This book was written in a hurry because on my copy, inside the front cover, an earlier owner had dedicated the book to her son/daughter with the date 2nd April 1942 written on it. The rush to get the book published resulted in inaccuracies in many places. Some of these are error of facts, for example the number of artillery batteries in Singapore (definitely more than two) (pg. 88) and Chiang Tso-lin dying in 1918 (it was in 1928). There are others relating to names of places; many of these I reserve my judgement because they could be spelt differently from how they are now due to the Romanization of the names for example Tjilatjap instead of Chilachap as spelt today. But there is one I find unacceptable - Tengate (Tengah) Aerodrome in Singapore (pg. 93). It took me a while to conclude that he was referring to Tengah.
Other faults include the rather random pictures that appear in random places throughout the book, for instance, why would a picture of Georgetown, Penang appear in the chapter on the Philippines and a Japanese submarine in the middle of the Appendix? Even more perplexing is Appendix I - A short chronology of Chinese History. Yet there is something that I must commend about the editing - mis-spelt names of places may be a result of ignorance of the Far East (it was 1942 after all), but beyond these, I did not come across any other editorial mistakes such as a spelling error. Why do I think this is amazing? Some of the printing is of such quality that reminds me of a facsimile typed on an old typewriter that did not have a clean set of strike bars. That reminded me that those were the days without spell-checkers. In 1942 under such dire conditions, someone (not the author, I think) has done a really good job.
The author's position was quite consistent in this book: no matter which theatre he was referring to, he would lament the lack of conscription in the years before the war to prepare the locals to fight the enemies. He did not blame the lack of foresight, he felt it was a misguided policy that deliberately excluded the locals. Another area where he was consistent was in his scathing attack of the British politicians' handling of the war and conversely his praise of both the Dutch and the Americans.
If the book suffers from the faults mentioned above, there are a few things that make me think well of the author. First of all, some of his reading of the Japanese's intentions were quite accurate. His conclusion that the Japanese did not intervene in Russia despite Operation Barbarossa was due to their experience in Nomonhan (which he got the year wrong, it was 1939, not 1938) bore out in a well-argued book on the subject written decades later. Secondly, I like his sense of optimism and courage that never falter throughout the book. Remember, this author was not talking with hindsight, he wrote the book immediately after the Far East fell like dominoes, yet he totally believed that Japan would lose. He wrongly predicted that the loss would result from a combination of the pincer on the Japanese coming from Australia in the south and China in the north but he never wavered in his belief that Japan would lose. He was a courageous man, I have never come across another soul who would take Churchill's famous exhortation of his countrymen to fight the enemies 'in the streets, on the beaches and in the hills' to be a reflection of defeatism. He asked instead why they should not fight in the enemy's streets, beaches and hills.
I am going to keep this book. Not because it is a resource that I think I would return to but for the historic value of the copy I own and as a source of optimism and courage whenever I need them. We don't just read for knowledge do we?
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