Empire Lost - Andrew Stewart [27]
This was a dangerous approach as was quickly demonstrated. The British Expeditionary Force's deployment to France was not revealed to the Dominions in advance nor even was there any mention made of it in the DW telegrams. In the British High Commission in Pretoria this cause considerable astonishment, an angry message back to London warning entirely correctly 'omission is somewhat difficult to explain and it is to be feared that the daily telegrams will lose value in their eyes if there is any implication that they contain selected items only'. There was another concern: by not including relevant information it might be taken by the Dominions that there was no confidence in their ability to keep secrets.39 This was actually a widely held fear in Whitehall, even in the DO there was a worry that sensitive cables might be tapped.40 Robert Hadow, who had earlier warned of the possible danger of Dominion neutrality, also wondered what might happen should a situation arise where the Dominion governments felt that London was withholding information they deemed vital to their security.41 He argued that keeping them within the 'inner ring of events' would bring them fully in step with British policy and remove the need for 'prior consultation' and delays which could happen at some future critical stage. Cadogan was still unimpressed though and again dismissed his subordinate's concerns.42 The result was that, at best, the DW telegrams remained highly sanitized accounts, only marginally better than Ministry of Information reports. A member of the Board of Trade who was involved in their preparation noted that they did not include anything which had 'a bearing on future plans' while the FO First Secretary who oversaw the process would later confirm that they 'never contained anything really important'.43
This was not lost on the high commissioners, a self-titled 'junior war cabinet' made up of forceful characters. Within DO circles, the Australian representative Bruce, himself a former prime minister, was seen as being very down-to-earth, while Massey, presiding at Canada House, was the most aristocratic. The South African, te Water, had been equally well-respected but he had resigned in protest at Hertzog's removal from power and a replacement was still awaited. This left Jordan, the New Zealander, a former London policeman, who although rarely treated seriously, was liked immensely because of his friendliness.44 All of them had initially welcomed what they saw as the positive measures being taken to keep them better informed, ones which they believed would allow them to retain a central role in the coalition's policy-making.45 Between the war's outbreak and the end of 1939, 83 meetings were held between them and Eden or his deputy, each of which allowed the opportunity to scrutinize official British war policy.46 With the distances and time involved in encoding and decoding communications, at this stage comments made by the distant Dominion prime ministers could only rarely carry the same bearing. Bruce and Massey were the key figures despite the fact that both had found themselves increasingly marginalized by their domestic political leaderships. Mackenzie King was widely rumoured not to trust his representative because 'his telegrams were too English' and had asked on numerous occasions that discussions were not held with Massey that might be construed in Canada as being of