* On the day Singapore fell, a letter of singular befuddlement floated into Curtin’s office: ‘My dear Prime Minister,’ Menzies wrote, ‘would we be…better off in this war by concentrating all available forces in the north of Australia to carry out a Continental defence and not an island one?’ Menzies was now advocating the concentration of Australian troops in Australia, and presented the idea as though it were a novel one. ‘There are undoubtedly naval and military and air considerations of which I am ignorant,’ the former PM conceded. To which a weary Curtin replied, ‘The evolution of [your] opinion towards a policy which has long since been advocated by me…is not without interest.’