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apparently later claimed that he generally liked Curtin, 'this eminent and striking Australian personality', and it was certainly true that in time he was thought of favourably within the DO, both generally and by US senior figures. But at the time of Singapore's denouement the significance of the shock, both physical and mental, caused by the rapid collapse of the alliance's military position could not be denied. The repercussions were devastating, the value of the British connection was open to question and with the raising of doubts about whether it could ever be restored an opportunity presented itself for the United States to exploit the discord. Subsequent aid from Washington was as much mischievous as sincere. Australia's primary function in their new ally's strategy proved to be as a base from which to mount operations across the Pacific and South East Asia in driving Japan back; when this role receded from mid-1944 onwards, American leaders paid correspondingly less heed to Australian wishes.

In turn disenchantment led to Curtin's London 1944 proposals, a demonstration that his country was not in fact chained to any 'American imperium'.16

The oldest and largest Dominion, Canada, maintained an often subdued approach to its relations with 'the Mother Country'. William Mackenzie King remained highly suspicious of Whitehall's motives. Backed by advisers who also, in some cases, had serious doubts about Britain's intentions, his fear was that the war would be used as a pretext to challenge the idea of Dominion autonomy. This ensured that, certainly until his visit to London in August 1941, his support could appear far from enthusiastic and wherever possible he kept comment on how the alliance should proceed to a minimum. The sizeable French-speaking population in Quebec had no real sympathy with the British Empire even when Vichy's fall meant that their support should have been unquestioned. Fully aware of the potential dangers this held, particularly if there were to be any repeat of the First World War's casualty figures, he fought a sometimes lonely war, one in which he was ever conscious of the growing significance of the United States. Ritchie noted in his diary in March 1941 that the average Englishman looked upon the Canadian military as 'an army of friendly barbarians who for some incomprehensible reason have come to protect him from his enemies'. Canadian troops were indeed the first to arrive on British shores and the contribution they made to the coalition war effort during the decisive campaigns in Italy and North-West Europe could not be criticized. Popular opinion in Canada though appeared to empathize with the sometimes mercurial leader in Ottawa; a Gallup opinion poll conducted in June 1942 showed that just 52 per cent of those questioned definitely wished to remain within the Empire.17

In the Union's case, the controversial manner in which Jan Smuts had become prime minister in September 1939 was always likely to place restraints on the degree of active support he could offer, a point fully understood by the DO if not always elsewhere in Whitehall. It was much more commonly accepted that the South African effort and Smuts were symbiotic; as the British high commissioner in Pretoria put it in July 1942, 'the further contribution that South Africa can make to the Allied cause depends all too absolutely on the life, health and continued leadership of Field Marshal Smuts'. Throughout the war he faced an organized nationalist opposition that, in many cases, openly sympathized with Nazi Germany's objectives. Wartime instructions from the WO for Army educators stipulated that they were to stress in their briefings that the Union was 'an independent sovereign state' and that Britain had no control over 'internal or external policy'.18 The South African military was obliged to operate on two levels, with only those who wore 'Red Tabs' on their uniforms willing to serve outside of the African theatre of operations; this ultimately did not prevent them from marching all the way through Italy. Indeed the Dominion's