A Truly Star Performance? Australian Minister Richard Gardiner Casey in Washington, March 1940-March 1942

journal of american-east asian relations 21 (2014) 109-133

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/18765610-02102003

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brill.com/jaer

The author extends his thanks to the two anonymous reviewers, who contributed immensely to this essay with their thoughtful and incisive comments.

A Completely Star Performance?Australian Minister Richard Gardiner Casey in Washington, March 1940-March 1942

Peter MauchUniversity of Western Sydney

[email protected]

Abstract

The Australian government in January 1940 appointed Richard Gardiner Casey minister to the United States. He sought both U.S. support for Britain in its war against Nazi Germany, and a U.S. guarantee to preserve Australian security in the face of an aggressive and threatening Japan. When Casey’s mission ended in March 1942, the United States had entered war in both the Atlantic and the Pacific. The limits to Casey’s ministerial influence were such, however, that one hardly can credit him with having delivered U.S. belligerency. The existing literature nonetheless locates merit in Casey’s ministerial mission, particularly in his highly effective public diplomacy and also in his ability to remain abreast of key U.S. decisions and strategy. This essay takes no particu-lar issue with these findings. Instead, it finds value elsewhere in Casey’s mission, and in particular in the delicate balance he struck between his twin loyalties, to both Australia and the British Empire. It also departs from the existing literature insofar as it identi-fies a number of issues and episodes that call into question Casey’s accomplishments and acumen.

Keywords

Australia – British Empire – Richard Gardiner Casey – Robert Menzies – pre-Pearl Harbor U.S. policy – Japan

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1 Prime Minister’s Department to Mr. F. K. Officer, Australian Counselor at U.K. [United Kingdom] Embassy in Washington, 8 January 1940, Documents on Australian Foreign Policy (hereafter dafp), 1937–1949, Vol. 3: January–June 1940 (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1979), 9.

2 W. J. Hudson, Casey (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1986), 122.3 William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The World Crisis and American Foreign Policy:

The Undeclared War, 1940–1941 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1953), 928; Herbert Feis, The Road to Pearl Harbor: The Coming of the War between the United States and Japan (New York: Atheneum, 1967), 69, 89, 105, 126.

4 See, for example, Glen St John Barclay, “Australia Looks to America: The Wartime Relationship, 1939–1942,” Pacific Historical Review 46, no. 2 (May 1977): 251–71. See also, Alan Watt,

The Australian government in January 1940 appointed Richard Gardiner Casey minister to the United States. Coming some five months after the out-break of World War II—and some two years before Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack brought the United States into the war—it was the “first time” that Australia had made a “full diplomatic appointment to a foreign country.” The historic appointment bespoke the “importance” with which Australia viewed U.S. “friendship” and it was Casey’s task to “do much to improve” that friendship.1 Specifically, Casey pursued a two-fold objective: U.S. support for Britain in its struggle for survival against Nazi Germany and a U.S. guarantee to protect Australian security. Casey left his Washington post in March 1942—to take up a new position as the United Kingdom’s Minister of State in Cairo, Egypt—by which time the United States had committed itself to pursuing the war until Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy were vanquished. Only the naïve would suggest that Casey single-handedly secured U.S. belligerence in both the Atlantic and the Pacific. His contemporaries nonetheless saw much that was worthy of praise in Casey’s mission. To borrow the words of former Australian prime minister and one-time mentor Stanley M. Bruce, Casey “put on a completely star performance.”2

Bruce’s assessment at that time notwithstanding, international scholarship has almost completely neglected Casey’s mission. He has vanished from recent international histories, and only appears in early accounts, notably those of authors William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, and Herbert Feis, as a two-dimensional understudy of British Ambassadors Lords Lothian and Halifax.3 Early Australian scholarship was almost equally dismissive. The basic premise underlying this early Australian scholarship was simple: Casey—and, indeed, Australia—unavoidably remained in the shadow of the British embassy in Washington and was therefore peripheral to the key decisions which would culminate in American entry into World War II.4 But historian Carl Bridge tackled this long-standing consensus in 1981. He argued that Casey’s

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The Evolution of Australian Foreign Policy, 1938–1965 (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1965), chapters 2 and 3.

5 Carl Bridge, “R. G. Casey: Australia’s First Washington Legation, and the Origins of the Pacific War,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 28, no. 2 (August 1982): 188.

6 Christopher Waters, “Casey: Four Decades in the Making of Australian Foreign Policy,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 51, no. 3 (September 2005): 382.

7 Harry G. Gelber, “Turning Points: Richard Casey and the Development of an Australian Foreign Service,” Quadrant 53, no. 4 (April 2009): 77.

8 Carl Bridge, “‘The Other Blade of the Scissors’: Richard Gardiner Casey, Australia’s First Minister to the United States, 1940–1942,” in Christopher Baxter and Andrew Stewart, eds., Diplomats at War: British and Commonwealth Diplomacy in Wartime (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2008), 127–48. Worth noting is that Carl Bridge has edited R.G. Casey’s Washington diaries. Carl Bridge, ed., A Delicate Mission: The Washington Diaries of R. G. Casey, 1940–1942 (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2008).

diplomacy, based as it was on “gentlemanly trust and consensus,” was success-ful, particularly insofar as Casey remained abreast of key decisions and strategy, and kept his own government apprised of both. Bridge highlights the Anglo-American agreement on the Germany-first strategy as one case in point. Casey, in this author’s estimation, ensured that his nation exerted its “maximum power” in pre-Pearl Harbor Washington.5

Bridge initiated a permanent shift in the historiography, as subsequent Australian scholarship took its cue from him. According to Deakin University historian Christopher Waters, Casey “had considerable success in presenting the Empire’s case to the American people and to the Roosevelt Administration.”6 University of Tasmania scholar Harry Gelber also has written approvingly of Casey’s diplomatic skills, noting that, in pre-Pearl Harbor Washington, these skills “came very much into their own.”7 Bridge recently turned his attention once again to Casey’s ministerial mission. Redirecting his focus specifically to Casey’s public diplomacy, Bridge portrayed the astuteness with which Casey cultivated the American press, used opinion polls, and made speaking tours around the United States. Casey, in short, succeeded in educating the American public to the values they shared with Australians. This, according to Bridge, facilitated Casey’s more traditional diplomatic efforts with respect to American policy-makers, from President Franklin D. Roosevelt on down.8

This essay does not take issue with the existing picture of Casey as an accomplished practitioner of public diplomacy. Nor does it disagree substan-tially with the established portrait of Casey as a most able networker with a happy knack for gathering information that was vital for his own government’s policy-making purposes. Rather, it locates merit elsewhere in Casey’s mission. Focusing almost exclusively on Casey’s traditional diplomacy, it finds much

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9 James Cotton, “R. G. Casey and Australian International Thought: Empire, Nation, Community,” International History Review 33, no. 1 (May 2011): 99.

10 Regarding Henry Luce’s vision of the “American Century,” see the collection of essays in Diplomatic History 23, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 157–370. The author of this article is particularly fond of Michael Hunt’s felicitous definition thereof, namely, it was a “twentieth-century vision of the world transformed in the American image.” Michael H. Hunt, “East Asia in Henry Luce’s ‘American Century,’” ibid., p. 321.

that is commendable in the delicate balance that Casey struck between his twin loyalties to both Australia and the British Empire. The argument in this sense is simple: his mission arose out of the realization that Australian interests were “not always exactly parallel with those of Great Britain,” yet he tackled differences in Anglo-Australian outlooks and interests with great dexterity throughout his time in Washington.9

By contrast, in a further departure from the existing literature, this essay locates a number of issues and episodes that call into question Casey’s accom-plishments and acumen. First, it shows how Casey in the initial months of his mission made little impression on his hosts and fumed at what he supposed was the refusal of the Americans either to identify or to align more properly with the British Empire’s cause. In so doing, Casey showed precious little appreciation for domestic U.S. politics, for the steps that the United States was taking toward ever-greater support for Britain, or even for the possibility that an American view of the world might differ from an Australian view. This re-examination also notes that although Australia’s government predicated Casey’s mission on the necessity of U.S. involvement—and, indeed, leader-ship—in both Europe and the Pacific, Casey privately recoiled from the thought of what American publisher Henry Luce soon would label the “American Century.”10 Most strikingly, this essay reveals how British Prime Minister Winston Churchill completely undercut Casey’s diplomacy in late November 1941. In a word, it exposes the limits of Casey’s influence in Washington—and also on his ability to smooth over the cracks in the Anglo-Australian relationship. None of this seeks to suggest that Casey’s mission was a failure. It does however call into question whether his perfor-mance was truly stellar.

Robert Menzies, Australia’s new Prime Minister, addressed himself publicly in late April 1939 to a discomfiting difference in Anglo-Australian outlooks. “What Great Britain calls the Far East is to us the near north,” he astutely observed. Menzies, who by his own (later) admission was British to his “boot-heels,” was adamant that he was not speaking about Australian “separatism” or “independence” from the British Empire. He nonetheless argued that



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11 Much of Prime Minister Robert Menzies’s public address is reproduced in Watt, Evolution of Australian Policy, p. 24. For Menzies’s oft-quoted British to the “boot-heels” remark, see Russell Ward, “Australian Legend Re-Visited,” Historical Studies 18, no. 71 (1978): 175.

12 Regarding the fledgling Department of External Affairs, see Joan Beaumont, “Creating an Elite? The Diplomatic Cadet Scheme, 1943–56,” in Joan Beaumont, ed., Ministers, Mandarins, and Diplomats: Australian Foreign Policy Making, 1941–1969 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 2003), 20–25. Months after Casey assumed his post in Washington, Sir John Latham and Sir Frederic Eggleston began their respective ministe-rial assignments in Tokyo and Chongqing. According to retired diplomat Alan Watt, Casey, Latham, and Eggleston each “showed no lack of initiative in reporting or comment.” Watt, Evolution of Australian Policy, p. 31.

the distance separating Britain and Australia gave rise to significantly different threat perceptions: whereas Britain was understandably—and overwhelmingly—focused on the ever-increasing threat from Nazi Germany, Australia’s “primary responsibilities and primary risks” focused on Japan. So far as Menzies was concerned, this divide in Anglo-Australian outlooks bespoke the need for establishment of Australian “diplomatic contacts with foreign powers.”11 Hardly coincidentally, Casey left some twelve months later for Washington.

Casey boasted little prior experience with the United States. He travelled twice to the United States, in 1913 and again in 1919, as an employee of Mount Morgan Gold Mining Company; he would return to the United States in 1921, in a failed entrepreneurial bid at convincing Ford and General Motors to adopt an Australian invention known as the crankless engine. Casey’s urbanity nonethe-less ensured he was a perfect fit for this ministerial mission. A Cambridge grad-uate, he brought considerable military, diplomatic, and political experience to his Washington post—he had been an officer in the Australian Imperial Force during World War I, had served as Australia’s highest ranking envoy to London in the 1920s, and, for much of the 1930s, he had held ministerial positions in the federal cabinet. In short, Casey possessed a raft of enviable experiences—not to mention a considerable personal fortune and a smooth sophistication—to which staff who served in Australia’s fledgling Department of External Affairs could only aspire.12

Casey did not receive written instructions from his government. However, this knowledgeable Australian diplomat hardly needed them. He well under-stood the difference in Anglo-Australian outlooks that had given rise to his mission. He was equally aware that Britain had abdicated its responsibility for Australian security. London in mid-1939 sheepishly admitted that it was unable “to send adequate forces to the Far East” and advised Australian policy-makers of the need “to rely on the United States of America to safeguard our interests

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13 Keith Jeffrey, “The Second World War,” in Judith M. Brown and William Roger Louis, eds., The Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. 5: The Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 317. See also, Arthur Marder, Old Friends, New Enemies: The Royal Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy, Strategic Illusions, 1936–1941 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 36–45, 62–68.

14 Carl Bridge and Bernard Attard, eds., Between Empire and Nation: Australia’s External Relations from Federation to the Second World War (Kew: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2000), 1.

15 Casey Diary entry, 18 April 1941, in Delicate Mission, p. 156.16 Quoted in Glen St. John Barclay, Friends in High Places: Australian-American Diplomatic

Relations since 1945 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985), 5.

there.”13 This provoked doubts among Australian policy-makers about Britain’s willingness and ability to discharge its responsibility for Australia’s external relations. Stated simply, they were concerned lest their British counterparts downplay—or even discard—Australian viewpoints and interests in their dealings with the United States. Would the British inculcate among Americans a purely Atlantic-centric worldview? Would British leaders remind their coun-terparts in the United States of Australia’s parlous position in the Pacific and risk diluting that message? Here, in a nutshell, were the imperial uncertainties and tensions underpinning Casey’s mission.

These uncertainties and tensions notwithstanding, Casey—like Menzies—did not question Australia’s self-designated role as an active participant in the affairs of the British Empire. As Carl Bridge and Bernard Attard might put it, Casey sought “to pursue Australian goals within a British world.”14 Indeed, Casey saw his ministerial mission in precisely this context, and bristled at the merest suggestion of a change in Australia’s status as a loyal Dominion and ally. To cite but one example, Casey in early 1941 baulked at what he termed a “dirty line of thought by certain Americans.” “They think they can get some worth while [sic] pickings out of this war,” he confided to his diary, “by way of getting Canada, Australia, or New Zealand out of the ‘British fold’ and into the ‘American fold’.” His “temper” rising at the very thought, Casey ended his diary entry with this scathing assessment: “The jackal mentality isn’t altogether con-fined to Italy.”15 Casey was far too diplomatic to offend his hosts by raising with them such sharp assessments of character; he himself, after all, in 1938 charac-terized the U.S. relationship as a “matter of desperate endeavour” for Australia.16

Casey was nonetheless under no illusions as to the difficulties he faced in overcoming the power of U.S. isolationism. He had reacted caustically, in early 1939, to University of Queensland Professor Alexander Melbourne’s unsolic-ited advice supporting the efficacy of an Anglo-American alliance. “Well that’s all very well—hasn’t everyone concerned had the same idea for years,” Casey



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17 Casey to Prime Minister Joseph Lyons, 3 January 1939, dafp, 1937–1949, vol. 2, p. 1.18 Casey to Minister for External Affairs Sir Henry Gullett, 9 March 1940, in Delicate Mission,

p. 30. See also, Lord Casey, Personal Experience: 1939–1946 (New York: David McKay, 1962), 10–11.

19 Winston S. Churchill to Franklin D. Roosevelt, 15 May 1940, in Warren F. Kimball, ed., Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, Vol. 1: Alliance Emerging (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), 37. See also, Franklin D. Roosevelt Message to Congress, 16 May 1940, in Samuel I. Rosenman, ed., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1940: War and Aid to Democracies, Book 1 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Library, 2005), 202.

20 Churchill to Roosevelt, May 20, 1940, Alliance Emerging, p. 40.

asked sarcastically. “We know that, although an ‘understanding’ might con-ceivably be possible, anything approaching an ‘alliance’ is quite impossible.”17 On 5 March 1940, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt confirmed this pessimis-tic outlook when Casey presented his diplomatic credentials. Roosevelt, while refusing to be drawn on policy toward Europe, remarked that Australia was so distant that it was “impossible to make any public reference” to possible courses of U.S. action in the event it came under attack.18

To Casey’s immense frustration, so much as an Anglo-American under-standing proved impossibly illusory in the weeks and months after his arrival in Washington. It was not for wont of British effort. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in particular, was predicating his nation’s otherwise seem-ingly hopeless war on the belief that the United States would sooner fight than see the Nazi subjugation of Europe. Churchill’s personal diplomacy toward Roosevelt was, however, making little headway. On 14 May 1940, he appealed to the American president to provide a firm U.S. commitment to the British cause. He got the promise of aircraft which Britain already had ordered—Roosevelt publicly warned Congress against impeding the delivery of American airplanes to Britain and France—but little else.19 A despondent Churchill on 20 May addressed a veiled threat to Roosevelt. “If members of the present administra-tion were finished and others came in to parley amid the ruins,” he wrote, “you must not be blind to the fact that the sole remaining bargaining counter with Germany would be the fleet, and if this country was left by the United States to its fate no one would have the right to blame those then responsible if they made the best terms they could for the surviving inhabitants.”20

Australian diplomacy at this juncture sought, if possible, to reinforce Churchill’s desperate pleas for American assistance, resulting in Casey emerg-ing as a key representative of the British Empire in Washington. The diplo-matic episode began with a letter, which Prime Minister Menzies addressed on 26 May 1940 to Roosevelt. It comprised an unabashed appeal for U.S. assistance

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21 Robert Menzies to Roosevelt, 26 May 1940, dafp, 1937–1949, vol. 3, pp. 332–33.22 Casey to S.M. Bruce, 28 May 1940, ibid., p. 351.23 Casey to John McEwen, 5 June 1940, ibid., pp. 387–91.24 Casey to Menzies, 30 May 1940, ibid., pp. 368–70.25 Memorandum by Secretary of State Cordell Hull, 11 June 1940, Foreign Relations of the

United States [hereafter frus with appropriate year], 1940, The British Commonwealth, the

“in this hour of emergency, not only for Great Britain and France, but also for Australia and the other British Dominions.” Echoing recent Anglo-American correspondence concerning Britain’s minimum needs, Menzies pleaded with Roosevelt for provision to Britain of all available American aircraft.21 Delivery of the letter afforded Casey the opportunity to meet again with Roosevelt. When he delivered the letter, the Australian Minister was careful to note Roosevelt’s insistence on the “vital importance” of the continued existence of the British fleet.22 Casey walked away convinced that France’s imminent fall—and Britain’s looming moment of truth—had brought home to the Americans that “the British fleet … has, in reality, been protecting them all for years.”23

Two days later, the savvy Casey met with Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles. He explained—correctly, one might note—that France “would crack sooner or later, probably sooner.” Germany could then turn its full force on Britain. “If Germany were prepared to lose sufficient men,” Casey explained, “she could overwhelm Britain.” This raised the question as to the future of the British Fleet, and Casey was quick in providing an answer. Working from the “conviction … that there was no hope of the United States entering the war,” the British Fleet “would not give itself up under any circumstances,” but instead would give itself to “spirit and passion.” As Casey saw it, “they would probably immolate themselves by an attack on German naval ports.” Welles admitted that this was “much graver” than anything he had anticipated; he promised to report immediately to Roosevelt.24

Worth noting is that Casey’s speculations were only slightly more alarmist than were Churchill’s rumblings about the possible collaborationist proclivi-ties of his prime ministerial successor. Furthermore, because Casey repre-sented not Britain but rather a British Dominion, he enjoyed perhaps more diplomatic freedom than did British Ambassador Lord Lothian. For example, Lothian in his conversations with Secretary of State Cordell Hull really only could parrot his prime minister. “Churchill’s position,” he typically explained on one occasion, “did not remotely contemplate Germany getting the British fleet so far as his Government was concerned; that the only contingency in this respect would arise in connection with some successor government …. ”25 Nimble or otherwise, the diplomacy of the British Empire—and Casey’s



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Soviet Union, the Near East, and Africa (Washington, DC: u.s. Government Printing Office, 1958), 3: 36.

26 Casey to McEwen, 5 June 1940, dafp, 1937–1949, vol. 3, pp. 387–91.27 Memorandum of Conversation, 6 June 1940, frus, 1940, 3, p. 10.28 Casey to High Commissioner S. M. Bruce, 8 May 1940, dafp, 1937–1949, vol. 3, p. 274.29 “Minute Sheet,” 8 April 1940, attached to “American Isolationism and the European War,”

1940 file—white tab, Isolationism (US), A3300.12, National Archives of Australia [naa], Canberra, Australia.

prominent place in it—amounted to precious little in May-June 1940. A “bitter and recriminatory” Casey on 5 June could “almost hear them say to them-selves—‘Well, well, fancy Britain going down—too bad’.”26 The day after recording that observation, Casey was direct in bluntly advising Hull that “he would be extremely interested to see … [the U.S.] Government make a declara-tion of war.” It was a forlorn appeal, which Hull “summarily dismissed” with the observation that U.S. belligerency remained “unthinkable.”27

U.S. policies toward Europe were one thing; U.S. policies toward the Pacific were an altogether different prospect. The Roosevelt administration was taking an ever-hardening line against Japan for both its war against China and its disregard for U.S. rights, interests, and policies in that beleaguered nation. Washington in January 1940 abrogated the treaty regulating Japanese-U.S. commerce. Assessing these developments, a nonplussed Casey questioned the “economic pressure” which U.S. policy-makers “believe[d] they … [were] exer-cising on Japan.”28 Casey doubted the likelihood of Japan bowing before U.S. pressure. There seemed at least a possibility that Japan instead would seek to capitalize on Adolf Hitler’s war and dispossess the distressed European pow-ers of their Southeast Asian colonies, including French Indochina, Malaya, Hong Kong, Burma, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies. Should Japan advance militarily into Southeast Asia, it then would be on Australia’s door-step. The only potential obstacle was the United States. The question, as Casey mused in April 1940, was whether the United States would “distinguish between not getting embroiled in a European war and not getting embroiled in a ‘Pacific’ war?”29

Early indications were discouraging. Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940 sparked rumors of a Japanese strike against the Dutch East Indies. As these tales reached a crescendo, Casey met on 13 May with Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle. Although it is difficult to conceive of a U.S. diplomat less sympathetic to Casey’s cause than the stridently Western Hemisphere-centric Berle, the two men talked freely with each other. Casey suggested that “Australian ships and troops … [could] be moved to … the north

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30 Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle memorandum, 13 May 1940, frus, 1940, The Far East, (Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1955), 4: 15–16.

31 Lord Caldecote to Menzies, 26 June 1940, dafp, 1937–1949, vol. 3, pp. 501–504. Regarding Sir Robert Craigie, see Antony Best, Britain, Japan and Pearl Harbor: Avoiding War in East Asia, 1936–1941 (London: Routledge, 1995), 111–28.

32 Casey to Menzies, 25 June 1940, dafp, 1937–1949, vol. 3, pp. 505–507.33 Hornbeck memorandum, June 26, 1940, frus, 1940, 4, pp. 362–64.

of Australia, where they might be of assistance in the Dutch East Indies.” It was a thinly-veiled attempt at prodding the United States into some similar action. The Roosevelt administration was unmoved. Berle took Casey’s suggestion to Secretary of State Hull, who merely noted how “Australian forces were not sufficient to have any real effect in defending the Dutch East Indies.”30 Nor, evidently, was Casey’s initiative enough to convince the United States to take a more determined stance in protecting the Dutch East Indies.

Various U.S. State Department officials over the following days sought to allay Casey’s concerns about a Japanese move into the Dutch East Indies. And although rumors of a Japanese strike against Australia’s northern neighbor proved unfounded, Casey’s chief worry remained, namely, that hardline U.S. diplomacy, in fact, was pushing Japan ever closer to military. The problem was that the Japanese likely would not direct any military assault against U.S. inter-ests, but instead against those of Britain, the Netherlands, and France. And in such a scenario, an utterly unprepared Australia would be on the frontline. Against this backdrop, Casey found himself in essential agreement with Sir Robert Craigie, Britain’s Ambassador in Tokyo, who in mid-1940 was arguing for a “more positive side to Anglo-American policy in the Far East.”31 Or, as Casey himself put it, they “should seek to come to terms with Japan on lines that would be attractive to Japan for the simple reason that beggars cannot be choosers.”32

The logic of the situation seemed obvious enough to Casey, but not to his American hosts. Casey in late June took his case to Stanley K. Hornbeck, the State Department’s chief Asian expert and renowned hardliner toward Japan. Casey argued that it was “absolutely necessary for the British to enter an agree-ment with Japan,” adding that he “felt this was likewise desirable with regard to the United States.” Hornbeck brushed Casey aside, stating simply that there were “no virtues in appeasement.”33 According to Casey, the conversation at this point became “a little heated.” “Someone else does all the exhorting,” he observed, “and we do the fighting.” The normally tactful Casey reminded Hornbeck that the United States was running “no risks at all.” Australia, by contrast, was contributing everything it could to the European war, while at



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34 “Record of talk to Hornbeck,” 25 June 1940, in Delicate Mission, p. 72.35 Casey to Menzies, June 30, 1940, dafp, 1937–1949, vol. 3, pp. 523–24.36 Christopher Thorne, Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain, and the War against Japan,

1941–1945 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1978), 39.37 Diary entries, 2, 12 July, 21 August, and 4, 12 September 1940, in Delicate Mission, pp. 76, 78,

90, 98.

the same time recognizing that it was hopelessly “alone” in the Pacific. It was, in short, “in no state to fight Japan as well [as Germany].”34 These words were as bitter as any Casey spoke during his time in Washington.

The State Department showed little sympathy. Hull told Casey only days later that the United States would “not use force nor … join the British Empire in negotiations with Japan and/or China.”35 Hull, in fact, went one better. Weeks later, when Churchill decided to meet Japanese demands and close that famous Chinese supply route known as the Burma Road, Hull privately indi-cated his understanding, but publicly deprecated the move.36 The United States seemed singularly oblivious to the precariousness of Australia’s posi-tion, and Casey was despondent. U.S. policy was noncommittal toward the war in Europe. It was growing incrementally tougher in the Pacific, without any hint of a U.S. commitment to halt Japan if it determined to act against anything but the United States or perhaps the Philippines. In the privacy of his diary, Casey launched into scathing criticisms of the United States and its people. “They haven’t the will to fight even to preserve themselves,” he wrote on 2 July. Days later, he reported that Americans realized “that the British are fighting their fight—yet giving inconsequential assistance—cursing Germany yet yap-ping at Britain.” The following month, he confided to his diary that it would be “easy to take offense and to perpetuate friction.” In early September, Casey was convinced that “appreciation of German methods has slid off most American backs like water off a duck’s.” After emerging from a mid-September meeting with the hardline Hornbeck, he entered this deprecating reaction: “He urges us to be stout-hearted and to resist the Japanese.” With incredulity, Casey also noted how “they have even been urging broken France to get Indochina to resist!”37

Regrettably, Casey’s frustrations blinded him to promising developments within the United States. For one, Roosevelt suddenly and exponentially built up the military force at his disposal. During June and July 1940, he obtained from Congress funding for a two-ocean navy. He also secured spending to fund increased arms production and a greatly expanded army and air force. Roosevelt looked beyond the armed services and, having declared an “unlim-ited national emergency,” mobilized the U.S. economy. Change also took place

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38 See Stephen E. Pelz, Race to Pearl Harbor: The Failure of the Second London Naval Conference and the Onset of World War II (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1974), 209; Mark A. Stoler, Allies in War: Britain and America against the Axis Powers, 1940–1945 (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005), 13; William M. Tuttle, Jr., “Aid-to-Allies Short-of-War versus American Intervention, 1940: A Reappraisal of William Allen White’s Leadership,” Journal of American History 56, no. 4 (March 1970): 841.

39 Berle memorandum, 27 September 1940, frus, 1940, 4, pp. 156–57.

at cabinet level as Roosevelt in mid-June appointed distinguished Republicans Henry Stimson and Frank Knox—both of whom were decidedly international-ist—to serve as secretaries of war and navy respectively. And by late June, the United States had begun selling machine guns, rifles, bullets, scrap steel, machine tools, and industrial chemicals to Britain. The U.S. government was, in a word, moving gradually toward a policy of opposition to Nazi Germany and its allies.38 That Casey failed to see this suggests, first, that he was being churl-ish in his appraisal of the United States, and second, that he was falling prey to the fanciful notion that U.S. policy-makers should view the world just as did an Australian policy-maker.

These promising developments in 1940 might have occurred more or less without Casey noticing them, but events later in the year filled him with opti-mism. Two coincided to cement American support for Britain—conclusion of the Japanese-German-Italian Tripartite Pact on 27 September and Roosevelt’s re-election on 5 November. Japan’s alliance with Nazi Germany and Italy linked the wars raging in China and in Europe. It signalled Japan’s aggressive inten-tions toward Southeast Asia. It also directly and unambiguously threatened the United States, making it clear that the Americans could not hope to fight one signatory in isolation. Specifically, U.S. belligerency in Europe necessarily would result also in a U.S.-Japanese war in the Pacific, and vice versa. The very evening the pact was concluded, Casey called on Assistant Secretary of State Berle. He put his case altogether bluntly: “Might [it] not be assumed that in the event that [Anglo-Japanese] war resulted, … [the United States] would immediately assist by going to war with Japan [?]” Berle’s response was less than encouraging. Offering his “purely personal opinion,” he suggested that there would be “very great reluctance to become involved in hostilities in the Far East.”39

Whatever pessimism this engendered in Casey did not last. Hull on 30 September asked British Ambassador Lothian “whether it would not be possi-ble for the United States, Britain, Australia and Dutch [sic] to have private staff conversations immediately on technical problems that would be involved in common action for defense.” Undersecretary Sumner Welles raised the same



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40 Casey to Menzies, 1 October 1940, dafp, 1937–1949, vol. 4, p. 195.41 Casey to Department of External Affairs, 9 October 1940, ibid., p. 217.42 Casey to Menzies and McEwen, 17 October 1940, ibid., pp. 226–28.43 David Reynolds, From Munich to Pearl Harbor: Roosevelt’s America and the Origins of the

Second World War (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001), 105–110.44 Diary entry, 20 December 1940, in Delicate Mission, p. 133. Berle’s admission was a precur-

sor, of sorts, to the post-Pearl Harbor reality, in which the boundaries of U.S. jurisdiction in the Pacific theater incorporated Australia and New Zealand. See Michael Howard, Grand Strategy, IV: August 1942-September 1943, in J. R. M. Butler, ed., History of the Second World War (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1972), 243.

45 Diary entry, 16 March 1941, in Delicate Mission, p. 151.

issue with Casey the following day.40 Hull on 10 October stepped back from this proposal, citing the fear that it might enable Roosevelt’s domestic opponents to portray him as a warmonger in the run-up to the 1940 presidential election.41 Still, the signs almost uniformly were encouraging for Casey. He met on 17 October with Roosevelt, who spoke—albeit vaguely—about sending “some United States warships … to Australia and elsewhere.” Casey at this meeting suggested—and Roosevelt approved—the dispatch of an Australian naval offi-cer to Washington. Later that same day, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox told Casey “he would like to have his officers talk privately and confidentially” with the dispatched Australian officer. (Casey promptly contacted his government in Canberra and requested the timely dispatch of a suitable naval officer). Knox also assured Casey that, once Roosevelt won re-election, “many things could and would be done that could not be done now.”42

Everything admittedly remained in abeyance until the presidential election—which Roosevelt won handsomely—but soon thereafter, develop-ments moved apace. Roosevelt publicly announced on 17 December that the “best defense of Great Britain” was “the best defense of the United States.” Before the year was out, the U.S. president had denounced the “unholy alli-ance” of Germany, Japan, and Italy, and declared American resolve to serve as the “arsenal of democracy.” Days later, Roosevelt set before Congress what became the Lend-Lease Bill.43 At least as important from the Australian per-spective was the emerging conception in Washington—as Assistant Secretary Berle expressed in late December—that “the defense of the Southwest Pacific was becoming … more or less an American responsibility.”44 A greatly encour-aged Casey nonetheless recorded some ambivalence in his diary. After a con-versation with Assistant Secretary of State Dean G. Acheson in mid-March, he made this confession: “The awful thought crosses my mind that the Americans think they’re doing us a favor [emphasis added] in extending help under the Lend-Lease Act!”45

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46 “United States-British Staff Conversations Report,” 27 March 1941, U.S. Congress, Hearings Before the Joint Committee on the Investigations of the Pearl Harbor Attack, 79th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946), part 15: 1491.

47 Bridge, “R. G. Casey,” pp. 183–84; John Robertson, “Australia and the ‘Beat Hitler First’ Strategy, 1941–42: A Problem in Wartime Consultation,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 11, no. 3 (September 1983): 301–307.

48 Casey to Department of External Affairs, 15 February 1941, dafp, 1937–1949, vol. 4, pp. 413–14. Regarding the Anglo-American division over Singapore, see Mark A. Stoler, Allies and Adversaries: The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Grand Alliance, and U.S. Strategy in World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 37–39.

49 Commander David H. Harries to Admiral Sir Ragnar Colvin, 19 April 1941, dafp, 1937–1949, vol. 4, p. 599.

Anglo-American staff conversations convened in Washington between late January and late March 1941. Under discussion was grand strategy in the event the United States entered the war alongside the British Empire. Australia had no representation at these talks. The naval officer whose dispatch Casey had requested in late 1940 nonetheless conferred regularly with the British dele-gates. What he learned was disturbing—the Americans had designated Nazi Germany the primary enemy and Europe the “decisive theater” of World War II. The Americans also had suggested that East Asian strategy must of necessity only be “defensive.” The British delegation happily acquiesced in this basic strategy.46 As historians Carl Bridge and John Robertson have demonstrated, Casey’s legation in Washington kept the Australian government fully apprised of this Europe-first approach.47

It is perhaps useful to recall Casey’s brief at the outset of his mission. He was to enlist U.S. support for the Allies in their struggle for survival against Hitler. He was also to convince the United States to guarantee Australia’s security. U.S. sup-port for Britain was assuming an ever more concrete form, but Australian secu-rity seemed little better for it. The situation was all the more dire because of Anglo-American differences over the defense of Singapore. The Americans, in short, would have none of British arguments for a U.S. naval presence at Singapore. Casey in mid-February took the Australian case to Hull, emphasizing how Australian security was utterly dependent on a naval presence at Singapore. A taciturn Hull merely noted that Casey “need not develop this point further.”48

Hull repeatedly gave the impression that he was in essential agreement with Casey regarding Singapore. U.S. strategic planners in both the War and Navy departments evidently thought otherwise. The naval attaché to the Australian Legation reported on 20 April—with more than a hint of cynicism—that the Americans held “to a hope that mere existence of United States Pacific fleet based at Hawaii will produce a containing effect on Japanese naval forces.”49



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50 Harries to Colvin, 1 May 1941, ibid., p. 625.51 Casey to Department of External Affairs, 2 May 1941, ibid., p. 635.52 Graeme Davison, “The Colonial Strut: Australian Leaders on the World Stage,” Australian

Journal of Politics and History 51, no. 1 (March 2005): 12.53 Robertson, “Australia and the ‘Beat Hitler First’ Strategy,” p. 305.

By early May, the naval attaché was reporting on a newfound American enthu-siasm for “the transfer of [a] portion of the U.S. Pacific Fleet to the Atlantic.” This would presumably alleviate pressure on Britain, which then would be in a position to transfer warships to Singapore. Somewhat hopefully, the attaché noted that such thinking “at least show[ed] a refreshing tendency on the part of the U.S. Naval Authorities to get away from the conception of keeping a large fleet based on Hawaii carrying out the half-hearted role of attempting to con-tain the Japanese fleet by its mere presence.”50

Casey saw things differently. The Pacific, he warned, “would be left with … wholly inadequate naval forces with which to resist potential Japanese aggres-sion.” To reinforce his point, Casey argued that the transfer of a significant number of U.S. ships to the Atlantic would “leave British countries and inter-ests [in the Southwest Pacific] in considerable peril.”51 These concerns reso-nated strongly with Menzies, who was in London publicly speaking about “indissoluble [Anglo-Australian] unity,” but also seeking to guard against any decisions that adversely affected Australian security.52 He complained to Churchill on 1 May about Britain’s all-too-ready acceptance of the American proposal to transfer part of its Pacific Fleet to the Atlantic. Menzies made it clear that the British at least first should have consulted with Australia and New Zealand. Churchill shot back: “Whatever helped to bring the United States of America into the war would help to keep the Japanese out.”53

Did Churchill persuade Menzies with this argument? The fact that Menzies departed almost immediately for the United States provides at least tangential evidence to the contrary. Did Casey encourage Menzies to make the trip? Any suggestion otherwise seems implausible. Was Menzies’ presence in the United States suggestive of his disapprobation of Casey’s efforts? Perhaps so, but it seems equally possible that Menzies and Casey alike hoped that a prime ministerial visit might add gravitas to Australian concerns about the power vacuum that would arise once U.S. ships began transferring from the Pacific. Was Menzies’ visit a success? He certainly thought so. Roosevelt, from his sickbed, told Menzies in mid-May that “we all ought to tell Japan where she gets off.” It is not too great a stretch of the imagination to believe that Roosevelt also might have raised the fact that, in mid-April, he postponed transferring most warships from the Pacific to the Atlantic, precisely because he did not

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54 Quoted in Joseph M. Siracusa and David G. Coleman, Australia Looks to America: Australian-American Relations since Pearl Harbor (Claremont, CA: Regina Books, 2006), 25. Regarding President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s decision to leave warships in the Pacific, and to restrict his plans for the Atlantic, see Waldo Heinrichs, Threshold of War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Entry into World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 56.

55 Diary entry, 28 March 1941, in Delicate Mission, p. 153.56 Casey to Department of External Affairs, 18 June 1941, 1941 file—white tab, War—U.S.-

British Commonwealth—Russia, A3300.137, naa.57 Diary entries, 18, 22, 29 June 1941, in Delicate Mission, p. 172.58 Casey to Department of External Affairs, 21 June 1941, 1941 file—white tab, War—U.S.-

British Commonwealth—Russia, A3300.137, naa. See also, Casey to High Commissioner in London, 21 June 1941, ibid.

wish to weaken his policy of deterring Japanese aggression. Whatever else Roosevelt said of course remains a matter for conjecture, but Menzies walked away from the meeting “in no doubt … that America will not stand by and see Australia attacked.”54

Casey was not present when Menzies spoke with Roosevelt about the prob-able U.S. response should Australia come under attack. His diplomatic efforts over the ensuing weeks suggest that he regarded Roosevelt’s assurances as anything but iron clad. Indeed, Casey redoubled his efforts in an attempt at securing a firm American commitment to provide for Australian security. The immediate spark came in the form of war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles in late March had raised with Casey the possibility of Nazi Germany turning its “guns on Russia in June or July.”55 Welles again spoke of the possibility on 18 June, although he told Casey that he thought Stalin would seek terms with Hitler. Welles remained, in short, “not … confident … that war [would] result.”56 Casey nonetheless worried that Nazi Germany would overrun the Soviet Union quickly, and then Hitler would simply declare an end to the conflict. In this instance, Casey fore-saw “little or no chance of [the] usa entering the war.”57

Within days—but still before German forces marched into Soviet territory—Casey spoke at length with Loy Henderson, one of the State Department’s leading Soviet experts. He assured Casey that a “German Russian war … would be to our advantage.” As Henderson saw it, Japan would be sorely tempted to take the fight to the Soviet maritime province of Vladivostok. This in turn would “stimulate Russia to expedite military supplies to China” and thereby intensify the Chinese quagmire in which Japan found itself. It also likely would ensure, Henderson suggested, that Japan’s “attention and efforts” would be “diverted” from the South East Asia (and, of course, away from Australia).58



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59 Casey to Department of External Affairs, 23 June 1941, ibid.60 Casey to Sir John Latham, 26 June 1941, ibid.61 Ibid.62 Casey to Menzies and Sir Frederick Stewart, 9 July 1941, dafp, 1937–1949, vol. 5, pp. 5–6.63 Casey to Menzies and Stewart, 25 July 1941, ibid., pp. 25–26.

With this hopeful assessment ringing in his ears, Casey met on 23 June with Soviet Ambassador Constantine Oumansky. The staunchly conservative Casey seemed unable to greet Oumansky with anything but irony and sarcasm:

I saw Soviet Ambassador here today who greeted me “my dear Casey we are now allies.” I just avoided personal embrace …. His respect for me has increased as I told him on May 1st that Germany would attack Russia on June 30th. I apologised for inaccuracy.

Casey nonetheless put aside his obvious disdain for the Soviet experiment and offered Oumansky his thoughts about “Russian interests.” Most immediately, this entailed the extension of Soviet “military equipment aid to China.”59 As Casey explained it to Australia’s minister in Tokyo, this was the “best means of maintaining Japan’s embarrassment on Chinese mainland.”60

Casey’s hopes of Japanese attentions remaining on the Soviets and the Chinese did not last. As early as 25 June, rumors began swirling to the effect that Japan might hold its fire and wait to see “how [the] war progressed” before it picked off “any pieces that looked easy.” That same day, the ever-opinionated Hornbeck informed Casey of his doubts as to “whether Japan is in position to take on another war.”61 Innuendo soon turned to something more concrete—and more worrisome. Undersecretary Welles on 9 July confided in Casey the most recent fruits of American interception and decoding of Japanese diplo-matic codes known as Magic. Japan, Welles reported, had responded to the German-Soviet war with a decision for “southward expansion.” He also made clear that in response, the United States most likely would slap an “immediate and complete economic and financial embargo on Japan.” Perhaps Welles designed this choice piece of intelligence sharing and policy forecasting to for-tify Australia in the face of Japan’s renewed aggression. Yet, his admission that the embargo “would provoke Japan to war … before long” rang in Casey’s ears.62 Some two weeks later when Welles confirmed for Casey that the United States was on the brink of taking “stringent economic action” against Japan, Casey simply asked whether this might “bring Japanese retaliation by force of arms on British or Australian or Dutch territories and not on American [territory].”63 For Casey, Welles’ silence was less than reassured, causing him to raise the

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64 Quoted in Raymond A. Esthus, “President Roosevelt’s Commitment to Britain to Intervene in a Pacific War,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 50, no. 1 (June 1963): 30.

65 Casey to Department of External Affairs, 3 August 1941, dafp, 1937–1949, vol. 5, pp. 47–48.66 Welles memorandum, 4 August 1941, frus, 1941, 5, pp. 254–56.

issue with Frank Knox as well. Although the secretary of the U.S. Navy lent a sympathetic ear, U.S. policy was unwavering.

Australian policy-makers now wanted nothing less than a concrete commit-ment from the United States. Not only would such a pledge guarantee Australian security in the event of war, but the Australians remained hopeful that such an assurance might deter Japan from war in the Pacific. “If the Americans feel in their hearts that in the event of warlike retaliation by Japan they could not remain aloof from the conflict,” Menzies cabled Churchill and the Dominion prime ministers on 30 July, “surely they can be made to see that a plain indica-tion by them to Japan at this stage would probably avoid war.”64 Casey dutifully raised the issue with Sumner Welles on 2 August, after the Roosevelt adminis-tration had frozen Japanese assets and imposed a complete embargo on Japan. Casey was careful to emphasize the “importance that Australia attached … to American support.”65 Welles went as far as he thought proper, telling Casey that although the United States could make no “definite” commitment, it prob-ably would come to the aid of the British Empire in a Pacific War.66

Casey was undeterred. In keeping with his government’s desire for a concrete U.S. commitment to underwrite Australian security, Casey penned a “suggested” U.S. statement, which he left with Welles on 8 August. Casey’s suggestion read in whole as follows:

The Japanese Government will no doubt be aware that the action taken by the United States Government to freeze Japanese assets in the United States, following upon the recent acquisition by Japan of further bases in French Indochina is clear evidence that the United States Government is determined to resist this new threat to American vital interests in the Pacific.

Any further aggressive action by Japan directed against these interests can only be regarded by the United States Government as proof of a will-ful refusal by Japan to recognize these interests and will only increase the fixed determination of the United States Government and the American people to protect them. In these circumstances the United States Government desires to make clear to the Japanese Government in advance that the responsibility for the consequences of any such further threat by Japan will rest solely with the Japanese Government.



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67 Casey to Department of External Affairs, 6 August 1941, 1941 file—white tab, War— U.S.-British Commonwealth—China, aid to, A3300.123, naa.

68 See, for example, Casey to Department of External Affairs, 14 August 1941, dafp, 1937–1949, vol. 5, pp. 78–79.

69 Regarding the Atlantic Conference, see Warren F. Kimball, Forged in War: Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Second World War (New York: Harper Perennial, 1997), 106.

70 James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom, 1940–1945 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1970), 134.

71 Oral Statement President Franklin D. Roosevelt handed to Japanese Ambassador Nomura Kichisaburō, 17 August 1941, frus, Japan 1931–1941 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943), 2: 556–57.

72 Casey to Department of External Affairs, 19 August 1941, 1941 file—white tab, War— U.S.-British Commonwealth—China, aid to, A3300-123, naa.

This was, as Welles put it, a “direct … threat of war.” The undersecretary admit-ted that such a threat would be a “wholesome corrective to Japan.” He also regretted how “unfortunately it was constitutionally impossible to use it.”67

Unable to get the concrete commitment he sought from the United States, Casey worked closely with Lord Halifax, his British counterpart, to secure the next best option—a joint Anglo-American warning to Japan. Casey raised the issue in mid-August with both Secretary of State Hull and Secretary of the Navy Knox.68 Off the coast of Newfoundland in the Atlantic Ocean, British Prime Minister Churchill simultaneously was entreating with Roosevelt to issue just such a warning. Nevertheless, the admonition that the U.S. president issued to Japanese Ambassador Nomura Kichisaburō on 17 August was far from the “harsh, unequivocal warning” for which Churchill had argued, and to which Roosevelt had agreed.69 “The lion’s roar of [the Atlantic Conference] had become a lamb’s bleat,”70 to borrow the words of presidential biographer James MacGregor Burns. Still, the reproach did put Japan on notice that the United States was prepared to take “any and all steps … necessary toward safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of the United States … and toward insuring the safety and security of the United States.”71 The statement contained none of the Anglo-American solidarity for which Churchill—and Casey—had hoped. It certainly committed the United States to nothing in the event Japan imperilled Australian security. Casey barely saw fit to comment.72

Casey found it difficult over the ensuing weeks to learn anything from U.S. officials regarding the course of the Japanese-U.S. negotiations. He was not alone. His British, Chinese, and Dutch counterparts were equally in the dark. What little Casey did hear did not make for happy listening. For one, Secretary of State Hull in early September admitted that “his principal objective in

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73 Casey to Department of External Affairs, 3 September 1941, dafp, 1937–1949, vol. 5, p. 96.74 Casey to Department of External Affairs, 11 October 1941, ibid., p. 131.75 Casey to Department of External Affairs, 10 November 1941, 1941 file—white tab,

War—U.S.-British Commonwealth—China, aid to, A3300-123, naa.76 Daniel F. Harrington, “A Careless Hope: American Air Power and Japan, 1941,” Pacific

Historical Review, 48, no. 2 (May 1979): 217–38.77 Casey to Department of External Affairs, 14 November 1941, dafp, 1937–1949, vol. 5, p. 197.78 Casey to Department of External Affairs, 16 November 1941, 1941 file—blue tab, Far East,

part 3, A3300-99, naa.

resuming discussions with Japan was to gain precious time.”73 Then, in mid-October, President Roosevelt told Casey that he was “not hopeful” of achieving anything in the Japanese-U.S. negotiations, “save [a] gain in time.”74 Disturbingly, a U.S. guarantee of Australian security remained a pipedream. Casey’s col-leagues in Canberra wondered about the possibility of convincing the United States to issue a blunt war warning to Japan, which they believed either would deter a Japanese attack on Southeast Asia, or lead directly to a Japanese-U.S. war. Either way, Australia would not face Japan alone. Casey saw little hope for such a warning:

U.S. administration viewpoint is that any further verbal warnings to Japan would be unwise …. They believe that formidable strengthening of Philippines … should be most eloquent silent warning.75

Casey—pre-empting the subsequent findings of one historian about the “careless hope”76 of American air power in the Philippines—was nonetheless skeptical. He asked Undersecretary Welles on 14 November whether “Japanese-Anglo-American relations were heading fairly rapidly towards a break.” Welles’s response was instructive: “He could not believe that Japanese will agree to evacuate China completely and nothing less will satisfy United States.”77 Two days later, Casey reported on the “very small” prospect of a Japanese-U.S. “deal,” even on “limited lines.”78 War was close.

Conscious of the proximity of war in the Pacific and animated by the terrify-ing possibility of U.S. non-involvement, Casey in late November 1941 reverted to the time-honored diplomacy of appeasement. The possibility presented itself on 18 November when Japanese Ambassador Kurusu Saburō raised with Hull the possibility that Japanese troops might withdraw from part of Indochina in return for a relaxation of U.S. economic sanctions. Two days later, Ambassadors Kurusu and Nomura handed Hull a concrete proposal for a temporary working agreement, known as a modus vivendi. Its terms were



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79 Casey to Prime Minister John Curtin and Foreign Minister Herbert V. Evatt, 23 November 1941, dafp, 1937–1949, vol. 5, pp. 216–219. For Kurusu Saburō’s suggestion of a withdrawal of Japanese troops from Indochina in exchange for a relaxation of U.S. economic pressure, see Hull memorandum, 18 November 1941, frus, Japan 1931–1941, 2, pp. 744–750. For the text of the subsequent Japanese proposal, see ibid., pp. 755–56.

80 Casey to Prime Minister Curtin and Foreign Minister Evatt, 23 November 1941, dafp, 1937–1949, vol. 5, pp. 216–19.

81 Lord Halifax to Foreign Minister Anthony Eden, 23 November 1941, 1941 file—blue tab, Far East Policy (US), part 4, A3300-100, naa.

82 Casey to Curtin and Evatt, 23 November 1941, dafp, 1937–1949, vol. 5, pp. 220–21.

relatively stiff. On 22 November, Hull explained to Casey, British Ambassador Halifax, Chinese Ambassador Hu Shih, and Dutch Minister Dr. Alexandre Loudon that it left Japan “free to do what she liked as regards Russia.” It also implied that the United States must “stop sending aid to China.” Hull wondered aloud about the futility of submitting a counterproposal. He nonetheless “believed two or three months delay was most desirable for all …. ” The “only question in his mind was the price that it was necessary to pay for this few months delay.”79

Casey knew precisely the price to pay. “We should all be willing to pay … for a three months delay with possibility of a calming down of passion in the meantime,” he argued.80 Casey also suggested that “if anything were to come of these ideas … it would be necessary to dress up … in as favorable a light as possible” any and all concessions to the Japanese. Specifically, he suggested “expanding the list of possible concessions by inclusion of some materials that while of economic value to Japan would not be of direct importance to their war potential.” Chinese Ambassador Hu Shih offered a voice of caution, explaining that the U.S. counterproposal would leave Japan “free to prosecute her war in China.” He also made clear that his government in Chongqing would “be very reluctant to see [economic pressure on Japan] seriously reduced.”81 Casey walked away from this meeting convinced that Australian interests dic-tated pursuit of a temporary Japanese-U.S. agreement. The alternative was war in the Pacific. In this regard, Casey calculated it was commonsensical for Japan to confine itself to an “attack on British or Dutch interests or on Thailand.” In this case, it hardly need be reiterated, there was nothing guaranteeing U.S. belligerency. And, should the United States remain aloof, nothing could slow the Japanese. This unsettling scenario brought Casey back to the Japanese modus vivendi proposal. “With certain amount of modification,” as he put it to his government in Canberra, the Japanese proposal “might be acceptable to Japan and to U.S., the British Empire and the Netherlands.”82

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83 Alan Watt, Australian Diplomat: Memoirs of Sir Alan Watt (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1972), 45.

84 See, for example, P.G. Edwards, “Evatt and the Americans,” Historical Studies 18, no. 73 (1979): 552.85 Casey to Curtin and Evatt, 24 November 1941, dafp, 1937–1949, vol. 5, pp. 224–27.86 See Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1995), 308; Mark A. Stoler, Allies and Adversaries, p. 61.

The Australian government, agreeing with Casey, was anxious that the Japanese-U.S. negotiations should continue. Yet, Casey met at this critical junc-ture with near silence from Canberra. The familiar, gentlemanly bond that Casey had shared with the Menzies Cabinet had disappeared. The Australian Labor Party was now in government and, to borrow the words of the Washington legation’s first secretary (and one-time Wimbledon quarter-finalist) Alan Watt, the Labor Party’s External Affairs Minister Herbert V. Evatt nursed a “reluctance or inability to trust a senior member of a different political party [like Casey].”83 (Within months, Evatt in fact had accused Casey of disloyalty and maneuvered openly to remove him from his ministerial post.84) Through no fault of the Washington legation, the Australian response to a temporary, U.S.-Japan work-ing agreement was, then, lukewarm. Essentially, Casey could offer only per-sonal observations when he returned on 24 November to the State Department. Shown a copy of the U.S. counterproposal, Casey noted that it looked “rough and ready.” The problem for Casey was that his own government’s silence meant that he could not produce a list of materials which Australia would be willing to trade to Japan. That in turn meant he had nothing holding the poten-tial to prod the Americans into compiling and expanding their own list. Still, he told Hull that it constituted a “definite and desirable advance,” emphasizing once again that it should buy “some much-needed time.”85

Casey’s arguments in favor of a counterproposal ran headlong into the Chinese and British responses. Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek predicted the complete collapse of his nation’s morale and resistance. The British response to the coun-terproposal came first in the form of a long list of Foreign Office criticisms, which Halifax handed Hull. More tellingly, Churchill wrote Roosevelt and argued against the counterproposal, on the grounds that it would leave Chiang with a “very thin diet.” Secretary of War Henry Stimson delivered the coup de grace when he pre-sented Roosevelt on the morning of 26 November with reports of Japanese troop movements south of Taiwan. Roosevelt and Hull soon thereafter agreed to “kick the whole thing over.” Later that same day, Hull submitted to Ambassadors Kurusu and Nomura not the American counterproposal, but instead a list of maximum American demands, including the withdrawal of all Japanese troops from China and Indochina, as well as abrogation of the Tripartite Pact.86



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87 Casey to Curtin and Evatt, 27 November 1941 dafp, 1937–1949, vol. 5, 236–37.88 Casey to Department of External Affairs, 28 November 1941, 1941 file—blue tab, Far East,

part 3, A3300-99, naa.89 Casey to Curtin and Evatt, 30 November 1941, dafp, 1937–1949, vol. 5, pp. 250–51.90 Casey to Curtin and Evatt, 30 November 1941, ibid., p. 253. See also, Casey to Department

of External Affairs, 2 December 1941, 1941 file—blue tab, Far East Policy (US), part 4, A3300-100, naa; Diary Note, 2 December 1941, ibid.

91 Quoted in Barclay, “Australia Looks to America,” p. 252.

Casey met on 27 November with Hull and made a forlorn attempt at con-vincing him to reconsider a temporary U.S.-Japan truce. A “depressed” and “upset” Hull “blamed the Chinese principally for the torpedoing of the modus vivendi.” Hull also showed Casey telegrams detailing considerable Japanese troop reinforcements in French Indochina, arguing that as a result the draft American modus vivendi “would be no use now.”87 The following day Stimson affirmed for Casey that the Japanese seemingly had “completed plans for fur-ther aggressive moves in Southeastern Asia.”88 Nevertheless, before November was out, Casey made a curious attempt at resuscitating U.S.-Japan diplomacy. He spoke with Ambassadors Kurusu and Nomura at the Japanese Embassy, not unexpectedly learning that they had “no proposal to make other than that discussions on the limited Japanese proposal should be resumed.”89 Casey proceeded to the State Department and again asked Hull to reconsider. It was to no avail. Hull was still “very bitter” about the Chinese reaction to the possi-bility of a temporary U.S.-Japan agreement. Showing “every sign of pique at having had his efforts fail,” Hull also “blamed the British” for having “sided with the short-sighted Chinese viewpoint.”90

Casey apparently did not record his reaction to this news. It was, so far as one can ascertain, the first he had heard of British opposition to the modus vivendi. At the very least, he must have raised his eyebrows. Whatever sur-prise—or perhaps consternation—Casey felt probably did not last. His minis-terial mission, after all, had emerged out of a distinct difference in Anglo-Australian outlooks. The question of a temporary Japanese-U.S. agree-ment had accentuated that difference. Australia could not countenance a war in the Pacific unless it could first be absolutely certain of U.S. belligerency. By contrast, Britain evidently regarded Australian security as expendable, and ultimately subordinate to the hope that the Americans would enter not only the war in the Pacific but also the one in Europe. Parenthetically, it seems worth asking whether this was what prompted Prime Minister John Curtin—in his famous “Australia looks to America” newspaper article of late December 1941—to note bitterly that “Australia can go, and Britain can still hold on?”91

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92 Esthus, “President Roosevelt’s Commitment to Britain to Intervene in a Pacific War,” pp. 28–38.

93 Casey to Foreign Minister Evatt, 6 December 1941, 1941 file—blue tab, Far East Policy (US), part 4, A3300-100, naa.

94 Casey to Foreign Minister Evatt, 5 December 1941, ibid.95 Casey to Foreign Minister Evatt, 7 December 1941, ibid.

That this episode did not result in greater Anglo-Australian rancor was due less to Casey’s efforts than to the Japanese decision to attack Pearl Harbor. To be sure, Roosevelt in early December promised, in a series of meetings with Halifax, U.S. armed support if the British Empire went to war with Japan in Southeast Asia.92 Even so, Casey was not present at those meetings, although he received copies of relevant reports from Halifax. Given that he grasped how the “Far Eastern situation [remained] largely if not entirely in the hands of the President …,” it seems likely that he sought an appointment with Roosevelt.93 The closest he got, however, was a 5 December meeting with Knox. Hoping to glean any information indicating that there was substance to Roosevelt’s promise of armed support, Casey learned from the U.S. secretary that the “U.S. Army wanted more time to prepare themselves in the Far East” but that “the U.S. Navy was ready.” “The sooner the break came,” Knox pronounced, “the better.”94 The uncertainty ended with a phone call on 7 December from the State Department: “Hawaii and Manila have been bombed by Japanese air-craft and … war plans against Japan have been ordered by the President to be made effective at once.”95 Whatever else the Imperial Japanese Navy had achieved by engaging the United States directly in hostilities, it had rendered moot the question as to whether Roosevelt would be able to make good on his promise of armed support for the British Empire in the Pacific. In so doing, it largely papered over the imperial cracks that Churchill had exacerbated in late November with his disregard for Australia’s distinct set of needs and interests.

The above analysis has shown that Australian Minister Richard Casey deftly juggled Australian self-interest and the needs of the British Empire throughout his time of service in Washington. He was tireless in his efforts at absorbing and delimiting the tensions inherent in representing both Australia and the British Empire in his interactions with the Roosevelt administration. Ultimately, however, the failed modus Vivendi—and Churchill’s prominent role in its still-birth—stood as testimony to the clear limits of Casey’s ministerial influence. Interestingly, this episode did nothing to shake Casey’s stance on Australia’s place in the British Empire. Nowhere is this more evident than in the fact that, soon after Pearl Harbor, Casey raised with Churchill—and his wife later pursued with Churchill—the possibility of his working for the British



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96 Diane Langmore, “Dick and Maie Casey in Partnership,” in Melissa Conley Tyler, John Robbins, and Adrian March, eds., R. G. Casey: Minister for External Affairs, 1951–1960 (Canberra: Australian Institute of International Affairs, 2012), 112.

government.96 The ministerial position that Churchill offered him in March 1942 removed Casey from his untenable position beneath the irascible Evatt.

Some may see grounds for criticizing Casey’s performance in Washington precisely because he continued to perceive of Australia as a British outpost in the southwest Pacific. His stance on the British Empire might well appear as the last gasp of a bygone era. A critic might, in this vein, ask whether Casey failed to see the vulnerabilities that very soon would bring an end to the British Empire. But such questions and observations would be wide of the mark. Casey and his conservative contemporaries in Canberra had been the driving force, after all, behind the establishment of an Australian legation in Washington. Nine years later, when the Australian electorate returned Menzies to the prime minister’s office, the world had undergone monumental change. The Cold War was in full swing, and Britain was but an American junior part-ner. The Menzies Cabinet steered a familiar course—it sought an alliance with the United States, while ensuring that Australia remained an active member of what had in the meantime become the British Commonwealth. Casey was appointed foreign minister in April 1951, and held the post for some ten years. In that time, he embraced the anzus alliance, declined a role of subservience toward the United States, and sought a strengthened British Commonwealth. Seen from this perspective, Casey’s diplomacy in Washington was entirely representative of the Australian diplomatic tradition and, at the same time, a fascinating chapter in the evolution of the U.S. position in the Pacific.