Political and External Affairs

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Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939–45 The authors of the volumes in this series of histories prepared under the supervision of the War History Branch of the Department of Internal Affairs have been given full access to official documents. They and the Editor-in-Chief are responsible for the statements made and the views expressed by them. By Authority: R. E. Owen, Government Printer, Wellington, New Zealand 1958

British Empire delegates to the San Francisco Conference meet at No. 10 Downing Street Left to right: Mr F. M. Forde (Australia), Field-Marshal Smuts (South Africa), Mr P. Fraser (New Zealand), and Mr Winston Churchill

black and white photograph of military dignitiaries

Title page Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939–45 THE NEW ZEALAND PEOPLE AT WAR Political and External Affairs F. L. W. WOOD WAR HISTORY BRANCH DEPARTMENT OF INTERNAL AFFAIRSWELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND1958Distributed bywhitcombe & tombs ltd.Christchurch, New Zealand

Preface

THIS book was planned and virtually completed under the editorship of the late Sir Howard Kippenberger. His personal support was unfailing and his humanity, integrity, and wide-ranging knowledge were a continual source of strength. To his successor, Brigadier Fairbrother, my warm thanks are also due, and to past and present members of the staff of the War History Branch. In particular, I am indebted to the research assistants who have from time to time worked with me, all of them formerly students at Victoria University College: Hubert Witheford, whose collaboration in parts of the book amounted to virtual co-authorship, John O'Shea, Patricia Lissington, Ian Wards, and Judith Hornabrook. Without their skilled help it would have been physically impossible to deal with the vast mass of official documents on which this volume is largely based. These documents are mainly in the custody of the Department of External Affairs. The Secretary of that Department, Mr A. D. McIntosh, and his staff have facilitated research with courtesy and efficiency. The conditions necessarily involved in giving access to such documents have been liberally administered. I am satisfied that nothing has been withheld, here or elsewhere; and there has at no time been any suggestion of censorship or pressure to add or omit, or to modify judgments.

I record with pleasure that the Council of Victoria University College has always, in my experience, done all that was permitted by its inadequate resources to encourage research; we are all indebted in this as in much else to the vision shown by Sir Thomas Hunter and his successor as Principal, James Williams. My major debt, however, lies within my own Department. From my academic colleagues I have had for many years sustaining friendship, and the stimulus of lively and critical scholarship; and from the secretarial staff, especially from Rona Arbuckle, my secretary during three critical years, skill and patience in the handling of a tormented manuscript.

F. L. W. Wood

Contents

Page PREFACE v PRELUDE: A FIELD DEFINED 1 1 SEPTEMBER 1939 7 2 THE WORKING OF ‘IMPERIALISM’ 13 3 THE RADICAL CRITICISM 19 4 THE CRITICAL YEAR 32 5 IMPACT OF A LABOUR GOVERNMENT 43 6 DEFENCE POLICY 57 7 THE ELEVENTH HOUR 72 8 EXPLOSION 90 9 WHITHER? 104 10 SETTLING DOWN 113 11 SEARCH FOR UNITY 128 12 AWKWARD MINORITIES 145 13 THE OPPOSITION OPPOSES 163 14 POLITICIANS AND SOLDIERS 173 15 IMPACT OF THE PACIFIC 191 16 A SECOND FRONT 207 17 PYRRHIC VICTORY 228 18 THE SCARCITY OF NEW ZEALANDERS 243 19 STOCK TAKING 262 20 FOOD OR FIGHTING MEN? 277 21 THE POLITICS OF FIGHTING JAPAN 293 22 FOUNDATIONS OF THE FUTURE 303 23 TRUSTEESHIP IN ACTION 327 24 WELFARE AND PEACE 348 25 EAST AND WEST 357 26 SMALL POWER RAMPANT 370 Bibliography 385 Glossary 389

List of Illustrations

Frontispiece British Empire delegates to the San Francisco Conference meet at No. 10 Downing Street Following page 80 The Governor-General, Lord Galway, farewells the First Echelon, 3 January 1940 C. Boyer Evacuation from Greece, April 1941 H. G. Witters Vice-Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham and Major-General B. C. Freyberg on board HMS Phoebe, May 1941 NZ Army The ship's company of HMS Achilles march through Auckland on 23 February 1940 Weekly News, Auckland The Home Guard: rifle instruction Director of Publicity Home Guardsmen about to move off on manoeuvres Director of Publicity Members of the Women's War Service Auxiliary take part in a ‘Don't Talk’ campaign, November 1941 Weekly News Mrs Roosevelt inspecting the Wrens at HMNZS Philomel, September 1943 Internal Affairs Department (J. D. Pascoe) United States Marines arrive at Wellington G. Silk Marines marching to their camp near McKay's Crossing, Paekaka-riki, July 1942 G. Silk The Rt. Hon. P. Fraser is welcomed at Washington Acme News Pictures, New York Rt. Hon. J. G. Coates Lieutenant-General Sir Bernard Freyberg and Mr S. G. Holland at Divisional Headquarters in Italy, April 1945 NZ Army (G. F. Kaye) Hudsons of No. 3 Squadron leaving Whenuapai for the forward area, October 1942 3 Division manoeuvres in the Kaimai Ranges Weekly News Following page 178 Loading beef for England on a Wellington wharf Internal Affairs Department (J. D. Pascoe) Coal miners at work Issuing ration books, April 1942 Weekly News Publication of a ballot, Auckland, January 1942 Weekly News Women workers at a dehydration plant, Pukekohe Weekly News Packing parcels for overseas, June 1942 Weekly News Soldiers help with the haymaking on a Waikato farm, December 1943 Weekly News A Maori carpenter at the Rotorua carpentry school Internal Affairs Department (J. D. Pascoe) Polish refugee children at Pahiatua, February 1945 Internal Affairs Department (J. D. Pascoe) Japanese prisoners of war, Featherston Internal Affairs Department (J. D. Pascoe) Rt. Hon. Peter Fraser with Admiral C. W. Nimitz and Vice-Admiral R. L. Ghormley at Honolulu United States Navy Vice-Admiral W. F. Halsey and the Hon. W. Perry Internal Affairs Department (J. D. Pascoe) Land for soldiers' farms, Rotorua Weekly News The first furlough draft returns to Wellington, July 1943 Internal Affairs Department (J. D. Pascoe) Air Vice-Marshal L. M. Isitt signing the Japanese surrender, September 1945 C. Stewart

List of Maps

Facing page The Mediterranean Theatre 97 The War against Japan: Allied Operations in the Pacific 195 South-west Pacific 213

Prelude: A Field Defined

THIS volume is concerned with the politics of New Zealand's participation in the Second World War: a broad definition which is intelligible according to the interpretation placed on its terms. There is much discussion of soldiers, but this is not military history; for the core of the inquiry is the ‘why’ rather than the ‘how’ of New Zealand's fighting. Political thinking—and feeling—within the Dominion are clearly relevant, and sometimes domestic politics strongly influenced the shape of New Zealand's war effort. Only to this extent, however, are they here analysed. Otherwise, the word politics is broadly conceived. It includes, for example, the impact of economic and social trends on public policy. These aspects of New Zealand life, however, are touched on relatively lightly because, in the upshot, political history turns out to be concerned with the activities of political leaders to a greater extent than might have been expected in a country so dedicated to a democratic theory. Their actions are on record: and moreover they register, often with subtlety and accuracy, the thinking and the emotions of those anonymous men and women who were the New Zealand community. The relationship between leaders and led in a wartime democracy is necessarily one of the underlying themes of this history. Another is the effect on the New Zealand people of those war years which covered a sizeable proportion of their corporate existence. At this point history merges into current affairs and thence into prophecy; so the historian is silent.

The politics of New Zealand at war, however, know no geographical boundary. Her coastal waters were occasionally visited by enemies, but her territory saw no fighting. Her own soldiers and sailors and airmen served hundreds, more usually thousands, of miles from their homes. This physical transplantation of New Zealand's most active manpower into other hemispheres underlined the Dominion's involvement with forces external to herself. There were thus created problems of concern to the political as well as to the military historian; for the integration of New Zealand troops into much larger forces under British or American command was not merely a technical problem. It involved national dignity and the right of a government to control its own armed forces. Eminent soldiers and sailors are not necessarily expert in the subtle conventions governing the intercourse of nations, and their professional task does not normally include the consideration of an overseas prime minister's susceptibilities. Nor is it, perhaps, easy for commanders trained in an imperial school to assess the attitude of a small, even if kindred, allied community. In military terms a division is a formation with which he is familiar. But in relation to the population from which it was drawn, the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force in the Middle East was the equivalent of twenty-five divisions of British troops; and in New Zealand's thinking the dangers which it encountered had to be considered on that scale.

In short, though the political meaning of dominion status had been fully worked out between the two wars, the formula was by no means easy to translate into terms of military co-operation. Some practical reconciliation had to be found between two principles easily enough acknowledged in theory; on the one hand, that in a military operation there must be a clear line of command and discipline, and on the other, that there must be agreement between governments on the employment of national armies. In the end, working agreement was reached but not without grave difficulties and the risk of failure. In the history of the Commonwealth the nature of these difficulties and the manner in which they were surmounted was as important as the ultimate achievement of successful co-operation, and with this field the present volume is inevitably concerned.

It is concerned, too, with the higher politics as well as with the grand strategy of the Second World War; nor is this merely a truism. One point of emphasis in any analysis of New Zealand life since the depression must be growing independence of thinking, her claim for at least a share in controlling her own external affairs. In one sense in the nineteen–thirties an independent foreign policy was hers for the asking, for she had merely to exercise the rights inherent in dominion status. The deeper realities of the situation, however, were infinitely more complex. Even in the most familiar of well established Commonwealth relationships—that with the United Kingdom—and even in the handling of peacetime issues, it can be said that actual practice still fell short of recognised theory. With the best will in the world ‘consultation’ could not give full participation in the formulation of policy. Differences in patterns of thought, though barely acknowledged, were a barrier to full understanding, and as the crisis gathered speed and intensity, a small partner, far distant from immediate danger, could claim only a modest share in policy-making. Yet the New Zealand Government was determined to assert that claim. In face of world trends which concentrated power and responsibility in London, in Washington—and in Moscow—New Zealand was one of those small but active powers whose leaders strove both to understand the great forces shaping their destiny, and so far as they might, to influence them.

This volume is accordingly concerned with the problems of developing nationhood, with a small country's efforts to play a part in world politics, to assert in a wider field some of those democratic principles to which its domestic life was professedly wedded. There is a tension here which challenges study, a persistent effort to assert, if not to exaggerate, its right to be heard before issues of world-wide importance could be decided. New Zealand's action can thus be understood only in the light of these issues, and the attitudes taken towards them by the ‘Big Few’. Inevitably, therefore, this volume, which at times deals intimately with local politics, becomes entangled also with the actions of statesmen to whom New Zealand could be no more than a tiny (if occasionally irritating) factor in a master-pattern. Exploration of this field is the more important because the wartime period carried forward sharply developments of world importance which in other circumstances have moved slowly and won tardy recognition. The predominance of American power over that of Britain was a fact of the greatest moment to New Zealand; so, though more remotely, was the rising importance of Asia as compared with Europe and the West. These two factors were strongly illustrated by the wartime experiences of the Pacific area, experiences to which New Zealand made vigorous, sometimes agitated, but generally dignified response. Discussion of her actions must at least take cognisance of the cosmic forces which, admittedly from a far distance, provoked them.

The time span, like the subject matter, involved in studying New Zealand at war can only be loosely defined. The beginning was not when war was declared, or when, some days earlier, German troops invaded Poland. By that time the part that New Zealand was to play had been determined. The material conditions and the mental attitudes were moulded for New Zealand—as for every belligerent—in the years of twilight and half-recognised menace. It is in these years that the historian must get his grip over the forces which controlled wartime thought and action. And he seeks in vain for an evident terminus. A global and totalitarian war was not followed by the conventional pause, by the tangle of diplomatic peace-making in which victors—and maybe vanquished too—struggled to frame a peace treaty more or less acceptable to all. On this occasion, with the main battle-front barely silent, the antagonisms of power politics were reshuffled in ways which even those with short memories found sadly inconsistent with wartime hopes. Ostensible friends became enemies, and enemies valued friends, almost overnight, all in the over-simplifying glare of publicity. Diplomatic convulsions were punctuated by local wars, as well as by bitter recriminations, and a new term, the ‘cold war’, crept in to describe a situation which, though not new, was singularly grievous and unpeaceful. Moreover, the demand for ‘unconditional surrender’ was met in Germany by resistance to the point of political disintegration. Even if anyone had been disposed to negotiate a treaty in conventional terms, and formally convert an armistice into peace, there was no one in the ruins of the Nazi empire with whom a treaty could have been concluded. Never before in modern history had allies possessed the field so completely after victory; and perhaps never before had the sudden disappearance of a powerful common enemy had such immediately shattering results on a wartime coalition. Before firing ceased, and when the New Zealand Expeditionary Force was still embattled in Italy, the new alignment took shape; the leaders of the United Nations were already choosing their partners and sizing up potential enemies in the conflict that was to come.

Accordingly, the history of New Zealand at war cannot be drawn neatly to a conclusion with an analysis of New Zealand's attitude to a peace settlement that never really took place. An arbitrary break must be made in a story that is endless; and the obviously convenient terminus is the mechanical one: the end of the shooting. For New Zealand the date is, therefore, 2 September 1945, when Air Vice-Marshal Leonard Isitt signed the documents of Japanese surrender. Moreover this date, in practice, proves an excellent watershed. Certain exceptions impose themselves. In particular, the stories of wartime Samoa and of post-war relief—both of intimate concern to New Zealand—cannot be wound up with the Japanese surrender. Moreover, the treatment of certain developments of first-rate importance but specialised character, whose origins lie well back in the wartime period—notably the rehabilitation of servicemen, and economic adjustment in general—must be left to other hands. Such reservations made, the six-year period ending in September 1945 turns out to have a real political coherence.

It did not, as did the immediately preceding four years, mark a new change of direction. In those four years the new Labour Government had pushed forward with unprecedented rapidity the tendencies, admittedly already traditional in New Zealand, towards the creation of a welfare state. In the war years this structure was tested and maintained—its maintenance as well as the waging of war requiring various further extensions of state control. By 1945 measures which had been controversial in 1939 had become sanctified, and the question was clearly not whether the welfare state was to survive but who was to operate it, and how in detail the burden of the expense was to fall. When Isitt laid down his pen on USS Missouri decisions had been made and attitudes adopted which defined the problems and set the policies New Zealand was to follow in the post-war world. In foreign affairs new decisions were clearly going to be required. The Government's enthusiasm and faith in international organisation for the maintenance of general morality and security was undiminished, but these principles had now to be related to a world in which the balance of power had profoundly altered since 1939. The world drama, no doubt, was the same. But one act had come to an end, and with the temporary disappearance from the stage of the former chief villains a general recasting was hastily in progress before the curtain again went up.

CHAPTER 1 September 1939

AT 9.30 p.m. (New Zealand time) on Sunday, 3 September 1939, a British ultimatum expired and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was at war with Germany. The official documents were precisely drawn. It was the government of the United Kingdom alone which gave a dramatic promise of protection to Poland on 31 March 1939 and transformed it into a formal and specific treaty of Mutual Assistance on 25 August. When Sir Nevile Henderson gave Germany final notice that the promise would be honoured, he spoke for the British government alone. Neville Chamberlain's announcement to the House of Commons made it clear that ‘this country’ was at war, not the British Commonwealth. Ample precedent made it clear that these words were to be taken seriously. His Majesty had many governments and their independence had long entered into the field of foreign policy and treaty making. In the famous phrase of 1926, Great Britain and the Dominions were ‘autonomous communities, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs'; and an autonomous community can hardly be deemed to be at war merely as a result of another autonomous community's declaration. For upwards of twenty years treaties had been so negotiated and framed as to emphasise that none of His Majesty's governments was committed unless by its own expressed wish. At the time of the Munich crisis it was made clear by at least three Dominions—Canada, South Africa, and Eire—that only their own parliaments could commit them to war; and by South Africa and Eire the right to remain neutral was firmly stressed.

Keith, in Journal of Comparative Legislation, Vol. XXI, p. 98.

Formally, then, Britain stood alone at noon on 3 September, and Germany's abusive reply to a purely British ultimatum was addressed exclusively to His Majesty's government in the United Kingdom. The dominion governments were therefore compelled to take positive action. They must either take their stand beside the United Kingdom or proclaim neutrality. Their legal position was no longer defined by the old-fashioned principle that when the King went to war all his subjects were at war too; nor by the new principles of international law embodied in the Covenant of the League of Nations and the Kellogg Pact. The former had been destroyed by dominion pressure towards nationhood, and the adventures of the dictators had deprived the latter of whatever reality they had possessed.

The members of the Commonwealth, in short, had to decide for themselves, and they did so each according to its established policy and constitutional processes.

Eire, as had been expected, chose neutrality, accepting the friendly assurance conveyed by the German Minister on 31 August. In South Africa there was a sharp parliamentary tussle. General Hertzog, the Prime Minister, proposed neutrality, though he also proposed to honour the engagements with the United Kingdom about the Simonstown base. General Smuts spoke for participation and carried cabinet and parliament with him. The Governor-General refused a dissolution and Smuts formed an administration to carry on war. The decision therefore rested plainly on parliamentary action within the framework of the law. So did that of Canada. When parliament had pronounced, the King's Canadian ministers advised him to declare war on behalf of that Dominion. Mr Mackenzie King, as Prime Minister, later emphasised the freedom and deliberation of the choice. Ours was not an automatic response to some mechanical organisation of Empire. Canada's entry into the war was the deliberate decision of free people by their own representatives in a free Parliament

Speech of 4 Sep 1941, quoted Dawson, Canada 1939–41, p. 204.

.’

The result of these proceedings was that Eire remained neutral throughout the war, while South Africa was neutral for three days and Canada for seven days after the United Kingdom had gone to war. In all three cases neutrality was recognised by the United States, which thus by implication gave its weighty approval to the right of the Dominions to independent action in declaring war and making peace.

Australia, whose Prime Minister, Mr R. G. Menzies, was a lawyer, was the only dominion to adhere to the doctrine that the King's declaration of war involved all his subjects. Mr Menzies signed and published in the Commonwealth Gazette a notice ‘for general information’ that war had broken out between Great Britain and Germany, and broadcast the plain statement that ‘Great Britain has declared war, and that, as a result Australia is also at war…. There never was any doubt as to where Great Britain stood. There can be no doubt that where Great Britain stands there stand the people of the entire British world

Quoted Hasluck, Australian War History, The Government and the People, Ch. IV; Elliott and Hall. British Commonwealth at War, p. 21; Round Table, December 1939, p. 191.

.’ This action was backed by the decision of a hurriedly summoned cabinet, but in principle Australia in 1939 proclaimed war merely by informing her people that a state of war existed in Europe. In the formal sense Australia did not declare war on Germany.

New Zealand acted with almost equal rapidity, but with greater respect for the forms of independent nationhood. Parliament was in session, but was not summoned. Cabinet, however, stood by to await the formal message from Britain which had been the agreed-upon signal for action.

Though Australia had decided to act on the shortwave broadcast of Chamberlain's statement.—Hasluck, op. cit., Ch. IV.

It arrived a few minutes before midnight on 3 September. On the same day, so the documents stand, the New Zealand Governor-General signed a proclamation that he ‘has it in command from His Majesty the King to declare that a state of war exists between His Majesty and the Goverment of the German Reich’, and that such a state of war had existed since the expiry of the British ultimatum, the issue of which New Zealand had previously approved. The proclamation was countersigned by Peter Fraser as acting Prime Minister. Then, at 1.55 a.m. on 4 September, a vigorously worded cable was despatched to London. His Majesty's Government in New Zealand reported that they had just received news that a state of war existed between the United Kingdom and Germany. They warmly associated themselves with His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, and asked the government to complete the formalities required under international law by notifying the Germans that New Zealand was at war. This was done in due course by the United States Ambassador in Berlin, and the notification presumably acknowledged, but records of these last steps were burnt with the archives of the American Embassy during the war.

New Zealand had declared war as thoroughly as she well could; abroad she had notified her enemies, and at home her own citizens, soldiers and law courts. As in the case of Canada, this was no case of automatic involvement through the mechanics of Empire. New Zealand felt it proper to indicate that she was taking action on her own account. At Westminster Mr Chamberlain noted of the Dominions as a whole that ‘of their own free will and under no form of compulsion these self-governing nations’ had stood beside the Homeland. In Wellington one lone, old-world voice protested against the procedure: When the King is at war, said the Hon. J. A. Hanan in the Legislative Council, so are his subjects, of whom we are a part.

New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, Vol. 256, p.40.

For the rest, both houses of Parliament approved the ‘action of the Government in advising His Excellency the Governor-General to proclaim on behalf of the Dominion of New Zealand the existence of a state of war.’ The Leader of the Opposition said expressly that a state of war had been proclaimed ‘between His Majesty's Government of New Zealand and the Government of the German Reich

NZPD, Vol. 256, p. 20. Cf. explicit later statement by F. Jones (Minister of Defence in 1939): ‘it was quite evident when the recent war broke out and Britain declared war, Britain did not declare war for New Zealand. New Zealand followed Great Britain and declared war against Germany on that occasion’.—Report of proceedings of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference, Wellington, Nov-Dec 1950, Foreign Affairs, 254.

.’

In the press as in parliament there was agreement on the propriety of what New Zealand had done. Nevertheless, the legal position was worse than obscure. The prerogative of declaring war and peace had not been entrusted by the King to his Governors-General. Only the King could declare war, or some agent specifically authorised by him. The New Zealand proclamation asserted that the King had instructed the Governor to act: but such instructions would be a grave violation of constitutional convention if issued without the advice of His Majesty's New Zealand ministers. The documents therefore require us to believe that after 11.52 p.m. the New Zealand cabinet reached a decision and cabled advice to the King in London in time for the King's instructions to reach the Governor-General before midnight. It seems easier to think that the New Zealand cabinet, secure in its own unanimity and in the obvious consensus of opinion in the country, had acted with commonsense and unlegalistic loyalty.

Cabinet's decision was made, and was approved by both houses of Parliament and by the community as being the only one conceivable. But, if there was no hesitation, there was no rejoicing. In August 1914 New Zealand people went to war with enthusiasm and noisy confidence. In 1939 there were no patriotic songs or cheering crowds in the streets. War was declared late on Sunday evening, a time when New Zealand cities are dead and New Zealanders habitually house-bound. Moreover, schooled during the Munich crisis to an excellent system of broadcasting the news, their ears would be tuned to the domestic radio, not to the spirit of adventure which dwells in excited crowds. Yet there was a deeper cause for quiet. What many New Zealanders had seen during 1914–18 and, even more, what all New Zealanders had been told in the nineteen-thirties, was not likely to encourage jingoism or mafficking. Also, in September 1939 New Zealand for the first time faced a struggle in which the outcome was obviously distant and even uncertain. Sentiment could not disguise the fact that Britain's relative strength was far less than in 1914. It was clear that Italy and Japan might well be added to the enemies of the First World War, while the support of Russia and the United States was at best problematical.

The new tone was apparent in the statements made on 4 September by Peter Fraser, who had been deputising for Mr M. J. Savage while the latter was recovering from an operation, and by Savage himself on the following day. ‘Not in anger but in sorrow, not in lightheartedness, but with heavy hearts, not in hatred but with a grave sense of great responsibility to mankind and to the future of humanity, not in malice and revenge, but with a prayer of peace on our lips, the British people today dedicate themselves to the work of overthrowing the oppressor and freeing the peoples of the earth from bondage and slavery to a ruthless and cruel tyranny’. Similarly Savage emphasised that ‘none of us has any hatred for the German people’, that the true enemy was Nazism, ‘militant and insatiable paganism’. ‘To destroy it but not the great nation which it has so cruelly cheated, is the task of those who have taken up arms against Nazism.’ He concluded his speech with words which at once assumed New Zealand's independent nationhood and stressed the link with Britain—‘Both with gratitude for the past, and with confidence in the future, we range ourselves without fear beside Britain. Where she goes, we go, where she stands, we stand. We are only a small and young nation, but we are one and all a band of brothers, and we march forward with a union of hearts and wills to a common destiny.’

It is of course impossible to ascribe with confidence any positive feelings to the community as a whole. But, in so far as it was sufficiently definite to find expression, New Zealand opinion thoroughly justified Savage's declaration of unanimity. The pacifists, who alone opposed the war from its first hours, were numerically insignificant. So were the communists, who took some weeks to collect their thoughts and come out in opposition. More important, but intangible and undefinable, was the uneasiness of many thoughtful New Zealanders who had grown up under the shadow of the First World War with its ideals and disillusionment, leading on to the scepticism of the inter-war period. There were many young men and women who were dissatisfied with the main trends of British policy towards the League, towards Mussolini and towards Hitler. They were uncovinced by Chamber-lain's last-minute change of heart in respect to Hitler, and were convinced still less by his claim that all things possible were being done to enlist Russian support. There was, in fact, a substantial current of opinion which was violently opposed to Hitlerism but was uneasy about the leadership and strategy of the struggle against it. This uneasiness, though it coloured New Zealand politics and kept wits alert, offered no immediate alternative policy to those who were neither pacifist nor communist, that is, the vast majority of the community. For many Chamberlain was the peaceful English-man, who had gone to all lengths to avoid war and ultimately led his people, at last united, into an unavoidable conflict. For most of the minority who seriously questioned either his motives or his methods, he had at least—and at last—taken a stand against the forces of evil which they had long denounced.

There was no more doubt about what New Zealand would do in 1939 than there was in 1914, but what she did was done in a different form and in a different spirit. Also remarkable was the quality of the unanimity. As will be seen, the absence of opposition cannot be explained on the grounds of an uninterrupted docility. Nor was residuary criticism swept away by a storm of patriotic enthusiasm. It had dissolved before the revelation that the world contained aggressive states which were apparently insatiable; and the evolution of domestic politics had forged the basis of national unity. Yet there had been times during the preceding quarter-century when such a measure of general agreement would have appeared unlikely of attainment. The Government's decision on 3 September 1939, inevitable as it was, and New Zealand's subsequent wartime policy, had in fact a dramatic aspect which can only be perceived in an historical perspective.

CHAPTER 2 The Working of ‘Imperialism’

IN the New Zealand of the nineteen-twenties the word ‘imperialism’ was commonly used in a sense far from pejorative. It referred to the spirit expressed in 1930 by that very typical New Zealander, G. W. Forbes, when he said that ‘It is only by strengthening the ties which bind us to the rest of the Empire that we can hope to realise the general benefits that we all hope for. In view of the condition of the world, it is our duty to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Motherland and our sister dominions and endeavour to develop to the utmost that spirit of unity which I believe is necessary for the welfare of our Empire

NZPD, Vol. 225, p. 539.

.’ Forbes spoke as Prime Minister. The Leader of the Opposition, J. G. Coates, supported him ‘in everything that will lead to a wider, a larger, and a united Empire.’ By unity both men plainly meant close association with Great Britain and acceptance of British leadership. They were in this sense Imperialists, and both main parties revelled in this robust, if old-fashioned, word: nor would either of them yield to the other pride of place in ‘Imperialistic sentiment’ and ‘standing for the Empire’.

Ibid., Vol. 196, p. 485 and passim.

In this they fairly represented the community. It was with justice that Lord Milner in 1925 hailed Massey as both ‘the true interpreter of New Zealand’ and ‘the most staunch, the most steady, and the most consistent of Imperial statesmen’.

Dominion, 11 May 1925.

New Zealand had taken no part in the pressure for definition of dominion status which led to the Statute of Westminster, and Mr Forbes went to the Imperial Conference in 1930 with ‘no complaints and no demands’, though with apprehension lest fellow dominions should combine to loosen the framework of the Commonwealth. When New Zealand departed from its attitude of entire satisfaction with the status quo was to stress the need for greater cohesion rather than for greater freedom. With this attitude there went a tendency to minimise the importance of consultation between the United Kingdom and New Zealand on matters of foreign policy. In February 1923 Sir Francis Bell, ablest of lawyers and already an elder statesman, had described from long experience in cabinet how New Zealand preserved detachment in face of fellow dominions'' interest in foreign affairs. ‘I cannot remember any instance in which we have been consulted on such matters where the answer had not been in stereotyped form: “New Zealand is content to be bound by the determination of His Majesty's Government in London.”’ To this testimony he added a commonsense criticism of the claim then fashionable in other dominions that they should be ‘consulted’ before imperial foreign policy was determined. ‘The matter that concerns us is how far it is of any benefit to anyone that we should be consulted; and, if we were consulted, is there any man in New Zealand who thinks that we are really fit to judge? By “we” I mean Government. I am quite sure the Opposition would say that we are unfit. I am a member of the Government myself, and I have no sense of fitness to advise the Imperial Government in matters of foreign policy

NZPD, Vol. 199, pp. 33–4.

.’

Yet New Zealand's ‘Imperialism’ was in fact never quite so unconditional as the warmth of loyal words suggested. Francis Bell himself gave an important clue in the very speech in which he spoke misleadingly of New Zealand's stereotyped comments on foreign policy; for he mentioned how he and his fellow delegate had spoken up emphatically in the Assembly of the League of Nations when an issue arose–that of mandates–in which New Zealand was ‘essentially and directly interested’.

Ibid., p. 31.

Massey had already participated at the Versailles Conference in a ‘front’ of the interested dominions which, independently of the United Kingdom, opposed Wilson's mandate proposals. In each case, of course, the motive of New Zealand interest was Western Samoa. In 1923, however, New Zealand, on Bell's advice, formally rejected the Imperial Act of 1914 on nationality on the ground that her special circumstances had not been adequately dealt with; and New Zealand remained out of step with the rest of the Empire until in 1928 Bell pronounced himself satisfied.

Stewart, Bell, p. 207.

Forbes himself could be exceedingly blunt when British policy conflicted with his wishes in a field where he had special interests. Moreover, the famous remark attributed to the British Dominions Secretary (‘Mr Forbes, we were delighted to meet you, but thank God you are going’) was quoted with appreciation by hot ‘Imperialists’ who expected their Prime Minister to ‘speak his mind fearlessly, and back his statements by arguments

NZPD, Vol. 228, p. 558.

’ when British and New Zealand policies diverged. There remains in Bell's dictum a solid core of truth. New Zealand ‘Imperialists’ were ‘content to be bound by the determination of His Majesty's Government in London’ on the numerous issues in which they were not seriously interested and on the many others in which their own views coincided with those of the British government. Nevertheless the confidential communications exchanged during the terms of the first two British Labour governments make it clear how much New Zealand acquiescence in British foreign policy depended on a substantial identity of political colour between London and Wellington, and show that where this was lacking a policy of being plus royaliste que le roi could in itself be a source of independent opinion. These documents, indeed, deprive of much of its apparent novelty the ‘independent’ foreign policy pursued by a New Zealand Labour government when the Conservatives were in office in England.

Though on the whole Massey seems to have refrained from protesting against those items which irked him in the foreign policy of the first MacDonald government (January-November 1924), he sent on 11 March 1924 a most sharply worded response to the British Government's decision not to proceed with the development of the Singapore base–‘I regret exceedingly that the Government of the United Kingdom do not intend to proceed with what is looked upon as one of the most important proposals connected with the defence of the Empire…. India, Australia, New Zealand, and a number of Crown Colonies are intensely concerned in this matter and are looking to the present British Government to remember that every country of the Empire and every citizen of the Empire are entitled to protection from the possibility of attack by a foreign foe…. You say that “your Government stands for international co-operation through a strengthened and enlarged League of Nations.” In reply to that I must say that if the defence of the Empire is to depend on the League of Nations only, then it may turn out to have been a pity that the League was ever brought into being.’

The Singapore base was obviously one of those issues in which New Zealand was ‘essentially and directly interested.’ However, during the term of the second Labour Government (June 1929–August 1931) action which the New Zealand Government clearly regarded as showing an irresponsible attitude towards imperial interests soon made the whole issue of consultation a very live one. On 10 August 1929 Sir Joseph Ward thus addressed Ramsay MacDonald:

Will you allow me in a helpful spirit to call attention to one aspect of the relations between H.M. Government in the United Kingdom and H.M. Governments in the Dominions in connection with such questions, for example, as naval defence, Singapore, the Optional Clause of the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice, Egypt, and Russia.

I do not question the fact that H.M. Government in the United Kingdom are much more directly concerned than the Governments of the Dominions in these subjects and I readily recognise your wish to implement your policy without delay. At the same time H.M. Government in the United Kingdom act in such matters not only on their own behalf but in a very real sense as the agent or trustee of H.M. other Governments and no decision taken by the Government in the United Kingdom can fail to have a direct and important effect upon the Dominions.

Our feeling is that there are disadvantages in moving too fast in such matters, that sufficient time has not been available for a study of your proposals and that there is much to be gained by taking the point of view of the Dominions in ample time to allow of a reasoned expression of their opinion before a decision is reached in London….

So far as public record went New Zealand remained a dutiful daughter dominion, except when her economic interests were involved, or some political matter in which she was directly concerned. Yet as early as 1929, when confronted with a distasteful trend in British policy, she spoke sharply on matters of principle, and on techniques of Imperial consultation. Other cables sent at this time confirm considerable New Zealand interest in issues geographically remote and not related to her immediate material well-being. New Zealand and Australia were so interested in the negotiations with the Egyptian Government over the Suez Canal that the United Kingdom suggested that they should appoint representatives to keep in touch with the United Kingdom negotiators. New Zealand nominated Thomas Wilford, her High Commissioner in London. On 9 April 1930, after attending a sitting of the conference, he cabled to the New Zealand Government suggesting that it express to the United Kingdom Government its concern for the maintenance of communications through the Canal–which it did–and that it should make a press statement on the matter–which characteristically it did not. Nor did the notification of the United Kingdom's intention to resume diplomatic relations with Russia pass without an expression of uneasiness–‘His Majesty's Government in New Zealand look with some misgiving upon the resumption of diplomatic relations with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; especially in view of the outstanding questions of propaganda and debts. They appreciate the reference to these subjects made in the proposed telegram to the Soviet Government and assume that due care will be observed to ensure that His Majesty's Governments are not subjected to subversive propaganda.’

After the death of Sir Joseph Ward Mr Forbes carried in his notes to the 1930 Imperial Conference a list of bombshell communications from the United Kingdom, when the Dominion was asked to comment on matters of major importance practically by return of cable: for example, a proposal to summon five powers to a naval conference reached Wellington for comment a week before the invitations were to be despatched; and the text of an important joint statement by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the President of the United States two days before it was to be issued. At the conference itself, if Forbes did not ‘complain’, he pointed out rather sharply that this kind of thing did not amount to consultation, that it was unfair to expect any government to give decisions at a few days' notice on matters of far-reaching importance, that New Zealand resented being bustled in this way, and was only restrained from more effective protest by ‘the paramount desirability of maintaining commonwealth unity’.

Sharp divergence of view seems to have been confined to times when New Zealand felt that the Government in London was careless of imperial interests; yet it would be wrong to suggest that the interest of New Zealand governments in foreign affairs was confined to such periods. At the Imperial Conference of 1926 Coates, though without any suggestion of reproach, had put forward proposals for improving the machinery of consultation. He was also responsible for the establishment in the same year of a small organisation to advise the Prime Minister on foreign affairs and other matters. The Prime Minister's Department was established with F. D. Thomson as first Permanent Head, and under him a staff of three including C. A. Berendsen as Imperial Affairs Officer. These officials furnished Coates with voluminous notes for the 1926 conference, including a comment under the heading ‘Spain’ which anticipates in a remarkable fashion the stand which was to be taken by the Labour Government ten years later. It was observed that ‘Opinion in New Zealand is alarmed at the extension of the movement indicated by events, for example in Russia, Italy, Spain, Greece, Bulgaria, Portugal, in the direction of imposing and maintaining forms of Government by force.’ In view of ‘the widespread agitation in favour of direct action in industrial affairs’ and of communist propaganda, it was ‘feared that action on these lines, which appears to be received with remarkable equanimity not only in the countries concerned but generally throughout the world, will tend to spread from the political to the industrial sphere, and in the present delicate industrial situation may have very serious effects. Matters in Spain do not in general affect New Zealand directly, but it is considered that His Majesty's Government should act with great caution in expressing any toleration or approval of such coups d'etat which it is thought must eventually have a repercussion on British affairs.’

In his speech on foreign affairs at the conference Coates made only a brief and vague reference to the matter, but the line of argument in the notes does seem to correspond to something constant in the New Zealand attitude. Primo de Rivera's coup in Spain, like Mussolini's aggression there and elsewhere in the next decade, set too dangerous an example to the forces of lawlessness everywhere to be accepted with complacency. That the object of fear in the earlier instance was internal subversion by communists, and in the latter, military aggression by fascists, should not obscure New Zealand's continuing anxiety lest expediency should tempt governments less morally robust to compromise with evil.

None of these evidences of independent thought and action can qualify the basic statements with which this chapter opened. The leaders of New Zealand–Bell and Ward, Massey, Forbes and Coates–in their different ways were at once true interpreters of New Zealand and staunch Imperial statesmen. They all appreciated fully the necessary relationship between a World Power and its smaller dependencies. Yet dominion status was to them no empty concept, and their loyalty to British leadership was neither blind nor dumb. If New Zealand's public policy within the Commonwealth be compared with that of Ireland, for instance, or South Africa, or even Canada, the contrast is sharp enough; yet this is a comparison which in most contexts it is mistaken to invite. The root questions are whether, in principle, New Zealand had made sufficiently clear her intention to participate when it suited her in the privileges of dominion status, and whether this intention had been recognised in practice, both in Wellington and in London. In a field where definitions are difficult and precision apt to be swept aside in the flow of political give and take, it nevertheless seems clear from the record that the answer to these questions is clearly affirmative. Beneath the so-called ‘mother complex’ an adult tradition lived on in the consistent attitude of statesmen who gloried in the title of ‘Imperialist’.

CHAPTER 3 The Radical Criticism

WITHIN the broad stream of New Zealand's external policy up to 1935 there were small elements of independence, which were potentially important, though in general courteously concealed from publicity. It made no great difference which of the two parties held power; they were not deeply divided with regard to external affairs, or indeed (after the death of Seddon) in internal affairs either. During the 1914–18 war, however, a third political party emerged which neither in domestic nor in foreign policies shared the basic assumptions common to the two older parties.

The Labour Party had its formal origin in July 1916. It drew together existing left-wing groups and was led with great energy and resource by H. E. Holland and the men who, after his death in 1933, were to govern New Zealand during the Second World War. Behind the political party stood the trade unions, still smarting from the severe defeats of the pre-war strikes. The leaders of this Labour movement, if the term may be used to cover groups which only gradually gathered cohesion, had a strong traditional suspicion of Imperialism as exploitation, and of war as a deception practised by governments. In 1914 they had, like their colleagues overseas, recognised the call of a national crisis; yet radical suspicion remained, and an anti-war tradition. Suspicion naturally ripened into outright dissent, and by 1916 the leaders of the Labour Party had become bitterly critical of the Massey government's wartime policy. In that year, out of a combination of personal judgment, radical tradition and the needs of political controversy, the leaders of the movement formulated clearly a threefold wartime policy which deeply influenced the Labour Party's thinking well into the period of the Second World War.

The first element was an opposition to conscription so vehement that, at the time of the second Anti-Conscription Conference in December 1916, ‘almost half the effective platform propagandists of the Labour Movement were placed behind prison bars’.

Holland, Armageddon or Calvary, p. 14.

The second was the demand that ‘conscription of wealth’ must precede conscription of men. The third element was the advocacy of negotiated peace. In January 1916 Labour Party leaders cautiously expressed the suspicion that the continuance of the war might be due to Allied intransigence, and demanded that the Allies should state their peace-terms and so ‘assist the German Social Democratic movement in creating a large peace sentiment in Germany. The war has reached a stage when the intelligence of the world must assert itself to extricate humanity from the impasse into which military bureaucracy has led it

Manifesto of first Anti-Conscription Conference, Evening Post, 28 Jan 1916.

.’ Later the demand became more explicit. In January 1918 the party newspaper, the Maoriland Worker, urged the opening of peace negotiations. ‘Is it worth while crucifying humanity for another two years if a satisfactory settlement can be secured by negotiations?

Maoriland Worker, 9 Jan 1918, and Thorn, Peter Fraser, p. 50.

’ And this demand was repeated at the party's annual conference in July.

Brown, New Zealand Labour Party, 1916–1935, p. 158. Unpublished thesis, Victoria University College library.

Naturally enough, Labour's attitude was publicly denounced by spokesmen of other parties as unpatriotic to the verge of sedition; yet it received considerable if unpublicised support. Sir Francis Bell himself was more than doubtful about the proceedings against the imprisoned Labour leaders,

In his correspondence Bell, at that time leader of the Upper House and shortly to become Attorney-General, emphasised the distinction ‘between advocacy of the repeal of the Military Service Act and advocacy of resistance to that Act. The first cannot be sedition however you take it, and yet in my view the Magistrates are dealing out the same sentences in respect of speeches which to my untutored mind do not seem to go beyond the constitutional right of advocacy of repeal’.—Stewart, Bell, p. 135.

and a series of remarkable Labour victories at by-elections in 1918 suggest that by that time war-weariness was sufficiently general to make Labour's wartime policy a political asset rather than a liability. In its context, the attitude between 1914 and 1918 of the men who were to be New Zealand's cabinet in September 1939 was not a violent aberration from the country's normal trends. It was rather the ardent expression of viewpoints which, by and large, were even then regarded as not wholly unreasonable by many of those who rejected them.

Except in a few cases, Labour's policy was not based on pacifism in the strict sense of the word—a renunciation of violence in all circumstances—nor, in its opposition to conscription, on the view that the State had no right in any circumstances to force its citizens to undertake military service. Much is explained by the inheritance of bitterness from the Waihi, Huntly and maritime strikes just before the war, the Massey government's effective strike-breaking methods and subsequent legislation. In France the conscription law had been used in 1910 to break a railway strike and many workers feared that something similar might happen in New Zealand. Opposition to conscription, therefore, could derive not only from basic views on the nature of war and of freedom, but from practical apprehensions as to what might happen later on. Workers who in the view of Bishop Sprott did not lack patriotism feared that a conscript army might be used ‘to hold the workers in subjection when the critical after war period is reached

Evening Post, 7 Feb 1916; Maoriland Worker, 2 Feb 1916.

.’ Moreover, if conscription was socially dangerous it was, in the view of Labour spokesmen, as yet unnecessary. If the people were agreed on war, it was argued, voluntaryism must produce the men, provided the soldier and his dependants are adequately cared for; therefore ‘conscript enough wealth to set free enough men to go as willing volunteers’.

McCombs, NZPD, Vol. 176, p. 507.

‘To conscript a man's wealth is a less serious invasion of personal liberties than to conscript a man's person, and in a struggle for freedom the conscription of wealth must precede the conscription of flesh and blood and be fully tried before the latter is seriously considered

Manifesto of Anti-Conscription Conference, 27 Jan 1916; Maoriland Worker, 2 Feb 1916 and Evening Post, 28 Jan 1916.

.’

Conscription of wealth was defined as meaning that ‘the land, mines, mills, factories, ships, banks and all the collectively used means of wealth production shall be seized and operated for the collective benefit of the people during the war, and shall remain the property of the people after the war

Ibid.

.’ Needless to say, this proposal was made for the purpose of discomfiting the advocates of conscription rather than with any serious expectation of its adoption. The phrase was also used by Labour speakers in the 1914–18 war with some vaguer and apparently less drastic meaning than that given to it in the manifesto. In its origin it was less a practical proposal than a rhetorical device to hammer home the Labour charge that the Government ‘fastened the chains of militarism on the young life of the Dominion, but … cringed and grovelled before the profiteer and exploiter

Maoriland Worker, 13 Feb 1918.

.’

It will be seen that Labour opposed certain wartime measures that it enforced twenty-five years later and advocated others that it did not put into practice when in power. This was duly pointed out during 1939–45 by its critics of both left and right. But there was more consistency in the attitude of some at least of the Labour leaders than a brief statement of the facts might indicate. A remarkable letter written by Peter Fraser and published in the Evening Post on 22 February 1916 indicates a point of view which he would have had little reason to modify as a justification of his later policy as a leader of the nation at war. Replying to the criticism that the Social Democrats were ‘fiddling while Rome burnt’, he wrote that it was surely better to do this than to ‘calculate in cold blood how much personal profit could be made out of the holocaust, which is in plain language what our present-day trade snatchers are doing.’ The letter continued:

It really is an insult to Britain to accuse her of mere practical nationalism. To their credit it can be said that the force which moved the British people was mainly their sympathy with Belgium. Britain is more international than ever she was.

Before the war many things advocated by Social Democrats were said to be Utopian. Today they are accomplished facts. Only by adopting instalments of State Socialism could the Allies carry on the war. The failure of private enterprise has been an outstanding feature of the situation, hitherto. Who can doubt than one reason of Germany's success on land (now probably nearing its limit) was her superior State organisation? The pity is that there should be such splendid organisation for such base ends. When the nations are as well organised for peace and economic justice as Germany was for war Social Democracy will be even to its opponents something more substantial than a dream.

It is true that certain prominent Labour men were pacifists, and that the party took up the case of certain conscientious objectors who had been maltreated. It is true, too, that in the first years of peace the issue was complicated by vehement expressions of anti-war sentiment. These, together with the personal pacifism of some individuals during the war, created the traditional belief that in this ‘free lance period’ the Labour Party was marked by ‘militant pacifism’.

Round Table, Vol. 97, p. 215, December 1934.

Yet there is little proof that at any time it departed so widely from a ‘responsible’ attitude. On the whole, its criticism of wartime policy in 1914–18 arose from its political suspicion of its own and other Allied governments (a suspicion shared by the Australian Labour movement) rather than from doctrinaire pacifism.

The main evidence in the contrary sense derives from the immediately post-war years. In 1920 the party conference did in fact modify its defence policy in an apparently pacifist sense. Since 1913 it had demanded the abolition of compulsory military training, this to be followed by the creation of a volunteer army ‘with standard wages while on duty’. The suggested volunteer army was now dropped. When this course had been unsuccessfully urged in 1919, some of the arguments were strictly pacifist: that the use of armed force was never justified and that ‘an unarmed nation depending upon moral force and passive resistance was the very best defence New Zealand could possibly have.’ The suggestion had then been supported by two men who were later prominent in Labour's wartime cabinet, by one of them, Walter Nash, with the remark ‘that an unarmed nation would be in an impregnable position

Maoriland Worker, 6 Aug 1919.

.’ When, however, the proposed change in the party's official policy was actually carried in 1920 it is more than doubtful whether the conference was thinking in terms of non-resistance. The main recorded argument stressed the fear that military force might be used ‘to subjugate the workers’ in New Zealand as ‘was happening today in Ireland, India, Egypt’; and, it was said, ‘a voluntary army [would be] infinitely worse than a compulsory one under present conditions’.

Ibid., 8 Sep 1920.

The conference also passed a resolution ‘Recognising that modern wars waged by the Capitalist Governments mean, in essence, the massacre of the workers of one country by the workers of another for the financial profit of a few’ and urging ‘the workers of belligerent countries to reply to a declaration of war by a general strike

Ibid., 15 Sep 1920.

.’

In considering the resolutions of the 1920 conference it should be remembered that they were passed at the time when the British Labour Party was threatening a general strike in the event of British intervention against Russia

The conference passed a resolution condemning the Allies' attempt to restore the Tsarist regime and a cable congratulating the British Labour Party on its stand in the matter was signed (among others) by the President of the New Zealand Labour Party.—Brown, Labour Party, p. 160, and Maoriland Worker, 8 Sep 1920.

in the war between that country and Poland. That the passage of the extremist resolutions in 1920 was largely due to what seemed the imminent possibility of further British military operations against Soviet Russia is suggested by the 1921 conference's shelving of a resolution on war similar to that passed in 1920, but milder in that it omitted the proposal for a general strike.

Maoriland Worker, 7 Sep 1921.

After two or three years of uncertainty the 1924 conference came out with the declaration that it ‘wholeheartedly supports the British Labour Government in its efforts to secure disarmament by agreement among the nations, and declares that it will be prepared to face the problem of defence on assuming office as the Government of the Dominion in the light of that policy, and will be guided by the circumstances prevailing at that time as to the extent to which disarmament can be achieved or defence is necessary

NZ Worker, 11 Jun 1924. The Maoriland Worker became the New Zealand Worker in February 1924, which was in turn succeeded by the Standard in October 1935.

.’

Cautious and vague as this statement was, it amounted to an unmistakable recantation of the fiery words of 1920. In the exceptional circumstances of that year prominent Labour men went far in the direction of pacifism; but for the party as a whole it was at most a passing phase. Outright pacifism was no significant part of Labour's contribution to the country's political thinking. What it did contribute was a persistent suspicion of war and war makers, a traditional sympathy for conscientious objectors, and an increasingly definite claim that, if war came, New Zealand should fight through her own considered decision, which would involve independent thought, and possibly divergence from British leadership.

In the nineteen-twenties this was a matter of principle rather than of political substance; for there was little immediate hope of deflecting New Zealand policy or of modifying significantly the normal preoccupation of most New Zealanders (including members of the Labour Party) with domestic economics. When Labour's core of seasoned political leaders treated world issues as being of practical concern to the intelligent New Zealander, and discussed them with knowledge and conviction, they were scarcely representative of the Labour movement, and still less of New Zealand as a whole. Behind the scenes New Zealand prime ministers might occasionally express candid disagreement with British policy when it veered to the left, just as Labour leaders openly denounced it while it kept to the main road; but for the great majority of New Zealanders world history was a drama to be observed from a distance without any notion of audience participation. The results of the play might, indeed, impinge on New Zealand, but among the actors was a hazily conceived entity, the British Empire, into whose practised hands most New Zealanders, by deliberate choice or by lethargy and acquiescence, resigned their country's interests. It is difficult for members of a dissenting minority to alter so predominant an attitude. However, by challenging it they can bring it to the surface and once this is done it may lose, for a while at least, something of its power. By the example of persistently continuing to exist they may keep open the possibility of alternative forms of action. By continuing to assert a reasonably coherent point of view they may gradually accumulate a body of inaudible but potentially powerful and disciplined sympathy.

In short, beneath an appearance of established traditionalism, old foundations can be undermined and new ones laid on which politicians may later erect novel and spectacular edifices; and something of this nature happened in New Zealand between 1920 and 1935. In Parliament, that admirable sounding board for public opinion, the conventional views might prevail but the unconventional never lacked outspoken advocacy. Labour speakers were fond of remarking that many New Zealanders rejected ‘the duty to take up the cry that comes from London and repeat it like so many parrots

P. Fraser, NZPD, Vol. 200, p. 788.

.’ Some went so far as to denounce ‘the blunders of British statesmen’,

McKeen, 1933, NZPD, Vol. 233, p. 231.

and claim that New Zealand defence expenditure was caused by such blunders. The characteristic line of Labour's most forceful debaters, however, was insistence that New Zealand should abandon her swaddling clothes, cease to take pride in her immature and inferior status, and contribute to Imperial defence the strength which comes from having a mind and soul of one's own.

NZPD, Vol. 228, p. 580 (C. Carr); p. 621 (H. G. R. Mason); Milner, New Zealand's Interests and Policies in the Far East, p. 91.

External and defence policy, it was urged, should be guided by information made available to the people and Parliament of New Zealand.

NZPD, Vol. 197, p. 86 (H. E. Holland); Vol. 239, p. 755 (W. E. Barnard).

It was not enough that the Government should advocate a given course with the presumed approval of the United Kingdom: evidence should be produced and arguments advanced. ‘The time had arrived,’ said Fraser in 1934, ‘when the House and the country should be taken into the full confidence not merely of Cabinet, but also of the Imperial Government

Ibid., Vol. 240, p. 381.

.’

One significant symptom of new developments was a trickle of intellectual criticism directed at New Zealand's traditional acquiescence: her ‘Mother complex’ was described as such to be derided. Another and more significant fact was the conscious development, in a generation which had known war (and later depression), of something increasingly resembling a New Zealand attitude towards life in general. It would be too ambitious to speak of a New Zealand culture. Yet something was stirring, to find expression among writers and painters, among scholars and journalists as well as among politicians, which produced a sharper mental climate. The difference between Allen Curnow's Book of New Zealand Verse and its predecessor, Kowhai Gold, shows that it was not only in politics that the ferment was working. There was in the politics of men like Holland and Fraser and in the writings of Mason and Sargeson and Glover, of Lee and Mulgan, something which we now think of as typical of the place as well as the time.

It is impossible to distinguish this indigenous element in New Zealand's life from the effect of influences shared by New Zealand with the outside world, particularly Great Britain. This was in most places a period of disillusionment, and one symptom was the spate of war novels in England in 1929–30. Most of these, of which the prototype was the German All Quiet on the Western Front, suggested in the words of a contemporary critic that ‘the Great War was engineered by knaves or fools on both sides, that the men who died in it were driven like beasts to the slaughter, and died like beasts without their deaths helping any cause or doing any good

Falls, War Books, p. ix.

.’ Dis- illusionmentDisillusionment ripened into a broad and undefined pacifism which according to Stanley Baldwin reached its peak in 1933–34.

Hansard, Vol. 317, cols. 1144–5.

It was in the former year that the Oxford Union's resolution not to fight for King and Country provided the most publicised expression of pacifist sentiment in Britain. The pathetic failure of the Disarmament Conference, on which high hopes had been desperately built, Hitler's seizure of power in Germany, and above all, the long course of the economic depression, all went to sharpen men's disquiet and shake still further their faith in traditional policies. The unique importance of the depression was that its immediate and bitter experience produced indignation far beyond the ranks of habitual radicals. The faith of innumerable not very reflective people in the wisdom of their rulers, and in the adequacy of the way in which their community was managed, was shaken as perhaps never before.

It is easy enough to trace this trend in New Zealand. In 1922 and 1923, for instance, there was a carry over of triumph from a victorious war and, as in wartime propaganda, an assumption that nations could be firmly divided into the good and the bad, the aggressors and the defenders of civilisation. At the threat of war in 1922 a contemporary observer could claim that ‘a thrill of patriotism and a deep sense of national obligation ran through the country’ as men beseiged the recruiting offices.

Round Table, Vol. 13, p. 452.

By 1930, however, a conservative government abolished conscription largely on grounds of economy, but also because ‘we cannot ignore the strong feeling in favour of world peace and the opposition to militarism which has grown up not only in New Zealand, but in most other civilised countries

J. G. Cobbe, Minister of Defence, NZPD, Vol. 225, p. 303.

.’ By 1933 Anzac Day services, once the occasion for teaching ‘the Empire builders of the future the lessons of Anzac’, and for telling the story of British fights for liberty, gave opportunity for clergymen to discuss the tragedy of war. This was the period when shops and libraries were full of books, fiction and otherwise, whose moral was the horror and futility of war, the tragedy that both sides always regarded their own cause as righteous and purely defensive, the wickedness of armament manufacturers, and the need to apply in the international field the principles of law and police action which had proved so fruitful within each state. The same ideas found their way into the schoolroom—a circumstance of some importance since the schoolroom contained those who were to be men of military age in the years 1939–45. A study of social attitudes in the New Zealand School Journal points out that from 1929 onwards articles expressing anti-war sentiments begin to appear in the Journal. By 1932 ‘Detestation and abhorrence of war’ are stressed and the broad social aim is ‘to serve the interests of all

Jenkins, Social Attitudes in the New Zealand School Journal.

.’ An article, ‘The Unknown Warrior’, describes how the soldier ‘goes out to live in mud and filth and die a lonely and horrible death far from his home and all that he loved…. the finest flower of every household, all offered as a sacrifice on the insane and monstrous altar of war’.

Jenkins, op. cit. p. 18.

In brief, by 1933 and 1934 it had become not only possible but almost conventional for New Zealanders to speak with scepticism of modern warfare and even use terms of outright pacifism which would have been wholly out of key ten years before. It is not surprising that these ideas were still to be found in the utterances of the Labour Party. In the debate on the 1934 estimates Labour speakers criticised the Government for spending money ‘to defend the people against problematical attacks’ by foreigners instead of against ‘the certain and continuous ravages of poverty and distress

Barnard, NZPD, Vol. 239, p. 755.

.’ New Zealand should keep out of ‘the competitive armaments campaign’ which would inevitably lead to war, as in 1914: she could thus help to frustrate the armament manufacturers who here, as elsewhere, were ‘stirring up enmity, discontent, and distrust

Armstrong, NZPD, Vol. 239, pp. 791–2.

.’ Yet the remarkable thing is that on the whole the pacifist and radical tendencies were becoming subdued in the Labour Party in the same years that they were infiltrating into the very citadels of conservatism.

The reason for this development lay in domestic politics. The party and its supporters were losing the feeling that they were in the state but not of it. As Labour steadily increased its representation in Parliament and as the possibility of its becoming the government by constitutional means became something other than a Utopian dream, its temper softened. The root and branch abolition of capitalism and the inauguration of the new socialist society faded from the party's propaganda to be replaced by more specific measures of reform, the doctrinaire significance of which was not laboured. The gulf narrowed between the advocates of the new society and the defenders of the old and there came to be an area of common ground on matters such as defence or foreign policy in which national rather than class interests were seen to be involved. The closing of the gap is illustrated from the side of conservatism in the abolition of compulsory military training by the Forbes government. It is illustrated from the other side by the increasingly conciliatory nature of the speeches made by Labour speakers urging this measure in the House of Representatives in the years immediately preceding its adoption. In 1929, for example, Mr Jordan had urged that if the old system were abolished ‘those who desire to render military service will still be able to do so under a voluntary system

NZPD, Vol. 221, p. 788.

.’ In the following year, Walter Nash as National Secretary of the party issued a statement stressing that a Labour government ‘would take all the steps that are necessary to ensure proper organisation for the defence of the Dominion. Its policy would be definitely determined by the extent to which disarmament had been achieved by agreement’.

Round Table, Vol. 20, pp. 913–14.

As early as 1927 Nash, then Secretary of the Labour Party, but not yet a member of Parliament, had participated in an odd episode which was perhaps significant evidence of the evolution of New Zealand opinion. In that year the New Zealand Government was severely criticised by Labour spokesmen for contributing to the Singapore base; one main ground for such criticism, especially by H. E. Holland, was that the construction of the base would be offensive to Japan. At a conference in Honolulu, however, Nash as a private citizen was called upon for a report on New Zealand opinion. He explained

Ed. Condliffe, Problems of the Pacific (1927), p. 38; NZ Worker, Aug-Nov 1927, summarised by Brown, op. cit., p. 175.

that the contribution to Singapore was contested, and summarised the arguments; but he added that a majority of New Zealanders would support the Government's decision on the ground that in their view the Navy was a major instrument for world peace, and that it could not exercise its peacemaking function in the Pacific without the base. Nash's action in saying publicly that on this issue his party's policy would not carry the electorate was warmly repudiated in Parliament; yet he would appear to have given a fair enough summary of New Zealand opinion at that time.

The significance of the incident lay in the contrast between the objectivity of Nash's statement with its emphasis on New Zealand's interest in maintaining world peace, and the fiery denunciation of Holland; and Nash's voice was that of the future. Opinion even in the leadership of the Labour Party was facing the notion that force as well as good will may be necessary for the control of war-makers.

It was, however, the League of Nations that was to provide the machinery for Labour's reconciliation to the principle of the just war. The League in the early days was criticised by Labour spokesmen as being a mere continuation of the wartime alliance, but it soon became apparent that the avowed objectives and methods of the League lay close to the ideals of those members of the Labour Party who were interested in foreign affairs. The League and its agencies, including the International Labour Organisation, at least offered machinery to those who wished to promote peace and social welfare through international action. It provided a forum in which New Zealand could speak and act for herself, not necessarily echoing the ideas of the United Kingdom. It stood for principles of justice, open diplomacy, and the marshalling of law-abiding nations against aggression.

The League, in short, was believed by influential Labour men to stand in the international field for the same principles as their own party, and to hold particular promise for small nations. From 1922 onwards, therefore, Labour spokesmen continually reminded opinion of a fact as yet hazily grasped: namely that the League existed and was potentially important for New Zealand. In 1922 Holland and Fraser criticised the Government for committing the country ‘without the authority of the parliament and people of New Zealand’, and urged that the issues between the Allies and Turkey should be submitted to the League for settlement.

NZPD, Vol. 197, pp. 86, 87.

In 1926 Holland complained that the Government had not exercised its right to send an independent delegation to the conference of the International Labour Organisation, thereby depriving the workers of their just rights. In the following year the Labour Party and especially Holland, in their opposition to the Government's decision to contribute towards the Singapore base, argued that such expenditure was ‘contrary to the whole spirit of the League of Nations. Instead of using this country's money in increasing the distrust of the West’ in the eyes of the East, ‘the government should use it in promoting the principles of the League of Nations

Press, 2 May 1927.

.’ In 1933 Holland unsuccessfully suggested that Parliament should expressly support the League's attitude in Manchuria,

NZPD, Vol. 235, p. 770.

and from time to time a plea was entered for New Zealand to take a really positive attitude in League matters. In the debate preceding the Imperial Conference of 1930, for example, Nash claimed that ‘The League of Nations has accomplished more progressive work and its achievements are greater than any other organisation in the history of the world’. And he asked that the Prime Minister should speak up in the conference to support the League's work, ‘not merely to say in a superficial way that the League is a splendid body, but by asserting that the whole weight of the New Zealand government and of our people is behind it in its efforts to establish peaceful relationships between the nations

Ibid., Vol. 225, p. 117.

.’

Such a statement, if Forbes had been foolish enough to make it, would have been a gross exaggeration, as it indeed would have been if made by the representative of almost any country represented at Geneva. As was to be expected, there was little response to such demands for positive action in support of the League. Yet in a sense Labour's campaign was fought without an enemy. Despite Massey's early suspicions of the League, most conservatives were prepared to admit that it was, in principle, an excellent institution. If there was little enthusiasm for it, there was still less hostility. It is true that in the depth of the depression New Zealand asked for a reduction of her contribution on the ground that the League had made such poor progress;

NZPD, Vol. 233, p. 422.

but a cut in her contribution towards naval defence was also suggested in the same year.

Round Table, No. 83, June 1931, p. 708.

The attitude of most New Zealanders was not unfriendly. In 1927 Mr Coates, then Prime Minister, summarised it fairly enough in terms characteristically inclined towards the future rather than the past:

We should work quietly and definitely in the direction of helping the League of Nations to accomplish what it will accomplish if given time. In the meantime no one can say that the League of Nations is an effective protection against aggression or against interference with trade or indeed with peoples, and it is essential in our own interests that we should do our share towards protecting our trade routes and assisting Empire defence.

NZPD, Vol. 214, pp. 258–9

This statement may accordingly be taken as a reasonable interpretation of New Zealand's official position up to the Italian-Ethiopian crisis. Yet the demand for something more positive was quietly accumulating. In 1934, for example, Walter Nash inaugurated a debate on the general theme that the Government had not been sufficiently interested in the League of Nations. In his view, by this time the League had firmly linked aspects as both an instrument of collective security and as a means of mutual help in raising standards of life.

Ibid., Vol. 239, p. 7.

In the balance between the views expressed by Coates and Nash is to be found a summary of effective New Zealand opinion in the first half of the nineteen-thirties.

A vital reservation must here be made from the perspective of twenty years later. The evolution which drew together the attitudes of these two men in relation to external affairs may be plain enough; and its natural culmination was their active collaboration in the War Cabinet. Yet this evolution tended to part both men from a significant section of their followers. As was well known even in 1934, Coates was too radical for many of his own party, which early in the war altered its leadership to his detriment. On the other hand, Nash in his association of collective security (with its implication of a possible ‘just war’) with Labour's long-term welfare objective only partially represented the radical currents of the period between the wars. The way was being prepared, therefore, for a new political balance, and an altered relationship between currents of opinion and political spokesmen. Meantime, the growing strength and the debating power of the Labour Party were in part the reflection and in part the cause of a long-term change in the New Zealand community. What was said and done in the following ten or twelve years cannot be understood unless it be remembered that in New Zealand between 1920 and 1935 men who could command a hearing were saying unorthodox things: that war had been in the past an almost unmitigated evil; that the League of Nations should be radically reformed in a democratic sense and used as an instrument for social welfare; that such a League was the highest expression of democratic ideals; that Britain herself might in fact be wrong; that New Zealand's people should decide their destiny according to their own judgment; and that New Zealand's policy must be guided by issues arising in the Pacific as well as in Europe. Such notions might not represent a coherent policy and might be hopelessly remote from practical politics, but they, as well as the continuing reality of the country's dependence on Britain, helped to determine the way in which New Zealand behaved when she was forced to define her attitude to the approach of another war.

CHAPTER 4 The Critical Year

THE critical year in the definition of New Zealand policy was 1935; for by a combination of external incidents and domestic discussion the character of public opinion was thoroughly tested and almost every group of political importance indicated its attitude either positively or by keeping silent. Accordingly, when the government which held power throughout the war period took office in November, its field of work was defined and its liberty of action circumscribed by facts made plain and pledges given. Moreover, the vigour of debate on domestic issues obscured a fact of first-class importance for external policy. Ostensibly the election of November displaced a government whose views on overseas relations were strictly conventional by one whose leading members had been for years outspoken critics, on varying grounds, of established tradition. Yet the passage of years had softened the asperities of difference between the two parties to such an extent that the Labour leaders were in fact consulted on the critical decision to enforce sanctions against Italy. In spite of differences in the past, and in the present a considerable contrast in paths travelled and arguments advanced, the National and Labour parties evidently proposed to do in practice very similar things. The events of 1935, in short, showed with force that New Zealand would face the external crisis with an agreed policy: a fact which helped to keep foreign affairs in their place of accustomed obscurity during a briskly fought general election.

The story begins on 19 February when the Prime Minister, G. W. Forbes, made in Parliament a long statement on external affairs: in itself an unusual course which he justified on the ground that members should know the current issues when ‘the times call for the efforts of all well disposed people, and perhaps the weight even of New Zealand might conceivably turn an evenly balanced scale

NZPD, Vol. 241, p. 79.

.’ One of the major developments which he then reported to the House was a proposed treaty of non-aggression and mutual protection. The Dominions, he said, were not parties to this new proposal, just as they were not parties to the Treaty of Locarno, yet it concerned them vitally. ‘There must be no blinking the fact that if Great Britain became involved in war New Zealand would also be involved. This is so, not only because of the legal position as we accept it in New Zealand–though there is some difference of opinion on this matter in certain other dominions–it is so because the sentiment of this country would inevitably insist on New Zealand standing shoulder to shoulder with Great Britain in such circumstances: and, even were these two reasons absent, any catastrophe that affects Great Britain must inevitably affect New Zealand also, bound up as we are in the welfare of the Old Country

NZPD, Vol. 241, p. 83.

.’

This statement apparently aroused little interest, but two months later the press reported Mr Forbes as having been even more explicit. He was on his way to a conference in London, and told the Canadians that he saw no need for discussion on defence or foreign policy. New Zealand had been kept informed of negotiations, but ‘when Britain is at war, we are at war,’ he said. No discussion had taken place in New Zealand as to participation or non-participation in a future war involving the Empire, which was the greatest agency for peace in the world. New Zealanders were confident Britain would always be on the side of peace and would make no commitments which were not absolutely necessary.

‘We don't have to discuss those things,’ he said. If another war broke out he expected New Zealand would act as promptly as in 1914, and there would be no necessity for calling Parliament to decide what should be done.

Evening Post, 26 Apr 1935.

In substance this reported statement did not add much to what he said in Parliament in February, but it raised a storm throughout the Dominion. There was a spate of newspaper controversy, and even staunchly conservative journals gently chided Forbes's complacence.

Ibid.

An important declaration was also made at an early stage by M. J. Savage, now Leader of the Labour Party and of the Opposition. In his view Forbes's ‘astonishing statement’ showed how far the Prime Minister was out of touch with the thinking people of the Dominion. ‘Our future,’ said Savage,

Ibid., 30 Apr 1935.

‘is bound up with the countries of the British Commonwealth. The Labour Party will strengthen the ties of the nations of the Commonwealth. The Labour Party's policy in the present state of world thought is to take whatever steps are necessary to defend the Dominion and its democratic institutions, but this policy, to be successful, implies discussion, negotiation and agreement in which Parliament, as representative of the people, should have the determining voice. The future of the Dominion and the British Commonwealth is dependent on the will to peace. This will can be rendered wholly ineffective if unknown commitments involving the lives of our people are to be made exclusively at the will of men who may not in any way understand the objective and outlook of our people. Our youth should not be sacrificed for unknown causes and unknown policies and without reference to the representatives of the people.’

This statement, taken in conjunction with that of Mr Forbes, gives the essence of New Zealand's attitude at this time. Solidarity with fellow members of the Commonwealth was common ground: so was the need for the defence of democracy. The main reminder of Labour's ‘free lance’ period was insistence that discussion and agreement in the community and endorsement by Parliament should precede commitments. There was no hint of pacifism and only a faint echo of the notion that war is necessarily an imperialist swindle. It was fairly clear that if Savage became prime minister, with Fraser and Nash as lieutenants, there would be some vigorous support of the League of Nations, the International Labour Organisation and the principles of collective security. There would be a claim for New Zealand to formulate her own foreign policy and even an attempt to associate Parliament and people with such a policy.

This would be done, however, in the faith that it involved no breach with other members of the Commonwealth, but on the contrary was an expression of Britain's own ideals. In the nineteen-thirties this faith had some practical justification, for New Zealand Labour could fairly claim that its views were shared, if not by His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, at least by His Majesty's Opposition, together with a large number of politicians and citizens who, on other issues, supported the Government. Further, even though British policy should remain conservative, there was so strong a disposition towards Commonwealth cooperation in the highest levels of the Labour Party that it was, to say the least, doubtful whether an incoming Labour government would push its disagreement beyond the point of frank discussion.

Such was the upshot of discussion on general principles in the first half of 1935; and it was shortly afterwards confirmed by the impact on New Zealand of the Italian-Abyssinian dispute and the problem of sanctions. Here were urgent practical issues formulated in such a way that they could not be indefinitely ignored. Reluctant New Zealand politicians were forced out of silence into speech and had to take up some position, however sketchily defined, towards an international problem of the first magnitude.

From September 1934 onwards the Dominions Office sent to Wellington massive information about the developing crisis. It neither asked for nor received any comment, nor did the New Zealand Government make any announcement of policy or give a lead to public opinion. This quiescence was deliberate, and was maintained in the face of challenge. On 5 August 1935 a deputation from the League of Nations Union asked expressly that the Government should form and announce its policy and suggested strongly that this policy should be the honouring of New Zealand's pledged word and the fulfilment of her obligations under the Covenant. In reply the acting Prime Minister, Sir Alfred Ransom, spoke of New Zealand's love of peace and support of Britain, of the dangers of speech and of the difficulty of deciding how far, in fact, the Covenant should be honoured. At this stage the New Zealand Government had, in fact, nothing to say.

Meantime, however, Sir James Parr, as High Commissioner in London, was attending frequent conferences between the British Foreign Secretary and the Dominion High Commissioners, from which it was hoped that Commonwealth-wide agreement might be reached before the meeting of the League Assembly early in September. On 20 August he wrote asking for instructions. Three days later New Zealand was told what Britain proposed to do: to reaffirm loyalty to the League and the procedure laid down in the Covenant; to bring the question of sanctions to the attention of League members and to keep in step with France, assuming no obligations which the French would not share. With this document before it the New Zealand Government at last formulated its ideas and sent Parr instructions on 2 September. They recorded approval of British policy to date, and promised ‘closest collaboration’ in the future. New Zealand policy, for publication only if necessary, was to fulfil obligations under the Covenant ‘on the understanding that any action to be taken will be collective action as contemplated by the Covenant.’ This last saving clause was reinforced in an uneasy confidential note, expressing extreme reluctance to become entangled in any quarrel not directly concerning the British Commonwealth. And as to sanctions, the Government was confident that public opinion would reject any measure involving force, and Parr was told not to vote for any sanction, economic or otherwise, without asking for further instructions.

In short, it took New Zealand a full year and some pressure from overseas to decide a policy, which amounted to following British leadership in reaffirming the Covenant, with conditions, and with the earnest hope that the whole matter might be cleared up without sacrifice. And even this policy was only to be made public if necessity arose, for the Prime Minister expressly declined to make any public statement.

Dominion, 3 Sep 1935.

The New Zealand Government trod gingerly on unfamiliar ground, still hopeful that the machinery of the League and of Commonwealth co-operation would rescue it from the need to state its mind publicly. Yet circumstances were forcing it to take part in a debate that was fifteen years old; and before long New Zealand would find itself in unaccustomed opposition to the British viewpoint. This long-standing debate concerned both the original drafting and the interpretation of the provisions of the League Covenant. By Article 10 The Members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all Members of the League. In case of any such aggression or in case of any threat or danger of such aggression the Council shall advise upon the means by which this obligation shall be fulfilled.' Article 16 provided that no member of the League should trade with an aggressor and that the League Council should recommend to each government what contribution it should make ‘to the armed forces to be used to protect the Covenant of the League.’ These provisions were not regarded by British statesmen as involving, as on the surface they appeared to do, the abandonment of the traditional policy of strictly limited commitments. Article 10 was insisted upon by France, who feared she might have to rely on the Covenant for her guarantee against Germany, but its second sentence only underlined the circumstances that its first was, as the French delegate complained, ‘only a principle’. Sir Alfred Zimmern wrote that ‘…the fact that the Council was now empowered only to advise on means of enforcement threw the whole responsibility back from the League upon the individual states, who could justly argue that, in its final form, the article was a mere expression of moral obligation and did not “mean business”. And so those of them for whom the English text of the Covenant is binding have not failed to argue

Zimmern, League of Nations and the Rule of Law, pp. 246–7.

.’

It became quite clear during the twenties that British governments did not consider themselves bound to an automatic and universal guarantee. In Britain, however, as in New Zealand, the League was gaining favour with the left and there is noticeable a swing of opinion in favour of sanctions after the failure to impose them against Japan's Manchurian aggression. This feeling found spectacular expression in the Peace Ballot held in Britain at the end of 1934. Here, after a series of questions in which voters were given an opportunity to endorse the general principle of the League and disarmament, they were asked: ‘Do you consider that if a nation insists on attacking another, the other nations should combine to compel it to stop by: (a) economic and non-military measures, (b) if necessary military measures?’ Out of the eleven and a half million votes cast, ten million replied ‘yes’ to the first half of the question and six million eight hundred thousand to the second half.

Livingstone, The Peace Ballot.

The Peace Ballot had been set under way well before the Abyssinian crisis became threatening and its results were announced in June 1935, two months after the Stresa conference at which Mussolini had been given some reason to believe that he would get a free hand in Abyssinia in exchange for his assistance in holding Hitler in check in Europe.

See Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. I, pp. 104–5; Salvemini, Prelude to World War II, Ch. XXIII; Cecil, A Great Experiment, p. 266.

This unexpectedly emphatic expression of public opinion in the Peace Ballot was followed by an almost equally impressive series of declarations by influential individuals and organisations in favour of the application of the principles of collective security in the developing crisis. Among these, though too late to influence the British Government's decision, were resolutions in favour of ‘all necessary measures’ to enforce the Covenant passed by overwhelming majorities at the conference of the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party. The last named was followed by the resignation of the pacifist leader of the party, George Lansbury.

The British Government was obviously impressed by the facility with which ‘pacifist’ opinion could transform itself into support for a League war and therefore accept the necessity for armaments. Baldwin and others had in fact long been convinced that rearmament was necessary in the national interest but that it would be politically dangerous to say so. Here there appeared to be a release from the dilemma. The formula of ‘collective security’ seemed to cover alike Baldwin's earnest wish for a brisk rearmament programme (which must not, however, outrun political expediency) and the active remnants of nation-wide anti-war sentiment.

G. M. Young, Baldwin, passim. Cf. Cecil, A Great Experiment, p. 260.

At the very time when the imminence of public discussion at Geneva made it essential for New Zealand's spokesmen to say at least a few words about the Dominion's attitude, there was a powerful swing in British opinion towards the sterner interpretation of the Covenant's obligations. The British Government harkened. It determined on firm action–or at least firm words–which repudiated the politic silence recently maintained at Stresa and cast an odd light on Baldwin's own dictum that effective sanctions mean war.

Round Table, Vol. 25, p. 466; Carter, British Commonwealth and International Security, p. 178; Cecil, A Great Experiment, p. 260; Young, Baldwin.

Accordingly, on 11 September Sir Samuel Hoare declared at Geneva that Britain would fulfil her explicit obligations ‘for the collective maintenance of the Covenant in its entirety, and particularly for steady and collective resistance to all acts of unprovoked aggression.’ It was a strong statement, all the more impressive because the League had waited for a decisive lead from the great powers. ‘Never did our name stand higher in Europe than at the close of that day. It seemed as if England had learnt to speak once more with the voice of Palmerston, or Pitt, or Cromwell

Young, Baldwin, p. 210. The sympathy of ‘practically the whole of the world’, Savage later remarked, had rallied behind the magnificent lead given by Hoare.–Imperial Conference, 1937, 3rd meeting.

.’ Parr noted that hesitations seemed to have been swept away, and that when his turn came he should endorse the British view and express ‘our loyalty to collective security, a course now being followed by all here, and from which New Zealand cannot stand aloof.’ This he did in company with the representatives of other small powers on 14 September, adding the significant remark that, if collective security failed, the small powers would suffer most.

Carter, op. cit., p. 195.

Meanwhile, in New Zealand the Prime Minister broke silence to say that the Dominion had accepted obligations under the Covenant and that New Zealand, being British, would not like its government to dishonour them. ‘We feel that the League of Nations is the hope of the future and that its testing time has come. We are not going to shirk our obligations

The Times, 20 Sep 1935; quoted Carter, op. cit., p. 192.

.’

Mr Forbes had in his office, if not in his head, full information about the secret negotiations which underlay the brave words at Geneva. Maybe he felt that New Zealand's obligations might not turn out to be very onerous after all,

For those who feared precipitate action, the attitude of the French was a safeguard. On the evening of the 11th Laval congratulated Hoare on his speech, while regretting that Britain had not spoken thus in earlier years ‘when France was more directly engaged.’

and that the old formula of supporting Britain had again shown its utility. Nevertheless, the political currents of 1935 had carried a Conservative government into unfamiliar waters, and brought it into close agreement with the official opposition. When Sir Samuel Hoare spoke at Geneva on 11 September, indeed, it was not quite certain what the New Zealand Labour Party would do. In neighbouring Australia opinion was divided, and in the Australian Labour movement the current of isolationism ran strongly. Moreover, during the Address-in-Reply debate, when the Prime Minister invited members to express their opinions, no clear consensus—nor indeed strong feeling—emerged from the Labour benches between 6 and 12 September. At the same time it seems that discussions were held by representatives of the industrial and political wings of the movement, and at least one observer expected Labour to follow an Australian lead against participation in overseas war.

Tomorrow, 18 Sep 1935.

There was then a background of some uncertainty on this issue when on 16 September Walter Nash, now National President of the party, addressed Labour's first big meeting in the general election campaign. ‘The Labour Party,’ he said, ‘is solidly behind the idea of collective security. This can best be achieved through adherence to the Covenant of the League of Nations.’ The covenant, he said, provided for peaceful change, and also, if all fulfilled their obligations, for the defeat of aggression. The Italians, he admitted, might insist on war: if this happened and if ‘the British Empire was drawn into it, New Zealanders should not be led into it with emotional hatred and shouting, but should fight in sorrow for the good of the future

NZ Worker, 25 Sep 1935.

.’

Mr Nash offered a clear answer to a decisive question: would the Opposition, on the eve of a general election, follow the Government in its ostensibly firm advocacy of League action? His robust affirmative was indeed challenged within the Labour movement by dissident individuals and by certain unions on the ground that the existing crisis was merely capitalism at its old tricks of bluffing the workers to slaughter each other for Imperialists' profits: ‘the situation does not differ fundamentally from that of 1914, and we refuse to be again deceived’ resolved the Seamen's Union immediately after the Italians invaded Abyssinia.

Dominion, 5 Oct 1935; Tomorrow9 Oct 1935

This line of criticism, however, apparently failed to deflect the party's leadership, and on 16 October the party's official organ, the Standard, editorially approved of the principle of collective security. The members of the League must fulfil their obligations, it said, and ‘it is useless to cloud the issue with arguments about imperialism.’ The acquiescence of the New Zealand Labour Party in Nash's policy speech of 16 September 1935 was a critical point in New Zealand foreign policy. It meant that after the election of that year a prosanctionist policy, into which a conservative government had drifted slowly and reluctantly, was to be taken over by a Labour cabinet which really believed in it, and which had won the preliminary skirmish against its own dissidents. The Labour movement in New Zealand, as in Britain, had grasped the nettle of warfare as the ultimate guarantee of collective security.

Accordingly, the enforcement of sanctions as advocated by Britain and France was for New Zealand an agreed policy. At Geneva the Government proceeded slowly and apprehensively, striving anxiously and unsuccessfully to keep precisely in step with the United Kingdom. In New Zealand it took the Labour Party into its confidence. The leaders of the party saw and discussed the confidential correspondence; while caucus had an advance copy of the bill embodying the Government's policy, and apparently was successful in having a proviso added to safeguard free speech and prevent the regulations authorised by the new legislation from enforcing conscription. In these negotiations, the Government explained, its hope was to enable the country to speak with one voice on an issue of great importance which was not a party matter; and it was, broadly speaking, successful. The Bill to enable the Government to enforce sanctions was passed without a division and without Labour opposition on 23 October. And incidentally, the defence estimates also passed without Labour opposition on 3 October, in sharp contrast with the course of events in 1934.

Parliamentary unanimity was, of course, a deceptive index to public opinion, for to the last the community as a whole showed little interest in foreign affairs as a field for New Zealand initiative. It was observant and receptive, but unconscious of responsibility. Moreover, no government had made any effort to educate opinion to a contrary point of view, and the earlier stages of this very crisis passed according to the usual pattern with the Government assuming a policy only when forced to do so by outside events. Nevertheless, the fact that it ultimately did something, and even did something with a form of independence, was a gratification not only to nascent national sentiment and to an important section of the Labour movement, but to influential people in the government camp. In April, for instance, a daily paper so far removed from Labour sympathies as the Evening Post

Evening Post, 26 Apr 1935.

gently reminded the Prime Minister that his great confidence in the British Government did not divest him of responsibility for positive action in imperial statesmanship, and in September boldly chided the Government for leaving the public without a lead. In the same month the Christ-church Press accused cabinet of lethargic indifference in foreign affairs' and said that it was ‘wrong and dangerous for members of the New Zealand government to assume that the willingness of the British government to advise and assist absolves them from duty to think.’ The public, added that newspaper, was fortunately showing signs of ‘a more active intelligence’. The Prime Minister was stung into protest by this criticism, but the editor stuck to his guns in private correspondence. Finally, it may be noted that in June 1935 the annual conference of the Returned Soldiers' Association discussed the overlapping fields of defence and foreign policy. It sent forward for consideration a plan by which the members of the Commonwealth should pool their resources, military and economic, and invite peace-loving countries of western Europe to join in a tight system of collective security within the League but explicitly abandoning the universal guarantee.

Round Table, September 1935, p. 858.

In short, by the end of 1935 not only was the Labour Party converted, but the forces of orthodoxy were in considerable measure adjusted to the notion that New Zealand should actively participate in sanctions; and the form of the crisis disarmed the strongest of the pacifist elements in the country. The League of Nations Union, for example, had prominent pacifist supporters. It was a small body in any case, though not unrepresentative; and it was naturally pro-Covenant, which in this context meant sanctionist. Again, in 1933 and 1934 the No More War Movement, the Councils against War in various centres, and the Movement Against War and Fascism contained strongly pacifist elements. In the last year before the crisis the last-named was probably the most influential of these movements. Like much anti-war activity during these years, it owed a good deal to the work of the small Communist party, though it was supported by many pacifically minded non-communists, and in the main its propaganda followed the general Communist party line. Up to September 1935 this was to denounce both the Italian and British governments and to approve any efforts to stop the Italians save those led by Britain. In September, however, the Soviet Union approved Sir Samuel Hoare's pro-Covenant speech, and by the end of the month the Workers' Weekly said plainly that ‘all those who stand for peace’ must ‘support the Soviet Union in the demand that sanctions be enforced against Italy

Workers' Weekly, 28 Sep 1935.

.’ This statement aligned the foreign policy of the Communist party with that of the British and New Zealand governments and with the British and New Zealand Labour parties, and it destroyed the Movement against War and Fascism, which at one time had seemed a possible instrument for the articulation of pacifist and anti-sanctionist sentiment.

There remained, indeed, a significant number of unappeased Christian Pacifists, who asserted boldly the view that ‘participation in war is a denial of the spirit and teaching of Christ’; ‘that attempts to end war by means of war will defeat their own ends, and that ultimately the only way to create a warless world is by taking the risks and making the sacrifices involved in an absolute repudiation of war

Dominion, 7 Sep 1935; Press, 30 Sep 1935.

.’ A deputation went so far as to tell the Prime Minister that in a new war ‘no government could reckon on the unanimity which manifested itself in 1914’, and forecast resistance to conscription by any moral means.

Evening Post, 18 Sep 1935.

Another group insisted that membership of the Christian Church ‘sets definite limits to our obedience to the behests of the State’ and that the duty of obedience stopped short of co-operation in war-making.

Dominion, 7 Sep 1935.

Ministers and laymen who held such views were to be found in all the main Protestant denominations, and earnest discussion took place. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, for example, considered in November a pacifist resolution, but in the end unanimously approved of economic sanctions, and its Moderator said expressly that for the church ‘sometimes war was the least of a number of conflicting evils

Evening Post, 28 Sep 1935.

.’ In the previous February the Methodist Conference called on everyone to consider his or her attitude towards war, and recognised that personal judgments might differ. ‘We uphold liberty of conscience in whichever direction loyalty to inward convictions may lead them

Ibid., 19 Feb 1935, 21 Sep 1935.

.’ Nevertheless, it seems fair to conclude that pacifist sentiment of an absolute character which rejected a sanctionist policy was confined to a comparatively small though active minority. The existence of this minority together with criticisms voiced by the Seamen's Union in the Labour movement showed a healthy variety in opinion but did not modify the general conclusion. A clear-cut and deliberate parliamentary decision had, when it came to the point, been accepted with equanimity by the majority of those who might have been expected to oppose it. The principle of economic sanctions as expressed in the legislation of 23 October represented the policy more or less consciously accepted by the vast majority of New Zealanders.

CHAPTER 5 Impact of a Labour Government

THE critical decision on sanctions made—and accepted—Parliament was dissolved on 26 October, and the general election could be fought, according to custom, on purely domestic issues.

Round Table, December 1935, pp. 202 ff.; March 1936, p. 429.

Neither party's manifesto referred to Abyssinia, and there was no incompatibility in their brief references to foreign policy. The Labour Party stressed international co-operation with economic objectives as well as political, while the Nationalists registered support of the League and its principles, but stressed ‘cordial collaboration’ with the United Kingdom. Candidates' speeches, corresponding to the electorate's predominant interests, concentrated on domestic economic policy and the promotion of secure prosperity. New Zealand voted with its mind full of the depression and wage cuts, the price of butterfat, and the possibility of ‘orderly marketing’. Labour's overwhelming victory of 27 November had nothing to do with foreign affairs.

The election campaign of 1935 would, indeed, have followed the same course and its results would have been the same if the knot of Labour leaders had been persistent isolationists and if Mussolini had postponed his Ethiopian adventure by twelve months. Nevertheless, new hands did in fact now grasp the helm, with results that were promptly made clear to the British Government. On 8 December the so-called Hoare-Laval proposals to end the Italian-Abyssinian conflict were drafted in Paris. According to Sir James Parr, who was shown the draft as High Commissioner, they would have handed over half of Ethiopia to the Italians; and they showed that the sanctionist policy into which New Zealand had followed the British Government was not to be taken quite at its face value. ‘The Prime Minister had declared that Sanctions meant war; secondly he was resolved there must be no war; and thirdly he decided upon Sanctions

Churchill, op. cit., p. 133.

.’ But the principles of the Peace Ballot which had provoked the Baldwin Government into its brief and unhappy effort at a virtuoso performance were taken much more seriously by the New Zealand Government as well as by a most powerful body of opinion in Britain. On 13 December New Zealand advised the British Government that it could not associate itself with the proposals: a gesture whose significance was temporarily masked by the immediate and overwhelming reaction in Britain itself. Public opinion clearly regarded the Hoare-Laval plan as a betrayal of Ethiopia and a repudiation both of the Baldwin Government's election promises and of the policy to which it had firmly pledged itself for three critical months. Mr Baldwin promptly confessed his mistake, sacrificed his Foreign Secretary and told the world that ‘the proposals are absolutely and completely dead’. The United Kingdom accordingly returned, somewhat chastened, to the policy for which it had won general approval throughout the Commonwealth in September: sanctions, short of anything which would provoke war.

There is no suggestion that New Zealand pushed her pro-League policy to extremes; to the extent, for example, of actively supporting the tentative moves at Geneva towards enforcing the oil sanction against Italy. Even the fact of her warm protest against the Hoare-Laval proposals was kept secret. Nevertheless, it was clear that just as Massey and Ward had been impelled to speak up in defence of ‘imperial interests’ when Labour had been in power in Britain, so the Labour Government in New Zealand had the feeling that the principles of collective security were taken far too lightly by British conservatism. Moreover, though their novelty has been overstressed, these protests were made more systematically and before long more publicly than ever before. Indeed, it seemed for a season that on all the big issues raised at Geneva, from Spain and China and from the Italian conquest of Abyssinia to the problem of reforming the League itself, New Zealand's policy expressly diverged from that of the United Kingdom.

In the first half of 1936 the New Zealand Government wanted sanctions to be maintained and even intensified, because their removal condoned a breach of the Covenant. In July, while acquiescing perforce in the abandonment of sanctions, it did this on the condition—also stressed at that time by the United Kingdom—that the whole Geneva peace structure should be reviewed at the September meeting of the Assembly. Following this line of thought the Assembly itself in July asked member governments to report by 1 September any improvements they would like to see made in the Covenant. This invitation led to a clear difference of opinion between the British and New Zealand governments. Britain, uncertain as to its own policy and desiring Commonwealth unanimity, suggested that no concrete reply should be made until the Assembly had met and other countries had shown their hands. New Zealand, alone among Commonwealth countries, firmly rejected Britain's advice and submitted a detailed reply to Geneva by the date set. Further, this memorandum expressed strong and clear-cut opinions which were not in line with British policy.

The fault, argued the New Zealand Government, lay not in the Covenant but in its enforcement, which should be made automatic and overwhelming. New Zealand for her part declared that she would take her part in sanctions, including complete economic boycott and the application of force against an aggressor, and that she would agree to an international force under the control of the League. To these simple and forthright views the memorandum added some characteristic suggestions in detail. Such a scheme would work only if governments had behind them the declared approval of their peoples: therefore it was suggested that League proceedings should be broadcast, and that all peoples in the world should be asked to declare in national plebiscites whether or not they would join in full and automatic sanctions. Though New Zealand did not herself favour regional pacts she was prepared, if a universal system could not be established, to support a scheme by which only the non-military sanctions should be universally applied, and certain countries might confine their duty to use force to troubles within a given area. Again, there should be adequate ‘machinery for the ventilation and if possible rectification of international grievances’; the problem of revising the peace treaties should be cautiously, but broad-mindedly, approached; world-wide survey of economic conditions should be undertaken; and non-members of the League as well as members should if possible be brought into the discussion on this or any other scheme for collective security.

Contemporary New Zealand, p. 196.

This memorandum was a declaration of faith by the new government. It was backed on the one hand by a declared willingness to progress gradually and to consider alternative means of achieving the distant goal of world-wide orderliness, and on the other hand by practical acts of policy. To the end, New Zealand put at Geneva the case for the maintenance of sanctions, though she recognised the impropriety of a country so small and so far removed from physical danger or the risk of serious economic loss pushing too hard against a majority.

Parr to Assembly in July, Otago Daily Times, 5 Jul 1936.

With the Italians firmly established in Addis Ababa, she resisted to the end the suggestion that their conquest should be recognised. The British Government was impressed by the need to re-establish good relations with Italy and by the danger of strengthening the understanding between Rome and Berlin. In the phrase of Lord Halifax, those who were unwilling to drive the Italians from Ethiopia by force must one day acknowledge their presence there: the timing of recognition thus became a matter of ‘political judgment and not part of the eternal and immutable moralities

Minutes of Council meeting, 12 May 1938.

.’ The New Zealand Government firmly refused, however, to ‘support any proposal which would involve either directly or by implication, approval of a breach of the Covenant.’ ‘They cannot convince themselves that right and justice are to be achieved by any departure from the principles of the Covenant

Savage to Jordan, 5 May 1938.

.’

The same questions were raised by the war in Spain. On this issue her position was indeed difficult. On the one hand the United Kingdom was, of all British countries, most closely associated with Spain by geography, history, and economic interest; and the risk of attack in any general war originating in Spain was hers. Further, the crisis arose in mid-1936, at a time when the British Government was most anxious to rebuild friendly relations with Italy, and when the undeniable Italian victory in Abyssinia seemed to have opened a certain chance to let bygones be bygones. Yet, to many New Zealanders as to many Englishmen, the Spanish government seemed to stand broadly for the humane and liberal and democratic principles shared by the British and New Zealand Labour movements, while, to many, the rebel generals stood, among other things, for social reaction and the authoritarian state. Further, the conviction grew in 1936 and 1937 that an allegedly civil war was in substance an international one, in which the Italian and German governments were openly backing the elements in Spain like-minded with themselves, while Spaniards of the contrary opinion benefited only from the enthusiasms of private individuals; for reports of Russian aid were discounted. Finally, as the horrors of warfare developed and became known, it shocked the humanitarian government in Wellington and its warm-hearted spokesman at Geneva that the civilised world could find no remedy for such a breakdown in international decencies. On the face of it the Spanish civil war challenged the basic principles of Labour thinking: faith in democracy, in the decency of ordinary men, and in the ultimate validity of reason over force. The war, after all, originated in a military rebellion, it was waged to a significant extent by foreign soldiers and technicians on Spanish soil, and it let loose savagery in Europe. Some had argued, for example, that the war in Abyssinia was a colonial crisis and that the Far East was a problem with its own character which was still comparatively distant in mind as well as in space. But Spain by any reckoning lay in the heart of Europe. Its tragedy was enacted under the eyes of the West, and with results that must affect men's attitudes as well as the balance of forces.

In these circumstances divergences of opinion were almost inevitable between a Conservative government in Britain and a Labour government in New Zealand; and these divergences were given unusual publicity because both governments held seats on the Council of the League of Nations. The United Kingdom had a permanent seat as a great power, and New Zealand was elected to one of the temporary seats in 1936: this was taken in New Zealand as a tribute to the activity in international affairs of the new Labour government and to the impression made among the smaller powers by New Zealand's vigorous championing of the principles of the Covenant. When, therefore, the Spanish government appealed to the League, both Britain and New Zealand had to explain themselves in public. The result was a difference in approach even more marked than the difference in action contemplated. Mr W. J. Jordan on behalf of New Zealand spoke with the warmth of a convinced democrat and humanitarian who could not feel that ‘non-intervention’ was the only solution civilisation could offer to suffering Spain. If there were two sides, he argued, let both be stated to the Council and let the Council pronounce between them. Alternatively, let some outside body establish order, and when the storm was calmed, allow the Spanish people to decide their own fate. On the one hand, reason could surely find a way, if its voice were once effectively heard through third-party judgment: on the other, the people expressing their will democratically must be able to find a solution. Better reason than guns: force alone cannot create peace or make a government legitimate.

Here was the expression of a faith which lay at the heart of New Zealand domestic politics as of British. But Britain, unlike New Zealand, had for centuries been involved in the maze of European diplomacy. On this issue she trod the tortuous and unhappy path of ‘realism’: well intentioned, but in caution even outdoing the French. At Geneva, therefore, British and New Zealand delegates spoke with a differing accent, and there was one incident greedily seized upon by journalists, when the British Foreign Secretary was seen to confer with Mr Jordan just before the latter spoke. There is, in fact, no substantial reason to believe that anything was ‘blue pencilled’ at Eden's behest, but the story underlines the admitted difference in viewpoint between the two governments, as well, incidentally, as the close contact maintained. Meanwhile, in the ordinary routine of Commonwealth consultation New Zealand remained ‘unalterably opposed to any action which, either directly or indirectly could be interpreted as, or tends towards, the recognition of any administration in Spain other than that of the lawfully constituted government.’ She objected, therefore, in March and in September 1937 to the proposal to exchange agents with General Franco's regime and raised objection, too, to suggestions for the grant of belligerent rights.

GGNZ to SSDA, 25 Mar 1937; Jordan to Savage, 16 Jul 1937; GGNZ to SSDA, 30 Sep 1937.

At the Imperial Conference in May 1937, moreover, Mr Savage had frankly denounced the reluctance of such conferences ‘to attack and solve difficult problems merely because of their difficulty.’ He feared ‘an innocuous and unhelpful formula’ and said that the ‘improvisation and indecision’ of recent British policy could not be ‘accepted as a sufficient application of the principles of League support accepted as Commonwealth foreign policy.’

In 1936 and 1937 New Zealand was, then, an active champion of the principle of collective security, and urged in Geneva and London that loyal application of the Covenant was the world's best hope of escape from the perpetual threat of war. This policy was a good deal criticised at the time and since on two main grounds. There were still some in New Zealand who argued strongly that public divergence from British policy must be avoided at all cost; and there were those, in New Zealand and abroad, who urged that her reputation for pro-League championship was won a little cheaply and at the expense of other countries no less willing to take risks for human well-being. As acknowledged by her spokesmen, New Zealand was in most ways favourably placed during the sanctions crisis and the Spanish civil war. Her economic loss was small and if the upshot in either case had been a general war, its first impact would have been on nearer and greater powers. Remoteness and inconspicuousness gave opportunities for the assertion of principle and for freedom of action which great powers sometimes complained that they lacked. Similarly, it was argued, a small power in 1936 could make generous offers in support of collective security without great danger of being called upon to honour them, and it could express concern for lifting the living standards of backward people without making notable changes in customs and immigration policy. It was remarked, for example, that New Zealand's energetic participation in international gatherings and the work of the International Labour Organisation did not lead to the immediate ratification of ILO conventions.

Such criticisms were in part justified and in part beside the point. Determination not to compromise with evil or surrender a moral principle was fortified by New Zealand's isolation from disturbing contact with very different sets of moral and political principles, and was evident in New Zealand foreign policy in days well before a Labour government. In the case of the Labour Party, there was somewhat incongruously combined with respect for moral principle a confidence in the efficacy of economic remedies to cope with human ills and apparent wickedness. These attitudes were expressed in their most popular form by a prime minister, M. J. Savage, who was an Australian-born Irishman but in his kindliness and optimism very typical of New Zealand. His comments on international affairs were not subtle or, for the most part, particularly realistic, and partly for that reason could be both emphatic and representative of his people. His warm faith in the soundness of the common man embraced the whole world. Let economic welfare be promoted, he argued, and the peoples of the world be given the chance to opt for decent behaviour; let us talk frankly, and swamp the warlords and profiteers in the good will and good sense of mankind. In 1936 he would ‘back the peoples of the world 100 per cent to endorse the principles of peace every time they have an opportunity of doing it

NZPD, Vol. 245, p. 154.

.’ In May 1937 he patiently explained to hard-boiled statesmen in Imperial Conference assembled, that the causes of war were essentially economic, that low standards of life among millions of suffering men promoted hatred and turned trade into a matter of rivalry and tension instead of an obvious common interest of humanity. The conference, he added philosophically, ultimately agreed that it would be a good thing to lift living standards but refused to see the connection between this and war: ‘I suppose one cannot blame them

Dominion, 29 Jul 1937.

.’ Well into 1939 he hammered the same idea. ‘People do not fight for the love of it. There are underlying causes, and if the representatives of the nations can meet to talk about them there is a chance of removing those causes…. You cannot consider them on the battlefield.’ And, he added, ‘proper trade relationships’ formed the most important single factor.

Evening Post, 17 Apr 1939.

For the Prime Minister, then, international like domestic policy was a matter of applied good will, and of moral principles which all men readily accept. At the Imperial Conference he pressed for a Commonwealth policy founded on a universally accepted moral basis and apparently felt that there should be little difficulty in pronouncing between right and wrong. The assumption is plain that there is a decency and a rightness in behaviour which will be recognised by all reasonable men of whatever race and colour, and accepted as guides to conduct in international affairs. Rightness and decency would clearly include the redress of legitimate grievances—for example, the over-severe clauses of the Treaty of Versailles, against which New Zealand Labour spokesmen had strongly protested; but they would not include the kind of proceed- ingsproceedings which were to lead to the extinction of Austria and of Czechoslovakia.

Consistent thinking along these lines naturally led to sharp differences over particular issues between the governments of New Zealand and of the United Kingdom. Yet there remained a genuine fundamental harmony. When the Labour Party took office the British Prime Minister was Stanley Baldwin, four-fifths of whose formula for democratic statesmanship fits Savage with uncanny accuracy: ‘use your commonsense; avoid logic; love your fellow men; have faith in your own people, and grow the hide of a rhinoceros

Young, Baldwin, p. 209.

.’ Baldwin, moreover, had made it abundantly clear that in war-making, or even in serious preparations for war, he would not move ahead of public opinion: an attitude shared also by Chamberlain and Eden.

Cf. the explicit statement by Eden to first meeting of Imperial Conference, 19 May 1937.

If the criterion for commitments—let alone war—was plainly acceptability to British opinion, here was ample safeguard for New Zealand. By accepting in 1935 the concept of a sanctionist war the Labour Party had pledged the new regime in advance to accept any commitment which a British government could, in the foreseeable future, confidently present to its own public.

There could be no doubt, then, of the New Zealand Labour Government's acceptance of the Dominion's commitment to Britain, and the exercise of her right to vigorous expression of independent judgment carried no implied challenge to the imperial link. In July 1937 Savage, as Prime Minister, gave in homely words much the same interpretation of the situation as had his predecessors. He was rendering to the New Zealand people some account of the recent Imperial Conference, during which he had sharply criticised some aspects of British policy. ‘We did not agree on everything,’ he said, ‘far from it; but the objective was about the same right along the line, and if Britain were in difficulties tomorrow I don't think there would be much division. I think about the same thing would happen as happened last time

Dominion, 29 Jul 1937.

.’ In the following year two key cabinet ministers were even more explicit: ‘in one split second after Britain becomes involved in war,’ said Mark Fagan,

NZPD, Vol. 251, p. 343.

‘this country also becomes involved’; and Walter Nash, the Minister of Finance, thus justified a large increase in the defence vote: ‘If the old country is attacked we are too. We hate all this war propaganda, but if an attack is made on Great Britain then we will assist her to the fullest extent possible

Round Table, September 1938, pp. 865–6.

.’

Close collaboration with Britain was, in fact, an essential part of Labour's policy, both as announced while in opposition, and as practised when in power. The change of government brought no slackening of political bonds, but a more vigorous use of co-operative machinery devised in the past under pressure from dominions much more independently minded than New Zealand; and it also established a firm tradition that on most big issues New Zealand had something to say. Viewed from the angle of New Zealand's history, this was no revolution, but merely a change of emphasis. In the context of Commonwealth policy-making, however, it acquired a considerable if transitory importance. New Zealand's views carried far more weight than derived from her own power because her spokesmen often summed up important minority opinion in other parts of the Commonwealth. The established system of consultation embraced governments only; it proved a marked advantage of that system that in such linked communities, the views of some government so often coincided with those of the opposition elsewhere, or of some unrepresented section of a government party. New Zealand's representatives in Westminster and Geneva spoke for a constituency much wider than the New Zealand Labour Party. Her very unorthodox High Commissioner, W. J. Jordan, was regarded as ‘truly English’ when he quoted the Bible at hard-headed politicians, and cut through the convenient mazes of diplomatic finesse to remind them of the fundamental principles at stake.

Walters, League of Nations, Vol. II, p. 735.

At a time when her action had strategic importance, then, New Zealand proceeded to exercise vigorously and with some publicity her acknowledged right as a dominion; and the new scale of activities soon called for improvement, both in Wellington and in London, in the technique of mutual consultation among British countries. Its life blood was information; and as a matter of routine the Dominions Office sent out to the dominion capitals a flood of confidential documents drawn from the British government's world-wide sources of information. Their physical quantity pre-supposed in the receiving centres a team of experts to read and analyse them for the benefit of politicians. In Wellington there was until 1943 no such organisation. External affairs were handled by the Prime Minister and his scantily manned department. Two or three officials of high ability but unlimited range of responsibility struggled as best they could with the flood of overseas documentation, and had to be prepared to discuss with their political masters any problems arising outside New Zealand as well as within it. This lack of elementary machinery for handling policy matters, which was of course paralleled in most government activities, derived from the days when New Zealand was scarcely interested in world politics, and when her views were unimportant. The danger of the situation was averted by accidental circumstances; by the presence in cabinet of an unusual body of relatively well informed interest in external problems; by the harmony of viewpoint between leading civil servants and ministers; and by the exceptional ability and long memories of individuals concerned. The Labour victory brought new men into this particular field, and their energies ensured at least the temporary filling of a serious lack in Commonwealth policy-making: for there was now sustained activity in Wellington.

When members of the new cabinet applied themselves with unusual knowledge and energy to the field of external affairs, they were represented in London in an unusually intimate way. William Jordan, who was High Commissioner from 1936 to 1951, was a Londoner who had become very typical of New Zealand. He was kind and naïve, with simple rules of conduct, and was resistant to the diplomatic convention that action need not conform too closely to verbal professions or to consistency. Above all, he represented the faith that the world's worst tensions will respond to straightforward human decency and good will. This general viewpoint corresponded closely to that of his Prime Minister, Savage, with whom he kept in close personal touch, and indeed to that of C. A. Berendsen, who could express in cogent and eloquent reasoning views which in Savage and Jordan were warm and vague. Accordingly, the views of average, kindly New Zealanders—which differed little from those of average, kindly Englishmen—were for a season forcibly expressed in the privileged and semi-private circle of Commonwealth consultation as well as on the ready-made platform of Geneva. There is, of course, no reason to suspect that New Zealand's persistent advocacy of fidelity to principle deflected the forces which were thrusting the world into disaster. Yet it had some importance, if only in the embarrassment of diplomats

Cf. Walters, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 736.

and in a certain encouragement to men of similar impulses in other countries.

Here, as elsewhere, the Labour Government made vigorous use of historic institutions. New Zealand had had a High Commissioner in London since 1908 and before him an Agent-General. The High Commissioner's position as an instrument of consultation was not well defined and his office was concerned primarily with the bread and butter side of New Zealand's overseas relations. Nevertheless the appointment was normally held by men of standing in the political hierarchy. Such men could perform a valuable function in conveying to those who sat in London the temper and atmosphere of thought in Wellington, and continual use was made of their services as contact men. ‘Whereas in the past the British Govern- mentGovernment settled all matters of moment and informed us after these matters had been settled’, wrote Sir Thomas Wilford as High Commissioner in 1930, the volume of regular consultation had then grown so great that ‘this office has become the “foreign office” of New Zealand

lWilford to Ward, 14 May 1930.

.’

Savage and his colleagues had of course no intention of locating their ‘foreign office’ outside Wellington, yet when they grasped the helm they found the necessary machinery, and much of the necessary tradition, already established in London. The main improvement made there was a minor one: the adoption of a device suggested years before by the fertile J. G. Coates, and operated with great apparent success

R. G. Casey, Conduct of Australian Foreign Policy (1952), p. 16.

by the Australians from 1924 onwards. A New Zealand liaison officer was appointed in 1937 to work with the British cabinet secretariat, and thus supplement documents and official interviews by the intimacy that can only grow through daily working contact.

The main changes in the machinery of consultation were made at the Wellington end. New Zealand had not followed the general Commonwealth convention of regarding her Governor as the personal representative of the King and of negotiating wholly through other channels with his ministers in the United Kingdom. New Zealand's Governor-General remained, therefore, in some sense a representative of the British government, and at least on one important occasion he made an express personal appeal to his New Zealand ministers to bring their policy into line with British wishes.

In April 1937 when transmitting a despatch dated 26 Apr 1937 dealing with the proposed recognition of Italian sovereignty in Abyssinia.

He was the official channel of communication between governments until February 1941 and the cipher staff was in fact lodged at Government House; an arrangement which sometimes led to serious delays.

An important London cable of 19 Mar 1937 reached Government House on the 20th but the Prime Minister's Department not until the 23rd.

The major step in improving this situation was taken early in 1939 when Sir Harry Batterbee took up residence as first British High Commissioner in Wellington. Thereafter the Governor-General could wholly cease to represent the British government, though his office handled the formal transmission of inter-government despatches for two years more, and useful new channels of communication were opened up. Despatches intended for the New Zealand government were, in fact, often sent from London to the High Commissioner, who with his staff could partially correct the inevitable aridity of cabled correspondence. New Zealand thus at last adopted to its full extent the available machinery for consultation with the United Kingdom. As will be noted, similar expansion in administrative machinery shortly took place in relation to the two neighbouring dominions of Canada and Australia, and to the United States; an expansion accompanied by the establishment in Wellington of a properly organised, if still inadequately staffed, Department of External Affairs in 1943.

Some small but significant improvements, then, were made in the machinery of co-operation in the early years of the Labour Government. There was, moreover, a new and active insistence that New Zealand wished this machinery to be vigorously used. On specific issues she emphatically and sometimes publicly differed from the views of the British government, and on general principles made her attitude clear at the Imperial Conference of 1937. This conference rather characteristically followed the celebrations of the coronation. It took place behind closed doors and its published documents were masterpieces of platitudinous reticence. Yet its discussions were an important prelude to the final crisis. Not only did they help to strengthen one of the most solid factors in Commonwealth relations, namely personal intimacy among key men, but they made clear the attitudes of these men towards general problems of Commonwealth co-operation, and towards a specific crisis, whose shape was already fairly evident.

In this company New Zealand's main spokesman, M. J. Savage, appeared to be concerned primarily with three things. First, he advocated in unfamiliar company New Zealand's formula of kindliness, decency, and economic welfare as an immediate remedy for world tensions. Second, he ardently desired a foreign policy for the Commonwealth as a whole, and evidently felt that agreement could be reached if men of good will would talk honestly and try to keep their conduct in line with their professed principles. Third, however, he said in plain terms that, of recent years, Commonwealth foreign policy had been neither sound nor consistent nor framed in genuine consultation. He warmly acknowledged the admirable stream of information supplied from London. But, he added, ‘information is one thing; consultation is a totally different thing….’ and he complained of recent occasions when British policy had been reversed, ‘without consultation with the Dominions, without one word of warning to the Dominions.’ He confessed himself puzzled by the apparent lack of guiding principle in what had been done. ‘I realise the complexity and difficulty of these questions,’ he said, ‘and we in New Zealand are prepared to go a long way in supporting the principal partner of the Commonwealth in any foreign policy, the general lines of which we have understood and approved beforehand and which is based on principle and not only on expediency. But I consider it essential that an agreed Commonwealth foreign policy should be adopted, that effective means of consultation must be evolved to ensure that this is observed or to provide for agreed alterations

Imperial Conference, 3rd meeting, 21 May 1937.

.’

New Zealand's plea in 1937 echoed that of 1930. The supply of information in itself does not constitute consultation, unless it is supplied in time for considered opinions to be formed and unless it is conveyed in such a manner that comment is made easy even if not directly requested. The British Government was indeed in a dilemma at a time when some dominions claimed an active right to participate, while others rejected participation as possibly carrying commitments. In the upshot, despatches from London to New Zealand in 1937 began to include occasional invitations for the expression of dominion opinion. Further, as the crisis intensified, increased use was made of a device already familiar. The Dominion High Commissioners as a group were summoned to frequent conferences—daily at times—with the British Foreign Secretary or the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs. During the Italian-Ethiopian dispute, therefore, the United Kingdom cabinet, which was necessarily the most active of British Commonwealth governments in the matter, had frequent personal reminders of the existence and importance of dominion viewpoints. The same practice was followed in relation to Spain. Whether these meetings and the resulting correspondence between the High Commissioners and their Prime Ministers resulted in dominion viewpoints becoming incorporated in Commonwealth policy is another matter. In a personal report to Savage after one such meeting, Jordan wrote that he had inquired about the fate of New Zealand's suggestions without receiving encouragement. He had then asked bluntly whether he and his colleagues were there to be consulted, and had been informed with equal bluntness that they ‘were not being consulted but were being informed

Jordan to Savage, 16 Jul 1937.

.’

Nevertheless it seems clear that by the outbreak of war the means were ready to hand for men who had worked together over a period of years to learn and sympathise with each other's attitudes, and even to frame and operate a common policy. Whether all this machinery was fully used, and whether it did in fact lead the British Commonwealth into action which had genuinely been jointly planned, is of course another matter. In 1944 Lord Halifax, who had been Foreign Secretary in 1939, set out powerfully the case for the negative. ‘On September 3, 1939,’ he said, ‘the Dominions were faced with a dilemma. Either they must confirm the policy which they had only a partial share in framing, or they must stand aside and see the unity of the Commonwealth broken, perhaps fatally and forever…. That is the point at which equality of function lags behind equality of status. The Dominions are free—absolutely free—to choose their path; but every time there is a crisis in international affairs they are faced with the same inexorable dilemma, from which there is no escape

The Times, 25 Jan 1944.

.’

Lord Halifax was perhaps being too absolute. In the long train of events which culminated in war the countries of the Commonwealth had on the whole moved together.

Cf. Elliott and Hall, Commonwealth at War, p. 13. Chamberlain's policy ‘was as near to being a common foreign policy of the whole British Commonwealth as any policy since 1919’.

When there were divergences no dominion criticism lacked responsible support in the United Kingdom. The overseas British in the Dominions had at least as much influence over war and peace as had their cousins who had remained in the Old World. The famous complaint of Andrew Fisher could not have been made in 1940: that as Prime Minister of Australia he had less influence over foreign policy than if he had remained a Scottish miner.

Curtis, Problems of the Commonwealth, p. 9, quoting The times, 31 Jan 1916.

On the contrary, it could reasonably be argued that in the nineteen-thirties—as indeed during the course of the war-the views of the Government of a million and a half New Zealanders received much more consideration than their numbers and relative importance warranted. The ground of complaint, if such existed, lay elsewhere. It was that in a world of power politics small countries are inevitably committed by the policies adopted by their neighbours and associates: a fact which great countries sometimes ignore and sometimes count upon. And as regards the British countries the fact remained to the end—and Lord Halifax was partly responsible for it—that the consultation clearly provided for in the constitution of the Commonwealth still amounted too often to a mere exchange of information and, more particularly, to supply of information by the United Kingdom to the Dominions.

CHAPTER 6 Defence Policy

IN respect of external relations—as indeed in much else—the impact of a Labour government sharpened and clarified existing trends in New Zealand evolution and set the course for the wartime period. It was perfectly clear well before the final catastrophe that New Zealand would stand by Britain in any crisis then conceivable. Yet she plainly proposed to exercise her right to have her own policy, and the directions in which she would exercise her influence—such as it was—were boldly sketched out. Further, though there was some conservative criticism of the Government's plain speech, the line was sufficiently close to that previously followed by the Opposition leaders to give it a broad basis in political assent. In the sanctions crisis the Government of Forbes and Coates made confidential information available to the leaders of the Labour Party. In 1939 they in turn showed the vital cables to Coates and to Adam Hamilton, then Leader of the Opposition; and there is, to say the least, no reason to suppose that in either case the particular decision or the general attitude would have been different if the parties in power had been reversed.

The political decision, however, was only half of the problem: dominion status carried freedom not only to decide whether or not formally to go to war, but also to determine whether participation would be whole-hearted or merely nominal. Mr Chamberlain told the House of Commons in December 1938 that ‘It is a matter for each member of the Commonwealth to decide the extent to which it will participate in any war in which any other member of the Commonwealth may be engaged.’ He added that the United Kingdom would undoubtedly go to the aid of any part of the Commonwealth that was attacked; but made it clear that such a policy could not be presumed for the Dominions.

5 Dec 1938; Keith, Journal of Comparative Legislation, Vol. XXI, Pt. I, p. 100.

The Imperial General Staff acknowledged in the same year that it had to accept the same uncertainty: ‘Each Dominion now had the responsibility for deciding for itself the extent and nature of its defence preparations in time of peace as well as the question whether it should employ these resources in war in a common cause with the remainder of the Empire

COS paper, 15 Oct 1938, quoting CID paper of June 1938.

.’

In short, entwined with the political problem was the technical difficulty of ensuring that the military efforts of a team of independent nations would be adequately prepared and coordinated. The soldiers might hope ‘that the whole of the British Commonwealth would form a united front in an emergency which must ultimately threaten the security of all’;

Ibid.

but they could not count on such a united front nor press too boldly for the prior planning necessary to make it effective. Ireland would clearly stand aside in any case. At the Imperial Conference of 1937 Mackenzie King said plainly that any attempt to commit Canada in advance would destroy national unity. The Australian Opposition was notoriously isolationist and the Government, to say the least, was lukewarm about opposing German expansion in Europe. General Hertzog, as Prime Minister of South Africa, said bluntly that his country would give no help if Britain became involved in war through interference in the affairs of central or eastern Europe. As Stanley Baldwin gently reminded his fellow prime ministers, no democratic community readily goes to war unless a vital national interest is evidently at stake, and it was plain that in no part of the Commonwealth was opinion then ready for a firm commitment to resist Hitler by force, nor indeed for a businesslike set of detailed plans for military co-operation by Commonwealth countries.

Imperial Conference, 1937, 3rd meeting, 21 May 1937.

Nevertheless established procedures within the Commonwealth provided at least a framework for action. Within this framework New Zealand had of all the Dominions probably the least to contribute in material resources: but in spite of strong anti-war sentiment, she had less psychological difficulty than any of them in contemplating prior commitments and in accepting British leadership. On technical as well as political grounds her defence, like her economic existence, was inconceivable to her citizens except in terms of co-operation with Britain. Yet the upshot, even for New Zealand, was a group of commitments which, however clear in political principle, remained up till the outbreak of war obscure when translated into practical terms.

New Zealand, like every dominion, accepted ‘primary responsibility for its own local defence’.

Resolutions of Imperial Conference, 1923.

Yet this notion was almost devoid of meaning when applied to an isolated community without naval, air, or industrial resources, except in so far as it gave respectability to the commonsense determination not to despatch an expeditionary force if New Zealand was in danger of invasion. Plainly, the security of New Zealand depended ultimately on victory—military or diplomatic—overseas. ‘The defeat of Great Britain would vitally imperil the various Dominions, which, even if successful in their own local defence, would in all probability be lost eventually to the enemy,’ wrote the GOC, Major-General Sinclair-Burgess, in April 1936.

GOC to Minister of Defence, 6 Apr 1936. Mr Churchill had said much the same in the House of Commons on 17 Mar 1914.

The primary object, he added, ‘is the preservation of the integrity of the Empire as a whole and not merely the local defence of each component part.’ In the following year the New Zealand delegation to the Imperial Conference accepted the same line of thought, and it was strongly held at the Defence Conference of April 1939. ‘We have to take risks because of the need to make sure that things were all right in the North Sea and the Atlantic,’ said Walter Nash. ‘If we are not all right there it does not matter whether we in the Pacific are all right or not.’ To the same gathering C. A. Berendsen, as head of the Prime Minister's Department, went so far as to say that ‘there is no disposition in any quarter of New Zealand to question the basic fact that in any war in which the British Commonwealth was involved the decision would be reached in the European theatre, and no one in New Zealand would dream of suggesting that a fleet should come to Singapore if such a step might prejudice the situation there. We entirely realise that the defence of New Zealand depends on the defence of the Commonwealth.’ The first part of Berendsen's statement would have been vigorously criticised by an insistent minority if made publicly. Nevertheless his conclusion fairly states the views both of the service chiefs and of the community over the whole inter-war period.

What, then, could New Zealand do to help herself and to strengthen the Commonwealth system within which she sought security? The basic answer to this question between 1919 and 1939 was that in the event of war she should send food to Britain and fighting men to serve under British command, probably in the traditional battlefields of France and the Middle East.

‘For we had guessed right: it was to Egypt we were going; as in the previous war we would doubtless train there, even do some fighting in the vicinity, and then go on to France for the great battles. So it had been and so it would be ….’—Kippenberger, Infantry Brigadier, p. 8.

At the Imperial Conference of 1926, for example, it appeared that New Zealand's plans were already deposited with the War Office in London, and that in a major war she was prepared to send at short notice an infantry division and a mounted brigade, and to maintain them for at least three years. Yet in practice this commitment was from time to time fairly heavily qualified by anti-war sentiment, by unpreparedness and lack of funds, and by the impact of her Pacific environment upon a European-minded community.

The last-named factor was of great long-term importance in influencing New Zealand's attitudes. As early as 1921 Massey defined the issue at the Imperial Conference referring to the First World War: ‘supposing Japan had been on the enemy side, one result would have been quite certain, that neither Australia nor New Zealand would have been able to send troops to the front, neither could we have sent food or equipment’ for the armed forces or the civil population of Great Britain.

Summary of Proceedings, Cmd. 1474, p. 31.

At that date, of course, the good neighbourliness of Japan was taken for granted, but by 1930 confidence had been to some extent shaken. At the Imperial Conference of that year G. W. Forbes bluntly inquired as to the place of New Zealand's forces in Commonwealth defence, and was answered by the Imperial General Staff in March 1931. Japan, it appeared, was the power most likely to challenge Commonwealth security in the Pacific area, but it seemed reasonable to hope that before any danger could materialise the Singapore base would be completed, the main fleet would reach it, and the general level of Commonwealth defence preparations would be adequate. There followed concrete suggestions which amounted to some alteration of emphasis from Europe to the Pacific area. The old commitment—that in war New Zealand would on request supply an expeditionary force—still remained. In addition it was now suggested that New Zealand might, if she wished to help, reinforce Singapore's peacetime garrison, or train airmen to relieve Royal Air Force units in the Far East, or prepare a force to be despatched immediately on the outbreak of war to menaced points in that area.

These suggestions were temporarily lost to sight in the domestic economic crisis, when defence expenditure like everything else was cut to the bone. In New Zealand, as in Britain itself, ‘the financial and economic risks of the time were [judged to be] even more serious than the military risks.’ In September 1931, however, Japan launched her Manchurian adventure, and at the beginning of 1933 problems of Pacific defence were raised by British experts with a new urgency. The plain fact, it then seemed, was that the existing condition of the Singapore base and other facilities made it impossible for the main fleet to go to the Far East: ‘The whole of our territory in the Far East as well as the coast line of India and the Dominions and our vast trade and shipping lies open to attack,’ reported the Committee of Imperial Defence in February 1933. And they added some oddly prophetic remarks. ‘We have no reason to impute aggressive intentions to Japan unless she is goaded into precipitate action’; yet she had shown herself disquieteningly adept at surprise attacks, and the state of British defence preparations would be greatly tempting to any aggressively minded power.

This strongly worded report was taken up by General Sinclair-Burgess, who on 28 August presented to his government a formidable argument for rearmament. He recommended in some detail a six-year programme of defence expansion, and asked specifically for the adoption of one of the suggestions made by the Imperial authorities in March 1931. A special force of an infantry battalion and an artillery battery should be stationed in India in peacetime to be transferred to Singapore in war. The men should be recruited for twelve years' service, of which three would be spent overseas; and the result would be an immediate contribution to Imperial defence, and the formation of a reservoir of trained men to be drawn on for an expeditionary force in the event of war.

In spite of the depression, cabinet felt bound to act; yet it remained fearful of public opposition and was firmly held in a European-wise tradition. Nothing was heard of the special force for the Far East. That suggestion remained a closely if not quite successfully guarded secret, which the Army hoped to operate one day. This apart, cabinet accepted its advisers' six-year plan for expansion, and the defence vote was slightly increased. A year later, in August 1934, Parliament was asked to approve a further and substantial increase in defence expenditure. The basis of appeal was broad and emotional—men should defend their homes and womenfolk

NZPD, Vol. 239, p. 875.

—and the Opposition complained that for six years there had been nothing like a reasoned government statement on defence policy.

Ibid., p. 755. Cf. Vol. 237, pp. 213, 255.

No serious attempt was made to educate Parliament or public opinion as to issues in defence and foreign policy, and in fact the Government was at some pains to conceal what it was doing.

There was much anxious debate between cabinet ministers, service chiefs and Treasury as to how a rearmament programme might be decided upon and financed over a period of years without recurrent reference to Parliament.

In October 1933 the GOC had drafted a short but coherent statement on the recent policy decisions. This was condensed into meaninglessness before publication. The Prime Minister solemnly announced on 13 October

Evening Post, 13 Oct 1933.

that the Government had ‘given consideration to the question of strengthening the defences of New Zealand and has come to certain definite conclusions.’ A beginning was to be made with improvements in aerial defence, but ‘the Territorial force has a responsible task to perform’; liaison with Australia would be improved; and certain naval vessels replaced in due course. Critics could be forgiven for thinking that nothing more than a gesture had happened, in spite of the misleading assurance that the Government's proposals had been decided ‘only after the closest consultation with the United Kingdom.’ Again, in August 1934, the Minister of Defence, J. G. Cobbe, vigorously denied that the Government's defence plans included preparations for an expeditionary force.

NZPD, Vol. 239, pp. 81, 84.

At this time the Territorial Force was expressly organised so that it could be promptly developed into an expeditionary force, the Army had detailed plans, approved by cabinet, for facilitating the transition, and a cabinet decision on defence policy bracketed the provision of an expeditionary force with local defence as being of primary importance in the general programme.

By 1935, in short, New Zealand had embarked on a significant though not very costly armaments expansion, which the politicians did not dare to publicise even though it followed traditional lines. This situation left the Navy and Air Force in a stronger position than the Army, which did not receive adequate political support to cure its lack of equipment and of standing in the community. Yet in the service view, which was tacitly accepted by politicians, an expeditionary force would be New Zealand's major contribution in any war then envisaged. This was made plain in March when the Chiefs of Staff produced a memorandum on the defence of New Zealand to guide the Prime Minister in the forthcoming conference in London. This document acknowledged the possibility of war with Japan, arising out of trade problems, rather than from hostility to the Empire or desire to conquer parts of it; nevertheless, the whole trend of argument swung away from the Pacific, and laid emphasis upon the possibility of war in Europe and methods of co-operation with Britain, if such a war should come. It was plainly stated that New Zealand must be prepared to send ‘the maximum expeditionary force possible’, a force which would be proportionately bigger than in 1914–18 because the population had grown. Peacetime organisation should be designed to ‘produce an expeditionary force of the maximum size in the shortest possible time’, and some definite understanding should be made, on which Great Britain could rely in wartime. It was expressly recognised that if Japan were an enemy ‘it would be difficult in the early stages to find the necessary naval escort for an expeditionary force’, but ‘in the case of a war in Europe or in the Middle East no insurmountable difficulties would arise’; and that was the kind of war which soldiers and statesmen alike anticipated. The alarm inspired by Japanese expansion, which had driven the same cabinet to action in 1933, had now evaporated. In April Forbes told his fellow prime ministers in London that ‘The Japanese question … was not a matter of special concern in New Zealand. The Japanese had made no demands on them and were consistently friendly.’ New Zealanders remembered that a Japanese cruiser had convoyed the first New Zealand Expeditionary Force, there was ‘a certain sentimental basis of friendship with the Japanese, and such feelings of irritation as arose in economic matters were relatively unimportant.’

At the time of the general election in November 1935 the situation was unchanged. Rearmament was being quietly carried out, and the Army knew that the provision of an expeditionary force was in prospect; but to avow this objective, or to make adequate preparations to achieve it, remained politically impossible. The suggestion would have affronted the optimistic and pacific temper of the community, and also alarmed a politically vocal minority that was conscious of New Zealand's position in the Pacific. The Government of Forbes and Coates accordingly prevaricated on the matter, and service conviction of the need for strong action was restrained by political expediency, rather than by countervailing argument.

In these circumstances the new Labour Government which took office at the end of 1935 naturally needed some little time to formulate its defence policy.

‘We have not so far decided our policy with regard to defence.’—F. Jones, Minister of Defence, Press, 10 Jul 1936.

None of its members had had cabinet experience before; nor had they been kept in touch with the developments culminating in the rearmament programme of 1934. They were anti-militarist and opponents of conscription; in so far as they had ideas on defence techniques they apparently believed in small, mechanised, highly trained forces, particularly the Air Force. From the first, however, they were impressed by the seriousness of the trend in world affairs, and to the pleased surprise of their opponents there was no check to the increase in defence expenditure begun in 1934. On the contrary, within their first two years of office they enunciated ‘a policy of rearmament’ which, said a conservative commentator, ‘ought to satisfy all reasonable criticism

Round Table, December 1937, p. 201; Contemporary New Zealand, p. 250.

.’ It included a considerable strengthening of the Navy, a vastly increased and independent Air Force, and a reorganisation of the Territorial Army which stopped short of conscription, but which was designed for expansion. The Government even expressed its sense of the great importance for New Zealand of the Singapore base, the construction of which the Labour Party in opposition had warmly criticised.

The Labour cabinet thus adopted, and in some respects strengthened, the defence programme of its predecessors: a programme based on the assumption that in any foreseeable war Japan would be friendly or, if hostile, neutralised by the Singapore base. The outlines of Imperial strategy were public property, and at this time were broadly accepted in both Australia

Round Table, December 1937, p. 131.

and New Zealand: on the outbreak of war in the Pacific a strong naval reinforcement would immediately sail to Singapore—and hold the base strongly enough to make it unduly risky for any substantial enemy fleet to attack either of the two Dominions.

Dominion, 22 Aug 1939, ministerial statement.

Service advice justified politicians in planning accordingly. Minor attacks plainly could not be prevented, and the calculation was that New Zealand might be raided by a cruiser or by armed merchantmen, which might bombard the ports and land parties of 200 men for each raiding ship.

NZPD, Vol. 246, p. 560.

New Zealand accordingly had a primary duty to prepare for dealing with attacks on this scale. Provided nothing more serious had to be contemplated, however, she had considerable freedom of action: freedom to think in terms of European commitments, of expeditionary forces, and of leisure to prepare for action behind the screen of the Royal Navy. On the other hand that freedom would be gravely limited should Japan seem likely to become a determined enemy, and would be instantly destroyed if there should be reason to suppose that Japanese forces might by-pass Singapore, or that in certain circumstances the British fleet might not be able to reinforce the base in times of crisis. Accordingly, New Zealand's thinking and emotional attitudes towards defence were necessarily dominated by judgments on the probable attitude of Japan and the strategic importance of Singapore in times of global warfare.

The attack on Manchuria in September 1931 caused some uneasiness, but relatively little public criticism in New Zealand. Most newspaper comment condemned Japanese methods, but recognised that Japan had a major economic problem to solve and that ‘the expansion of a virile and increasing people is inevitable

Otago Daily Times, 18 Mar 1933; McKinlay in Pacific Affairs, 1933.

.’ The country as a whole allowed its preoccupations with economic problems and the general trend of its strategic thinking to remain undisturbed by nightmares of immediate war with Japan.

A sharp new turn was given to the situation by Japan's renewed attack on China in August 1937. By contrast with 1931 and 1932, there was now an emphatic public reaction in New Zealand. A section of opinion, mainly conservative, which had long feared Japanese expansion as the spearhead of Asiatic reaction against the West, now pointed to visible proof of the danger, and found unaccustomed allies in powerful sections of the trade union movement. Railwaymen and watersiders saw this new outbreak as another fascist adventure of the pattern made familiar by Italy and Germany in Ethiopia and Spain, an adventure, moreover, which would extend from China to engulf the whole Pacific area under Japanese domination. They accordingly proclaimed a boycott on goods destined for Japan, and the Federation of Labour also urged its members to boycott Japanese imports. It was acknowledged that such measures would have little material importance in impeding the Japanese militarists; ‘but any action taken by New Zealand had a valuable propaganda effect in other countries’, and it was claimed that on this occasion the New Zealand watersiders led the world in holding up Japanese cargoes. The New Zealand Government took very seriously this vigorous action among its followers. There was a conference between cabinet ministers, officials of the Federation of Labour and the waterside workers, and it was agreed that the ships should be worked, but that the export of scrap iron should be prohibited in the interests of New Zealand industry. The campaign for a boycott of Japanese goods went on.

With this background Mr Jordan, as New Zealand's representative at Geneva and at the Brussels conference of November 1937, pressed for the application of the Covenant and deplored the failure to find some basis of collective action. In September 1938 New Zealand and Russia alone criticised the platonic resolution with which the Council of the League met China's appeal for help, and Jordan expressed his country's ‘sincere regret that the terms of the Covenant are not being collectively applied without qualification in conditions about which there is unfortunately no room for doubt.’ New Zealand maintained this general attitude through 1939. There is evidence that while Australia was cautious and feared that Britain might go too far in opposing Japan, New Zealand was uneasy at the possibility that principle might be sacrificed in an effort at ‘appeasement’. There was much criticism among rank and file members of the Labour Party of the so-called Tokyo Agreement of July 1939, when Britain recognised that ‘Japanese forces in China have special requirements for the purpose of safeguarding their own security and maintaining public order in regions under their control, and that they have to suppress or remove any such acts or causes as will obstruct them or benefit their enemy

Jones, Japan's New Order in East Asia, p. 150. It is perhaps noteworthy that this scholarly book deals with British policy in the Pacific virtually without consideration of the importance of that policy to Australians and New Zealanders.

.’ The Government, when pressed on the point, was non-committal but admitted that it had not known in advance the terms of the agreement between Britain and Japan.

The whole episode seemed to some New Zealanders to show not only the weakening of the British Empire in the Far East and Pacific but also that Empire policy in a matter vitally affecting New Zealand could still in emergencies be decided in London without the full consultation provided for in the constitution of the Commonwealth. Further, it left the impression that New Zealand was more anxious than Britain herself that a stand should be made against Japan. At a time when the Germans were seriously trying to persuade Japan that England was obviously her number one enemy,

Nazi-Soviet Relations, p. 70.

New Zealand among British countries had taken the strongest public stand against Japanese policy.

Between 1933 and 1939, in short, New Zealand opinion was reluctantly assimilating two disturbing facts: that in a new war Japan might not be an ally or even a friendly neutral, and that the consequence of Japanese hostility would be more serious to New Zealand than to those British statesmen who controlled Commonwealth policy in the Pacific. Realisation of responsibilities involved in being a Pacific country brought, therefore, not subservience to her predominant partner, but renewed willingness to differ from Britain. In this matter, political judgment was reinforced by a new sense of intimacy. If things went wrong in the Pacific the impact on the Commonwealth partners would be fundamentally different: as the perspicacious head of the New Zealand Army, General Sinclair-Burgess, noted during the earlier scare of 1933, ‘the difference in degree is that between embarrassment in the case of Great Britain and disaster in the case of New Zealand

Cf. Toynbee, World in March 1939, p. 32.

.’

Accordingly, as tension mounted, New Zealanders naturally rated higher than did Englishmen both the likelihood and the destructive possibilities of a Japanese move against a weakened Commonwealth. In February 1936, for example, the incoming government was told by its service chiefs that Australia and New Zealand were ‘open to attack as never before in their histories.’ The Singapore base, they noted, when completed ‘will act as some deterrent to Japanese activities’, but, they added, the British main fleet, the greater part of which would be required at Singapore to deal with a serious Japanese attack, could not move east of Suez if things were complicated in Europe.

GOC to Minister of Defence, 27 Feb 1936.

In December 1936 they returned to the attack with a forcible reminder that on any reasonable calculation the fleet would, for the foreseeable future, be tied firmly to European waters. The risk of invasion remained, therefore, unless New Zealand could obtain an explicit promise that an adequate fleet would arrive at Singapore in time.

GOC to Minister of Defence, 16 Dec 1936.

Thus prompted, the New Zealand delegation raised the matter at the Imperial Conference of 1937. ‘There was a feeling in New Zealand,’ said M. J. Savage, ‘that if the United Kingdom were hard pressed the Dominions in the Pacific would get little assistance from her.’ His view, he said, ‘was emphatically that all must sink or swim together.’ The delegation was reassured, but in general terms only, and in fact realised clearly enough that the reinforcement of Singapore in wartime would depend on the course of the fighting in the Atlantic. Indeed the British Government firmly resisted any attempts to extract from it the specific promise which New Zealand desired. As late as August 1938

SSDA to GGNZ, 4 Aug 1938.

she was notified that her Chiefs of Staff were not justified in assuming that the Navy would proceed to Singapore ‘in sufficient strength to serve as a strong deterrent against any threat to Commonwealth interests.’ ‘The standard of naval strength’ to be sent to the Far East ‘was still under consideration.’ In February 1939 the Imperial authorities for the first time said explicitly that Singapore would be reinforced if the Commonwealth were involved in war both in Europe and the Pacific: this promise was warmly welcomed by the New Zealand Chiefs of Staff, but they emphasised with some pain that the British pledge was silent both on the strength and timing of the reinforcement. The fact was that the period before relief, which was put at forty-two days in 1926, was now thought to be at least ninety days; and it was by no means clear whether the reckoning started with the outbreak of war or with the naval clearing of European waters. By 1939 the British promise to reinforce Singapore, which was the basis of Imperial strategy in the whole Pacific area, had been qualified almost out of existence.

According to Cordell Hull, Halifax told the American Ambassador on 22 March 1939 that, in spite of the British promise to Australia, the fleet could not be sent to Singapore. France, it was said, had vetoed the plan.—Jones, Japan's New Order, p. 149n

The resulting situation was regarded realistically in New Zealand. In 1933 the Army estimated that New Zealand would have to hold out alone for two months; in 1936 it put the period at six months, with the reflection that if the fleet could not in the end reach Singapore, Australia and New Zealand would have to defend themselves indefinitely from their own resources.

Conference of 28 Sep 1933; GOC to Minister of Defence. 27 Feb 1936

At the end of 1938 the New Zealand Council of Defence was told by its chief civilian official, C. A. Berendsen, that ‘New Zealand might well get no assistance from Great Britain for very many months or even years’; and the Navy spokesman ‘agreed that the British fleet could not come to Singapore for an indefinite period.’

If justified, these fears made nonsense of the traditional conception of New Zealand's wartime activity—an expeditionary force fighting in Europe or Egypt; for if New Zealand were in danger of invasion, no statesman could contemplate sending men beyond the Pacific area, nor even embarking them on transports unless the seaways were reasonably safe. During most of the period 1936–39 expert opinion appeared to be that New Zealand must face six months of initial isolation if the Commonwealth should be at war simultaneously with Germany and Japan—a circumstance all too likely to arise—and that her strategy must simply be to hold out until rescued. Her soldiers, however well equipped and well intentioned, might be land-bound indefinitely, and New Zealand's military effort be confined to the raw materials and the trickle of technicians and airmen who might slip through a blockade. Some experts added, indeed, that food and technicians would represent Britain's essential needs in any likely war better than an expeditionary force. New Zealand's manpower could perhaps best be employed in producing the food which Britain might be no longer able to draw from Denmark and the Argentine.

Such was the trend of military opinion. Its upshot coincided with views still influential in the Labour Party: that an expeditionary force would be strategically undesirable; and that preparations for it would be a militaristic gesture which could in any case be maintained only by conscription. The probable role of the Army, therefore, remained shrouded in mystery, and New Zealand's growing sense of peril in her own hemisphere had the paradoxical result of preserving chaos in her defence planning. The political decision remained unbreakable: New Zealand would stand with Britain in any crisis then imaginable. Yet technical preparations did not match that decision. It is true that no difficulty arose with the Navy, for it had always been understood that in wartime the New Zealand Division would pass under Admiralty control. New Zealand's willing acceptance of this arrangement had been reiterated and accepted in September and October 1935 when war with Italy had seemed possible. Nor was there much difficulty with the Air Force, which was expanding fast, and which expected to have two new squadrons of modern aircraft available for overseas service;

Contemporary New Zealand, p. 255.

though it may be noted that New Zealand preferred to train men for the RAF rather than provide units to relieve the RAF in the Far East. The real problem lay with the Army. Of all the three services its political position was the weakest, it faced the greatest psychological and economic obstacles to expansion, and its role in any future war was the hardest to define. Awareness of danger in the Far East and growing insistence on a specifically New Zealand policy towards Japan, while temporarily destroying the basic plan of a Europeanwise expeditionary force, laid no alternative task on the Army, and did virtually nothing to restore its prestige in the community. The most important concrete suggestion was the revival of the idea that New Zealanders should help garrison Singapore in peacetime; a suggestion made in private, and ill received, partly because of the notion that New Zealand troops might be used to maintain civil order. The apologist for the Army could say in general terms that New Zealand's military forces would undoubtedly be important if war came and that patriots should enlist in the Territorials: but such imprecision could make but little public impact. Volunteers, in the temper of the nineteen-thirties, needed cogent arguments, and a clearer conception of what they might be called upon to do.

The situation was in sharp contrast with that preceding the First World War. Then it was clear to all concerned that in a war with Germany an expeditionary force would be needed. The idea had a certain appeal, and in any case under the new system of compulsory service, peacetime training could be planned accordingly. In the nineteen-thirties public sentiment was on the whole unfavourable, and as late as June and July 1939 the Prime Minister, while appealing for recruits, gave ample assurance that no one would be compelled to serve overseas. The Government's professed policy was that New Zealand should defend herself and also British interests in the South Pacific, but should make no promise to send forces elsewhere; New Zealand would stand with Britain, but as to the disposition of her manpower would ‘wait until the time shows what we ought to do

NZPD, Vol. 254, p. 172.

.’ The Army was thus denied the tangible objective of an expeditionary force by official pronouncement as well as by commonsense calculation; nor was there any clearly conceived threat to New Zealand soil which could give emotional reality to plans for local defence. It was natural, therefore, that the Army should lag behind in the defence expansion programme launched in 1934: it continued to be desperately short of equipment and trained manpower, and army service ranked low in sentimental appeal.

The Government's plan to deal with the general situation was announced in August 1937. The aim was a small force of high mechanisation and efficiency, which could fill the threefold function: to garrison the main ports, to provide a small field force, with an eye to raiding parties attacking other parts of the country, and to build a cadre of skilled men who could in an emergency train recruits and quickly expand the Army to a division. The training was to be made more realistic and interesting and a special Reservist Force was created whose men were to receive vocational as well as military training. Late in 1937 a campaign was launched to attract recruits, appealing to the public ‘to make some sacrifice, and endeavour to infuse into defence some of the enthusiasm —almost religious in its devotion—which the average New Zealander shows towards the game of Rugby football

Round Table, December 1937, p. 203; Contemporary New Zealand, p. 253.

.’ The results of these efforts were disappointing. The roll of Territorials remained at about 8000, of whom, it was said, not more than one-third had completed their full training. There were plenty of volunteers for the Air Force, but till the eleventh hour the community as a whole lacked interest in the Army, and its weakness was such that in April 1939 there was doubt whether it could have provided without notice a unit of 500 well-equipped men for Singapore.

Statement by Minister of Defence, 17 Apr 1939.

In short, the Government's efforts to strengthen the Army made little progress, as was evident enough to interested citizens. The result was sporadic, but sometimes searching, criticism of this side of New Zealand defence policy. In August 1936 Parliament held what was its first full-dress debate on defence since the abolition of compulsory training, when the Opposition moved to refer back to the Government for consideration the annual report of the GOC Defence Forces.

NZPD, Vol. 246, p. 535.

Two months later a Defence League was established under the chairmanship of Mr William Perry, a Legislative Councillor and President of the Returned Soldiers' Association. In 1938 this organisation became really active, and the National Party became seriously concerned about the shortcomings of the country's defences. The opinion grew among soldiers, and among conservatives generally, that only compulsion could produce the men necessary to put the Army in order. Accordingly, the Government was pressed from many quarters to re-apply the existing compulsory service law for the benefit of the Territorials.

In answer to this campaign the Minister of Defence on 17 May 1938 gave a lengthy and detailed account of the Government's defence policy. The record was not unimpressive, but the Minister expressed conviction that 9000 would be an adequate peacetime strength for the Army, and admitted that the existing strength was 7400, of whom only 41 per cent had attended camp that year. The following day four colonels of the Territorial Force issued a manifesto declaring their conviction of the complete inadequacy of the system of land defence; and they said bluntly that the voluntary system had failed owing to lack of support for the Army by successive governments. Their precipitate action was widely publicised, but was in plain violation of military regulations. They were accordingly placed on the retired list, though cabinet told General Freyberg at the end of the following year that he could, if he wished, make use of their services in the Expeditionary Force then being organised.

In spite of this spectacular incident, public discussion on the Army during 1938 remained inconclusive. It was significant that in the election campaign of September-October 1938 the National Party, while castigating the Government for the inadequacies of its defence policy, refrained from advocating compulsory service. Certain public bodies, it is true, pronounced firmly in favour of conscription: the Farmers' Union in May, for instance,

Evening Post, 25 May 1938.

and the November conference of the Defence League.

Dominion, 18 Nov 1938.

Moreover, government spokesmen, under pressure, sometimes cautiously admitted that among the incalculable necessities of war, compulsion might turn out to be necessary.

e.g., Savage, in Dominion, 3 Jun 1938.

Yet to the commonsense view compulsory service in peacetime made sense only as a step towards the sending of a large-scale expeditionary force soon after the outbreak of a new war. The theoretical possibility of such an expeditionary force was, of course, present in army thinking, as for instance during the Munich crisis, when the Chief of the General Staff warned his officers that, if the enemy should be Germany alone, such a force would be quickly armed and despatched.

Memorandum of 16 Sep 1938.

Yet opinion, professional as well as lay, refused to accept the prompt despatch of an expeditionary force as the probable—or even the possible—consequence of war.

Contemporary New Zealand, pp. 262–3; NZPD, Vol. 251, p. 343 (Fagan); Evening Post, 27 Sep 1938 (Barnard).

No one questioned that the young men would flock to serve when fighting actually began. In the meantime, Territorial service had relatively little appeal to the community and it remains doubtful whether Government ‘support’ or renewed exhortations from older men could have made very much difference until the obscurity shrouding the New Zealand Army's role in a new war had been dispelled.

CHAPTER 7 The Eleventh Hour

THE intractable chaos of British Commonwealth strategy in the Pacific was surveyed with dignity and commonsense by a conference of defence experts drawn from Britain, Australia and New Zealand in Wellington in April 1939. For New Zealand thinking about defence this conference was a decisive experience: or perhaps, more accurately, would have been decisive if time for effective action had still remained. The meeting itself originated in a New Zealand suggestion, and New Zealand was the driving force throughout. For her officials and politicians the mere organisation of such a gathering was an education, apart from the material information which came to light, and the conference drew together the streams of foreign policy and strategic thinking which had at times seriously diverged. More specifically, it made an essential conversion within the New Zealand cabinet. The Prime Minister, M. J. Savage, was in this context the key person. Personally optimistic and anti-militarist, he resisted the political judgment that armed force in addition to good will might be necessary to resist evil; and he was repelled by the idea that New Zealand manpower should be sent to fight overseas. Accordingly, though his cabinet had approved of expanding preparations for defence, the emphasis lay on Air Force and Navy and technical expertise; and the Prime Minister himself was unimpressed by the need to strengthen the Army. In April 1939 he changed his mind. ‘The conclusions reached by the Pacific Defence Conference,’ he said later,

Evening Post, 23 Jun 1939.

‘convinced me of the necessity of having in New Zealand not only a modern Air Force and Navy, but also an Army reasonable in numbers and efficient, with a proper scale of modern weapons.’ In the remaining months of peace the Prime Minister threw his powerful influence into the strengthening of the Army in terms which in good faith repudiated the possibility of an expeditionary force, but in fact directly prepared for it.

The Defence Conference of 1939 arose from a request made by Savage to the Imperial Conference in May 1937 that there should be discussions between Britain, Australia and New Zealand on the strategic importance of the Pacific islands. Following up the idea a year later, New Zealand suggested a conference between these three countries on the ‘widest aspects’ of Pacific defence, a notion soon sharpened to mean the ‘strategic situation in the Western Pacific in its widest aspect and embracing all those political, economic and geographical considerations which would arise in a simultaneous war in Europe.’ The British Government approved, and recommended that the proposed conference should be held in Wellington forthwith. The Australian Government demurred, possibly because Australian politics were dislocated by the approaching need to find a new prime minister. Service chiefs and ministers were busy, it explained, and questions of higher policy, both political and strategic, should be discussed in London rather than in Wellington. It wished, in particular, to exclude discussion on one of the topics most interesting to New Zealand and Britain—the Pacific islands, with special reference to air routes and to American policy—and tied down its delegates to the discussion of technical service matters.

PM Aust to PM NZ, 29 Mar 1939 and 1 Apr 1939.

The United Kingdom, for her part, wished like New Zealand for a broadly based discussion; and the conference was important largely because this view in effect prevailed.

The preliminary discussions showed clearly the trend of New Zealand thinking and the nature of problems yet unsolved. The New Zealand Government was greatly impressed by the deterioration in the world situation since the Imperial Conference of mid-1937, and more particularly by the likelihood that trouble in the Pacific would coincide with a major European war. Not only did an attack by Japan seem more probable to New Zealanders than to Englishmen; if it came, the danger appeared to them to be much greater. There was plainly scepticism in New Zealand about the British axiom that Singapore would stand indefinitely in a global war and, while held, protect New Zealand from any attack more serious than sporadic bombardment and 200–men raiding parties. Current reports suggested the Japanese bases might even be out-flanking Singapore. No one in authority counted for a moment on prompt American rescue in a war against Japan, and not much comfort was drawn by laymen from study on the map of the relative positions of Singapore, Truk and Pearl Harbour—let alone San Francisco. Nor were existing preparations within the Western Pacific area satisfactory. Key islands were still virtually undefended, though small forces might well suffice to protect them. In defence matters there was virtually no liaison with Australia, New Zealand's closest neighbour, the ally to whom she was tied by virtual identity of strategic interests, and a vital source of supply. How, in fact, were New Zealand's forces to be equipped in the event of a Pacific war which everyone believed would involve a six-months' break in overseas communications? Her reserves of equipment had long been based on the needs of the first echelon of a hypothetical expeditionary force, it being assumed that the rest of the force would find its equipment at an overseas base. In 1936 the Army had asked that its reserves should be based on the needs of a whole division, a request presumably received sympathetically but without effective action.

GOC to Minister of Defence, 12 May 1936.

Even the modest orders recorded in 1938 could not be fulfilled by British manufacturers, who were fully occupied with the United Kingdom's own rearmament programme. At the beginning of 1939 the military equipment held in New Zealand was evidently inadequate for mobilisation; and her soldiers were anxiously inquiring where they could get more—in peacetime, let alone in war.

New Zealand's first preoccupation was, then, with the possible consequence of an attack by Japan timed to coincide with a European crisis, but her growing Pacific consciousness gave her an additional reason for interest in the islands of the Pacific area. In particular, it led her to participate in an obscure tussle between the two great powers on whom her safety depended. If Britain should be fully committed in Europe, the hopes of Australia and New Zealand lay in the slow movement of American opinion against those countries which, it so happened, menaced also the British Commonwealth.

Cf. vigorous over-statement by T. Dennett, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 18, p. 125.

At this time, however, American activity in the central Pacific was causing considerable apprehension. The immense possibilities of civil aviation brought great promise to a country so isolated as New Zealand and so dependent economically and culturally on overseas contacts; but it also brought embarrassing competition for potential bases. In the nineteen-thirties British and American interests were feeling their way towards trans-Pacific air routes, and great stress was suddenly thrown on possible air bases, both in islands of admitted ownership, and in countless others, many of them scarcely known, about which no government had been greatly concerned. Some spheres of influence were acknowledged, or at least persistently claimed, but there were numerous islands whose inclusion with the main groups was marginal, or where doubt might arise when the prizes had become valuable. In 1935 the United States acted in such a case by annexing Howland, Baker and Jarvis Islands, which Britain regarded as part of the Phoenix Group; and next year the claim was pushed to include Canton, Christmas and Enderbury Islands within the same group. Of these, Christmas Island was within the area patrolled by the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy. American claims, which were formally listed for the first time on 5 April 1939, included certain of the Cook Islands and Tokelaus which New Zealand had for years regarded as indisputably hers.

See map facing p. 195.

These proceedings naturally led to complex diplomacy, of which New Zealand was kept informed, and her opinion frequently asked. Great Britain agreed to discuss marginal cases, and ultimately accepted an American suggestion that Canton and Enderbury Islands should be jointly controlled for fifty years, without prejudice to ultimate ownership. Her view, however, was that claims for islands were connected with the general problem of trans-Pacific air routes, and that the four countries concerned—USA, Britain, Australia and New Zealand—should confer to plan a solution for the problem as a whole. Co-operation of several governments was clearly essential, and the possession of various islands could best be decided when the needs of the rival services had been studied in a joint political and technical discussion. The United States rejected this approach. She refused to confer on the broad problem of civilian aviation or to agree to the principle that the countries concerned should give each other reciprocal rights in their various territories. She laid claim to a string of islands which bit deep into territories long regarded as British, and which would have given a chain of potential air bases. American action at Canton, moreover, showed that in crucial cases the only claim she would recognise was that the claimant was actually developing the islands in question, and was not merely represented there by governmental officials. Between 1935 and 1939, then, there was something like a scramble to establish island claims in the central Pacific. Ostensibly it was a matter of legal definitions. Behind lay rivalry in commercial air routes, and perhaps behind this again, at least in American eyes, the possibility of a naval war against Japan.

New Zealand's policy in this tug-of-war behind the scenes was to support the British attitude, with perhaps slightly greater asperity than Britain herself. She clearly wanted to prevent British aviation in the Pacific from being swamped by America: therefore she wanted surveys to be pushed ahead, and took an active part in them. The cruisers Achilles and Leander were used in such surveys, and in October 1938 New Zealand willingly acted on a British request to prepare an air base on Christmas Island, one of the most important and most controversial of the islands concerned. She approved of discussions on marginal islands—while refusing to admit that any of hers fell within this category—and urged that, if necessary to win reciprocal rights, the British countries should refuse landing rights to the Americans.

In relation to the Pacific islands, then, as in relation to Japan, New Zealand had worked herself into a foreign policy mildly independent from that of the United Kingdom. Perhaps it would be fanciful to find here echoes of the Pacific imperialism of Grey and Vogel and Seddon. Yet New Zealand may well have been responding to the same basic factors which stung those elder statesmen to aspire to leadership of the British peoples in the Pacific area. To men of foresight, New Zealand's destiny was tied up with trade and communications in that area, no less than with her lifeline to Europe. She had, in fact, the embarrassment of an inescapable dualism: tied at once to Europe and the Pacific, she was deeply committed to Britain, yet was situated in an area where American was displacing British dominance. Some aspects of this change appeared to distress her Ministers more than their colleagues in London; but it was with British approval that New Zealand proposed for the conference agenda an item covering ‘Policy in relation to Trans-Pacific air routes and United States activities in the Pacific.’

The Pacific Defence Conference opened in Wellington on 14 April 1939. On the crucial issue of Singapore, the British delegation was firmly optimistic. The base would be reinforced, even in a simultaneous war against Germany and Japan. No crisis in the Mediterranean area, however severe, would interfere with the despatch of a fleet to the Far East, and it could reasonably be presumed that the Singapore base would hold out indefinitely. Thus protected from any risk of major attack, New Zealand could plan long-term co-operation along much the same lines as in the First World War. ‘Once New Zealand is involved in war,’ wrote the British Chiefs of Staff, ‘the best means by which her land forces can co-operate is by the formation of a division, as in 1914–18, and its eventual despatch for operations overseas wherever it can be employed most usefully. We suggest that in peace time the New Zealand Army should be organised with this role in view, so that the division could be despatched in as short a time as possible.’ Admiralty spokesmen also denied that New Zealand's overseas communications would be cut in the opening months of warfare against a combination of Germany and Japan. By ‘evasive routing’, they said, most ships would get through.

Sir R. Colvin on 14 Apr 1939.

The New Zealand delegation, it seems, remained respectfully unconvinced. They did not know that, at this very time, the British Government was pressing the United States to transfer its fleet to the Pacific on the ground that it would be unable to honour its promise to send a fleet to the Far East in the event of war.

Hull, Memoirs, Vol. I, p. 630. In May 1939 the Committee of Imperial Defence was to accept the view that ‘There are so many variable factors which could not at-present be assessed that it is not possible to state definitely how soon after Japanese intervention a fleet could be despatched to the Far East. Neither is it possible to enumerate precisely the size of the fleet we could afford to send’.

They could, however, recall facts placed before them in the past and draw upon commonsense. Their conclusion was plainly that the promise to reinforce Singapore was qualified so heavily that, in spite of its firm appearance, wise men would reckon on there being no fleet in the Far East for an indefinite period. Maybe they had gathered the substance of a decision reached about this time by the Admiralty, that the estimated period necessary for the relief of Singapore must be raised from 90 days to 180 after the outbreak of war.

General Percival's Report on Malaya, para. 22. (Supplement to the London Gazette, 26 Feb 1948.)

A reinforcement which could not arrive for at least six months after fighting began–and then presumably only if the Navy had been clearly victorious in European waters–was a reinforcement which should not be counted upon by those living in a menaced area. The New Zealanders accordingly judged that, in spite of Singapore, their country would be in danger of invasion in a global war: and the Americans based their strategy on the assumption that there would be no British battle fleet in the Pacific area.

Morison, United States Naval Operations, Vol. III, p. 49.

So far as concerned New Zealand, such conclusions were of political, not of military importance. They showed an attitude, which influenced wartime and post-war policy; they could not lead to adequate preparations to meet the eventuality that was feared. A hint of the reality was contained in a dialogue which then sounded almost flippant. Suppose, asked the New Zealanders, that Singapore has fallen and the reinforcing fleet has been smashed, how do we then defend New Zealand? ‘Take to the Waitomo Caves’, replied the British delegation. The exchange was significant. The British delegates refused to take seriously a fundamental factor in New Zealand thinking–that Singapore was vulnerable, and that with or without it, New Zealand was in danger. On the other hand, supposing New Zealand to be exposed to major attack, the preparations she could make were desperately limited by lack of industrial resources, local or overseas, even if she undertook a ruinous expenditure. The consciousness of danger, and of the impossibility of doing anything about it, was a factor in New Zealand statesmanship until the tide of Pacific warfare turned decisively in 1943.

Leaving speculation, the Defence Conference considered possibilities; and on this plane an easy reconciliation was found between the British and New Zealand viewpoints. It was not even necessary to raise forcibly the politically awkward problems of conscription and of an eventual expeditionary force. No express preparations had been made for such a force, yet it was agreed that New Zealand, if isolated, would need home defence. Therefore, it was said, let men be raised, ‘and if they are trained to defend New Zealand they will know how to defend other places too’: that is, strategic points for the protection of New Zealand which lay outside her own territory. Moreover, it was agreed, they would be eager to do so. ‘If you had the men here, you would not be able to stop them. If there were an overland route [to the battlefield] they would walk there.’ Accordingly, it was judged, if New Zealand prepared adequately for home defence, the question of an expeditionary force would settle itself, as soon as it should turn out to be possible to send men overseas.

In the upshot, the Defence Conference placed its authority behind a line of thinking already accepted by New Zealand soldiers; that the Army must be considerably strengthened with the immediate object of equipping it to deal with substantial raids–or even with major attacks–but with the ulterior hope that it would also be thus enabled to provide an expeditionary force at need. This policy–with explicit reference to an expeditionary force tactfully omitted–now became that of the New Zealand Government; and Major-General P. J. Mackesy, chief British military delegate, was invited to remain to advise as to details. Meanwhile, discussion at the conference showed where the crucial problem lay–in equipment rather than in men. British advice was to build up locally stocks to cover mobilisation as well as a period to allow reprovisioning from the United Kingdom; no time was mentioned, except that it must be longer than for reinforcing Singapore. No allowance had been made for New Zealand's needs, however, in estimating Britain's manufacturing capacity in wartime. The conference was told firmly that no provision had been made in the United Kingdom to make munitions for New Zealand after the outbreak of war, and that nothing would be done at the British end without firm orders, which should therefore be placed immediately. The situation was such, however, that there would be long delay in delivering anything ordered now. Nor could much help be expected from Australian industry. Local defence needs would absorb all that was being produced, and though expansion was not in itself difficult it would take time. Plans for the supply of munitions to New Zealand's forces were evidently in a rudimentary state as late as April 1939; and the conference could not do much more than lay bare the problem.

In dealing with the Pacific islands, New Zealand was in some sense the pacemaker, and her government was very conscious of the development of modern aviation which gave vastly increased importance to the islands in her neighbourhood. Fiji and Tonga, noted the Chiefs of Staff in December 1938, are ‘entirely undefended, they invite capture’. A Japanese expedition, once established, could be dislodged only by a major operation; meantime it would disastrously disrupt shipping and bring much of New Zealand within range of air attack. The New Zealand delegation, therefore, pressed upon the conference the strategic importance of the islands to the north. For her part she had already promised to garrison Fanning Island and offered to keep a brigade group ready to reinforce Fiji and other islands. The conference's general conclusion was that it was impossible to defend all islands that might be useful to the Japanese. Fiji, it was agreed, should be held and plans were prepared. For the rest, there must be reliance on small local militia forces to make landing difficult and a mobile force to deal with intruders. In May 1939 it was reported that small defence forces actually existed at Ocean Island, Fanning Island, and Tulagi. The plan was to make these forces strong enough to deal with raids by forces of up to 200 men; this, of course, being the official estimate of the strength of raids which might be expected by New Zealand itself.

The problem of the Pacific islands, however, obviously concerned friends as well as enemies, and the New Zealand delegation urged that a co-operative air route should be organised with the Americans by ‘the granting of full reciprocal rights’ to the aircraft of either nationality operating along a common route; though British countries should control the Tasman. It urged also that a British policy towards American claims on Pacific islands must be ‘formulated and agreed upon’. To many this insistence was ill-timed. The cardinal problem in the Pacific appeared to be that of planning for a war against Japan and Germany simultaneously, and no positive conclusions were reached on attitudes towards America. The New Zealand Government, however, remained intensely uneasy lest the Americans might, with the additional advantage of British preoccupation in Europe, oust British aviation from the Pacific and establish claims among the islands. This uneasiness was strongly expressed as late as November 1939, when New Zealand urged that the trans-Tasman link should be quickly established for reasons of prestige in the Pacific as well as for material and strategic purposes. The whole matter, however, was soon dropped by common consent, New Zealand being watchdog to the last, on the ground that discussions likely to irritate one's friends should be postponed till the enemy was beaten.

When the Defence Conference separated, General Mackesy remained behind at New Zealand's request to report on the state of her army: his report, together with the conference's own recommendation, set the pattern of New Zealand's preparations in the remaining interval of peace. Many of these preparations were technical, and beyond the scope of this volume; for example, possible air reconnaissance, and the organisation of forces to serve in the Pacific islands, and, more generally, the efforts made to obtain munitions, both for home defence and for the equipment of a possible expeditionary force. A good deal was done towards remedying weakness in liaison between the armed forces of the British countries. The conference showed, for example, that information flowed freely between Britain and New Zealand but that there was lacking the intimate co-operation given by personal contacts. The Australian and New Zealand navies evidently kept in close touch, but there was need for great improvement with the armies and air forces. In the remaining months of peace, some advance was made in these directions. In the political field, the conference made plain the corresponding need to improve cooperation with the Government of Australia on matters of broad policy. This problem had been raised from New Zealand in September 1938, when it was pointed out that the two countries often got information about each other's plans through their mutual contact with the British Government. New Zealand wanted to ‘establish the principle of complete mutual interchange of information between Governments as opposed to between individual services’, and favoured periodical conferences.

Documents relating to New Zealand's Participation in the Second World War, Vol. I, p. 338.

Australia's reply had been cautious, and her partial acceptance of New Zealand's proposals did nothing to bridge the considerable difference in point of view between the two governments as revealed in the whole story of the 1939 conference. At this stage, it appears that New Zealand rather than Australia was pushing for closer political liaison between the two countries, and for a more independent line in Pacific policy. Nor is there much evidence of change in this matter before the Japanese entered the war.

The most serious problem where political decisions were involved, and one which was underlined by the Defence Conference, was that of strengthening New Zealand's army. At this time the Army consisted, in theory, of 9000 men, mainly part-time Territorials, though with a core of professional soldiers. This was indeed a tiny and ill-trained force; yet in 1939 many New Zealanders, civilians and servicemen, too, were frankly doubtful as to whether, in the new war, New Zealand's effort should or could be to produce large numbers of infantry. It might rather be to find a relatively small number of specialists in mechanised warfare, and for the rest to keep up the production of food and raw materials and perhaps to improvise a new range of industries. In these circumstances the Army remained the Cinderella of the forces, and British soldiers sometimes hinted that it could not have dealt satisfactorily even with those minor attacks which might penetrate the screen of a successful Royal Navy. In the view of British advisers an increase was needed for home defence, and such an increase, it was agreed, would enable New Zealand to help others as well as herself. On 4 April 1939 the New Zealand Chiefs of Staff said that if the Territorials were now increased by 6000–that is, to divisional strength–a reasonably trained force could be made available for service overseas at fairly short notice'. Three weeks later the Defence Conference recommended such an increase; this, it reported, together with increases to the Regular Army, would ‘provide a complete organisation with trained leaders and trained reserves to ensure the security of New Zealand itself against any likely scale of attack, and also to facilitate the rapid organisation and completion of training of the Territorial Force on the outbreak of war.’

The Governor-General, Lord Galway, farewells the First Echelon at Parliament Buildings, Wellington, 3 January 1940 black and white photograph of soldiers ready to leave

Evacuation from Greece, April 1941 black and white photograph of soldiers resting

Vice-Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, C-in-C Mediterranean, and Major-General B. C. Freyberg on Board HMS Phoebe after the evacuation of Crete, May 1941 black and white photograph of navy

The ship's company of HMS Achilles marching through Auckland on 23 February 1940, on their return after the Battle of the River Plate black and white photograph of soldiers marching

The Home Guard: rifle instruction black and white photograph of soldiers with guns

Home Guardsmen about to move off on manoeuvres black and white photograph of soldiers

Members of the Women's War Service Auxiliary take part in a ‘Don't Talk’ campaign, November 1941 black and white photograph of women soldiers

Mrs Roosevelt inspecting the Wrens at HMNZS Philomel, September 1943. Second from left in front is Commondore Sir Atwell Lake, Chief of the Naval Staff

black and white photograph of women soldiers in inspection

Drinking milk on the wharf, Wellington, June 1942 black and white photograph of soldiers drinking milk

UNITED STATES MARINES IN NEW ZEALAND Marines marching to their camp near McKay's Crossing, Paekariki, July 1942 black and white photograph of soldiers from usa

The Rt. Hon. Peter Fraser is welcomed at Washington Left to right: Lord Halifax, British Ambassador to the United States; Brigadier-General Patrick Hurley, United States Minister to New Zealand; Hon. Walter Nash, New Zealand Minister to the United States; Rt. Hon. Peter Fraser; and Mr Cordell Hull, Secretary of State

black and white photograph of dignitiaries

Rt. Hon. J. G. Coates black and white photograph of coates

Lieutenant-General Sir Bernard Freyberg and Mr S. G. Holland at Divisional Headquarters in Italy, April 1945 black and white photograph of two men

Hudsons of No. 3 Squadron leaving Whenuapai in the early morning for the forward area, October 1942 black and white photograph of soldiers in front of airplanes

Mud in the Kaimai Ranges – 3 Division manoevres in New Zealand black and white photograph of soldiers standing

Thus did the arguments interlock; and the evolution of opinion in the Labour Party left no doubt that they would be accepted. There was, however, a week or two of confusion after the conference, in which the problems of defence were discussed by the Prime Minister in statements which must have caused torment to his advisers, and which are interesting as showing the lingering resistance even at this stage to traditional forms of defence. First he was reported as having said that ‘My aim is a home defence force of at least 50,000 men, independent of overseas sources for arms, ammunition and other essentials’.

New Zealand Herald, 26 Apr 1939.

When there was some newspaper discussion of the provision of uniforms for these men, Mr Savage replied sharply that the Government had not been talking about 50,000 Territorials. ‘It has talked about a citizen army in which men would not be dressed up in uniform, but could go about their business feeling that they were citizens and soldiers at the same time, not goose-stepping up and down the country in uniform and spending hundreds of thousands a year in doing the job’.

Evening Post, 4 May 1939.

Needless to say, these amorphous proposals came to nothing. The Prime Minister was doubtless feeling his way, and reaching that personal conviction which was a major factor in preparing New Zealand for the crisis. The Government's policy when announced on 22 May was as recommended by the Defence Conference–that is, the enrolment of 6000 more Territorials. To supplement them, all able-bodied men were called upon to enrol in the National Military Reserve. This force had been established in the previous October and had been confined to ex-servicemen–out of those now enrolling it was proposed that 5000 with previous military experience would be called up in the event of a national emergency.

Evening Post, 23 May 1939.

Once the policy had been determined, there was nothing maladroit about Mr Savage's appeal for recruits. He spoke indeed from a position of unique personal strength. The very cloudiness of his past thoughts on the subject cleared him from any suspicion of militarism–his conception of defence had always been based on that of a population who could be relied upon to do the decent thing because of their basic goodness of heart and because Labour's social programme had removed the source of evil. With this programme he was popularly identified. A successful radio personality had convinced countless New Zealanders of his manifest kindliness and faith in humanity.

It would be hard to imagine a better equipped recruiting agent for the New Zealand of 1939, and on 22 May his campaign was launched in a series of national broadcasts. As long-term policy, said the Prime Minister, ‘Let us in God's name do all that we can to restore the reign of sanity, good faith and law.’ Yet in the world as it is, good will must be matched by powerful and skilful selfhelp. Some say, he hinted, that the militarism of dictators must be matched by a like militarism and dictatorship in their opponents: ‘I say with profound conviction that democracy can be trusted to do, and to do freely and quickly, what is necessary for its self-preservation’. Therefore he called confidently for volunteers: the Government could supply weapons, but the people must supply the men to use them. No fear of being sent abroad on half-known causes need deter volunteers: the training was ‘for home defence, that is, the defence of New Zealand in New Zealand. It is with a view to repelling attacks against our own shores that I ask them to prepare themselves. I am not asking them to go to war, but to be prepared if war comes to them.’ By joining one of the defence forces, said Mr Savage, they would be helping themselves and helping Britain; and they would surely find in their association for national defence the same kind of social satisfaction that they drew from their association in sport and in civilian bodies of all kinds; incidentally, there was a promise that the normal Saturday's sport would not be interfered with by military duties. If the overseas menace passed without the war which all feared, ‘they will still be able to say that they had a certain organisation, an appreciation of each other's requirements and of the development of the idea of service. There is nothing bigger on this earth. It teaches men how little they can do single handed and how much they can do united

Press, 31 May 1939.

.’

The recruiting rate immediately increased: in June, 1550 men joined the Territorials, as compared with an average of 530 in the three months February-April. Yet to some the flow seemed pitifully slow, and there was a renewed demand for compulsory military training. A resolution advocating it was passed at the NZRSA Conference on 22 June, and a few days later when the Address-in-Reply debate opened the Opposition took a much more definite line on the matter than it had in the past. Colonel Hargest said that ‘We stand for universal military training for home defence, and we consider that if citizens desire to enjoy all the rights and privileges of a British democracy they should be prepared to do their share towards defending them’.

NZPD, Vol. 254, p. 36.

Most other opposition members spoke strongly in favour of compulsory service. However, the Government still stood firmly against peacetime conscription. Labour tradition was strongly against it, and the idea was repugnant even to those who could contemplate the possibility of compulsion in times of war. This, it seems clear, was already the position of Savage and of Peter Fraser, who was to succeed him as Prime Minister in 1940; when the nation had its back to the wall, suggested Savage in mid-1938, compulsion may prove necessary, but ‘we will not begin with human flesh and blood’ or allow some men to profiteer while others are dying.

Dominion, 3 Jun 1938.

That conscription of wealth would precede conscription of manpower became the stock formula of Labour speakers whenever the latter problem had to be discussed.

In the meantime, however, it is doubtful if, even if they had wished, the members of cabinet could have carried the Labour movement with them on compulsory military training. If diehard opponents of conscription had been added to critics who complained that cabinet's financial policy was too conservative, the position of the party leadership might have become precarious. Voluntary recruiting continued, therefore. In the last three months of peace over 6000 men enlisted in the Territorials, the roll of whom at the end of August stood at nearly 17,000. In addition roughly 10,000 men with military training had volunteered for the National Military Reserve.

Last-minute conversion to the need for strengthening the Army was paralleled to some small extent in other and less publicised matters. In particular, brisk work was tardily done to fill a serious gap in New Zealand's preparations: that of the linkage between the three armed services, and between all of them and the civilian organisation of the country. This matter had a long history, for those who grasped the existence of the problem were few in number and argued a politically unattractive case. Yet there were not lacking among service chiefs those who realised that modern warfare would clearly demand, sooner or later, the redirection of the country's whole economic effort. The adjustment from peace to war could not be left to chance even in so small a community as New Zealand. Someone had to hold the balance among the armed services, and between them and civilian life, and New Zealand's efforts as a whole had to be integrated with those of her overseas associates. Moreover, detailed planning was essential as well as decision on broad questions of policy: and policy-making, if it were to be better than improvisation, must build on intimate knowledge of existing facts and possibilities in New Zealand as well as on an understanding of the needs of world strategy.

Ultimately the responsibility in such fields must rest on cabinet, and particularly on the Prime Minister. Nevertheless, the lessons of the First World War showed clearly the need for planning ahead of urgent need and the utility of well organised professional institutions to guide statesmen through problems impossibly complex for last-minute study.

Such lines of thought demanded a departure from New Zealand's general tradition, namely, that a few key men should know everything and give decisions without interference by specialists. They demanded, too, that something more systematic than personal contacts between individuals should integrate the work of the different branches of the armed services, and plan defence in terms of civilian as well as of military organisation. Overseas models were, in fact, not lacking. Some institution was needed on the model of the British Committee of Imperial Defence to link together the research and policy-forming work of politicians, servicemen and civilian departments, and to assure that when action was needed, it could be taken promptly. The Committee of Imperial Defence was, of course, an active body in Britain during the years before 1914. It was a group of interlocking committees, covering all departments that would be concerned with the outbreak of war, but crowned by a small ‘Prime Minister's Committee’ which could ensure effective action. In such a body the transition from peace to war could be organised as a national problem; and mere prudence dictated that every department should know its function in any crisis and have confidence that the government machine as a whole was proceeding according to a coherent plan, and dealing with contingencies that had been foreseen. One of the major functions of the Committee of Imperial Defence was, therefore, to compile and keep up to date the overall plan, embodied in a complex set of documents which came to be known as the ‘War Book’.

The Imperial Conference of 1911 had recognised the need for some such body in every dominion; but action lagged. In 1920 an effort was made in New Zealand to organise an advisory committee, and it met once. In 1928 the British Government told the Dominions that its own War Book was complete, and sent out a description of it and of the work of the Committee of Imperial Defence, in the hope that this would be of value to those drafting the Dominions' War Books. It also raised the whole question of imperial defence, the function of the CID and the need for defence committees in the Dominions. The New Zealand Minister of Defence, T. M. Wilford, discussed the matter with his service chiefs, and memoranda were drafted for the Prime Minister adapting British practice to New Zealand conditions. But then the suggestion lapsed, and was lost to sight under the waves of economic depression, in spite of awkward reminders from London that something should be done about a New Zealand War Book. At the Imperial Conference of 1930, for example, it appeared that Australia, Canada, South Africa and India had made considerable progress, but New Zealand had achieved nothing. The advent of Hitler at length gave new stimulus: in February 1933 the Prime Minister said that the War Book should be pushed ahead; and, after considerable service prompting, announced in October his decision to form a New Zealand section of the Committee of Imperial Defence.

It met for the first time on 15 November 1933 and was addressed by three cabinet ministers; and a series of sub-committees got promptly to work. Yet the way remained hard. Outside of a few keen servicemen, of whom Major W. G. Stevens became secretary, there was little appreciation of the magnitude of the task in hand. An under-staffed Prime Minister's Department and cabinet secretariat could not undertake their natural function of administering the new co-ordinating committee. Army officers who acted as secretaries to sub-committees were distracted by other duties. Moreover, the structure was incomplete; the New Zealand Committee of Imperial Defence was essentially an affair of officials, civilian and military. It lacked the Prime Minister's committee of British precedent, the direct link with cabinet which would have given both leadership and the prospect of action. As it was, cabinet ministers could find no time to consider CID papers, let alone press forward its work which, in cautious official phraseology, ‘proceeded with no great enthusiasm or result till November 1935’. An impasse had been reached, with preparatory work piling up and the bridges to link up government departments still unbuilt.

Towards the end of 1935 the Committee itself worked out plans to make action at last effective. The key man must be the Prime Minister, in whose office an adequate secretariat should be lodged and to whom the organisation–soon to be re-christened the Organisation for National Security–should have direct access. The group of sub-committees working on specific problems should be crowned, as in Britain, by a Prime Minister's committee attended by ‘appropriate ministers and the Heads of the Fighting Services.’ A senior civil servant should be sent to the Imperial Defence College and given experience of the British Committee of Imperial Defence, and then appointed secretary to the New Zealand organisation with status as Assistant Secretary to the Permanent Head of the Prime Minister's Department. This scheme was recommended to Cabinet on 20 December 1935, just after the change of government, with reminders in March and August of the following year.

It was late in the day for such a gap in effective planning to be tolerated; and in March 1937, with nothing yet achieved, the matter was taken up again by uneasy servicemen. Paymaster Commander E. L. Tottenham, as Naval Secretary, had long been fighting for a more efficient organisation at headquarters; and the Chiefs of Staff now asked with some emphasis for a Council of Defence composed of the Prime Minister, Minister of Defence, Chiefs of Staffs of the three services, and such other persons as the Prime Minister might appoint. Here was a Prime Minister's committee on the British model, strong enough to co-ordinate the policy of the defence departments and to direct the work of the sub-committees of the Organisation for National Security–work involving almost all government departments. It could keep contact with parallel bodies in Britain and other dominions, and should be served by a secretariat in close contact with the Prime Minister's Department. It was planned as an advisory body, which would propose action to cabinet: a means of focusing expert advice, so that politically responsible action could be prompt and well informed.

The general scheme was at last approved, and in May 1937 the Council of Defence was created. Major Stevens was accordingly established within the Prime Minister's Department with the triple function of Secretary to the Organisation for National Security, to the Council of Defence, and to the Chiefs-of-Staff Committee. The means were thus formally provided by which the planning of New Zealand's war effort, military and civil, could be studied in a systematic way through sub-committees, their reports co-ordinated, and recommendations placed before Cabinet in a form suitable for quick decision.

Whether actual achievement was greatly hastened is another matter. Even after Munich the Chiefs of Staff complained that Cabinet was dilatory in giving decisions on their recommendations, and as late as August 1939 the Manpower Committee could not go ahead because it had had no ‘indication of the Government's view of manpower problems in war’. Nor was the necessary administrative machine built up with any sense of urgency. Within ONS itself all depended on one man, Major Stevens, for a year or more, both for the organisation of committee work and the drafting of reports. It was only in the course of 1938 that the secretarial work of various committees was gradually taken over by the departments likely to be most concerned, and it was not till September 1938, the month of Munich, that the ONS got a civilian Assistant Secretary.

Ill provided as it was, the ONS grappled manfully with problems of central planning, aided by recurrent crises in Europe. In September 1938, it seemed, an effective beginning had scarcely been made in the War Book which would guide every department through the transition to a state of war; in that month, wrote Stevens, ONS ‘achieved more … than in the previous three and a half years of its history’; ‘during the crisis all departments were most helpful and the work advanced rapidly’. With relaxed tension, however, pressure still was necessary to finalise details and ensure revision; as late as 12 June 1939 it was still necessary for the Prime Minister to ask all departments concerned to have their sections of the book complete by the end of July. As tested in the outcome, the work was well done, and just in time.

Other aspects of the work depended on factors harder to control. No efforts made in New Zealand in 1939 could significantly increase the equipment available for the armed forces, nor, short of conscription, produce a wholly adequate number of recruits. From time to time, for example, there was talk of producing military equipment locally, and in April the Defence Conference recommended that New Zealand's capacity to make military equipment should be explored. The New Zealand delegation ‘pointed out that if any armament production capacity were to be inaugurated in New Zealand its creation must depend upon the provision of basic industries such as [an] iron and steel industry’. This cautious pomposity did not conceal the fact that nothing whatever could be done beyond the frantic, ingenious improvisation which in wartime did enable New Zealand industry to do useful work with existing resources. There was a certain industrial development in New Zealand between 1935 and 1939. It is, of course, debatable whether much of this was due to direct government action, except in so far as public policy was responsible for a general inflationary movement, and for the system of import control imposed in 1938. Cabinet was, however, conscious of the relevance of industrial activity to warfare. Thus Mr Savage said in March 1939, ‘…it is our bounden duty to prepare for the worst, not only in defence along ordinary lines, but in industrial development upon which the defence of the country will largely depend

AucklandStar, 22 Mar 1939.

.’

So far as manpower was concerned, difficulties were not economic but political. By common consent, a national register was the essential foundation for any intelligent planning, and on 25 January 1939 the relevant ONS committee pressed cabinet for the compilation of a compulsory register of the country's manpower, and failing that a voluntary register–‘The Committee desire to put forward the view that the only method which allows time for planning ahead and for obviating confusion is a compulsory register in peace; but it must be made clear that this almost inevitably leads on to full compulsory control from the outset of the war’. Here lay the crux of the matter. The unwillingness of cabinet to treat conscription as anything more than a remote possibility has already been noted, and despite the efforts of the committee the decision to compile a register was not taken until after the outbreak of war.

A further difficulty impeding action lay in the official estimate of the shape likely to be taken by the approaching crisis. Nothing effective could be done against a full-scale Japanese attack, but short of this there was reason to fear a war on two fronts, in which New Zealand would be isolated. Logic dictated, therefore, preparations to deal with an indefinite interruption in supplies, and with a huge accumulation of perishable produce in New Zealand. A good deal was actually done to build up reserves, in spite of acute shortage of overseas funds. Not only did manufacturers build up their own stocks of key materials with the encouragement and, in some cases, the financial assistance of the Government, but reserves of certain commodities were purchased and stored by government departments. For instance, £42,000 worth of tinplate together with small quantities of tin and lead were stored by the Public Works Department against a possible United Kingdom order for tinned foodstuffs. So far as New Zealand's own perishable produce was concerned, little was in fact achieved. In July 1939 the Supply Committee of the ONS had approved a recommendation from one of its subcommittees urging that meat companies be compelled to increase their refrigerated space and that the Government itself should import equipment to enable still further increases to be made. No further action, however, seems to have been taken on the proposal before war broke out–nor, with Japan temporarily neutral, did it prove to have been necessary. Any tardiness shown here was justified by the event; and though it might have been ideally desirable to make preparations against this and other hypothetical dangers, the arguments against making them–particularly when as in this case they involved a drain upon scarce overseas funds–are obvious enough.

In the upshot, New Zealand entered the war better prepared, psychologically, technically and administratively, than might have been anticipated in view of her far from warlike past. Fortune favoured: the war against Japan, against which she could not have armed herself or her economy, was postponed till, with American help, it could in fact be faced. For the war as it actually evolved, the channels of her co-operation had been clearly marked out as regards Army, Navy and Air Force alike. The men were there, untrained it is true, but eager; and the machinery, military and administrative, was there, much of it built at the eleventh hour and untried but ready for use. To have done much more–for example to have raised and trained an expeditionary force and to have had it ready for export on 3 September 1939–would have been politically impossible. It would also have been of doubtful strategic wisdom in view of New Zealand's situation and of the professional advice received. New Zealand moved into line slowly, reluctantly, and in response to irresistible pressure; but for the particular task in hand she was not ill-equipped.

CHAPTER 8 Explosion

ON 19 September 1922, H. A. L. Fisher cast round in his well-stored mind to find examples of extreme political improbability, and he asked of the foreigners assembled at Geneva the rhetorical question: what would be the attitude of New Zealand if asked to fight because a threat to the eastern frontier of Poland involved Great Britain through a treaty of mutual guarantee? The answer was to Fisher and his audience so obvious that it was a conclusive argument against Britain entering into any such treaty without the most careful study and forethought.

Procès verbaux de la troisième Commission, Troisème Assemblèe, 19 Sep 1922.

Nevertheless when New Zealand first declared war it was in fulfilment of a guarantee not very different from that imagined by Fisher, though entered into under conditions the reverse of those which he said were indispensable. The guarantee to Poland meant the abandonment of established policies. It was given in haste to meet an emergency, an improvisation on the part of disillusioned and indignant men which formed no part of ‘a coherent plan of action

Times Literary Supplement, 14 Sep 1951, p. 574.

.’ The objections which Fisher envisaged in 1922 as being too obvious to need mention were completely ignored, both when the guarantee was given in March and when it was honoured in September 1939. It would, in fact, have been hard to devise a more challenging issue for those in New Zealand inclined to favour isolation, or even caution in accepting risks originating in the Old World. Yet her involvement in eastern Europe was quietly accepted by a government which had pushed its claim for independence in policy-making beyond the point of embarrassment to fellow members of the Commonwealth.

The policy, later stigmatised as ‘appeasement’, which culminated in the Munich agreement of September 1938, but which was sustained till after the extinction of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, had some fair claim to be considered an agreed policy of the British Commonwealth. Even New Zealand with her general firm support of collective security did not oppose the appeasement of Germany as decisively as she did that of Italy. The prolonged crises of Abyssinia and Spain not only permitted policy to be formulated: their circumstances made of the League a forum in which small countries had opportunity, and even encouragement, to express themselves. In Hitler's case, however, his victims submitted quickly, immediate practical obstacles to effective action seemed insuperable, and the circumstances provided neither constitutional occasions nor convenient opportunity for serious debate within the League of Nations. Moreover, the leaders of the New Zealand Labour movement had long held the view, widely spread in the English-speaking world, that Germany had been badly treated at Versailles, and tended to apply, to the benefit even of Nazis, its basic axiom that men behave decently when well and generously treated.

For all their clarity as to the means proper to be adopted for the remedy of grievances, therefore, Mr Savage's cabinet was disposed to link with firmness of principle a willingness to contemplate peaceful change. His personal attitude was expressed at the 1937 Imperial Conference when he blamed the British Government for its acquiescence in German acts of lawlessness, but also laid stress on the necessity for rectifying legitimate German grievances. He suggested a world conference which ‘would review the Treaty of Versailles and all its works and would give Germany a new start’. What he had in mind seemed to be not so much a territorial redistribution as an effort to improve Germany's economic position. He did not completely exclude the restoration of Western Samoa to Germany as part of such a general settlement but pointed out that the welfare of the native inhabitants must be the primary consideration.

There were, of course, clearer heads than Savage's at work, and the German-New Zealand Trade Agreement of September 1937 emerged from considerations of practical advantage rather than from vague idealism. It was, in fact, practical considerations which determined New Zealand's uneasy acquiescence in the last moves of the Czechoslovak crisis. When Chamberlain on 28 September 1938 dramatically announced his decision to fly to Munich, the New Zealand cabinet asked that he ‘be informed that they most earnestly support his continued and determined efforts for the peace of Europe and the world which they sincerely trust will be crowned with success

GGNZ to SSDA, 19 Sep 1938.

.’ Cabinet declined, however, to join in the chorus of praise for ‘peace in our time’; in expressing their relief when the Munich Agreement was concluded, they remarked that they ‘earnestly trust that the basis of settlement is such as will prove to be a lasting safeguard of world peace, founded on justice and order between nations

Ibid., 30 Sep 1938.

.’ The New Zealand Government may very well have felt that the obvious choice in September 1938 lay between appeasement and an immediate war of the first magnitude. To chide the British Government for choosing the first alternative would have been a very different thing from arguing that Britain should not have steered so very clear of the relatively small risk of hostilities with Italy in 1936.

In short, there is reason to think that the New Zealand cabinet disapproved of the British Government's conciliatory policy; but its attitude was not publicly defined. To that extent the Dominion was associated with that policy, and after Munich assumed, like everyone else, that it would be continued. The Munich settlement had, in fact, strengthened a consideration already powerful: the sheer strategic impossibility of resisting an eastward move by Germany. This had been acknowledged by Eden to the 1937 Imperial Conference. Six months before Munich, with the Czech army intact and well equipped, the British ambassador in Prague—and the British Prime Minister in discussions with the French—had insisted that the Western Powers could not protect their friends in eastern Europe; the threat of war from the west could only be a bluff, because if fighting once began Bohemia must be submerged. The utmost that Britain and France could do would be to reconstitute Czechoslovakia when they had beaten Germany.

Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-39, Third Series, Vol. I, pp. 55, 85.

In January 1939 the British Chargè d'Affaires in Berlin wrote plainly that Britain could not guarantee the status quo in central and eastern Europe, but that she could keep out of the coming war by squarely facing this fact, and by cultivating good relations with the more moderate Nazis.

Ibid., Vol. III, p. 563.

The implication was plain, and it was drawn by the German ambassador in London in January 1939. Of ‘authoritative circles’ there, he wrote that ‘It can be assumed that, in accordance with the basic trend of Chamberlain's policy they will accept a German expansionist policy in Eastern Europe

Documents on German Foreign Policy, Series D, Vol. IV, p. 367.

.’ Chamberlain himself gave a friendly response to Hitler's speech of 30 January 1939, which hinted broadly enough at this assumption.

In these circumstances it is not surprising that established British policy stood the first shock of Germany's extinction of Czechoslovakia on 15 March. Chamberlain's own first comment was cautious, with the suggestion that it was only the method employed that was at fault. New Zealand press comment on the whole followed the same line: after Munich the remnants of the Czech state were at the mercy of Germany, and her action, although deplorable, was not altogether surprising and made no fundamental change in the European situation. The pressure of the following fortnight was, however, to reverse completely the pattern of British policy.

This was in part due to the impression created by Hitler, perhaps misleadingly, that he intended a further immediate drive eastwards. After occupying Bohemia and Moravia the Germans launched a ‘psychological offensive’ which constantly shifted its direction from one part of eastern Europe to another. On 22 March Lithuania accepted a German ultimatum and ceded Memel, on the following day Germany proclaimed a protectorate over Slovakia, and Rumania—under pressure—signed a trade agreement with Germany. Above all, German pressure against Poland steadily increased and by the time the British guarantee to Poland was decided upon Cabinet did not know, Chamberlain said later, that ‘Poland might not be invaded within a term which could be measured by hours and not by days

Hansard, Vol. 351, cols. 1876–7.

.’ All this had its effect not only directly on the feelings of members of the Government but indirectly through its impact on British opinion, notably in the Conservative Party. On 28 March thirty-four government supporters tabled a motion urging the formation of a national government.

In blunt general terms, many men judged that the time had come to call a halt to Hitler, and therefore to take a stand beside his next prospective victim. Yet such reactions had an emotional, even a quixotic, quality of a kind unlikely in themselves to lead a responsible government to reverse a well established and logically defensible attitude. In particular, they provided no answer to the obvious question: how could British or French forces operate in eastern Europe? In this case, however, there was a powerful underlying apprehension of a more immediate and less romantic kind. On 25 January 1939 the British Government told the New Zealand Government of its fear that Hitler was ‘considering an attack on Western Powers as a preliminary to subsequent action in the east

This cable was along the same lines as a message from Viscount Halifax to the Embassy in Washington on 24 January 1939, printed on pp. 4–6 of Documents on British Foreign Policy, Third Series, Vol. IV. Documents released since the war suggest that, at the time the guarantee to Poland was given, Hitler did in fact intend to attack first in the west rather than the east, and in particular had then no firm plans for military attack on Poland; but the attack on the west was not scheduled to take place for some years.—Templewood, Nine Troubled Years, p. 344. See in particular de Mendelssohn, The Nuremberg Documents pp. 99, 100, 120, 140–1; also Hinsley, Hitler's Strategy, p. 2.

.’ This estimate that Hitler was bent on an early war with the Western Powers seems to have prevailed first with Lord Halifax and then with the rest of the British cabinet in the critical days of late March.

At the end of March 1939 the British Government evidently saw two alternative dangers developing in eastern Europe. The first was that Poland would be quickly eliminated, as a political force, either by a lightning military attack, or by being subjected to such pressure that she would submit promptly to German political and economic demands. On 28 March the British Government told the New Zealand Government that it thought Germany's purpose was gradually to neutralise the countries of central and eastern Europe, to ‘deprive them of their power to resist and to incorporate them in the German economic system. When this has been done, the way will have been prepared for an attack on Western European powers’. The second danger apprehended in London was of a more urgent kind: that, in spite of past fulminations against Bolshevism and profession of friendship with the West, Hitler's military programme was to attack westwards before striking at Russia—an apprehension which struck at the vague hope among some Westerners that Nazism and Bolshevism would become deadlocked in exhausting strife and so leave them in peace.

Cf. Salvemini, Prelude to World War II, p. 509 and passim.

While it remains doubtful whether Chamberlain's cabinet would have gone to war in the hope of preventing progressive German domination of eastern Europe, a different emphasis emerged with the possibility that a military blow westwards came first on the timetable. To the layman's argument that Britain should stand with Hitler's next victim, there was added the urgent wish to be sure that the West, if attacked, would have help in the East.

These two differing reasons for an immediate guarantee to Poland were apparently reinforced by personal influences of a kind comparatively rarely felt in British foreign policy. It seems likely that the arguments for a pessimistic interpretation of Hitler's intentions were strengthened in the mind of Lord Halifax by reaction against the sordid character of the Munich settlement, and given overwhelming weight with Chamberlain by indignation at the brazenness of German policy in the days after the middle of March, and its repeated failure to respond to his personal gestures of good will and confidence. These reactions at government level were swiftly reinforced by a sweeping revulsion of British public opinion against the Munich policy and its sequels. Decisive action was determined upon in circumstances more creditable to the emotional than the intellectual soundness of British leadership.

Reports concerning British cabinet opinion were faithfully cabled to the New Zealand Government, and information as to British public reaction filled the press. In neither case could the full emotional flavour be conveyed, nor could New Zealand's own reaction, at cabinet level or in the public mind, have a comparable character. It should be noted, however, that after Hitler's occupation of Prague the proposed commitment to Poland was not accepted automatically, or without the formulation of some at least of the arguments against it. The Christchurch Press, for example, remarked on 22 March that ‘It would be a tragic and indeed an intolerable irony, if having abandoned Czechoslovakia to her fate because she was unwilling to involve herself more deeply in European commitments, Britain should be induced by a panic “stop Hitler” movement to guarantee the frontiers of Poland, a country which has no ethnic or strategic unity and has in the brief period of its resurrection distinguished itself by the corruption of its political system, by its abominable treatment of minorities, and by the dishonesty and opportunism of its foreign policy’. On the following day the Auckland Star wrote that ‘There is talk of Britain making a “common front”—with Russia, the most ruthless dictatorship in the world; with Poland, another dictatorship, holding down by force enough minorities to make Herr Hitler's mouth water; with Rumania and other Balkan nations, all opportunist by necessity and training. What stability could be hoped for from such a front: What would be its purpose? To break a dictatorship in Berlin and strenghten another in Moscow?’ This vigorous journalism was no doubt written for citizens who were conscious that their fate was being determined, and were uneasy at the trend of events.

The Government had more responsibility, though not much more knowledge, and little freedom of manoeuvre. The complexity of the situation and the speed of developments gave small opportunity for constructive comment from overseas, and as was to happen so often throughout the wartime period, New Zealand merely reiterated and stood by the policies established in the last years of peace. On 21 March a message to the British Government suggested that a conference be called of ‘as many nations as may wish to defend the principles of international decency or their own integrity.’ It concluded with a pledge that the Government and people of the Dominion would ‘play their full part should the occasion unhappily arise, in defence of the right against the brutalities and the naked power politics of aggressor states, and in defence of the decencies of international life and the traditions upon which the British Commonwealth had been built.’ In a press statement two days later Savage reaffirmed that ‘New Zealand would be found wherever Britain was when Britain was in trouble’ and remarked that ‘There were some people in New Zealand who seemed to know just what should be done, but he thought it likely that those on the spot would have the best knowledge, certainly better than those 12,000 miles away.’ Savage had, for the moment, come to a position not so very different from that for which he had so sharply criticised Forbes in 1935. New Zealand's criticism of appeasement had been made at an earlier stage and had no doubt played its very small part in building up the reaction against it in British opinion that was now reaching its climax. But, as the issue revealed itself not as one of how best to prevent a war but how to secure the most favourable conditions to fight it when it came, those who had hoped that war could be avoided by a system of collective security were left with their own adjustments to make.

When the British Government on 31 March announced its guarantee to Poland, there were good reasons why it should be accepted without demur both by the New Zealand Government and by public opinion. The ‘firm line’ against aggression which New Zealand had advocated in the past had at last been taken, and with a unity of opinion in England that had not been paralleled for many years. To New Zealanders, as to Englishmen, the fact that such a lover of peace as Neville Chamberlain had been driven to take such a step was a proof that there were in favour of it arguments of overwhelming cogency. Moreover, the optimistic tone of newspaper reports about Anglo-Russian relations created a general impression that the front against Hitler would soon be strengthened by the addition of Russia. Even the small Communist party, which sometimes struck a discordant note, supported the guarantee ‘to the extent that it is genuine’.

People's Voice, 14 Apr 1939.

For New Zealand, as for the Western world as a whole, the die was cast on 31 March. Technically, she was not a party either to the initial temporary and conditional guarantee, or to the full Treaty of Mutual Assistance, but she was committed up to the hilt, both by the decisions of her government and by the attitude of her people. If Hitler chose to strike either westward or eastward New Zealand was pledged to fight. We now know that it was only three days after the guarantee that he made his choice. On 3 April he gave instructions for preparations to begin so that an attack on Poland could be made at any time from 1 September onwards,

de Mendelssohn, The Nuremberg Documents, p. 100; Documents on German Foreign Policy, Series D, Vol. VI, p. 186.

and on 17 April the Russians opened with Germany the negotiations that were to culminate in the Non-Aggression Pact of 23 August.

See United States State Department Nazi-Soviet Relations.

Thereafter the critical decisions controlling New Zealand's immediate future were made in Berlin and Moscow, not in London, and this situation had been created by her own leaders' responsible actions, based in turn on the realities of New Zealand life. Events of 1939 could be taken relatively calmly because the only decisions about which doubt was possible had been made freely and openly and with public acquiescence in the years of peace.

The Mediterranean Theatre colour map of mediterranean

The course was set, and New Zealand politics subsided into their normal preoccupation with domestic and economic issues. The ONS, however, drafted its plans, the Prime Minister campaigned for recruits, and cables arrived from London describing the efforts to arrive at an understanding with Russia. New Zealand was informed step by step of these complex negotiations but as far as the records go her comment was confined to one despatch. On 12 May it was cabled to London that the New Zealand Government ‘fully realise that His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom are much nearer to the problem and more intimately affected by possible results, than are His Majesty's Government in New Zealand, but they would regard it as deplorable if Russian assistance in the prevention of aggression were not secured and in their view no reasonable opportunity should be lost of obtaining Russian collaboration in this essential policy.’ On 28 August New Zealand expressly approved of the British decision to tell Hitler that the Polish guarantee would be honoured in spite of the Russo-German pact. An overwhelming pressure of events had converted into a formality the decision to go to war that was made by the New Zealand cabinet just before midnight on 3 September 1939.

The immediate problem which followed cabinet's capital decision was technical, namely the transition from peace to war, involving alike the assumption by the State of the stronger powers necessary to wartime administration, and the readiness of armed forces and civilian departments to undertake their new tasks. The first moves were made, as planned, on 1 and 2 September: the ‘precautionary stage’ was adopted and a group of ten emergency regulations took the essential preliminary steps in relation to censorship, the armed forces, and the prevention of profiteering. Then, in the early hours of Monday morning, 4 September, the ONS and its associates had the strenuous, but rather satisfying, task of operating the newly finished War Book.

Under test the machine worked well. There were enough loose ends to provide a moral for the future: contingencies inadequately provided for on the one hand, and on the other, the inveterate tendency of Ministers and departments to work independently of one another and to appeal direct to cabinet, thus imperilling a hard-won co-ordination. The remedy, wrote Colonel Stevens,

Stevens to Berendsen, 4 Sep 1939. Stevens had been promoted lieutenant-colonel on 1 Nov 1937.

was indicated in the experience of the past ten days. All measures relating to the war must pass through a single office and cabinet procedure (or the procedure of the ‘War Cabinet when set up’) should be strengthened so that departments would receive co-ordinated ‘directives’. Meanwhile, however, the activity of the co- ordinatingco-ordinating office was certified in the flow of detailed emergency regulations. Between 1 and 11 September, thirty-four of such regulations were issued under the authority of a depression-time law, the Public Safety Conservation Act 1932. The procedure was then regularised under the Emergency Regulations Act 1939, under which a further thirty-four regulations were issued before the end of the year. These constituted a body of legislation which was in the main both well digested and comprehensive, and which enabled New Zealand to go to war with surprisingly little dislocation of her normal living. Moreover, the reservoir of authority thus created was evidently limitless. So long as there continued to be an overwhelming consensus of opinion in favour of waging war, under state direction, with all available weapons, a determined government would have no difficulty in exercising the most extensive powers with full legality.

The main contingency not directly provided for in the War Book was a war in which it was possible to send an expeditionary force overseas. Nevertheless, the Army had always thought in terms of this possibility. Public sentiment and the adventurousness of youth both stressed this form of co-operation, and Peter Fraser's sober remark that in such a conflict as that in prospect it might be of more value to the common cause to maintain farm production than to provide fighting men was out of key with the times.

NZP D Vol. 256. p. 155 on 15 Sep 1939.

On 5 September the Council of Defence took the decisive step, and recommended that a ‘special force’ should be raised of men volunteering to serve in any part of the world. The advice was accepted, and the plan announced as government policy on 8 September. Overseas service was not mentioned, but everyone knew it was in mind. Enlistment was for the duration of the war and twelve months thereafter. Recruiting for the first batch of 6600 men began on 12 September, and within a week almost 12,000 men had volunteered. The prophecies of older men, that given a chance young New Zealanders would flock to serve overseas, were fulfilled; and the problem was clearly not so much to find the men as to train and equip them and transport them to some scene of effective action.

To the task of training them, the Army applied its rather inadequate resources: the story is told in another volume in this series. In brief, an expeditionary force was in fact trained and despatched in rough conformity with the timetable which for many years had been agreed upon among service officers and made known to London. If combat troops were desired, and the government of the day approved, it had been understood that about a third of an expeditionary force would be available within three months, and a whole division within twelve months of the outbreak of war. All would depend, however, on the availability of equipment, which was a factor at this stage within British rather than New Zealand control. Until 1936, and probably much longer, equipment held in New Zealand was based on the needs of the first echelon (or about one-third) of an expeditionary force. In the event, the First Echelon was ready for despatch in December 1939, though still requiring further training before combat. The Third Echelon was despatched in August 1940, though likewise only partially trained. The Expeditionary Force was recruited without reducing the numbers of Territorials seriously below the divisional strength envisaged in April 1939;

Strength in March 1939 was 9512; in September, 17,523; and in March 1940, 15,926.

but New Zealand was denuded of trained men.

Documents, I. p. 171

In short, so far as New Zealand's domestic arrangements were concerned, a complete reversal of military policy was quickly and easily achieved; though the Prime Minister's private thoughts on the matter will never be known. New Zealand, it was understood, would continue to defend her own shores, and to send overseas the relatively small flow of specialised trainees for Navy and Air Force, on whom stress had previously been laid; but in addition she offered a large expeditionary force on the pattern of the First World War.

The offer was formally made on 13 September,

Ibid., p. 21

but was conditional on the attitude of Japan, on the availability of shipping and protection for convoys, and on the likelihood that New Zealand troops could, in fact, be useful in the common cause. These matters were considered carefully at a London gathering of Commonwealth ministers and their advisers in October and November 1939. On the attitude of Japan, information in London was reassuring. Lord Halifax, quoting a despatch from his ambassador in Washington, set out the reasons why Japan was unlikely to move southwards in the near future. Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, reached the same conclusion on naval grounds, but assured the conference that, if the unlikely should happen, Britain would give almost top priority to protecting her southern dominions: ‘if the choice were presented of defending them against a serious attack or sacrificing British interests in the Mediterranean, our duty to our kith and kin would prevail.’ His conclusion was clear: there were no naval reasons to prevent the despatch of Australian and New Zealand armies to ‘decisive battlefields’.

The Australians remained somewhat sceptical in face of these arguments;

Ibid., p. 43

New Zealand was satisfied, though conscious that the situation might change, and determined, as in the First World War, that no troops should move without adequate naval escort. She was assured that this condition would be met, and that there were solid reasons why the general interest would be promoted if New Zealanders should again serve abroad. In particular, their presence would give both to the British and the French the most convincing demonstration that they were not alone in the fight against Hitler.

Cf. statement by Chatfield to ministerial conference, London, on 2 Nov 1939; and Hore-Belisha on 6 Nov 1939.

In these circumstances, no New Zealand government could have hesitated. The problem became, therefore, the mechanical one of deciding place, time and circumstances.

Place was easily decided, on expert advice: New Zealanders should finish their training in Egypt, and be available for service where required. Time was mainly a problem of transport and protection, an administrative matter to be arranged, not without difficulty, with the Admiralty. In 1939, as in the First World War, New Zealand rejected the Admiralty's estimate of adequate escort, and there was some brisk discussion, finally resolved in personal talk in London between Winston Churchill and Peter Fraser. It was the first meeting of the two men, whose association was a factor of major importance in New Zealand's war effort. Maybe the soundness of their relationship owed something to the firmness with which, on this occasion, Fraser stated his country's case.

Documents, I, pp. 52, 56, 60. The battleship Ramillies was included in the escort, thereby setting a precedent which had its awkwardness later on.

Naval matters, however, were on the whole straightforward: as arranged, New Zealand's own ships passed under Admiralty control on the outbreak of war. It was a different story on the military side, where a new and delicate relationship had to be worked out. Though the awkward experiences of the First World War were only hazily remembered, it was realised by thoughtful men that the smooth working of the British Commonwealth at war was an objective to be worked for, not a benefit to be taken for granted.

So far as New Zealand was concerned, the foundation for an honourable, co-operative independence was solidly laid by decisions reached at the end of 1939. When Peter Fraser was in London in November 1939, one of his urgent tasks was to interview Major-General Bernard Freyberg, who on the outbreak of war offered his services to the New Zealand Government, and wrote that he would be glad to serve with his compatriots again.

Ibid., pp. 23 ff.

He was a New Zealander who had won legendary fame in the First World War, and had gone on to a distinguished career in the British Army. This gave training and experience to fit him for a high command, and intimate personal contacts with senior men in the British Army; but it had not obliterated the early influences which made him a New Zealander still. He was willing to give up a career in the British Army to lead his countrymen into battle. Moreover, he was willing to face, from the first, the difficult responsibility of commanding the army of a small power attached to a very great one; and his personality and judgment were as tough and sound as his military valour. Something of this was learnt by Fraser in a long personal interview, though as in duty bound he collected and forwarded to Wellington the favourable judgments of distinguished Englishmen on Freyberg's capacities. By mid-November the decision was made. Freyberg was offered and accepted command of New Zealand's second Expeditionary Force. The New Zealand Government had chosen better than it knew. The personal links forged at this time between Peter Fraser and both Churchill and Freyberg were of untold importance to wartime New Zealand.

On his appointment, wrote Freyberg later, he had very definite notions on the control of the new Expeditionary Force, on the powers that should be vested in its commander, and in particular on the rights which should be retained by the New Zealand Government when its troops went overseas. And he was firmly of the opinion that such matters should be thought out from the first, and clear understandings reached. He made some rough notes of his ideas and handed them to Fraser. He called at the War Office, where ‘I found every help I could desire’. The Director of Military Operations took the attitude ‘that the wishes of the New Zealand Government were law’. He visited France, and returned somewhat disturbed by the state of preparations there, by the optimism of Allied commanders, and by the way in which the British Expeditionary Force had apparently been handed over unconditionally to French command. Then he flew to New Zealand. On the plane he worked diligently on documents which he proposed to discuss with the New Zealand cabinet. They were typed and retyped; and in Melbourne he consulted with senior military officers who were dealing with parallel problems. Finally, he reached Wellington on Christmas Day, with a great deal of his thinking done, and his conclusions on paper. The documents thus prepared, it seems, were closely discussed with the Minister of Defence and with cabinet, and were, with little change, embodied in agreements between the British and New Zealand governments and between the New Zealand Government and its commander in the field.

Most of the material discussed between cabinet and General Freyberg about Christmas and the New Year concerned military matters and the welfare of the men. Freyberg had insisted from the beginning that the commanding officer should be a man who understood New Zealanders and was capable of welding ‘the Division into one large happy family’; and he was anxious to be sure that his powers were adequate. In addition, however, there were important political issues involved. There was a real danger that New Zealand soldiers would, in practice, be absorbed into the British armed forces; as indeed happened with the men fed into the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. With the Expeditionary Force, however, the numbers were much larger. They formed a substantial part of the manhood of the country. The disappearance of these men into the general mass of British troops would be an offence to New Zealand's sense of nationhood; and in the view of many, it would blunt the edge of fine soldierly material, and would make impossible the maintenance of the high standards of welfare on which New Zealand opinion insisted.

The essence of the problem was to hold together the New Zealand Expeditionary Force as a single well-recognised entity, with its own organisation and services; to ensure that it would be used in accordance with New Zealand wishes, formed in consultation with Britain, but not in automatic acceptance of British orders; and yet to ensure that, when policy decisions had once been made, the force would co-operate smoothly with Allied units to which it was attached. Its commander necessarily had a dual responsibility, which so far as possible should be defined. As a Divisional Commander within an army, he was an officer obeying orders. Yet, in another capacity, he was the ‘servant of the government of New Zealand’, responsible to that government, with right of direct access to it, and in practice often called upon to report to his political masters on the policy of his military superiors. The Division he commanded, Freyberg wrote afterwards,

Army Quarterly, October 1944, p. 33.

‘is the Expeditionary Force of a Sovereign State, a partner in the British Commonwealth of Nations…. We are in the position of an ally, a very close one it is true, but we are not part of the British Army…. All major decisions, such as the employment of the force, are made by the New Zealand War Cabinet, and the force only comes under the command of an Allied Commander in Chief for operational purposes.’

Relationships of this kind can be to some extent defined in documents, such as General Freyberg's ‘Charter’, formally signed by the Prime Minister on 5 January 1940, or in the agreement between the British and Australian governments in March.

Documents, I, p. 31; Hasluck, Government and People, 1939–1941, p. 217.

Agreement could be reached in discussion between Freyberg and his friends in the British War Office, and between co-operative prime ministers. Yet the situation was irretrievably complex and even illogical, and it remained to be seen what would happen in the heat of battle among men steeped in military tradition. It was a problem which had to be worked out in terms of human personalities, as well as of political principles, wherever the armies of independent peoples were linked together, but not fused. In later years, Eisenhower had to deal with just this situation when preparing the final blows in Europe, and he claimed that ‘near perfection’ was reached in the voluntary co-operation of ‘strong men representing strong and proud peoples’, and in maintaining authority in the field without sacrificing ‘the fundamental interests of each participating nation’. Basically, wrote Eisenhower, efficient voluntary co-operation must rest on a ‘highly developed sense of mutual confidence’ among the men concerned.

Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, pp. 6, 33–4. Cf. Collins, Lord Wavell, p. 217.

Something else, however, was needed too: the courage and obstinacy as well as the tact of leaders willing to hold out for principles.

The integrity of the New Zealand Division was due in no small measure to the robustness with which Freyberg, backed by the New Zealand Government, fought for the principles which, he claims, he had enunciated to the War Office and to the New Zealand cabinet in November and December 1939. His achievement was notable, not only as a soldier, but also in the field of policy-making, when in the first two and a half years of the war his status as a Dominion Commander at times brought him into embarrassing personal conflict with military colleagues and superiors of the British Army. He was truly typical of his country in his determination to combine independence with loyalty; and his moral courage in evil times laid the foundation for teamwork in later years which was as sound and healthy in military as in political affairs.

CHAPTER 9 Whither?

BY January 1940 New Zealand had grasped the nettle of the Expeditionary Force. She had committed herself not only to despatch such a force, but to maintain it as a national army basically under New Zealand control: a symbol of the continuation in war of that national independence which a peacetime Labour government had so expressly claimed. This attitude was made plain not only by written agreements, but by the personality and attitude of the commander who had been chosen, and by the personal relationships established between Fraser, Freyberg, and Churchill. The decisions had then been made, the men had volunteered and the machinery set in motion. The next phase was one of administration and fulfilment: for the time being unspectacular matters. The very success with which the ranks had been filled paradoxically contributed to a period of mental slackness. There was little need to conduct recruiting campaigns or to build up morale in a community already virtually unanimous. Nor did a distant war with so little immediate impact even on the country's economic life present challenges which could be taken up with enthusiasm.

The period of comparative calm made possible, and indeed necessary, some serious discussion on war aims. Apart from a relatively few pacifists, there was no debate on the basic policy of destroying Hitlerism by force of arms. At first even the Communist party spoke with the majority, and followed the same broad lines as before the Russo-German pact of August.

People's Voice, especially 8, 22, and 29 Sep 1939.

‘The central question’ was seen as the defeat of Hitlerism, and for a month those within the party who argued that the ‘struggle against the reactionary forces in Britain and New Zealand is the first indispensable condition for the defeat of Hitler’ were suppressed with some vigour. The party's policy was to participate in the war as a means towards influencing its course, and in particular to guard against a development which was more or less consciously feared by many whose thinking inclined towards the ‘left’ but who were by no means communists, namely, the possibility that the Western powers and Germany might even at this late stage suspend their own conflict in a mutual hostility to Russia. This suspicion was one of the factors pressing towards a definition of war aims. New Zealanders could agree that the battle was for freedom and justice, for ‘human brotherhood, fair dealing and international righteousness’ against dictatorship and aggression. It was a crusade in which, it was widely believed, the enemy was a savage and faithless clique, not the German people itself. New Zealand's basic war aims were the application to international affairs of that generosity and reasonableness, that inherited morality, faith in human nature, and somewhat superficial optimism which were close to the heart of the community's life.

Yet in this period of grace, before Hitler struck in the west, national agreement on broad objectives did not adequately define for New Zealanders the object and character of the war, or even the means by which it was to be carried on. The period therefore became one of some uncertainty and debate, which by no means qualified the country's wholehearted willingness to fight, but which probed causes and aims, and defined attitudes. At the national level, moreover, New Zealand took during this period an individual attitude in this matter. Her government from the first shared the uneasiness which prompted many in Great Britain to press Mr Chamberlain for a statement of precise aims which could be announced both to friendly Germans and to the men and women in allied countries who were being asked for unlimited efforts. This line of thought was being pressed by influential Englishmen in mid-September,

Manchester Guardian Weekly, 29 Sep 1939.

and after the defeat of Poland and the Russo-German settlement of 29 September 1939 the problem recurred more insistently. Hitler, now echoed by the Russians, urged that continuance of the war was purposeless, for the extinction of Poland was a fact which the Western powers could not reverse. His virtual offer of a negotiated peace along these lines was not attractive to governments who had recently experienced his faithlessness. Yet during these months a war of stalemate seemed so likely that it was natural for people to lose the sense of immediate peril. When even governments did not realise their danger, it was difficult for citizens to keep vividly in mind that they were fighting a war of survival which needed for its justification no assurance that after victory the state of Europe would be better, or even no worse, than it was in September 1939.

The issue had, of course, seldom been stated so modestly. Naturally and—from the point of view of getting the maximum public support—wisely, the Allied leaders had from the beginning laid great emphasis on the universal and moral aspects of their cause. But if it was necessary to represent the war as something more than a struggle for survival, further difficulties presented themselves. In view of the disillusionments of the previous two decades there was reason to fear that enthusiasm for the defence of democracy, freedom, decency and the principle that men should fulfil their covenants made, could not be sustained unless concrete illustrations were offered of what these generalities would mean. Men will not fight for a negation, it was remarked in the House of Commons,

Hansard, 5th Series, Vol. 351, col. 1921.

and behind the closed doors Peter Fraser for New Zealand told the assembled statesmen of the Commonwealth that ‘the time was not far distant when the people would no longer be satisfied with broad generalities, no matter how eloquent, but would ask for a definite statement of the Allies' objectives.’

These last words were spoken on 1 November 1939 at the Ministerial Conference in London, when representatives of commonwealth countries studied the tasks they had jointly undertaken. By this time the difficulties of being definite were clear, as well as the need. All agreed on the necessity to march in step with France, and French opinion insisted that a final solution must be found and Europe freed for ever from the menace of German aggression. Material guarantees must be sought, and though the character of such solid guarantees was not well thought out, hints were not lacking that for many Frenchmen the best guarantee would be the dismemberment of Germany into its component parts. Any suggestion that Britain was considering a ‘generous’ peace would, it was made clear, take the heart out of the French will to fight. On the other hand, the idea of a ‘hard’ peace was repugnant to a great deal of British opinion, partly because the hint of it must unite Germany behind Hitler, and partly because history showed vindictive peace settlements to be followed by resurgent nationalism and wars of revenge. Faced with these facts the British Government urged caution. It kept to broad generalities which offended no one, even if they did not inspire; and it dropped over Germany propaganda leaflets of a character which, according to some British critics, demonstrated the current lack of constructive leadership.

New Zealand's opinion on these problems was shown in a significant exchange of views within the Commonwealth in October and November 1939. The British reply to Hitler was given in a statement by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons on 12 October. When consulted as to its terms, New Zealand added to the inevitable approval of the general British line a cautious protest against intransigence. She felt ‘it essential that, without in the slightest degree weakening our determination to put an end to aggression once and for all, no door should even at the present juncture be closed that might lead to a peaceful solution whether by international conference or any other feasible means.’

A fortnight later a new round of discussion was started by the French. They were bearing once more the main military burden and physical risk. Their government had been told a few months before that British military help would be of token character only—too small to justify staff conversations.

Renouvin in Revue Historique, Vol. 205, p. 270

Frenchmen were asking themselves whether Britain now was willing to make the efforts necessary to secure permanent peace or whether she still looked for a compromise, and for an understanding with good neighbourly non-Hitlerite Germans in whose effective existence few Frenchmen believed. The only way to allay such doubts was to frame a statement of war aims pledging the British to do something much more drastic and presumably more permanent than merely to eject the present German government in favour of one more acceptable to the Allies. The British countries were thus asked to go a good deal beyond the destruction of Hitlerism, which had been the essence of the generalities thus far used.

On this problem the two Pacific dominions were in close agreement. In the phrase of the Australian Prime Minister victory should be followed ‘by a great gesture of generosity and of justice. Germany would be expected to play her part as a great nation on a footing free and equal. Those who advocate not mere defeat but the destruction of Germany pay far too little attention to the problems which are and will be presented by Russia, Italy and Japan.’ New Zealand told the Australians that ‘your sentiments in favour of a generous peace are shared equally by us’, and sent to Peter Fraser, then attending the Commonwealth Conference in London, significantly detailed instructions. These were a serious attempt to apply her well established general attitudes to the current crisis.

It was common sense, thought the New Zealand cabinet, that Britain and France, having rejected Hitler's terms, should state their own. Since experience showed the disastrous consequences of a dictated peace, the earliest possible moment should be seized for ‘sincere and constructive peace discussions’ before bitterness and exhaustion had destroyed all chance of a rational peace. The French should therefore be told that we would not be parties to an ungenerous peace, while neutral states, especially Russia and the United States, should be enlisted to persuade Germany to discuss the terms of just peace. Possible peace terms were then sketched in terms which, though broad, were an advance on published generalities. The rule of law should be re-established, with the sanction behind it implied in a revived and fortified League of Nations. It was argued, however, that the enforcement of the law demanded not merely the punishment of wrongdoers but the establishment of conditions worth defending. The law must therefore be just and capable of peaceful amendment. The economic basis must be sound, with solution in sight of such problems as access to raw materials. And the welfare of the masses must be increased, for ‘no peace is worthwhile which does not result in raising the living standards of the people.’ Along such lines, wrote the New Zealand cabinet, it should be possible to pass from aims largely negative (to stop aggression, or merely to survive) to something more positive. Some progress in this sense was essential for a threefold purpose: to convince our own people that the war was worth winning, at whatever sacrifice; to convince the Germans that we had an acceptable and indeed an improved alternative to their present principles; and to convince ‘neutral opinion that our cause is both just and essential to their own security and welfare

Savage to Fraser, 5 Nov 1939.

.’

The memorandum thus summarised was duly circulated to fellow delegates before the conference decided how to answer the French. Meantime, however, broad questions of policy had been discussed at the first joint meeting on 1 November. Peter Fraser for New Zealand, who was quick to respond to British suggestions for the use of our forces, was critical on political issues. He was not satisfied with Lord Halifax's opening analysis of the position. In particular, he thought that an agreement with Russia should have been reached some time ago, and he said bluntly that warlike enthusiasm might well vanish unless fed with more concrete fare than praise of democracy and criticism of rival political, economic and social systems. The time was certainly not ripe for drawing frontiers but the people must be told clearly the purpose for which they were fighting. A fortnight later, with the instruction of 5 November 1939 before the conference, he initiated another discussion on war aims, adding the suggestion (which had been made before the outbreak of war by Savage) for a general conference. ‘It was obvious,’ he said, ‘that sooner or later a conference must be held, and it would certainly be better held before both sides had suffered enormous casualties.’ Such a conference would have to include neutrals as well as belligerents. At the present moment, he added, there was a pause in the fighting and a period of apparent hesitation in Germany: ‘was not the present, therefore, an opportune moment for a general conference?’

This last suggestion was formidably criticised and Fraser admitted its difficulties, particularly those connected with reconsti- tutingreconstituting Poland. He was acting under explicit instructions, which were later described by a cabinet minister

R. Semple, in Standard, 14 Mar 1940.

as including pressure for ‘an armistice and a conference’; and his defence of the basic demand for defined war aims was more effective. Even so the conference was against him. Neville Chamberlain for Britain had already pointed out the danger of being too definite: for example, precipitancy two months earlier might easily have replaced the present general promise to the Poles by a definite obligation to restore pre-war Poland intact, involving a war with Russia as well as with Germany. Halifax insisted, too, that precision must be avoided to avert a plain breach with French opinion. This general view prevailed and was embodied in the British Commonwealth's comments on war aims, as drafted for the French government. Britain accepted the French view that the mere removal of Hitler would not by itself guarantee the future, but urged that no suggestion of dismembering Germany should be made and no detailed promises given to the Poles or the Czechs. Some permanent machinery to prevent a resurgence of German power would be essential, but details could not yet be decided, and ‘it would seem premature to make any public statement of war aims in precise terms.’

The effort to obtain a definite and convincing statement of war aims had, then, failed; and as Fraser had predicted, the failure had its effect in local politics.

By the time he returned to Wellington there was already some insistent and intransigent opposition to New Zealand's participation in the war, that of the small Communist party. As recently as 18 August 1939 the editor of the People's Voice had written that ‘we in New Zealand are just as concerned in the fate of Danzig as the people of Poland. Hitler must be stopped and Danzig is the place where it must be done. Britain has entered into definite obligations towards Poland. These obligations must be honoured.’ This general attitude was abandoned on the signing of the Russo-German pact, but partially resumed in September, during which month the party supported the war against Hitler. By October, however, the People's Voice was printing material from Russia and from communist sources in other overseas countries which was quite incompatible with support of the war. In December a meeting of the party's national committee formally resolved ‘that the present war is an imperialist war waged by the capitalist classes of Germany, Britain, and France for trade, markets and colonies’, and it called on the working class of New Zealand ‘in unity with the workers of all other belligerent countries’ to end it ‘in the interests of the peoples’.

People's Voice, 8 Dec 1939.

This line led to a forthright attack on the Labour Government of New Zealand, which ‘instead of leading the New Zealand people on the road to socialism, peace and democracy,… have led it into the jaws of a new imperialist war

Ibid., 3 Nov 1939.

.’ Now that war had come, however, the party could give little practical advice on how to end it, beyond the demand that an agreement should be reached with Russia; and it may be doubted whether the communist line, with its apparent subservience to Russian leadership and lack of practicable policy for those who distrusted Chamberlain but believed that Hitler was the most serious immediate danger, ever won much support in New Zealand. In May 1940 one of the party's ablest spokesmen, Gordon Watson, later to be killed in action in Italy, won at a by-election a vote claimed to be higher than had ever been cast for a communist candidate in New Zealand, but it was only 375 against the winning candidate's 5935.

Ibid., 24 May 1940.

Nevertheless, communist action had some significance in New Zealand politics. In the face of the country's substantial homogeneity it expressed persistent opposition. Later the party went underground and endured the mild forms of persecution possible in this country; its small, irksome, sometimes contradictory and not very respected voice kept reminding Labour men of old-fashioned objectives and of the uncomfortable fact that the defeat of Hitler would not of itself solve the problems of mankind. In the meantime the Communist party's sharp change of policy and at times irresponsible criticism had unfortunate effects. It alienated moderate opinion and invited repression, stinging a not illiberal government into actions which were sometimes ill-considered. The manner of its complaints made the sensible discussion of problems increasingly difficult, and so far as domestic policy was concerned, intensified the very evils against which the party was ostensibly fighting. In particular, the tactics adopted by the party made the suppression of its journal almost certain when the fall of France brought a real sense of tension.

It is doubtful whether any declaration of war aims could have deflected the communist attack, or even reduced its venom. Yet uneasiness at the situation was felt by more orthodox and more influential citizens of both main political parties. In particular, uneasiness developed within the Labour Party. Public policy was the concern not only of the parliamentary party, but of a complex structure of supporting organisations: local branches and trades unions, Labour Representation Committees in important areas and Trades and Labour Councils. Though the Government firmly claimed the right and duty of leadership, it was naturally sensitive to the views of its organised supporters, especially when expressed in such influential gatherings as the annual conferences of the Labour Party and the Federation of Labour. In a party so numerous and embracing so much political experience, it was inevitable that a wide range of opinion should be expressed.

Almost from the first there were complaints that ‘the British government consistently refuses to state its war aims

Canterbury Branch, Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, quoted in People's Voice, 27 Oct 1939.

.’ There were evidently many Labour supporters who fought shy of communism but felt uneasy lest this was, or should become, a war of the old imperialist type, ‘a struggle for markets and raw material between capitalist Britain and France on the one side and capitalist Germany on the other

West Coast Trades and Labour Council, Press, 6 Dec 1939.

.’ The demand was accordingly pressed that the Government should ‘make public the reasons for which New Zealanders were expected to fight’;

Ibid.

and as months passed without clear statement of war aims and without spectacular military achievements or dangers, those elements in the country which had fought ‘appeasement’ became increasingly uneasy about the undefined mandate claimed by their old enemy, Neville Chamberlain. Was he even prepared to switch the war from Germany to Russia? On the testimony of W. E. Barnard, whose personal conviction on the need to fight Hitler was very clear, there were ‘many thousands of New Zealanders of unimpeachable loyalty who are … not satisfied with the oft repeated declarations about liberty and freedom and democracy (equality is not mentioned) which are offered as sufficient reasons for the present sacrifice’.

Tomorrow, 7 Feb 1940.

Men wanted to know not only why they were now called on to fight, but what kind of a world their efforts would help to create. ‘It is fairly obvious,’ wrote James O'Brien, MP, ‘that until we have something definite to go on, opposition to war in all its forms will grow’.

Ibid., 21 Feb 1940.

This uneasiness was shared in high quarters. The Prime Minister himself, for all his moving public statements, apparently felt doubts: he wanted more clarity as to objectives and assurance that it would be ‘a very different peace this time’. His deputy and successor, Fraser, did his best to extract definition from London, and correctly foretold what would happen if it were not forthcoming.

These uneasinesses must be set in their right perspective. So far as the war effort was concerned, they were variants within an accepted master pattern which was never disturbed. When the test came, New Zealand's war potential was at Britain's command, subject to the right of friendly though independent scrutiny of individual suggestions. Nevertheless, the military pause gave an opportunity, even a challenge, to thought. The lack of definition in war aims left the field open, and this situation led to important developments in internal politics. Not only did it make possible, and indeed stimulate, changes in both political parties; it led to a new ordering of the relations between them. The pattern of New Zealand's political behaviour and the tone of her wartime administration were set between September 1939 and April 1940.

CHAPTER 10 Settling Down

THE insoluble problem of war aims accentuated a cleavage already developing within the government party. Those who asked the most awkward questions in this field were, for the most part, men within the Labour fold who were already somewhat critical of the party's leadership; critical of alleged tendencies to compromise with capitalists, to slacken the drive towards socialism, and to keep party direction in the hands of the ‘Old Guard’. Such men were for the most part younger politicians, leaders of militant trades unions, and independent sympathisers of radical tendency. They carried into a government party something of the language—and the impatience—which had marked their present leaders twenty and thirty years before, and their implicit claim was to represent the true spirit of the Labour Party still unsuffused by the conservatism of age and the temptations towards compromise of high office. The most vocal of the malcontents was J. A. Lee, between whom and the Prime Minister a strong personal antagonism had developed. Lee was an able man who had not reached cabinet rank, and a powerful propagandist of striking personality. He spoke with added authority in wartime as one of the party members most experienced and most interested in modern war. Without touching on communism he claimed to represent the left wing of the party's economic thinking. His ability and ambition and broad, undefined radicalism had long marked him out as a natural spokesman for any serious challenge to Labour's established leadership; and the economic situation in 1939 provided clear-cut issues on which to stand.

The years 1938 and 1939 were marked by a prolonged financial crisis, which Hitler's war masked but intensified rather than resolved. After three years of general prosperity the Government was still spending over £6,000,000 yearly in promoting employment. The State's debt to the Reserve Bank leapt up during 1939, and a big increase in imports nearly extinguished that surplus in her external trade out of which New Zealand paid her way abroad. Moreover, spectacular events had underlined the seriousness of the situation. In 1938 the sterling balance fell suddenly and in December exchange control was hurriedly imposed to keep New Zealand solvent. A few months afterwards Walter Nash travelled to London to deal with the problem of converting a group of large overseas loans which fell due early in 1940. He could not arrange normal terms and had to promise repayment over a period of five years, a proceeding which would in normal times have been a very severe burden on the national economy. This virtual demand for quick repayment was an entirely new experience in New Zealand's history, for her development had been financed by long-term loans, which neither lender nor borrower expected would be repaid. It showed the power still held by a lender over a community whose credit had been shaken, and underlined a dependence which the development of dominion status—of virtual sovereignty in international affairs—had done little to weaken.

This was the problem that crystallised a sharp difference of opinion within the Labour Party. Cabinet evidently judged that the time had come, if not for credit restriction, at least for a slowing down of the expansionist policy followed since 1935. The 1939 Budget forecast measures to deal with inflation, and was close enough to orthodoxy to give considerable gratification to the Opposition and to infuriate a powerful element in the Labour Party. Belief in the supreme importance of control over credit and currency had become strong and widespread in New Zealand during the depression, and with it the feeling that powers so vital should be in the last resort under public and not private control. Advocacy of something vaguely called ‘social credit’ had played an important part in Labour's victory of 1935, and this line of thinking was strongly represented in the new government. One of its first and most important actions was to take full state control over the new Reserve Bank. By the Act of 1936 the bank operated its extensive powers under the direction of the Minister of Finance, and it was used directly to finance such major schemes as state housing and guaranteed prices for dairy produce. For the orthodox these proceedings were noxious both in principle and in detail; but advocates of ‘social credit’ were still unappeased. In the last months of peace they accused the party leadership and especially the Minister of Finance, Walter Nash, of undue caution and conservatism in the use of his powers, and demanded in effect that social welfare should continue to be vigorously promoted by the use of debt-free credit from the Reserve Bank.

The conversion operations imposed on Nash in 1939 were to Lee an example of the unscrupulous exercise of brutal and impersonal financial power which it was precisely the duty of a socialist government to combat. The correct policy, therefore, was to answer by continual credit expansion in defiance of the London money market. To the apprehension of his leaders that such expansion would lead to inflation Lee made no answer that has been recorded, but to their acute embarrassment he did not fear to use the dread word ‘repudiation’ in relation to overseas debt. If the screw were turned hard enough to force the issue, New Zealand, he said, should refuse to meet her overseas debts rather than sacrifice the well-being of her own people.

This conflict of opinion within the government party was unresolved in September 1939, and was inevitably accentuated from the outbreak of war. The flow of consumers' goods was further slowed down, and at the same time defence expenditure built up purchasing power. Moreover, long established Labour Party attitudes were very relevant and very embarrassing to the Government's more orthodox advisers. In particular, there was a long-standing promise that conscription of wealth must precede—or at least accompany—conscription of manpower. The origin and general intention of this promise was clear enough, however unprecise its meaning when examined by economists and administrators. Since the first introduction of compulsory training, and particularly during the First World War, the Labour Party had vehemently opposed conscription. It had strongly contrasted the sacrifice of life and limb made by the conscript with the prospering of ‘profiteers’ behind the lines. It had complained that soldiers came home to find that the cost of living had soared—for other men's benefit—and that the war had been financed by loans which they must help to repay; and it suggested that these evils should be avoided by imposing as rigorous a compulsion in economic as in military matters. If wealth could be conscripted it would appear that civilians could be given precisely the same pay and conditions as soldiers, and capital, instead of commanding the high interest rates of the previous generation, could be levied free of interest to the extent necessary for the public good.

This line of thought naturally had a wide appeal within the Labour Party, and more particularly in its industrial wing, but with the outbreak of war there was an obvious conflict between the desire to avoid profiteering and organise equality of sacrifice in a national crisis and the need to get things done quickly and on a large scale. In an informative debate on 20 September

NZPD, Vol. 256.

the Government's position was made clear. There should be no profiteering or exploitation, either within the Dominion or in bargains struck between the Dominion and the United Kingdom. In the phrase of Walter Nash, as Minister of Finance, ‘The policy of the Govern- mentGovernment and of the country must be no profiteering—not “no undue” profiteering, but no profiteering of any kind whatever…. It is that little “undue” that will lead us to all the difficulties we faced in 1914–18’.

NZPD, Vol. 256, p. 249.

On the broader issue Fraser, as acting Prime Minister, said that his Government was ‘prepared to carry on, if it could be done, at the same rate for everyone as for the soldiers; that that should be a common footing for us all’. It was as yet impossible, he said, to adjust everyone to that basis; but it might come about that sacrifice would have to be equalised. ‘The time may come, if this war goes on, when we will have to do actually what today we all subscribe to in theory and in heart’.

Ibid., p. 231.

The Government, in short, was compromising, as governments must. It would have been administratively as well as politically impossible to have carried out a wholesale, state-directed mobilisation of men and industry in the public interest and in defiance of private wishes. Even a reforming government must use the methods and institutions and men available; wartime haste breeds conservatism rather than radical experiment. That at least was the judgment of those elements in the Labour Party who were already accusing cabinet of far too great a readiness to use instead of to destroy the machinery of a previous era. The war situation thus aggravated an existing struggle for leadership of the powerful Labour Party machine—a struggle which could no longer be postponed, if only because the Prime Minister was mortally ill, and there was no individual whose prestige in party and country stood so high that he could claim unquestioned right to the succession.

In the first phase of the war, the public was soothed by news of Savage's improved health—and indeed he continued to give effective broadcasts—while an obscure duel was fought between his old associates and his new critics. Ostensibly these last had powerful weapons in hand: disappointment among the rank and file in the slackened progress of 1938 and 1939, and in the disappearance of ultimate socialism beyond the horizon of practical politics, while the emotive formula ‘conscription of wealth’ gave the force of established tradition to the demand for radical measures in organising war. In practice, however, Lee and his followers commanded neither sufficient weight in personality nor a sufficiently practicable programme. Their chief antagonist, Peter Fraser, who was to display high qualities of statesmanship when released from local pressure groups, had all the craft of a successful party manager; and he secured within the industrial wing supporters of ability, tenacity and wide political experience, of whom F. P. Walsh was perhaps the best known. Such a combination was powerful, especially when operating within a large and normally well disciplined organisation. The struggle came to its end on 25 March 1940, when Lee was expelled from the Labour Party by 546 votes to 344 at the annual Labour Party conference. His conduct towards Savage was the main count in the indictment against him and a report from the Prime Minister denouncing him was read to the conference. When Savage died, two days later, he was quickly succeeded by Fraser as leader of the parliamentary Labour Party and as Prime Minister. The rebellion was defeated, and the change of Prime Ministers marked no change in policy. The cabinet which took office at the end of 1935 remained basically unchanged until its defeat in 1949. Personal and party loyalties held firm, and as older men occasionally dropped out the younger were admitted without deflection of policy.

The expulsion of Lee from the party and the appointment of Fraser as Prime Minister had implications of first-class importance in the functioning of the Labour Party and in the relations between Government and Opposition during the critical months that followed.

Within the Labour Party, the defeat of the rebellion strengthened a trend towards authoritarianism. The leadership had already shown great sensitivity to the persistent and virulent abuse by the Communist party, and had reacted by forms of censorship which became increasingly stringent. The party's national executive had, moreover, in the early days of the war declared for the expulsion of any member who supported any communist agency; and its disciplinary action extended to any person or group that departed from the party's accepted platform, or publicly attacked the Labour government. There was, in fact, a tightening of discipline to preserve the ‘elementary and vital principle of party unity’, and in the so-called ‘black circular’ of 20 October 1939 the national executive not only laid down rules to prevent snap resolutions being passed to criticise the Government, but recommended that for the time being no public political meetings should be held.

ChristchurchPress, 20 Oct 1939; statement by Nash, Evening Post, 11 Nov 1939.

When in 1940 party leadership was cemented by the expulsion of a leading critic, the feeling naturally grew that criticism within the ranks was not greatly welcome and that an established and well-tried leadership was asking to be given a free hand during the wartime emergency. It may be doubted whether this free hand was silently conceded either by the political or industrial wings of the movement. Moreover, the trend towards authoritarianism was gravely disturbing to many, particularly to that younger generation bred in the idealisms and disappointments of the First World War, the League of Nations, and the slump: young men and women who had been taught to use their minds, and who, whether within or without the Labour Party, had expected a Labour government to give a lead towards democratic behaviour in wartime as in peace.

The new trends, therefore, were not unchallenged. Nevertheless, the events of September 1939 to May 1940 certainly strengthened the grip over the party and therefore over national policy of the men who had guided Labour to power.

III

If these events strengthened the Prime Minister's hand—at the cost of considerable subterranean criticism—they also gave a new aspect to the long search for a broad political unity in face of national danger. They amounted to the defeat of the Labour Party elements least trusted by the Opposition and the victory of the ‘old guard’, whose economic policy, though distasteful to it, was not revolutionary. With Peter Fraser in power it was clear that the war situation would not be used to push doctrinaire ‘socialism’, and that the principle of conscripting wealth would be applied in a form not unduly novel. Wartime economic policy, and the institutions through which it was administered, brought no breach with the past more drastic than that imposed on his reluctant followers by J. G. Coates during the battle against the depression. There was a basis here for subsequent agreement on the general policy of economic stabilisation. Moreover, it had long been known that Fraser himself was personally in favour of closer collaboration between the two parties.

Cf. NZPD, Vol. 256, p. 447, 28 Sep 1939.

Nevertheless, the forces within both parties operating against a coalition government proved overwhelmingly strong. Indeed, during the first eight months of war New Zealand became more rather than less pledged to maintain the conventional party form of government.

New Zealand's declaration of war against Germany was made with every appearance of national and parliamentary unanimity. The necessity to fight, and indeed to concentrate every effort in a war to which no sensible man could expect a foregone conclusion, was so plain that normal preoccupations could scarcely compete for attention. The conclusion which seemed obvious to spokesmen for the Opposition was that domestic politics should in effect be shelved in a national war effort. The Leader of the Opposition, Adam Hamilton, and two former prime ministers, G. W. Forbes and J. G. Coates, were taken into the Government's confidence on the war crisis and shown confidential despatches.

NZPD, Vol. 256, p. 47.

Their reaction was clear: ‘Even the most determined disagreement on questions of domestic policy must now be put into the background…. Party politics must be laid aside so that our people may be united in their determination and effort

Evening Post, 2 and 4 Sep 1939.

.’ This attitude was clearly welcome to Peter Fraser, then acting Prime Minister. When the House of Representatives met on 5 September 1939 to confirm the declaration of war, he explained that the two parties had arranged for Parliament to pass at once the estimates which were being considered and then adjourn for a week for the Government to review the situation and settle its whole programme. A major objective, he told the House, would be to avoid political dissension. ‘We know that we speak with one voice on the overwhelmingly important question that overshadows everything else, but we want as far as possible to agree on those matters where agreement can be reached, and if it can be done, to postpone matters on which there are obvious political disagreements, also postpone matters which are not urgent

NZPD, Vol. 256, p. 21.

.’ In response, the Opposition promised all co-operation with the Government in the discharge of its new responsibilities.

During the week's adjournment that followed, the Labour cabinet and caucus had a twofold task: first, to concoct measures for carrying on the war, a tough but relatively straightforward task based on previous plans, as modified by current British suggestions: and second, to decide what was to be done about domestic policy. The country was one year removed from a hard-fought general election, in which divergencies in viewpoint were wide in spite of the substantial identity in practical proposals. The Opposition's offer of co-operation depended on the abandonment of ‘controversial legislation’; but there was a substantial section of the Labour Party which thought that the party programme, plus the 1938 victory, was an express mandate precisely to do controversial things. To the Opposition the war dictated adherence to the well-tried weapons of the past; to many Labourites it set their social and economic programme in a new light—this now became an instrument for urgent use in a crisis, instead of a mere long-term objective. Between these two viewpoints Fraser was feeling for a compromise. His eye was on the dreary prospect of international affairs as well as on the turmoil of domestic politics. His hope was evidently to find within his own party, and in the Opposition, a broad insistence on the overwhelming importance of the war effort. He hoped to widen the area of agreement and to postpone, or at least soften, controversies which could not be avoided.

When Parliament reassembled on 12 September there was still an atmosphere of slightly uneasy truce. The Government was not quite ready with detailed plans, but it introduced the Emergency Regulations Bill to replace the Public Safety Conservation Act, 1932, as authority for wartime government by regulation. The new measure was drafted very widely indeed, giving cabinet virtually unlimited power to legislate; but the Opposition contented itself with pointing out dangers of abuse and the need for utmost care in administration. ‘We acquiesce at this time,’ said Adam Hamilton, leader of the National Party, ‘or at any rate we do not intend unnecessarily to obstruct or resist’. His deputy, Coates, said bluntly that ‘our only thought’ must be the successful prosecution of the war, that all must help the Government to get its plans on to a sound basis, and that criticisms should be made ‘not merely for the purpose of criticising but with a real desire that the best should be done in the circumstances in which we find ourselves

NZPD, Vol. 256, pp. 94, 98, 13 Sep 1939.

.’

The Opposition's attitude was that of unlimited co-operation in war measures, but with the right of responsible criticism reserved, an attitude expressly welcomed by the acting Prime Minister; and in spite of some stormy days, the same attitude was professed by both sides when Parliament adjourned three weeks later. ‘We have withdrawn fierce opposition for the time being,’ said Hamilton on 6 October,

Ibid., p. 841.

‘and we have offered our genuine co-operation to the Government. That in no way prevents us from using the full force of our attack on occasions when we think the Government is in the wrong.’ He referred with some pride to the debate of the previous night which showed that the Opposition had not lost its parliamentary skills and could put up a good fight if necessary, and a few days later made it very clear ‘that the co-operation of the Opposition does not extend into the normal political field

Dominion, 12 Oct 1939.

.’ This reservation did not mean that the ‘truce’ was at an end, at least so far as the leaders were concerned. Peter Fraser said frankly that the criticisms brought by the Opposition were of the kind to be expected and even desired in a democracy. ‘The right of criticism and pointing out abuses of power is inherent in our democratic institutions,’ he said at the beginning of the session,

NZPD, Vol. 256, p. 103.

and at the end he remarked that it had been understood that when measures were discussed which ‘involved unavoidable and essential differences of political outlook and principles … there was to be no curtailment of expression of opinion, no sinking of principles, and no avoiding of issues. We did not expect anything of that sort and we think the attitude of the Opposition has been quite correct with regard to these matters

NZPD, Vol. 256, p. 840.

.’

Nevertheless, in spite of friendly valedictions, events had already taken a decisive twist by the time Parliament adjourned on 6 October. It soon became clear that in the view of Adam Hamilton, who among the Opposition leaders was one of those most likely to meet the Government halfway, Peter Fraser had had ill success with his avowed policy of so trimming his party's legislative programme that contentious issues would be postponed or reduced to a minimum. On the contrary, Hamilton pronounced the legislation of the session to have been ‘revolutionary and objectionable’ and to have been introduced deliberately, after full consideration. In his view the Government had rejected his offer of co-operation, and was pushing its normal domestic policy under the guise of wartime emergency.

Hawke's Bay Daily Mail, 14 Nov 1939.

On the political side the Emergency Regulations Act, which gave the executive the right to rule by regulation, was perhaps a disagreeable necessity, but its use had to be vigilantly watched, and the Opposition fought tooth and nail against other Government measures. In particular, it took the greatest exception to the Reserve Bank Amendment Act and the Marketing Amendment Act.

Round Table, March 1940, p. 462.

The first extended the powers of the bank and required it without qualification to carry out the Government's decisions. The second gave power to buy and resell any commodities at prices to be fixed by the State. These Acts were regarded by the Opposition as major steps in the direction of autocracy and socialism.

The Government's domestic policy in general, and in particular the Reserve Bank and Marketing Acts, were bitterly attacked in Parliament, in the press, and in a political campaign through the country after Parliament adjourned. The attack was as vigorously answered and, in the phrase of a journal whose business was controversy, ‘things healthily reverted to normal

Tomorrow, 11 Oct 1939.

.’ After the parliamentary adjournment the most systematic statement of the Government's case was that put forward in a series of radio broadcasts delivered by the Prime Minister. Though the fact was not then widely known, Savage was by this time so ill, and he was so little at home in the new war situation, that his broadcasts may be read as reflecting in a more than ordinary sense the views of his advisers, and (more particularly) of his deputy and successor, Peter Fraser. The line was set in the Prime Minister's national broadcast of 26 November. The suggestion had been made, he said, that a wartime government should purchase the Opposition's good will and thus establish national harmony by abandoning the domestic policy which it had been elected to carry out. If this were done, he argued, the will of a minority would prevail; and the majority would be antagonised by a move which was probably immoral and which might not even win the steady collaboration of the government's erstwhile enemies. He recognised, he said, that the waging of war to victory must be the government's paramount concern, and that if it came to the point ‘every item of domestic policy must be subordinated to it’. Subject to this principle, however, a government was bound to carry out its election platform and an opposition should refrain from attacking developments that would have taken place if there had been no war. He acknowledged frankly that a government's power must expand in wartime, and that at the end of a long war it would be impossible promptly to go back to the status quo. Nevertheless, there was a strong moral obligation on the government not to enlarge its powers ‘on the pretext that these are necessary, if in truth they are not necessary, for the successful carrying out of the war’. There was also an obligation to give up powers which had been taken to meet emergencies when those emergencies no longer existed. On this general basis, he said, ‘mutual concessions, reciprocal restraints are as feasible as they are desirable’ between a government and the opponents of its domestic policy. ‘Let us never forget that political controversy, though a peacetime necessity, is a wartime luxury

Evening Post, 27 Nov 1939.

.’

This appeal asked much of an opposition which had already denounced leading government measures as being precisely an acceleration of party policy under guise of national necessity. It probably asked more than any virile opposition could concede while the war was still uneventful and rather remote. During the summer of 1939–40, therefore, the Opposition continued strong criticism of the Government's domestic policy in terms that were familiar enough in normal peacetime controversy, but which, as used by less responsible spokesmen, amounted to violent abuse. They were answered in terms equally violent. To those who said that at home ‘we must fight Nash-ism as the men overseas were fighting Nazism’,

Standard, 30 Nov 1939; Opotiki News, 20 Oct 1939.

it was retorted that extreme and unscrupulous criticism amounted to sedition and an obstruction of the war effort. Controversies thus phrased showed clearly enough how, in the slack months that followed the fall of Poland, the scale of values in political discussions became disturbed.

In this atmosphere the two main parties naturally drifted apart, even in respect to war measures. By November, for example, the Opposition chiefs had ceased to consult the policy cables exchanged with the British Government; they could scarcely take advantage of this access to confidential documents while engaged in severe criticism of general government policy.

Cf. statement by Hamilton, Hawke's Bay Daily Mail, 14 Nov 1939.

In the rank and file of the Opposition a more far-reaching change of tone was taking place which was, in due course, to culminate in the replacement of the existing leadership by one which might be described as more virile or more virulent according to one's political predilections.

See p. 143 and Chapter 13.

It must remain a matter of speculation as to whether this hardening trend in domestic politics might have been arrested if the war situation had been from the first as tense as it became in May 1940. As it was, the period of relative calm promoted a swing within the Opposition towards more ‘normal’ party behaviour, which in turn would put increasing difficulties on those in both camps who favoured more intimate collaboration.

During the summer of 1939–40 the Government was, then, faced with three currents of discontent: on the left a small noisy minority accused it of betraying the interests of the working-class; on the right, criticism of economic policy overflowed into general denunciation; and small but embarrassingly sincere and active groups of conscientious objectors questioned the whole morality of war. A period of slackness in military operations and an inevitable sense of frustration and ineffectiveness had opened the door to criticism. This in turn made an already sensitive cabinet more sensitive still, and made it more authoritarian both in relation to its own political followers and to the community as a whole.

Looking back, it may be doubted whether opposition ran deep enough to affect seriously the national unity of purpose, or the strength of the national effort. At the time, however, leaders of both parties agreed that the situation had elements of danger, and the natural result was a tightening of the Emergency Regulations

Statement by Fraser, 25 Feb 1940; Evening Post, 26 Feb 1940.

on 22 February 1940 ‘to put an end to the dangerous state of affairs which has been developing recently.’ The amended regulations extended the law against subversion and gave the police wide powers to deal with processions or meetings likely to be injurious to public safety. The Government had from the first claimed that it would be exceedingly tolerant of all genuine criticism, while stead- fastlysteadfastly enforcing the law against those of any political persuasion who injured the war effort. Peter Fraser, as minister in charge, now again emphasised his desire to preserve the freedoms of the individual, but he said ‘freedom to incite damage, and do injury to New Zealand and New Zealand's war effort is not freedom of speech; freedom to sabotage this country by deliberately disseminating false statements is not freedom of thought; endeavouring to prevent men enlisting is not political freedom. Placing the interests of foreign powers before those of our own country is not freedom but a gross abuse of freedom.’

The regulations of February 1940 completed the main structure of a formidable system of censorship and of control over public expression of opinion. They are a reminder, too, that this system had an object much more complex than the straightforward denial to the enemy of military information. Censorship of civilian mail was not regarded, as was censorship in the Army, as a valued means of testing opinion, but it sometimes provided useful information.

Documents, II, p. 101, note 2.

In addition, it was felt that in some circumstances too great publicity in the mere exchange of opinion might gravely impede the war effort; if confidence in the general capacity of the Government to run the war were undermined, whether locally or overseas, damage might well be done. In the early months of the war, therefore, postal censors were apt to cut from letters criticism of government policy, criticism which was mainly aimed at slackness of effort, but which censors regarded as ‘exaggerated’ or ‘likely to mislead’. Such action was naturally resented, and policy was soon modified. Instructions from the controller of censorship in late 1939 and early 1940 did much to remove cutting which was close to the margin of being political in effect, though not in intention.

This branch of censorship was managed within the Post and Telegraph Department, and with no observable political bias; though incidents naturally occurred and were used by a rejuvenated Opposition for political purposes.

NZPD, 13 Oct 1944.

The main criticism that censorship had a political implication was however directed at the activities of the Director of Publicity, J. T. Paul, who had been closely associated with the Labour movement for some forty years and with the press for a still longer period, and who at the outbreak of war had been placed in control of the press and the censorship of outgoing news. The policy as regards the latter, as formulated in April 1940, was drastic: ‘it is proposed to suppress all outward press news which is likely to convey a prejudicial view to overseas countries concerning the National War Effort in New Zealand. This will include comment implying disunity on the part of political parties as affecting the Government's war measures, and in addition information concerning anti-war and communist organisations

Circular of 17 Apr 1940.

.’ As regards the local press Mr Paul's position was clear too: ‘the liberty of the Press and temporary liberty of any one of us cannot tip the scale against the possible perpetual slavery which would follow defeat in the war.’ In other words, public policy, ‘the greatest good of the greatest number’, must give the answer as to whether or not any particular cable might be sent or any item of news published locally.

This last principle would, of course, have been accepted universally, with the vital qualification that in a democratic community men must know the facts necessary to enable them to form responsible judgment. The difficulty arose in that vast area in which the application of principle to individual cases was not axiomatic. In such cases the New Zealand system concentrated the power of interpretation in the hands of the Director of Publicity and his assistants. He and his political chief, the Prime Minister, came from a political party to which the press was almost unanimously opposed. For many the determination to avoid undue encroachments on the liberty of the press was strengthened by irritations of a more partisan kind, and during most of the war the Director of Publicity fought more or less friendly guerrilla warfare with the press.

His powers were in the last resort immense, for he was part of an executive machine clothed with almost unlimited authority under the Emergency Regulations. For instance, it would not have required any high degree of ingenuity to brand almost any political criticism as subversive, since subversive reports included those that were false, or likely to cause disaffection to His Majesty, or likely to disturb the morale of civilians or soldiers.

Emergency Regulations 1939/121.

However, the Government had taken more powers than it had any intention of using, and in practice the Director of Publicity worked in three main ways: the press was forbidden to publish specified news items, or material bearing on certain subjects, without reference to him; it was invited or exhorted to adopt certain policies; and when it published material which the Director judged prejudicial to the public interest, it was reproved, and in certain cases prosecuted. In addition, the Government held the right, which it occasionally exercised, to suppress a publication altogether. The Director's strong preference was naturally to proceed by co-operation, not compulsion or threat; his own testimony

On 30 December 1943 in statement concerning proposed action against R. H. Billens.

in 1943 was that the press normally complied with requests even when there could be no threat of legal action.

By April 1940 New Zealand was fighting her war in some comfort. Military action had slipped into the well-worn and emotionally satisfying channel of co-operation by expeditionary force. Military discussion amounted essentially to a hot debate on whether or not that force could—or should—be maintained by volunteers. At each extreme in this debate were those with strong prior commitments: Labourites pledged against conscription, and conservatives convinced that it was immoral as well as impracticable to rely on the patriots and allow slackers to escape. For the most part, New Zealanders were content to observe that the existing system was thus far producing the required results. As late as 6 May 1940, Peter Fraser said plainly that if New Zealand were in danger ‘then automatically every man, woman and child and every penny of wealth would be at the disposal of the state’. But he added that up to the present time ‘the voluntary system had been a great success, and the Government adhered to it’.

AucklandStar, 7 May 1940.

None but fanatics, therefore, expected any change in military policy till fighting should flare up.

Similarly, the economic system had adapted itself well enough to the muffled shock of an inactive war. New Zealand's system of economic controls—including control of imports and of overseas exchange—was already well advanced in 1939, and could be adapted with relatively little experimentation to a wartime situation. Overseas trade, the life blood of New Zealand, passed entirely under state management, and dairy produce, meat and wool were sold in bulk to the British Government at prices somewhat above those of the previous season. Income thus remained reasonably high, and though there were awkward interruptions in supply, life was much more normal than could have been expected. Experts somewhat ruefully contemplated long-term dangers. For instance, though patriotic New Zealanders were urged to produce more food, it was by no means clear that Britain would buy without limit; indeed in April 1940 there was a real threat that purchases would be cut down and British larders replenished from Denmark. Again, while New Zealand's policy was—and remained—that of selling at prices approximating to those of 1939, the prices charged for her imports greatly increased. A suggestion that if this went on the prices for New Zealand's exports should be increased, so that her income would remain roughly stable, was received without sympathy in Britain. Further, there was a real threat that two of her staple products—butter and wool—might be displaced by substitutes. For New Zealand, therefore, the war might amount to a slow strangulation of economic life.

Such fears were expressed at the time,

Round Table, June 1940, p. 721.

but scarcely influenced public sentiment except perhaps as part of a general feeling of futility. When the fall of Poland was followed by long months of military inactivity, New Zealanders like others asked themselves how this war, however justly launched, could ever reach a conclusion. Leading citizens confessed frankly, if not for publication, that though faith in ultimate victory was unshaken, they could conceive no sequence of events by which it could come about. Meantime, the soldiers of the Expeditionary Force proceeded by due stages towards the scene of their future activities, farms and factories ground out their supplies, and the community followed wise injunctions towards business as usual. Debates about war aims continued. Liberal-minded watchdogs vigilantly exposed wartime threats to civil liberties. Small groups of pacifists and communists pricked the Government into spasmodic action. The benevolent cloak of censorship lulled fears and took the edges from political discussion. The armed forces progressively engulfed a generation of young men who were to show in practice that they could respond quietly to a crisis. They were preparing conclusive evidence that New Zealanders—well fed and materialistic, sheltered, remote from the dangers and tensions that afflict the vast majority of mankind, rejecting forethought and apprehension—yet can answer when the challenge comes.

CHAPTER 11 Search for Unity

ON 9 April 1940 the crash of Hitler's occupation of Denmark and Norway resounded through the world. It disturbed but did not destroy the sense of unreality in a war that was fought only at sea and that spasmodically. A month later the whole weight of German attack was thrown against the Dutch and Belgians, against the French, and against Britain's tiny Expeditionary Force. In a sense, wrote a thoughtful British patriot at the time,

Round Table, June 1940, p. 499.

the shock was welcome: it blasted Britain from numbing acceptance of war without immediate challenge, in which initiative remained with the enemy, and in which Britain's own leadership could forecast no intelligible strategy of victory beyond soothing calculations of potential strength. Almost overnight the crisis became vivid, a struggle for life as well as for national values, a struggle to be entered with buoyancy and courage, and with that added fierceness that comes from calculated hope tinged with fear. It was a spiritual experience, a challenge to national revival as well as a military threat of the first magnitude.

If Britain, before May, had subsided into an unreal routine, New Zealand was 12,000 miles further removed from reality; even in May, with no closer touch with disaster than that conveyed by the smooth, comforting voice of the BBC recounting calamities, New Zealanders could only by sustained efforts of the imagination share the experiences of their kinsmen. The nature of the crisis was indeed well enough understood by the leaders of the Government. This was not only a matter of intellectual understanding, based on voluminous and very frank day-to-day information and on personal visits abroad. Peter Fraser, now Prime Minister, was a Scot, and his principal lieutenant, Walter Nash, an Englishman; both developed in a high degree that peculiar combination of Dominion-conscious independence with a sense of oneness with the ‘Mother Country’ which was so characteristic an element in New Zealand life. Nor did the then leaders of the Opposition, Hamilton and Coates, need any prompting in the matter. They, too, had served in cabinets and had seen the crisis develop. Yet leaders' words, however vehement, could only bridge inadequately the difference ‘between the thunderous atmosphere of Europe and the obstinately normal course of life in the South Pacific; a faint sense of unreality persisted, only to be dissipated, and that temporarily, in the months following the disaster at Pearl Harbour.

The crisis of mid-1940, then, had only a temporary impact and in any case was partially muffled by distance. Its moral, however, was not obscure. The Commonwealth faced disaster, and New Zealand could not put less than her total resources into the scale. This meant total powers for the Government, and legislation in Britain provided the model. Though all-or almost all-could agree with such reasoning, the situation embodied a much less clear imperative to the community than in Britain; and the kind of action envisaged demanded sacrifices of principle from both the main parties. Was it proper to concede unlimited powers to a government which still frankly retained its party character ? Was some kind of joint administration possible? The answers to these questions were sought at leisure, along lines indicated by recent internal politics.

When the storm broke in Europe the political situation in New Zealand was relatively calm. Those elements in the Opposition that were soon to insist on revived party warfare were still not unduly prominent, and a potential swing towards the left in the Labour Party had been sharply arrested. By May 1940 that party was indeed a distinctly more conservative body than it had been eight months earlier. In this move away from radicalism the most important incident was not a result of the war. Though J. A. Lee had differences with the party leadership as to how the war should be waged, both their charges against him and his against them were mainly concerned with domestic issues. In other points, however, the purge of ‘extremists’ was directly due to the war. The Labour Party as it had emerged in the war of 1914-18 was to a considerable degree the party of those who, in the words which Toynbee uses to define a proletariat, were ‘in the community but not of it.’ This quality had of course been growing less and less pronounced both in Labour's later years of opposition and in its five years in office, during which it had realised many of the aspirations of those who had been discontented in 1935. In 1939, however, a small hard core of disaffection still remained, and the breach between this element and the majority was precipitated by the war. Here was an issue which divided the community into those who did and those who did not think that the status quo was sufficiently worth while for violence to be used in its defence. Just as the Government secured for its war policy the not too severely qualified support of many who found its peacetime programme too radical, so it encountered on this, as on no other issue, the opposition of the communists and of a minority of its own supporters whose thinking inclined towards Marxist or pacifist doctrine, or indeed retained the obstinate radicalism of which H. E. Holland had been an eloquent spokesman.

A pointer to the new situation had been given by Savage in a broadcast of 11 February 1940: ‘Freedom, such as we enjoy, breeds the truest patriots,’ he said, ‘but its genial climate permits also the growth of cranks, and ingrates; of dreamers of fantastic dreams; of ideological oddities and ne'er-do-wells; a diversity of creatures having this at least in common, the urge to propagate error

Dominion, Feb 1940.

.’ Such reproaches had often been directed by the conservatively minded against Savage's followers and against Savage himself: it was eloquent of the tide that was running in the higher levels of New Zealand politics that he should now be employing them. After all, much that was fruitful, and more particularly much that was democratic, in British politics had been contributed by those castigated as cranks, dreamers of fantastic dreams, and ideological oddities. There were those at the time who felt that Labour's leadership was then being less than true to its own tradition; that in cutting free from a possible source of embarrassment it was also isolating itself from a reserve of courage and enterprise or at least of stimulus.

Also significant was the change in the fortunes of Mr C. G. Scrimgeour. He was a legacy from the depression, during which his session from a private radio station, The Friendly Road, was a feature of New Zealand politics; and his vogue was a symptom of the continuing power of depression-time mentality, well into the years of recovery and of war. With Labour's victory in 1935 he entered the government service as Director of Commercial Broadcasting, and his session continued. For many years he addressed Sunday night radio homilies to the ‘Man in the Street’ in which, in terms of a highly diluted Christianity (his signature tune was ‘The Stranger of Galilee’), he stressed the merits of a hardly less indefinite policy of social reform. These sessions gained a considerable audience in the New Zealand of the late ‘thirties and had, in their saccharinish way, a professedly radical flavour which was more typical of Savage than of his more hard-headed lieutenants. At the end of 1939 Savage had firmly defended Scrimgeour against the indignation of the farmers whom he was alleged to have slandered. When Savage died Scrimgeour delivered a memorial broadcast in which he remarked that the greatest tribute that could be paid to Mr Savage would be not to lose John Lee also. This was not the view of Savage's successor any more than it had been of Savage himself, and on the following Sunday Scrimgeour's sessions were suspended, at the request, it was said, of Fraser. Though he was back on the air again after a week the writing was on the wall for him.

The changed tone was, indeed, made more noticeable by the death of Savage. There is not the slightest evidence that Fraser's ideas on social policy were any less progressive. But as the radical journal Tomorrow observed, ‘The death of Mr Savage has deprived the Labour Party of a leader who was popular not only with supporters of the party but with all those people who feel vaguely that some change in society is necessary. Mr Savage had the ability to inspire people with his confidence that the Labour Party could banish the evils of capitalism by social reform

Tomorrow, 3 Apr 1940.

.’ On the other hand, Peter Fraser might be expected to command more general confidence as wartime prime minister, and the reactions in the New Zealand press to his assumption of office were significantly cordial.

By the beginning of May the turbulence that accompanied these adjustments in the Labour movement was over, and it once more presented the appearance of unity. It was led by an able realist, whose wish for all-party co-operation in war-making was well known, and its relations with the National Party seemed better than at any time since the short-lived political truce after the outbreak of war. Although Hamilton had expressed uneasiness at the Government's delay in calling Parliament together, the other questions that were shortly to become so acute were for the time being below the horizon. The Nationalists were not pressing the conscription issue, and showed no desire for a coalition. Their decision not to contest the Auckland West seat left vacant by the death of Mr Savage was typical of improved relations. Indeed, there were some who felt the National Party was unduly supine. Mr E. R. Toop, president of the right-wing People's Movement founded in November 1939, complained that ‘The National Party is at present inarticulate as a Parliamentary Opposition

Evening Post, 4 May 1940.

.’ It was, therefore, upon a tranquil political scene in New Zealand that the news of the German offensive in the west arrived on the evening of Friday, 10 May 1940.

The Allied reverses in the Norwegian campaign, which in England led to the fall of Neville Chamberlain, did not cause any manifestation of public uneasiness in this country, and indeed the first week of the German offensive in May seems to have been accompanied by only minor public reactions in New Zealand. Representatives of the Farmers' Union and of the Chambers of Commerce urged an increase in the working week; reports of ‘fifth column’ activities in Norway and the Low Countries led to some demand for the internment of enemy aliens; and there were complaints of the lack of inspiring leadership. Further, the formation of Winston Churchill's coalition government-a few hours after the main attack began-naturally led to suggestions from the press, from the People's Movement and from the conservative Freedom Association that New Zealand should follow suit. The National Party itself made no move at this stage, however, and both Fraser and Nash hastened to indicate that they considered a coalition in New Zealand to be unnecessary. The country was in fact preoccupied with the news from Europe rather than with the action that such disasters might require from New Zealand politicians; and that news was sufficiently alarming. On 14 May the Dutch army ceased resistance, on the 15th the Germans broke through on the Meuse, on the 17th they occupied Brussels, on the 18th they captured Amiens and reached Antwerp.

New Zealand's effort to adjust her politics to the new situation was launched on the evening of Sunday 19 May, when statements by the two leaders began a week of bitter and confused controversy. On the one hand, Adam Hamilton as Leader of the Opposition vigorously associated the National Party with the criticism of government policy that had been expressed by various people and groups during the previous week. ‘The country,’ he said, was ‘becoming increasingly uneasy about the shilly-shallying of the Government and its apparent ineptitude in checking the fall of primary production and the drift in industrial and financial matters.’ The National Party had previously refrained from criticism as far as possible in order to enable the Government to devote its full attention to the war effort but this had been misunderstood, and ‘having been deprived of the opportunity of placing our views before the country in Parliament assembled in the usual constitutional way, the National Party will in future exercise its right to discuss publicly Government policy in relation to the war effort

Dominion, 20 May 1940.

.’ On the other hand, an oddly inept broadcast by the Prime Minister on the same night gave ammunition to those who said that New Zealand was in desperate need of effective leadership. There was little of inspiration in Fraser's generalities, or of challenge in his specific proposals. He announced that members of the Territorial Force would be given periods of training ranging from three to five months, and that new measures would be introduced to overcome the farm-labour shortage. These latter included a reduction of public works and an increase in subsidies to be paid to farmers who took on untrained men. One passage in his speech which was to arouse sharp criticism was a tribute ‘to the waterside workers at Lyttelton who had loaded an overseas liner on Saturday and Sunday when they realised it was essential work and those at Wanganui who had also worked during the weekend

Christchurch Press, 20 May 1940; Standard, 23 May 1940.

.’ These were not the words the community was waiting for.

Mr Fraser's speech was indeed pedestrian and wide of the mark for a leader who was usually acute in gauging the public mood; and his deficiencies on this occasion were highlighted by a comparison most difficult for any orator to sustain. On Monday morning by New Zealand time Mr Churchill made his first broadcast as Prime Minister. ‘After the battle in France abates its force then will come the battle for our island. For all that Britain is, and all that Britain means-that will be the struggle. In that supreme emergency we shall not hesitate to take every step, even the most drastic, to call forth from our people the last ounce or the last inch of effort of which they are capable. Interests of property and hours of labour are nothing compared to the struggle for life and honour, for right and freedom to which we have vowed ourselves

Evening Post, 20 May 1940.

.’ In New Zealand, as in England, it was the oratory of Churchill that struck the right note for the urgent mood of May 1940.

In New Zealand, however, in the absence of actual and immediate danger this sense of urgency produced results notably less heroic than in England. The statements by Hamilton and Fraser touched off an explosion of anti-government criticism whose violence is explicable only in emotional terms: forces of opposition had been long pent up, and the shock of disaster in Europe was accentuated by the frustrating impossibility of doing anything but watch and listen. By Tuesday the 21st public opinion, or the newspapers and representative individuals who claimed to express it, was in full cry against the Government. In this campaign genuine patriotism seemed inextricably interwoven with political prejudice and economic interest. Much of the comment was frankly political in flavour on both sides. Hamilton gave the signal, wrote the Standard,

Standard, 30 May 1940.

and ‘within two days anti-Labour organisations in every part of the Dominion sprang into action, columns of anonymous letters attacking the Government filled the newspapers, all sorts of individuals notorious for their anti-Labour outlook were being interviewed by the newspapers, the Prime Minister was being lampooned in cartoons, and new organisations with Fascist ideas were coming into existence.’

Yet criticism had a basis broader than party. The Standard's reference to the ‘new organisations with Fascist ideas’, for instance, was a hit at the National Service Movement which had been founded at Auckland earlier in the week. It is true that the convenor and chairman of the committee which set up the movement was Mr B. H. Kingston,

NZ Herald, 21 May 1940.

who had just received, as a conservative newspaper put it,

Evening Post, 30 May 1940.

a ‘full measure of Nationalist support’ as independent candidate for Auckland West. However, the organisation was not entirely confined to the usual opponents of the Government. Among those who addressed its first mass meeting in Auckland on 23 May were the Rev. P. Gladstone Hughes, Moderator of the Auckland Presbytery, who explicitly dissociated himself from the National Party, and Mr F. W. Schramm, the Labour MP for Auckland East.

This meeting was large and emotional, and in the latter half of the week similar meetings organised by influential citizens in towns throughout the country demanded conscription, a coalition, the internment of all enemy aliens and the suppression of subversive propaganda. Sometimes anxiety touched on hysteria-particularly over the question of enemy aliens. Thus on 21 May a provincial paper observed that it would like to see an organised defence force in every town in New Zealand, armed and ready for any eventuality. Norway was captured by 1500 Nazis without the great forts at Oslo, considered impregnable in the event of an attack from the sea, firing a shot. It would be a tremendous blow to Britain if, at the moment, Australia and New Zealand fell to a blitzkrieg from within

Taumarunui Press, 21 May 1940.

.’ At one stage the Leader of the Opposition actually advocated the indiscriminate internment of all Germans,

Evening Post, 22 May 1940.

but more important than such eccentricities was the quality of the emotion generated around the mass meetings of the latter part of the week. That held at Wanganui on Friday, 24 May 1940, may serve as an example:

Remarkable evidence of the refusal by an overwhelming majority of New Zealanders to tolerate any discordant note in the demand for vigorous leadership and action in the present crisis was seen in Wanganui today at a great public meeting in the Opera House, convened by the Wanganui Branch of the Returned Soldiers' Association. When a motion calling on the Government to form a National Cabinet was submitted to the meeting two members of the audience attempted to move amendments. The vast majority of the audience, however, would have none of them and repeated attempts by the movers to speak were drowned by waves of cheering, booing and counting out.

The building was packed to the doors and many hundreds who were unable to gain admission stood outside and listened to the speeches through loud-speakers. Wanganui business men had agreed to close their premises for an hour to enable their staffs to attend the meeting. Upward of 200 returned soldiers, with the Wanganui Pipe Band, paraded at the Drill Hall to march in a procession to the Opera House, and 100 delegates to the Farmers’ Union conference also marched in fours behind the returned soldiers.

Dominion, 25 May 1940.

When all over New Zealand men 12,000 miles from threat of immediate attack behaved like this, sober assessment became difficult, and official spokesmen were bitterly criticised for complacency.

This uncharacteristic excitement mounted to a climax at the end of the week, stimulated by shocks of unprecedented character from overseas. New Zealand was watching with horror an unexampled dissolution of established securities. Later disasters were of even greater magnitude, and set new standards for fear and prolonged tension: the fall of France, the titanic drama of the German thrust and failure in Russia, the smashing of the American fleet at Pearl Harbour, the onrush of Japanese conquest, and the advent of the atomic age. In the perspective of 1940, however, the events of this third week in May acquired a truly catastrophic momentum. On Wednesday the 22nd the evening papers reported the German communique announcing that the French Ninth Army had been scattered and Arras, Amiens and Abbeville captured. On the following day came the news of the British Emergency Powers (Defence) Act placing all persons and property in the United Kingdom at the disposal of the State. On Friday the 24th it was revealed that the communications of the British Army in France were endangered.

On that day, as an emotional climax was being reached, the Government acted. In the morning the caucus of the parliamentary Labour Party met as had been arranged before the crisis broke. When it adjourned for lunch Fraser announced that Parliament was to meet on the following Thursday, 30 May, when legislation on the lines of the British Emergency Powers Bill would be introduced. Asked to explain the full significance of this statement, Fraser replied disingenuously that the meaning was quite clear. ‘All forms of property and institutions as well as every person in the Dominion, would be at the disposal of the country for the prosecution of New Zealand's war effort to a successful conclusion

Evening Post, 24 May 1940.

.’ Similarly, when he was asked by the President of the RSA, William Perry, ‘Can I tell my executive this morning that the proposals to come before Parliament next week mean compulsory, universal, national service, civil, military, and financial?’ his reply was canny: ‘Yes, definitely, as required

Otago Daily Times, 27 May 1940.

.’ The Government was in fact adopting the British precedent as the best way out of a difficult situation. To take the widest possible powers and proclaim the intention of using them was, in the short run at least, an effective answer to those who complained of an insufficient war effort, but were less enthusiastic about increased state powers over property than about conscription of manpower. On the other hand, the comprehensive and vague character of the proposals was likely to sweeten the pill of conscription for members of the Labour Party.

There was, of course, one glaring difference between the situation in the United Kingdom and that in New Zealand. In the United Kingdom the new powers would be exercised by a national government representing the three main political parties. It was only to be expected therefore that their introduction in New Zealand would intensify local pressure for a comparable political arrangement. This pressure was already strong, for it was in accordance with a decision made before the announcement of the Government's plans that Hamilton and Coates called on Fraser on Friday afternoon. ‘Owing to the gravity of the war situation and the growing expression of great uneasiness in the minds of people of all ranks throughout New Zealand,’ said Hamilton, ‘I deemed it wise to tell the Prime Minister that in this emergency he should form a national Government.’ He explained further that in the Opposition's view this move was made ‘all the more essential’ by the Government's newly announced plans. ‘To say that New Zealand can be satisfied by a national emergency administration of such a drastic nature, without a national Government, is in my opinion the grossest form of misjudgement and folly

Evening Post, 27 May 1940.

.’

The issue was now squarely raised. Over the weekend the external clamour abated, and behind closed doors cabinet and the Government defined its policy. The result was broadcast to the people by the Prime Minister on Sunday evening, 26 May. What he now had to say was very different both in content and in tone from what he had said just a week before. The difference was a reflection of the momentous events of that week and of the heat of agitation within New Zealand; and it showed a new strength in leadership.

The broadcast made it clear that the Government was taking virtually unlimited powers to dispose of New Zealand's men and resources in the national interest. Compulsion-including conscription-was envisaged. The new powers, however, would be exercised only as required. ‘Those words “as required” mean that no steps will be taken unless they are needed; no steps will be taken without adequate consideration and the necessary organisation.’ Nevertheless, declared Peter Fraser, ‘Such conditions as will hamper our effort will be overwhelmed. If longer hours are necessary, the people of the Dominion will face up to that necessity, for only by such means can we maintain and retain the conditions of living that we have won. Every person in the Dominion, every atom of the country's services, must be subordinated to the requirements of the Dominion and the British Commonwealth. The sacrifices asked for may be great ….’ The Prime Minister then touched on the Opposition's request for a national government, which had been discussed with his parlia- mentaryparliamentary followers; and he announced the decision to form ‘a representative war council to be in charge of war activity, and consisting of the Cabinet Ministers associated with the war effort, representatives of the Opposition, and of industrial employers, the trades unions and the farmers.’ The ‘necessary powers’ would be given to this body and it would hold joint sessions with cabinet.

Finally the Prime Minister dealt with the home front. ‘Subversive propaganda’ would be suppressed. ‘People who malign the Allies will be stopped. The leaflets which have been flooding the Dominion have not done much harm, but the people and the Government are in no mood to stand any more of it, and we will put a stop to it. Anyone who stands in the way will be swept aside.’ At the same time the Government's more violent critics of the previous week were sharply rebuked. ‘The vituperative abuse that was poured forth came from those who have always been, and are, the bitterest opponents of the Government, and who have objected to every reform that has been enacted for the amelioration of the people of the Dominion …. The Government, returned by a majority of the people, … will not be overawed by clamour and will not give way to mob rule ….’ ‘Let the people remember,’ he added, ‘that we are not in a general election, but in a war to determine the future of civilisation. Let the criticism be keen; let the critics show a willingness to help; and let them do so in a friendly spirit of co-operation.’

The Prime Minister's broadcast left his critics not silent, but much less vociferous. It did in fact announce decisions that to some extent put their minds to rest on the questions which had been agitating them, and-equally important-this was done resolutely, confidently, and without any air of bowing before the storm. Indeed this manner was not unjustified. The public uproar of May 1940 helped to free the Prime Minister's hand by counterbalancing the effects of pressure from within the Labour Party. Without it the no-conscription pledge of two months earlier might have proved an inheritance very embarrassing sooner or later to the Government in its deployment of the country's manpower.

The following week brought even greater disasters in Europe: for the Belgian army surrendered, and it soon became clear that the British Expeditionary Force was endeavouring to escape from Dunkirk. Alarm at such news no longer converted itself into resentment towards the New Zealand Government, but it was in the shadow of unprecedented calamities abroad that Peter Fraser completed a delicate manoeuvre in internal politics. The new equilibrium established by his policy statements was subject to two obvious dangers. The first was that the Government's proposals, especially the implication of conscription and the admission of the Opposition to a share in administering the war effort, might have gone too far for the Labour movement outside Parliament. The second was that the offer of a war council might not have gone far enough for the Nationalists and that there might be in consequence a renewal of the agitation of the third week of May. The situation was precarious, and a false step might have produced political chaos.

The first danger proved the less serious. In the Labour Party, opposition to conscription had lost its diehard core earlier in the year, and even if it had not, it could hardly have stood against the storm now blowing. It is true that there were initial signs of hesitation. The Emergency Regulations Bill embodying the new powers passed through Parliament without difficulty, but during the debate in the House of Representatives most of the Labour speakers steered clear of the word ‘conscription’, and Clyde Carr's attitude no doubt reflected the regrets of many others. He supported the Bill but pinned his faith to the saving phrase ‘as required’, declaring that he did not believe conscription would be required and that he was utterly opposed to it.

NZPD, Vol. 257, p. 70.

Regret, and even outright opposition were expressed, too, by speakers at the emergency conferences of the Federation of Labour and the Labour Party which were summoned (as had been promised would be done in such circumstances) in the first week of June. The traditional left-wing case, regarding war as an extension of the class-struggle and conscription as compulsion to fight the wrong enemy, did not go by default; it was expressed, answered with some vigour, and rejected by a great majority.

The Government, supported by the office-holders of the Federation of Labour and the Labour Party, frankly asked for a free hand to deal with a desperate situation. No secret was made of the intention to introduce conscription, on which, indeed, the Prime Minister had been sufficiently clear during the parliamentary debate.

Ibid., p.21.

He was now asked whether the Government intended to differentiate between home defence and overseas military service; he said that ‘Our front line trenches are in Flanders. Conscription for home service has merged right into the question of overseas service

Standard, 6 Jun 1940.

.’ When asked if the Government did not consider it should have taken a referendum to obtain a mandate for conscription he replied: ‘When a house is on fire no one needs a mandate to fight the fire. When the country's very existence for the future is at stake, no other mandate than the necessity is required to conscript anything and everything

Ibid.

.’ He insisted on a free hand, too, in dealing with the Opposition: at the Labour Party conference, ‘without a moment's hesitation and with great firmness’, he refused to accept any commitment not to form a national government.

Evening Post, 4 Jun 1940.

On the other hand, great emphasis was placed on the Government's determination to demand from the rest of the community sacrifices equal to those made by the workers. ‘It is no question of the Government taking the super-profit from employers,’ Mr Nash assured the delegates. ‘We intend to take all the profits except for the proviso that we must be reasonable with the people who are dependent on profits or interest for their existence

Standard, 6 June 1940.

.’ Both conferences by overwhelming majorities gave the Government the mandate it sought to take whatever action was necessary for the effective prosecution of the war.

Fraser's dealings with the Nationalists were to prove much more difficult. The project of a war council, he said later, had been under consideration before there was any demand for a national government. He seems to have been particularly attracted by the opportunity it offered of giving a voice to economic groups not represented as such in Parliament.

NZPD, Vol. 257, p.86.

On the council, as proposed by Fraser to the Opposition on 28 May, there were to be six cabinet ministers and three members of the Opposition. Primary and secondary industries were each to be represented by an employers' and a workers' representative and there was to be one person nominated by the NZRSA and one returned soldier selected by the Government.

Dominion, 30 May 1940.

The powers of the council were to be much the same as those eventually given to the War Cabinet.

This proposal was unanimously rejected by the National Party caucus on 29 May.

ChristchurchPress, 30 May 1940.

. Apart from the division of powers with the domestic cabinet which was later to prove a stumbling block in negotiations over the War Cabinet, the composition of the council itself was unacceptable; one sharp critic, F. W. Doidge, spoke in Parliament of ‘a cumbersome War Council of fifteen members, half of whom will not be members of Parliament-that is to say, persons who will not come forward on the vote of the people, but will be there at the invitation of the Prime Minister …

NZPD, Vol. 257, p. 37.

.’ The Opposition, however, did not go so far as to vote against the Government's ‘all-in legislation’. Having made its protest against the handing over of virtually dictatorial powers to a single-party cabinet, it allowed the Emergency Regulations Amendment Bill to pass without a division. Mr J. A. Lee failed to find a seconder for an amendment that the House should give the Bill its second reading ‘when there has been inserted therein provision for the taking of a referendum before conscripting men for service overseas

NZPD, Vol. 257, p. 34.

.’

There was still pressure for a two-party cabinet, and negotiations continued. On 12 June, the morrow of Italy's entrance into the war, the caucus of the Labour Party broke through one of the main obstacles by approving an invitation to two Opposition members to act (without portfolio) on a War Cabinet with Government members. This War Cabinet was to deal only with service matters and its scope would thus have been less extensive than had been that proposed for the war council. It was still proposed to set up a war council, but ‘In the event of the War Cabinet being established the functions of the War Council will necessarily be consultative and advisory’.

Fraser to Hamilton, 13 Jun 1940, quoted by Hamilton, NZPD, Vol. 257, pp. 168–9. The War Council was set up on 18 June. Its 14 members did not include any Nationalist representatives, though Fraser said the invitation to them to nominate three still stood.— Christchurch Press, 19 Jun 1940.

. The new overture, however, was promptly rejected by the Nationalists; they had no taste for what Hamilton called an ‘uninspiring, cumbersome trinity of control and advice.’ Apart from their objections to the complicated division of powers and the withholding of portfolios from their representatives, they felt that ‘Because the all-important questions of production, finance, and man-power are completely excluded from the functions of the War Cabinet, its main purpose … is defeated

NZPD, Vol. 257, p. 168.

.’

The Prime Minister reacted with considerable anger to this rejection of the Government's plan. Perhaps he had experienced difficulty in persuading his followers to accept so clear a reversal of Labour tradition, and it became clear in discussion that he would have been content to allow the new War Cabinet in practice to extend greatly the field of its work. Yet there the matter rested, with some mutual irritation. Meantime, the overseas disasters culminated in the collapse of France, and in serious discussion as to whether or not Britain could continue the war alone. In a statement on 19 June-just after the loss of RMS Niagara near Auckland harbour had brought the war very close to New Zealand's thinking-the Prime Minister gave Parliament the gist of the cables on this momentous problem. In a telegram to Churchill on 15 June, he reported, ‘We said that whatever the decision of His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, in these most difficult circumstances, it would be understood, accepted and supported by us to the very end …. The fact that the people of the United Kingdom were much nearer events and consequently much more likely to bear the brunt of enemy attack was, we said, never absent from our minds, nor was the fact that we were a small and distant people.’ However, ‘As His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom had decided to fight on, then we, too, pledged this Dominion to remain with it to the end

NZPD, Vol. 257, p. 205.

.’ Though Fraser was undoubtedly expressing the feeling of the House when he said on this occasion that ‘if personal and factional considerations cannot be set aside then we are not great enough to retain our liberty’,

Ibid., p. 207.

yet there was still no agreement as to the practical implications of this sentiment and the Imprest Supply Debate which followed the Prime Minister's eloquent statements was acrimonious in tone. The very gravity of the situation left the party leaders and their supporters the more exasperated at what seemed to them the irresponsibility of their political opponents.

Negotiations continued, however, among those who wished so far as possible to eliminate party politics from matters concerning the war, and on 16 July Fraser was able to announce the formation of a War Cabinet consisting of Coates, Hamilton, Jones, Nash and himself. Its scope was not to be restricted to the services but it was also to make decisions concerning ‘production for war purposes, war finance requirements, emergency regulations so far as they apply to the war effort and generally to implement the policy of Parliament in relation to New Zealand's participation in the war

Ibid., p. 512.

.’ Nationalist objections to the earlier proposal had been met by a formal extension of the War Cabinet's powers; but it was clear that the domestic cabinet was to function as before for matters not directly connected with the war effort. Moreover, despite Opposition criticisms, the war council, now an advisory body, had been set up as planned.

Broadly speaking, therefore, the plan outlined in the Prime Minister's national broadcast of 26 May was achieved. On the one hand, the most drastic powers had been taken into the Government's hands. By the Emergency Regulations Amendment Act, the authority already granted to the Governor-General was now to ‘include power by Order in Council to make such emergency regulations making provision for requiring persons to place themselves, their services, and their property at the disposal of His Majesty as appear to the Governor-General to be necessary or expedient for securing the public safety, the defence of New Zealand, the maintenance of public order or the efficient prosecution of any war in which His Majesty may be engaged, or for maintaining supplies or services essential to the life of the community.’ It would have been hard to draft a more comprehensive basis for the ‘constitutional autocracy

The phrase was used in a perceptive editorial in the Wanganui Herald of 27 May 1940.

’ under which New Zealand was to live for the next five years.

Increased governmental powers were associated by many people with the notion of a ‘national’ government. On 26 May the Prime Minister had clearly foreshadowed the Opposition's participation in administration, and the complex negotiations that followed were concerned to define this participation in terms effective enough to satisfy the Government's opponents, without causing too sharp a reaction from the Government's supporters. The upshot was a War Cabinet, a domestic cabinet, and a war council: an illogical and potentially disastrous arrangement. At an early stage in negotiations, however, Fraser had argued powerfully that the effectiveness of such institutions depended less upon their formal character and relationships than on the men who composed them and the purpose which they strove to fulfil;

NZPD, Vol. 257, p. 171.

and the new War Cabinet brought together men for whom logic was subordinate to work to be done. Long before negotiations were successful, Gordon Coates had made a moving statement on the floor of the House. He said frankly that by all the rules of party warfare he ought to regard Peter Fraser as his bitterest opponent, and think of him with keen resentment, but in fact he could find no such resentment in his heart, and thought that the Prime Minister had given a fine lead to the country. Criticism could and did follow; but the war effort took precedence.

Ibid., p. 57 (31 May 1940).

With leaders on both sides often—though not always—able to take such an attitude, the War Cabinet worked effectively. As had perhaps been anticipated, its field of activity widened as the needs of the war effort came more and more to dominate New Zealand's life. In March 1942, for example, the Prime Minister said that ‘90 per cent of the country's administration was now in the hands of the War Cabinet

Evening Post, 31 Mar 1942.

.’ In that cabinet two leading members of the Opposition were of course full members, and there is reason to believe not only that party considerations were generally eliminated from its proceedings, but that relations between it and the Government cabinet were surprisingly good.

Cf. NZPD, Vol. 259, p. 83 (March 1941).

The new arrangement was, however, regarded with something a good deal less than enthusiasm by the rank and file in both parties, and criticism was at times vocal. That within the Labour Party had little immediate political importance; those who had sought to make an issue of their leaders' conservative trend had been defeated before the war opened up in the west. Party discipline generally held firm, though sometimes at the cost of inflicting frustration on the enthusiastic. Within the National Party the position was different.

Since the defeat of 1938 there had been signs that powerful elements within the party felt that Coates and Hamilton were irretrievably involved in the public mind with the ‘depression government’ of 1931–35, and that the National Party would never return to office until it was led by men untainted by association with the disastrous past. This tendency had its implications on the question of collaboration between the Government and the Opposition. In spite of their attacks on men and measures, it was clear that Coates and Hamilton would respond readily to any appeal to place national before party interests, that their personal experience of office in times of crisis strongly disposed them towards the kind of co-operation which ministers like Fraser so evidently desired. On the other hand the younger men in the parliamentary party reflected the new trend, were unsubdued by senior office, and their adherence to the principles of economic laissez-faire had not been compromised by experience of the needs of depression administration and consequent adventures in state control.

In the first months of the war a distinction developed between those who were more and those who were less willing to soft-pedal party politics in wartime. When the leaders of the former group entered a War Cabinet which fell short of an over-all national government, the difference in judgment was clearly defined. According to Hamilton, ‘this War Cabinet is at least a realistic approach to the ideal of unity and action which we all cherish in our hearts’.

ChristchurchPress, 22 Jul 1940.

To others it was a means by which the Opposition might be prevented from criticising adequately the activities of the Labour cabinet, which remained the Government for all purposes not directly connected with the war. These fears were expressed both in Parliament and in the press,

NZPD, Vol. 257, p. 574; Press, 19 Jul 1940.

and the problem was seriously discussed as to whether Adam Hamilton, as a member of the War Cabinet, was an effective leader of the Opposition. There was, it seems, a considerable group of younger members of the party which was doubtful as to the wisdom of having a War Cabinet at all, and which thought that, in spite of Hamilton and Coates having joined it, ‘the Opposition should not sacrifice any of its critical privileges

Press, 19 Jul 1940

.’ A generally well-informed newspaper went so far as to name S. G. Holland, the member for Christchurch North, as this group's prospective nominee for leadership of the party.

Such reports were denied, yet they gave an indication of trends. The achievement of a two-party War Cabinet was a Pyrrhic victory for the ‘old guard’ of the National Party; it represented a type of co-operation which that party was about to repudiate. Accordingly, it achieved less than had been looked for by the Prime Minister and the then Leader of the Opposition alike. Yet it proved an efficient instrument of New Zealand's will to fight.

CHAPTER 12 Awkward Minorities

THE explosive experiences of mid-1940 were followed in New Zealand by a period oddly reminiscent of the slackness which had preceded Hitler's attack on the West. In spite of occasional activities by raiders in the Pacific, the war remained remote from New Zealand. Its impact was one of words rather than deeds; and apart from those actually serving overseas, the country was concerned primarily with two not very stimulating forms of activity: the working out in detail of policies adopted in haste, and the continuance of normal forms of work, under greater difficulties and with more urgency, but without the stimulus of danger and of extensive change. The result was that issues great and small tended to become confused, and matters of no great intrinsic importance demanded undue attention. Overseas news indeed remained calamitous, but lacked climax. Men could not live perpetually tense; they became hardened to existence on the edge of disaster, and fearful news from abroad, while it sharpened tempers, ceased to be an urgently compelling factor in domestic politics. The gap accordingly widened between the needs, as apprehended and expounded by the leaders, and the emotional convictions of ordinary men. It was a long, uphill pull undertaken with determination; but when there were sharp reactions, they sometimes had a faint note of hysteria rather than of exaltation.

Wherever else opinions differed after June 1940 there was at least agreement on the need for conscription. Agreement in principle extended compulsion, as required, to economic resources and the assignment of civilian labour. In these fields, however, qualifications quickly entered in, and adequate precedent and administrative machinery was lacking. Conscription of men, however, meant the revival of familiar practices. It could be organised smoothly, and it met a popular demand for equality of sacrifice in the field traditionally regarded as the most significant–men in khaki marching in the Empire's battles. Voluntary enlistment accordingly ceased on 22 July 1940. Thereafter the men required were chosen by ballot from men of the appropriate class. Before very long the word ‘ballot’ became misleading: all those within certain categories were called to the colours unless some cause–medical, conscientious, or the public importance of a man's peacetime activities–was held to indicate otherwise. Appeals against military service could be made by men called up, or by others on their behalf.

Politically, conscription presented some problems that were awkward in principle, even if they bulked small, when measured in material terms, in the national picture. The possibility that its enforcement would raise a major political conflict vanished when the Labour Party as a whole accepted the new policy. That policy, wrote the Standard ingenuously, ‘provides for conscription of everything and everybody–which is what the Labour movement has always urged

Standard, 30 May 1940.

.’ Yet difficulties remained. It was not always easy, for example, to determine whether a fit man was more use in the forces than on a farm or in a factory or a scientist's laboratory. Much more serious, however, was the problem of conscientious objection, which seemed for many minds to be a test case for the preservation of liberty in wartime.

The attitude of the leaders of the Government was clear and dignified. Peter Fraser said plainly that he could not personally understand the position of the absolute pacifist, but must respect it. If a man was genuine and sincere, and had not manufactured his conscience for the occasion, there should be no persecution.

Ibid., 6 Jun 1940.

Walter Nash said with equal frankness that he had once been a pacifist but had changed his mind; events during the depression years and the rise of Hitlerism convinced him that there were evils which had to be resisted by force.

Ibid.

Both these men, who were at the core of policy-making, respected the conscience of those who sincerely differed from them on such an issue. It was clear, however, that the Government would not recognise as ‘conscientious objection’ the views of those who admitted that warfare might sometimes be necessary, but claimed that they could not conscientiously fight in the particular war then being waged. ‘The person he was concerned about and wished to meet in every possible way,’ said the Prime Minister,

To a deputation from the Christian Pacifist Society on 18 Nov 1940.

‘was the person who conscientiously believed that it was wrong to take life in any circumstances whatsoever. The test of a man's sincerity was that he was prepared to suffer or be killed himself rather than do what he thought wrong.’ After a year's experience, official policy was explained in explicitly generous terms by the Minister of Justice, H. G. R. Mason, on 23 May 1941. ‘It is the earnest desire of Government,’ he said to a gathering of Crown representatives and secretaries of Appeal Boards, ‘that Appeal Boards should prevent the coward and the slacker from sheltering under a convenient conscience invented to meet the exigencies of the present situation; but it is equally the earnest desire of Government that every consideration be extended to the objector who is sincere. To this end the standard of proof should not be harsh. Until and unless an appellant shows himself to lack sincerity, he should be handled by a friendly examination rather than by a rigorous cross-examination …. The examination should not generally involve deep and complex ethical considerations. The Boards should seek to find a simple sincerity, a real genuine belief. It is, of course, important that the dishonest or the insincere should be detected, but if as a result of a Board's investigation a few slip through who ought not, this will be better than that the genuine man should fail.’

The difficult task of pronouncing on the sincerity of conscientious objectors fell initially upon nine of the Appeal Boards, which dealt with all appeals against compulsory service in the chief towns of the country. These were judicial bodies of three men, including a lawyer chairman, aided by a Crown representative, and were charged to discover whether or not an appellant ‘holds a genuine belief that it is wrong to engage in warfare in any circumstances.’ In the nature of things, no precise rules could be laid down for their guidance. Long-standing membership of a pacifist religious body such as the Society of Friends was in 1940 instanced as acceptable evidence as to a man's convictions, but even this was omitted in the following year to avoid the suggestion that such membership was essential to sustain an appeal; it was expressly provided in 1941 that a Board could accept an appellant's own account of himself even if there were no corroborating evidence. In essence, although the forms were legal, and the executive officers were lawyers, the Boards had an almost unlimited discretion; nor was there any appeal against their decisions. In typically New Zealand fashion the effective administration of a centrally formulated policy was placed in the hands of almost independent local authorities.

Emergency Regulations 1940/117 and Amendment No. 4, 1941/73. Memorandum, Director of National Service to Minister, 10 Mar 1941.

The wishes, even the written directives, of the Government cannot be taken as conclusive evidence of the policies actually adopted in administration.

During five years of conscription 306,000 men were called up for service, and of them over 5100 lodged appeals on grounds of conscientious objection. In round figures, 3000 of such appeals were actually heard by Appeal Boards: 600 (20 per cent) were allowed; 1200 (40 per cent) were dismissed, subject to the men concerned being called upon only for non-combatant duties; and 1200 (40 per cent) were dismissed outright.

The percentage of appeals allowed in the United Kingdom was higher. See Hayes, Challenge of Conscience, pp. 382–3. Also, comparison is difficult owing to the absence of special provision in the United Kingdom for defaulters' detention. Objectors who persisted after their appeals had been rejected seem on the whole to have been treated with more leniency than in New Zealand, though there were some starting exceptions.– Hayes, op. cit., passim, particularly p. 172.

Of the second two groups, whose appeals had not been allowed, two-thirds accepted the position and–no doubt in some cases in grave distress–did what was required of them. Eight hundred refused and became military defaulters, offenders against the law. For them, there was no right of appeal, and, officially speaking, no sympathy. These figures are not large: indeed, they testify to the community's overwhelming agreement, and show that many people who held scruples at the prospect of war served without protest when the call came. Yet the dilemma posed for the community by the appeals was none the less a difficult and important one, and it can scarcely be said to have been faced.

The men appointed to Appeal Boards were necessarily drawn mainly from the older, more established, respectable and conventional sections of the community, men who represented the majority judgment and who were quite clear that this war, like the last, was unquestionably just, and unquestionably to be fought by the same basic methods to a victorious conclusion. Those who appeared before them were of a different generation. Some, no doubt, consciously or otherwise sought an easy way out of a moral dilemma and a physical danger. At the other end of the scale were men of settled and mature religious convictions. Among those who had recently reached the age of military service, however, there were very many thoughtful men feeling their way painfully through a morass of doubt and controversy towards a clearer definition of their duties as citizens. It was not so easy for them in the nineteen-thirties as for their fathers in 1914 to feel absolute certainty as to contemporary issues, or equal confidence that successful warfare would establish moral values or even solve basic political problems. A certain scepticism was natural; and many a young man faced an agonising struggle when the community demanded he should kill in the name of peace. No doubt such men were in a small minority in any case, and of them many quietly conformed rather than face the ordeal of public inquiry. Those who did push the matter to a conclusion had to prove their case to men who, however anxious to be fair, were of a different world, and who were most of them convinced that conscientious objection to war was a position logically untenable, and even amounted to presumptive evidence of failure in citizenship.

Cf. remarks in confidential circular from Director of National Service to Appeal Boards, 30 Jul 1943.

In these circumstances, the hearing of appeals became for many young men a gruelling ordeal, made all the more grim in some cases by the vigour with which some tribunals expressed their own and the community's condemnation of conscientious objection. In some cases it was widely believed that chairman and Crown representatives departed seriously from the judicial attitude prescribed for the Boards, and mature, legally trained men acted as advocates rather than as dispassionate inquirers after truth. Even an unsympathetic press made occasional protests, and the Director of National Service thought it appropriate to remind Appeal Boards in 1943 that they must not show hostility to appellants whose views they personally rejected. Proceedings, he said, ‘must be clothed with both the fact and the appearance of complete impartiality

Director of National Service to Appeal Boards, 30 Jul 1943; Press, 17 Jul 1943. Cf. also remarks by Bishop of Wellington to Minister of National Service, 26 Feb 1941.

.’ The Director, indeed, emphasised that he was rebuking no one in particular, but it soon became notorious that Appeal Boards differed widely in their attitudes towards conscientious objectors: the proportion of appeals allowed by the different Boards varied from 33 per cent to 14 per cent. This fact reinforced the feeling that in some areas at least the administration of the law did not conform to government policy, and that at least some young men of deep sincerity had been unfairly bullied and branded as law-breakers who were little better than traitors. The failure of the Government to grapple with this problem was, and remains, unexplained.

The allowing of his appeal entirely freed a conscientious objector from military obligation, but not from social pressure. As the war situation worsened and the armed forces suffered severe casualties feeling sometimes ran high, and those whose appeals had succeeded, or who had been declared liable to non-combatant service only, were sometimes regarded as having evaded some of the burdens of citizenship. This line of criticism was in part met in 1941, when a special tribunal was set up to ensure, on the one hand, that an appellant's ‘financial position shall be no better than if he were serving as a member of the Armed Forces’, and on the other, that he ‘shall be employed on such work of a civil nature and under civil control as the public interest requires

National Service Emergency Regulations 1940, Amendment No. 5 (27 Aug 1941).

.’ The Tribunal worked quietly, with public support and with the co-operation of the conscientious objectors themselves, and it produced at last a respectable token result. When its operations ceased in mid-1946, some £29,000 had been collected for the Social Security Fund under its decisions from 500 men, individual contributions ranging from a few shillings a week to several hundreds of pounds a year.

Apart from financial considerations, however, there was a strong current of thought which insisted that conscientious objection to service was anti-social. There were accordingly recurrent suggestions that objectors should be dismissed, especially from employment where they might influence opinion. In particular, difficulties arose in the schools, and opinion grew strong among Education Boards–which represented parents–that conscientious objectors should not be allowed to remain as teachers.

Deputation from Wellington Education Board to Minister, 26 Aug 1941.

The Government at first maintained that teachers should come under the same rule as anyone else, but by the end of 1941 it had deferred to pressure. Thenceforward, any teacher who appealed against service on conscientious grounds was placed on leave without pay for the duration of the war, even if the appeal were allowed. Those whose appeals were rejected and who became military defaulters could be dismissed. Altogether, 123 teachers appealed on conscientious grounds, though some of these subsequently served. In 1942 Canterbury University College Council, which also administered schools, ap