The object of this letter is to put before you in a rambling and
personal way something of what I have been thinking in the last
few days about the War and its future.

It seems almost a certainty-in fact it will no doubt have happened
before this letter reaches you-that Poland is going down the drain
quite completely, and that the effect of this upon Russia, Rumania
and Hungary, to say nothing of the other Balkan and Middle Eastern
countries, may be disastrous. Given a landslide among these
people, both Italy and Japan may very well decide that the time
has come to carve up Great and Greater Britain.

I feel quite confident that Hitler [1] has no desire for a first
class war, and that until the Polish debacle is complete he will
not be disposed to assume the offensive against either France or
Great Britain. It seems to me that when he has finished with
Poland he will say to Great Britain and France-'Well, it is all
over now; I have beaten the Poles and you haven't been able to do
anything about it and you cannot do anything about it now; but I
am a magnanimous fellow. I don't propose to annex Poland. I will
simply re-take the Corridor and Danzig and, for the rest, I will
be prepared to be a guarantor with yourselves of the integrity of
Poland proper'. At that stage we will have a choice: We can either
say 'Yes' or we can say 'No'. If we say 'No' we must settle down
to a war in which Germany's defensive position is incredibly
strong, in which, in the long run, millions of British and French
lives will be lost, and in which the economic force which will be
our ultimate weapon will tend to affect us almost as severely as
it does Germany. How is this war to be sustained?-Not by the cry
of 'Protect Poland' because, ex hypothesi, Poland will have been
defeated; not by the cry of 'Revenge Poland', for nobody really
cares a damn about Poland as such; not by the cry of 'Down with
the Nazi Government' for it is really quite indefensible for us to
be dictating to the German people what sort of government they
shall have. The cry then must be, in effect, 'law and order and an
end of terrorism in Europe'. I don't underestimate this cry,
because I believe it is a true and a good one. But I have a
horrible feeling that by the time we have sustained three years of
carnage and ruin, law and order will tend to be at a discount in
every combatant country, and our last state may be worse than our
first.

These are gloomy observations, and no doubt they all need
qualification, but the point that is really clear in my mind is
that some very quick thinking will have to be done when the German
offer arrives, and I think that considerable diplomatic activity
will need to be shown on the Italian and Balkan fronts if we are
not to be completely outmanoeuvred. Frankly, I have not been
impressed with British diplomacy of late. We looked just like a
lot of fools over the Russian Pact with Germany. For British
military experts to be conferring solemnly with the Russians in
one room, while Papa Stalin [2] and Von Papen [3] double-crossed
them in another, is enough to make everybody laugh at us. Again, I
feel that if France had been spoken to in language they could
understand, at the right time, Franco/Italian relations might have
been better and the truculence of Hitler might have been
diminished.

As to Japan-I have had a growing feeling for some time that though
the Far East is a major problem to us, it is a relatively minor
one to Whitehall, and that the British Government is more engaged
in hanging on in China, hoping for something to turn up, than in
any clear process of thinking about the future. Even now I would
not hesitate, if I were responsible for British foreign policy, to
offer a joint mediation with America in the Sino/Japanese dispute,
and to accompany it by a statement that it is recognised that
extra territorial rights on the part of foreigners in China are
admitted to be anomalous, and that these rights would be
progressively abandoned over a period of, say, 1o years.

So far as Italy is concerned-I would buy her allegiance by giving
her a couple of places on the Suez Canal Board and doing something
rational about Djibouti and Tunis. What on earth is the use of
France being intransigent on these matters when 3 or 4 strokes of
the pen might put both France and Great Britain on an almost
intolerable defensive?
What positive action could be taken in relation to Poland I admit
I do not know. All I know is that I feel profoundly disturbed
because Germany has always seemed to me to have an almost
unanswerable case in relation to the Corridor. Woodrow Wilson
invented this wretched Corridor and put it among his 14 points.

Seeing that America in this way pushed this thorn into Europe's
side, what about suggesting to Roosevelt that he should now make
reparation by calling a conference to extract it?
If Germany conquers Poland and then puts up the proposition I have
anticipated above, what is the possibility of having that
proposition broadened out to provide for a re-settlement of the
whole map of Europe with joint and several guarantees all round?
I know that you know more about these matters than I do, but I
know that you feel much the same as I do, and I know that there is
probably no answer to it all-except just to go on fighting until
the other country goes down into a state of starvation and riot in
which the seeds of another war, in which my grandchildren will
fight, are sown. But at the same time I see no sanity in it.

Meanwhile, there is amazing unity of political opinion, both in
Great Britain and here. In Australia, nobody doubts the justice of
our action, though I am sure that the chief passion in anybody's
heart is one of bitterness at Hitler and his satellites for having
so wantonly induced a war, but at the same time nobody has any
illusions about it. Those who think about it all, feel sick about
it-and those who don't want to feel sick, don't think about it.

ROBERT G. MENZIES