worth our while to fight with Japan would be to prevent an invasion of Australia.’30 To carry out such an assault, Japan would need to mount a major naval and military strike at great distance from the Japanese home islands. Japan would face enormous problems in carrying out this offensive. Since a war between the British and Japanese empires would entail colossal costs and risks, Churchill discounted its likelihood, holding the view that leaders on both sides would recoil from the prospect of such a hideous struggle.

Furthermore, a Japanese drive to destroy the British Empire in Asia, according to Churchill, would likely bring the United States into the war against Japan. During World War I, Germany’s aggressive, offensive strategies triggered American entry into the fighting. If ‘Japan was the aggressor,’ he foresaw the United States ‘would be thrown increasingly to our side.’31 In other words, a Japanese attempt to gain hegemony in East Asia would result in a powerful countering coalition. Consequently, Churchill considered a Japanese decision for war irrational because it would involve Japan in a conflict with the United States as well as Britain.

Churchill’s understanding of the international strategic environment also led him to conclude that Japan alone, unaided by coalition partners of its own, would not embark on a war against Britain. Instead, Churchill imagined a predatory Japan acting in a more opportunistic way, attacking only if Britain found itself already endangered by some other great power. In this scenario, if the British Empire faced a serious threat from some other quarter – most likely, a challenge from a revanchist Germany in Europe or an expansionist Soviet Russia in South Asia – Japan might exploit this opportunity to bandwagon against Britain by aggressive action in the Far East. This scenario, too, proved an accurate forecast: Japanese decisionmakers only did feel confident enough to attack Britain when it appeared that Germany was on the verge of scoring a major military success in Europe during World War II. The principal danger from Japan, Churchill thought, was a Japanese strike when Britain was tied down elsewhere. If this lurid scenario came to pass, with the British Empire fighting simultaneously on several widely scattered fronts, Churchill concluded that Britain’s salvation would depend on finding a coalition partner in the United States. In 1912, when serving as First Lord of the Admiralty, he wrote: ‘If the power of Great Britain were shattered upon the sea, the only course open to the 5,000,000 of white men in the Pacific [that is, the populations of Australia and New Zealand] would be to seek the protection of the United States.’32 After the war, he held to this view: ‘Canada, Australia and New Zealand had very strong racial objections to the Japanese and would be disposed to throw in their lot with the United States against Japan in certain contingencies, as they already regarded the United States fleet in the Pacific in the light of a safeguard to themselves.’33 Churchill, then, possessed a deep understanding of the workings of the international balance of power.

Nor was Churchill alone in holding the view that war with Japan appeared remote. In challenging the Admiralty’s assessment, Churchill sought the views and support of the Foreign Office.34 Austen Chamberlain, Britain’s foreign secretary, wrote to the British ambassador in Japan: ‘I can conceive of no subject which ought to range us in hostile camps, and still less can I think of war between Japan and the British Empire.’35 Chamberlain’s judgment about Japan reflected the view of the Foreign Office, which presented a comprehensive assessment, entitled ‘The Improbability of War in the Pacific’.36 While Britain and Japan were economic competitors in China, this ‘struggle for economic supremacy’, in the Foreign Office’s view, did not point toward war between the two countries. ‘One might hazard the opinion,’ the report stated, ‘that Japan has learnt a lesson from the great war, viz. that Germany by having recourse to arms, failed to obtain what she otherwise would probably have obtained if she had continued in her policy of peaceful penetration.’ The Foreign Office also downplayed the likelihood that Japan would attack Britain and the United States, countries much stronger than itself in economic and potential military power. F.T. Ashton-Gwatkin of the Foreign Office’s Far Eastern Department wrote on one assessment of this scenario: ‘a war [started by Japan] would therefore be an act of desperation on their part – national harakiri, in fact’.37

Britain’s ambassador in Tokyo, Sir Charles Eliot, concurred. He did not see cause for alarm in Japan’s arms programs: ‘the Japanese Treasury are determined to carry out the policy of retrenchment which was announced when the present Government came into office. That they regard this policy as essential in the present financial condition of Japan is clear from the fact that the Finance Minister has been able to enforce his views upon the two great spending Departments; for not only has he been able to resist the demands of the navy, but also he succeeded last year in obliging the army to agree to a reduction in the number of divisions.’ Ashton-Gwatkin noted on the Ambassador’s report: ‘This reduction in expenditure on Armaments must mean a decline of bellicosity on the part of Japan, and an increasing reluctance to a sharp policy in China.’38

On the matter of the Admiralty’s cruiser program, the Foreign Office concluded: ‘It seems therefore both unreasonable and unfriendly to regard Japan as an active enemy and deliberately to commence a competitive programme of ship-building against her … and if they [that is, the Japanese] now became aware that we were deliberately building up our Navy against them the result would not only be deplorable in its effect on Anglo-Japanese relations, but would give other nations to suspect us of militaristic designs.’ Victor Wellesley, the deputy under-secretary of state, underscored this view. ‘I feel strongly,’ Wellesley wrote, ‘that to embark upon a policy of building against Japan at the present moment is both provocative and dangerous.’39 Wellesley maintained: ‘What [Japan] is really aiming at is military & naval predominance in the Far East, not for aggressive purposes, but to be able to say to all comers “hands off”.’40 Churchill, far from espousing extreme opinions or a narrow departmental outlook, expressed a consensus view held by British decisionmakers that Britain and Japan were not locked onto a course bound to lead to a collision.

Britain’s naval leaders were not so sanguine about Japan’s future behavior and the prospects of a lasting peace in Asia. Bridgeman disagreed with the assessment that there was no imminent danger of war with Japan. ‘No one,’ he wrote, ‘can foretell the date of the next war.’41 Instead of continued international cooperation, Bridgeman had no difficulty imagining Japan striking out on the road of conquest. ‘It has been said there is no danger of war – the common cry of the foolish virgins,’ he wrote. ‘Would the Foreign Office still say, in view of the racial unrest in the East that an anti-European wave of fanaticism might not seize the Japanese, bring about a revolution and the instalment of a militarist Government?’42 One astute appraisal put together by a British naval officer, with considerable experience of service in Asia, maintained that ‘the Japanese Government and their people are entering a very critical period.’ In his view, a struggle was ‘in full swing’ between a ‘section of the ruling classes’ who favor cooperation with the West and the ‘military party, who have hitherto dominated Japan’s policy, [and] do not take kindly to these new ideas which, as a very minimum, presuppose the subordination of armies and navies to civilian direction.’ The outcome of this struggle within Japan was in doubt because ‘the majority of the Japanese nation have been brought up very stiffly upon extreme nationalist lines.’43 A group of militarists, intent upon whipping up and exploiting nationalist sentiments, could emerge the winners in Japan’s internal power struggle, thereby increasing the likelihood of conflict in East Asia.

Bridgeman thought that Churchill’s assessment of Japan ‘ignores history, real facts and the psychology of the people.’44

In the aftermath of the Washington Conference, while Japanese internal politics and external behavior gave the appearance of a responsible stakeholder invested in the international status quo, that stance could change, with Japan turning into a revisionist power before Britain could rearm. British naval planners thus discounted the rise of liberalism within Japan as a force for arresting a Japanese quest for hegemony in East Asia. In the Admiralty’s opinion, Japan’s increased trade and growing economic interdependence with other countries would not pacify Japanese foreign policy ambitions. Instead, the growing Japanese economy was underwriting Japan’s naval buildup.

That Britain and Japan had until recently been formally allied to each other also did not dissuade British naval leaders from their views about the emerging Japanese threat. Nor did Japan’s adherence to the treaties negotiated at the Washington Conference alter the assumptions held by British naval planners. The veneer of liberalism – evidenced by popular elections, political parties, cabinet government, international cooperation, arms control, and spending cuts imposed on the Japanese Army and Navy – hid what was actually a militaristic country bent on expansion. Furthermore, British naval planners framed their force requirements from assessments of emerging Japanese capabilities to operate in the maritime domain as well as intentions. Japan’s growing naval strength required a British response. Consequently, simple prudence dictated that Britain adopt a hedging strategy, undertaking substantial defense preparations to provide for a war against Japan even if that contingency appeared remote.

In response to the Admiralty’s concerns, Churchill formed his own appraisal of the likely strategic contours of a war with Japan. The initial campaigns of a war with Japan, in Churchill’s estimation, would not decide the conflict’s outcome. Instead, a protracted attritional war would ensue. World War I had showed all too clearly the ruinous human and physical costs associated with a war fought out for high stakes by great powers. At the Admiralty when the war with Germany began, Churchill put in motion a huge program of naval construction. Later, as Minister of Munitions during the closing stages of the war, Churchill presided over the manufacture of vast amounts of weapons, used to equip the British Army and Air Force, as well as the armed forces of Britain’s coalition partners.45 This experience gave Churchill first-hand knowledge and considerable understanding of the economic mobilization required to fight a war against another great power. While Japan might score important opening victories, causing the British Empire ‘great annoyance and expense’ in the Pacific, these initial Japanese gains ‘would not make any difference to the final result.’ Once Britain mobilized its resources for action in the Pacific, Churchill thought that ‘in three or four years we could certainly sweep the Japanese from the seas and force them to make peace.’46 The superior resources at Britain’s command would eventually win out in a protracted struggle with Japan. Still, Churchill feared that terminating the war might entail Britain having ‘to send large armies … to go and attack Japan in her home waters.’ Thus, even in victory, a war with Japan ‘would reduce us to bankruptcy.’47

Churchill was a realist: he understood and did not deny the strategic risks that Britain was running by not funding all the Royal Navy’s programs for warships, bases, and readiness. In a remarkable strategic appreciation, Churchill made recommendations for managing that risk during the opening stages of a war with Japan. At first, Britain should ‘make arrangements to base a squadron of battle cruisers, or a fast division of battleships, or if possible both, upon Singapore during the period of strained relations, or as soon as may be after War has begun.’ This force, supported by cruisers, destroyers, submarines, aircraft, and coastal artillery batteries, should remain on the defensive, avoiding any engagement with superior Japanese forces. He thought ‘that such a force w[oul]d prove an effectual deterrent against a Japanese attack on Singapore.’48 British forces should remain on the defensive, holding at Singapore and guarding trade routes in the Indian Ocean, in Churchill’s strategic appraisal, until ‘a preconceived programme of new construction’ started at the outbreak of war provided Britain with naval superiority over Japan. Churchill envisioned this program of construction completed within two years of the war’s beginning.

Reinforcements sent to Southeast Asia would eventually enable Britain to make a transition from a defensive stance to offensive operations. If deterrence failed and the Japanese sent an overwhelming force to take Singapore, then British covering forces should ‘withdraw without being drawn into decisive action at an inferiority’ into the Indian Ocean, awaiting reinforcements.49

Churchill even went so far as to contend that the loss of Singapore during the early stages of a conflict did not mean Japan would win the war. ‘Great as are the injuries which Japan, if she “ran amok”, could inflict upon our trade in the Northern Pacific, lamentable as would be the initial insults which she might offer to the British flag, I submit that it is beyond the power of Japan, in any period which we might foresee, to take any action which would prevent the whole might of the British empire being eventually brought to bear upon her.’50 Churchill considered a defensive Fabian strategy during the war’s opening operations, trading space for time until the British Empire could build up an overwhelming force to take the offensive, would enable Britain to hold and then win.

Churchill thus possessed a sound strategic appreciation of the course a major war in the Pacific might take: Japan would act opportunistically, likely to strike only if Britain was already tied down in a conflict with another great power; fighting would entail a protracted, costly struggle of exhaustion; Britain in all likelihood would find a coalition partner in the United States, with both countries sharing the common aim of preventing the imposition of a Japanese hegemony in Asia; and, while Britain might suffer reverses at the war’s beginning, it could build up its armed forces to regain the strategic initiative and roll back Japan’s initial conquests. This strategic appraisal proved a remarkably accurate forecast. He addressed the Admiralty’s arguments and did not hide the risks confronting Britain. The competing assessments produced by the Admiralty and Churchill are remarkable in the way they complemented each other and, taken together, offered a window for seeing into the future. These assessments provided Britain’s leaders with sound guidance for measuring strategic risk and to develop a hedging strategy for meeting the challenge posed by Japan’s rising sea power.

IV. Britain’s Defense Dilemma

In crafting a British strategic response to Japan’s rising naval power, Churchill could not ignore Britain’s domestic politics and economic predicament. An expensive naval buildup, he feared, might provoke a domestic political backlash against the government. He contended that, by authorizing the Admiralty’s spending requests, the government would provide the opposition Labour and Liberal parties with an effective electoral campaign issue to attack the Conservatives. To carry out the Admiralty’s modernization and readiness programs, the Treasury estimated that the Navy’s annual budget might grow until it reached about £90million. This amount would upset the government’s fiscal package of cutting taxes, balancing the budget, and finding money for expanded social benefits. Churchill made plain the tradeoffs facing the government if it agreed to the Admiralty’s spending requests. ‘We can, if we choose,’ Churchill wrote, ‘make this a Naval Parliament, the work and resources of which will have been wholly devoted to maintaining and developing our sea power, and which in consequence has had to demand the hardest sacrifices from the taxpayer, and to forgo all plans of social reform. On this basis I believe that we could meet the Admiralty requirements without any important increase in taxation.’51 Churchill believed that the government would pay a steep political price if it funded the Navy’s buildup: ‘From the moment these [naval spending] estimates are presented and the Admiralty’s designs disclosed to Parliament, we shall be irretrievably branded as a Jingo Armaments Administration.’52

The Conservatives would then look less attractive to voters outside of the party’s political base. Liberal voters, whom Baldwin wanted to court, would turn away from the Conservatives. Carrying out a costly program of warship construction would ‘ruin the Government and lead to a Socialist House of Commons, returned for the express purpose of stopping such expenditure.’53 Churchill warned that, with a Conservative electoral defeat and a Labour government returned to power, the Admiralty could expect even deeper cuts in its spending. Any large shipbuilding program set in train by the Conservatives would only be canceled by a succeeding Labour or Liberal government. Churchill contended: ‘Only a very real case of public danger would be required to sustain these rapid increases [in naval spending].’54 In Churchill’s view, no domestic political consensus existed for carrying out the Admiralty’s plans for a buildup of Britain’s naval power to compete against Japan.

If a serious Japanese naval challenge did emerge, provoking a change in British public opinion, Churchill believed that Britain possessed the financial resources and industrial strength to build warships at a faster pace and in greater numbers than could Japan. Churchill sought information and analyses on Japan’s financial position, manufacturing and shipbuilding capacity, and technological prowess to assess its ability to engage in a naval competition with Britain.55 One Treasury study comparing the British and Japanese economies highlighted ‘the slender resources’ available to Japan, calling it ‘a very poor country.’56 The immense damage suffered by the Japanese homeland from the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923, in which perhaps as many as 140,000 people perished, put an additional strain on Japan’s economy. The British naval attaché reported that the Japanese Navy would not complete reconstruction of naval facilities damaged by the earthquake and the replenishment of destroyed armaments and stores until 1934.57

Assessments on Japanese defense spending provided another indication of its naval effort. Japan spent substantially less on its navy than did Britain. One report estimated Japanese naval spending at £22,271,774 for 1925–26.58 Further, the 1920s saw the Japanese Navy’s budget shrink rather than grow. The Japanese treasury was especially eager to curb naval spending. Ashton-Gwatkin noted on the report about cuts in the Japanese Navy’s budget: ‘Nothing to indicate intensive naval preparation; on the contrary there seems a tendency to defer work owing to financial stringency.’59 By the late 1920s, Churchill would proclaim: ‘Beatty’s Japanese bogey has completely collapsed.’60 The relative economic strength of the two countries led Churchill to believe that, if Japan did attempt to overturn the existing British naval lead, Britain could still keep ahead by undertaking an emergency program of warship construction. In a naval competition with Japan, Britain possessed the resources to build a powerful fleet for operations in the Pacific. A decade later, Churchill still maintained the view: ‘The superior resources of the English-speaking nations can easily carry naval rivalry … to a level at which it is quite impossible for Japan to compete. She would be well advised, therefore, not to provoke such rivalry … . It would be madness; but sometimes nations are mad.’61

Churchill put forward an alternative course of action in response to Japan’s cruiser construction from that advocated by the Admiralty. He proposed that the Navy’s cruiser program ‘be halved’ – that is, spread out over a period twice as long as that wanted by naval planners.62 This construction would maintain Britain’s lead in cruisers, Churchill estimated, until a more menacing Japan emerged to change the British domestic political climate in favor of increased naval spending. According to Churchill, Britain possessed more than a two-to-one edge over Japan in cruisers of less than ten years of age: 43 British cruisers, aggregating 236,140 tons displacement, as opposed to 20 Japanese cruisers, displacing 109,230 tons.63 This lead, Churchill considered, afforded Britain the margin of strength needed to run the short-term risk associated with a reduction in the Admiralty’s recommendations for cruiser construction.

Furthermore, Britain could exploit its existing superiority in cruisers to follow the naval developments of other great powers. By delaying new construction as long as possible, gathering intelligence on foreign warship designs, Britain could then respond with vessels that were superior in combat power to those built by rivals. ‘We are able to build warships faster than anyone else in the world’, Churchill maintained, ‘and much faster than the Japanese, consequently it has always paid us to lay back as long as possible and then go one better in design.’ Churchill believed Britain would squander the advantage of its lead in cruisers by acquiring ships inferior in weaponry to those building in Japan. He admonished one colleague: ‘it is certainly stupid deliberately to make weapons which will be out-matched.’64

Churchill also asserted that air power would play an increasingly larger role in determining the outcome of future wars. In previous leadership positions, as First Lord of the Admiralty, Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War and Air, and Colonial Secretary, Churchill showed himself an air enthusiast. He understood that Britain’s security and international standing required British leadership in the air as well as on the sea. In the conduct of naval operations, he long held that aircraft ‘will be a substitute for many classes of warships.’65 Aircraft, for example, would undertake some naval missions that cruisers performed in the past. Churchill, too, urged giving aircraft a more prominent role in strengthening the defenses at Singapore. In Churchill’s opinion, the defense of the Singapore base ‘even now – and how much more in ten years’ time – against a landing would be by aeroplanes.’66 Air power along with naval forces would determine the outcome of a future struggle for command of the maritime commons.

Churchill was not blind to the potential threat posed by Japan’s naval buildup. In Churchill, the Admiralty actually had an important ally against those demanding even larger reductions in the Navy’s spending. Nonetheless, no government of this era, even a Conservative administration committed to upholding Britain’s navy as the strongest in the world, was willing to foot the bill put forward by the Admiralty.67 Other budgetary priorities, seemingly more urgent than the construction of cruisers, pressed in on the government. Spurring economic growth, reducing unemployment, and maintaining social peace demanded the government’s attention. Faced by Britain’s straitened economic circumstances, Lord Balfour could only lament: ‘Our position is a very unhappy one.’68 Economic hard times imperiled Britain’s strategic position more than Japan’s naval challenge. In Britain during the late 1920s, the navy wanted by the admirals cost more than what the politicians thought the country could afford.

V. Conclusion

The disagreement between Churchill and the Admiralty about how to contend with Japan’s naval buildup reflected conflicting and deeply held assumptions concerning the interplay of politics, economics, and strategy. Britain’s naval leaders held a pessimistic view of how History unfolds, seeing great powers as competitors striving for security within the international environment, their rivalries provoking arms races and even culminating in war. The underlying change in the balance of power in East Asia – in the Admiralty’s view augured by Japan’s growing naval strength – carried with it an increased likelihood of conflict. By warning that Japan’s international ambitions might grow as its power increased, British naval planners made a strong case for the need to gauge and counter the Japanese Navy’s fighting capabilities.

British naval planners maintained that the international scene could change rapidly, with Japan shifting from a satiated to a revisionist power, perhaps leaving Britain with too little warning time to respond effectively. The Admiralty warned that a sudden political shift within Japan might propel Japanese expansion. That Japan’s rulers might do the unthinkable and set out to dominate the region, as the Admiralty feared, was not farfetched, as the events of the 1930s and early 1940s would show. In the Admiralty’s opinion, guidelines for strategic planning and weapons acquisition – such as, those offered by Churchill and the government, stating the Royal Navy should work on the assumption that, for the next ten years, Britain would not fight a major war – were dangerously misleading. If a confrontation occurred suddenly, Britain would then be unprepared to conduct a viable forward defense against a Japanese first strike. The British statesman Leo Amery warned: ‘A great Navy, once let down, cannot be improvised in an emergency.’69

Churchill understood the Navy’s case about Japan and the potential strategic risks confronting Britain. Still, he held to the optimistic tenets of classical liberalism, which judged that the great powers benefited from settling disputes without recourse to arms competitions and war, as well as by promoting trade and economic growth. He believed that Japan stood to gain more in security and prosperity from a partnership with Britain and the United States than by becoming their adversary. Aggressive Japanese actions to overturn the balance of power in Asia, in his view, would only jeopardize Japan’s strategic and economic position, making it more vulnerable and less secure. Furthermore, Churchill maintained that the carnage of major wars meant no one ‘outside a madhouse’ would want to attack another great power.70 Next to whatever material advantage an aggressor might acquire by conquest, the immense human and economic loss suffered in fighting against a powerful, determined adversary, along with the uncertainties of success, would loom much higher. Churchill’s first volume of The World Crisis saw in the actions of imperial Germany an object lesson, demonstrating the folly of militant nationalism bent on the violent overthrow of the international equilibrium. Germany’s prewar naval arms buildup, aggressive war plans, and outsized foreign policy ambitions provoked a coalition of adversaries, ultimately superior in armed strength, intent upon toppling the Kaiser’s military regime that initiated the conflict.71 Japan’s rulers, if they followed Germany’s path, had much to lose and little to gain by starting a struggle for mastery in Asia.

Churchill also believed that statesmen and strategic planners could measure with some accuracy the economic and potential armed strength of the great powers. He considered these assessments the ‘casting up’ of a ‘dread balance-sheet and contemplating … dangers with a disillusioned eye.’72 Armed with these assessments, policymakers could make rational strategic decisions, soberly weighing their chances for success in war. The structure of the international system, the balance of power in Asia, would act as a brake on aggressive actions by Japan, deterring aggression. The prospect of fighting Britain and the United States, Churchill maintained, would ‘exercise a dominating influence on the extremely sane and prudent counsels which we have learned over a long period of time to expect from the Japanese Government.’73 Since Britain and the United States, individually and together in a coalition, possessed much greater potential to generate military might than Japan, Churchill viewed a Japanese decision for war against them as making little strategic sense.74 ‘[B]ecause Japan knows perfectly well the risk she would run in attacking the British Empire,’ Churchill concluded, ‘that I am convinced it will not come.’75 Japanese aggression to oust Britain from Southeast Asia and assault Australia, in Churchill’s mind, would constitute irrational strategic behavior: ‘he was convinced that the picture of Japan going mad and attacking us had no sure foundation whatsoever.’76

Churchill erred, however, in crediting Japan’s rulers with greater strategic acumen and concern for the wellbeing of their people than what they actually possessed. The extremist international ambitions of Japan’s military and naval leaders, their glaring refusal to show self-restraint, coupled with the growing capability of the Japanese Navy to inflict shattering blows on forward-deployed American and British forces in the Pacific, confounded Churchill’s expectations. In December 1941, soon after Japan attacked Britain and the United States, Churchill told a joint session of Congress that it was ‘difficult to reconcile Japanese action with prudence or even sanity’.77 He would later maintain this point of view in his history The Second World War, arguing that the Japanese decision for war ‘could not be reconciled with reason.’78 Although Churchill possessed a wonderful gift of imagination, he found it difficult to fathom the actions of leaders who, with little prospect of success before them, would embark upon an all-out struggle, whose cost in lives and treasure would prove immeasurably high. And yet, in predicting that an aggressive Japanese bid to gain hegemony in Asia would ultimately prove self-defeating, Churchill showed that he possessed a deeper understanding of national interest and grand strategy than did imperial Japan’s warlords.

Notes
This work was authored as part of the Contributor’s official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.

2Churchill memorandum, ‘Navy Estimates’, 29 Jan. 1925, Gilbert, Companion, vol. 5, 366.
3Roy Jenkins, The Chancellors (London: Macmillan 1998), 306.
4Beatty to his wife, 26 Jan. 1925, B. McL. Ranft (ed.), The Beatty Papers, Vol. 2: 1916–1927 (Aldershot: Scolar Press for the Navy Records Society 1993), 277.
5Lord Robert Boothby, from ‘Personality and Power,’ BBC Broadcast, 24 Nov. 1970. Churchill actually served as Chancellor from 1924 until 1929.
6Secretary Robert M. Gates, ‘Remarks to the Heritage Foundation,’ 13 May 2008, .
7Fareed Zakaria examines the ‘rise of the rest’ in The Post-American World (New York: Norton 2008).
8Michael Mandelbaum, The Frugal Superpower: America’s Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era (New York: Public Affairs 2010).
9Ian H. Nish, Alliance in Decline: A Study in Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1908–23 (London: Athlone Press 1972); Erik Goldstein and John Maurer (eds), The Washington Conference, 1921–22: Naval Rivalry, East Asian Stability and the Road to Pearl Harbor (London: Frank Cass 1994).
10Keith Neilson, ‘”Unbroken Thread”: Japan, Maritime Power and British Imperial Defence, 1920–32,’ in Greg Kennedy (ed.), British Naval Strategy East of Suez 1900–2000 (London: Frank Cass 2005), 62–89.
11Notes by the Naval Staff, ‘Consequences of Suspending Work at Singapore’, 28 April 1924, Beatty Papers, Vol. 2, 393–7.
12Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. 5: Prophet of Truth, 1922–1939 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1977), 103. Hereafter cited as Gilbert, Prophet.
13Minutes of the 26th Meeting of the Standing Defence Sub-Committee, the Committee of Imperial Defence, 30 Nov. 1922, ADM 116/3165, National Archives, hereafter cited as NA.
14This reference, of course, is to Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster 1996), 102–9, 236–7.
15Keyes to Churchill, 24 March 1925, Paul G. Halpern (ed.), The Keyes Papers (London: The Navy Records Society 1980), Vol. 2, 112.
16David C. Evans and Mark R. Peattie, Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887–1941 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 1997), 199–352.
17The cruisers Furutaka and Kako were completed in 1926, while the Aoba and Kinugasa (started in 1924) were finished in 1927. The four cruisers of the Nachi-class – Nachi, Myōkō, Haguro and Ashigara – were completed in 1928–29. Eric Lacroix and Linton Wells II, Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 1997), 49–116.
18This examination of Britain’s cruiser requirements draws upon Beatty’s testimony before the Naval Programme Committee, headed by Lord Birkenhead, established to investigate cruiser construction. See, in particular, the Record of Proceedings, 8th Meeting, 30 June 1925, CAB 27/273, NA.
19Stephen Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars, Vol. 1: The Period of Anglo-American Antagonism, 1919–1929 (London: Collins 1968), 351.
20Admiral Beatty’s testimony before the Naval Programme Committee, Record of Proceedings, 8th Meeting, June 30, 1925, CAB 27/273, NA. Christopher M. Bell, The Royal Navy, Seapower and Strategy between the Wars (London: Macmillan 2000), 59–98.
21’10-Year Building Programme’, P.D.02171/25, 6 March 1925, ADM 1/8685/152, NA.
22Lord Beatty’s presentation, 27 Feb. 1924, Beatty Papers, Vol. 2, 377–8.
23’10-Year Building Programme’, P.D.02171/25, 6 March 1925, ADM 1/8685/152, NA.
24John H. Maurer, ‘The “Ever-Present Danger”: Winston Churchill’s Assessment of the German Naval Challenge before the First World War,’ in John H. Maurer (ed.), Churchill and Strategic Dilemmas Before the World Wars (London: Frank Cass 2003), 7–50.
25At the Admiralty, J.C.C. Davidson did his utmost to belittle Churchill’s strategic acumen and impugn his character. See Robert Rhodes James (ed.), Memoirs of a Conservative: J.C.C. Davidson’s Memoirs and Papers, 1910–37 (London: Weidenfeld 1969), 212.
26Diary Entry, Sunday, 19 July 1925, Geoffrey Dawson Papers, Vol. 29, Bodleian Library, Oxford University.
27Pound to Keyes, 10 Aug. 1927, Pound to Keyes, 9 Nov. 1927, Pound to Keyes, 19 Dec. 1927, Halpern, Keyes Papers, Vol. 2, 227, 231, 234.
28Churchill to Baldwin, 15 Dec. 1924, Gilbert, Companion, Vol. 5, 305–6.
29Churchill to Baldwin, 15 Dec. 1924, Gilbert, Companion, Vol. 5, 306.
30Ibid.
31Churchill to Sir Roger Keyes, 22 March 1925, Gilbert, Companion, Vol. 5, 443–4.
32Churchill memorandum, undated but approximately Feb. 1912, Randolph S. Churchill (ed.), Winston S. Churchill, Vol. 2, Companion Part 3: 1911–1914 (London: Heinemann 1969), 1511–14.
33CID 134th Meeting, 14 Dec. 1920, CAB 2/3, NA.
34Churchill to Austen Chamberlain, 15 Dec. 1924, Gilbert, Companion, Vol. 5, 303.
35Austen Chamberlain to Sir Charles Eliot, 17 Dec. 1924, quoted in B.J.C. McKercher, ‘A Sane and Sensible Diplomacy: Austen Chamberlain, Japan, and the Naval Balance of Power in the Pacific Ocean, 1924–1929’, Canadian Journal of History 21/2 (Aug. 1986), 188.
36’The Improbability of War in the Pacific’, 3 Jan. 1925, FO 371/10958, NA.
37Minute by F. Ashton-Gwatkin, 28 April 1925, on Sir C. Eliot to Austen Chamberlain, 26 March 1925, FO 371/10634, NA.
38Eliot to Chamberlain, 6 Nov. 1925 (received 2 Dec. 1925), with F. Ashton-Gwatkin minute, dated 4 Dec. 1925, FO 371/10965/5787, NA.
39Wellesley to Austen Chamberlain, 1 Jan. 1925, ‘The Improbability of War in the Pacific’, 3 Jan. 1925, FO 371/10958, NA.
40McKercher, ‘Sane and Sensible Diplomacy’, 203.
41Bridgeman memorandum, ‘Admiralty Arguments Against Postponement’, undated but 11–12 July 1925, Philip Williamson (ed.), The Modernisation of Conservative Politics: The Diaries and Letters of William Bridgeman, 1904–1935 (London: Historians’ Press 1988), 186.
42Bridgeman memorandum, ‘Political Case for the Admiralty’, undated but 11–12 July 1925, Williamson, Bridgeman, 186.
43Stephen King-Hall, Western Civilization and the Far East (London: Methuen 1924), 297–311. Admiral Keyes recommended this book to Churchill. See Keyes to Churchill, 21 March 1925, Gilbert, Companion, Vol. 5, 442.
44Memorandum by the First Lord of the Admiralty, ‘Political Outlook in the Far East’, 5 March 1925, CAB 24/172, NA.
45Eugene Edward Beiriger, Churchill, Munitions and Mechanical Warfare: The Practice of Supply and Strategy (New York: Peter Lang 1997).
46Churchill to Keyes, 22 March 1925, Gilbert, Companion, Vol. 5, 443–4.
47Churchill to Baldwin, 15 Dec. 1924, Gilbert, Companion, Vol. 5, 306.
48This memo shows that Churchill envisioned what would become known as Force Z, the ‘decisive deterrent’ sent to Singapore on the eve of war with Japan. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. 3: The Grand Alliance (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1950), 578–624.
49Churchill to Hankey, ‘Singapore’, 31 March 1925, Gilbert, Companion, Vol. 5, 451–2.
50Churchill memorandum. ‘Navy Estimates’, 7 Feb. 1925, Gilbert, Companion, Vol. 5, 384.
51Churchill memorandum, ‘Navy Estimates’, 29 Jan. 1925, Gilbert, Companion, 359–68.
52Churchill to Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, 20 Jan. 1925, Gilbert, Companion, 350.
53Churchill to Keyes, 22 March 1925, Gilbert, Companion, 443–4.
54Churchill to Barstow, 27 Nov. 1924, Gilbert, Companion, 267.
55Churchill to P.J. Grigg, 16 April 1925, Gilbert, Companion, Vol. 5, 459–60.
56Churchill Cabinet Note, 29 Dec. 1924, quoted Gilbert, Prophet of Truth, 77.
57Eliot to Chamberlain, 7 April 1925 (received 12 May 1925), enclosing report by Captain Royle on Japanese naval estimates for the year 1925–26, FO 371/10965/1677, NA.
58Eliot to Chamberlain, 7 May 1925 (received 3 June 1925), providing a report by Mr Macrae on the Japanese budget for 1925–26, FO 371/10965/2030, NA.
59Eliot to Chamberlain, 7 April 1925 (received 12 May 1925), enclosing report by Captain Royle on Japanese naval estimates for the year 1925–26, with F. Ashton-Gwatkin minute, dated 13 May 1925, FO 371/10965/1677, NA.
60Churchill to Keyes, 6 Jan. 1928, Halpern, Keyes Papers, Vol. 2, 236–7.
61Winston Churchill, ‘Japan Guesses Wrong’, Collier’s 102/5 (30 July 1938), 45.
62Note by Churchill to Barstow, 16 Dec. 1924, T 161/243/S.25613, NA.
63Churchill memorandum, ‘Navy Estimates’, 7 Feb. 1925, Gilbert, Companion, Vol. 5, 385.
64Churchill to Sir Douglas Hogg, 14 Nov. 1927, Gilbert, Companion, Vol. 5, 1101–3.
65Churchill to David Lloyd George, 29 Dec. 1918, Gilbert, Companion, Vol. 4, 448.
66Churchill to Sir Samuel Hoare, 12 Dec. 1924, Gilbert, Companion, Vol. 5, 300.
67John Robert Ferris, Men, Money, and Diplomacy: The Evolution of British Strategic Policy, 1919–26 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1989).
68Naval Programme Committee, 10 Nov. 1927, CAB 27/355, NA.
69Roskill, Naval Policy, Vol. 1, 400.
70Churchill’s speech, ‘The Causes of War’, 16 Nov. 1934, Robert Rhodes James (ed.), Churchill Speaks, 1897–1963: Collected Speeches in Peace and War (New York: Barnes and Noble 1980), 586.
71Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis, 1911–1914 (London: Thornton Butterworth 1923), 9–69, 94–120, 192–213.
72Churchill’s speech, ‘Their Finest Hour’, 18 June 1940, James, Churchill Speaks, 720.
73Churchill memorandum, ‘Navy Estimates’, 7 Feb. 1925, Gilbert, Companion, Vol. 5, 384.
74Churchill sent a prescient warning to the Japanese government before the war’s outbreak, underscoring the danger Japan would confront by provoking Britain and the United States. Churchill to M. Yosuke Matsuoka, 2 April 1941, Churchill, Second World War, Vol. 3, 189–90.
75Churchill to Sir Roger Keyes, 22 March 1925, Gilbert, Companion, Vol. 5, 443–4.
76215th Meeting of the CID, 22 July 1926, CAB 2/4, NA.
77Churchill’s speech, ‘A Long and Hard War’, 26 Dec. 1941, James, Churchill Speaks, 784–5.
78Churchill, Second World War, Vol. 3, 602–3.

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