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By Root 880 0

war years, of dealing with the Dominion high commissioners in London did little to improve the position. Tasked with securing the unity of the British Commonwealth of Nations, this meant the department faced a constant and often lonely struggle. This did not inhibit its response and there was quick condemnation when it was deemed necessary.11 Perhaps the best critique of the impact the DO made came from Gerald Campbell who, prior to taking his position in Washington, had been Britain's representative in Ottawa. Not originally from the department, he had gone to Canada with little knowledge of the country other than the generally negative Whitehall view. Upon his subsequent departure for his new role in Washington, he could only conclude that 'other UK departments ... would have produced secession any day of the week if what was once described to me as the "bloody Post Office" had not done a most useful job'.12 It might have been fair to claim that, pre-war, the DO had to 'concentrate on tactics rather than strategy' because it lacked political muscle.13 During this final conflict, while the general view appears to have been a blissful ignorance of its activities or even existence, it is undoubtedly the case though that this was a department that played a major, if largely unrecognized, role in the successful wartime management of the British Empire.

The power within this alliance lay with the prime ministers, specifically those of Britain, Canada and Australia, and their closest acolytes within government. Primus inter pares was obviously Winston Churchill and here lay a good deal of the problem. Amery, the founder of the DO and a father-figure in terms of the Anglo-Dominion relationship, was undoubtedly better placed than most—albeit with an overly passionate and generally biased eye—to comment on the performance of the British leader. He lamented that he 'never really sympathized with any of the developments in Imperial relations during the present century' and begged the Dominions secretary to see to it before the 1944 visit by the Dominions' leaders 'that Winston does not let loose some passage of old-fashioned Victorian Imperialism' on his visiting Canadian counterpart.14 As Churchill had himself said at the height of the Battle of Britain, he had always faithfully served two 'supreme causes': the first was 'the historic certainty of our Island life'; the other 'the maintenance of the enduring greatness of Britain and her Empire'.15 Despite such typically bombastic rhetoric the truth was that he clearly did not find it easy to preside over a free Commonwealth at a time when the pace of wartime events meant action had to be taken quickly and, often, secretly. He still lived in the days of the old Empire, a single unified whole bound together by romantic attachment to British ideals and pride in British accomplishments. The system that existed in his mind did not question the direction issued from the centre and he sometimes appeared unable to understand why the modern version was not the same.

And then there were the Dominions. Australia had been by far the most pronounced in both its support and, in equal measure, its criticism. The position it felt it occupied within the corridors of power and influence in London and the actual situation were, however, often quite different. The reality was that the self-perceived 'blue-eyed boy amongst the Dominions' was often in fact sometimes loathed. Menzies came and went and caused trouble in the process and bore much of the blame for this state of affairs. His successor was then largely instrumental in causing the political clash between the British and Australian governments following the Japanese attack in December 1941, which proved to be perhaps the most serious threat to Anglo-Dominion relations during the entire war. Bitterness and recriminations persisted for many months, the tensions becoming so visible that The Times was moved to comment on the unfortunate impression that 'Australian plain speaking is synonymous with empty grumbling and futile fault-finding'. Churchill