* The case for an orchestrated ‘betrayal’ of Australia by Britain is not easily made. It seems rather that British ministers were unable, or refused, to see the war through Australian eyes. In January 1942, Churchill ordered the redirection of an entire division of British troops, which had been bound for Burma, to Singapore, in response to the Australian claim that the evacuation of the island fortress would be an ‘inexcusable betrayal’. With the fall of Singapore, thousands of these British troops died. Churchill never forgave the Australian Government for the loss, argues David Day. At other times, Churchill spoke sincerely of British gratitude to Australia for her military support. Churchill constantly reassured Curtin of Britain’s intended support, despite Britain’s own grave situation. He restated Britain’s commitment to send immediate troops and ships at the expense of India and the Middle East if Australia were invaded in force by Japan. It was an effective caveat. Whether these reassurances were hollow or sincere depends on one’s measure of the British leader. Curtin never openly condemned Churchill for ‘betraying’ Australia. It is noteworthy that Evatt, and not Curtin, penned the intemperate cable that described the evacuation of Singapore as an inexcusable betrayal of Australia. Davids Horner and Day, the titans of Australian World War II military and political history, disagree on whether Britain betrayed Australia during World War II. David Horner does not recognise a betrayal, stating that British inability to help Australia was forced on Churchill by the fact that it was fighting a total war. David Day, however, in his books The Great Betrayal and The Politics of War makes plain his view that Britain betrayed the dominion. Churchill himself perhaps spoke the truth of Britain’s position, when he said that a government’s first duty is to its own country (see The Politics of War, p. 307). It was just as well that Curtin took the same view.