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The defenders had been too civilized for this sort of thing. They stuck to the pillboxes along the highways, defended the airfields, stood at the bridges, guarded the cities, gallantly did everything the manuals said to do. Many of them knew how to hunt the fox, shoot grouse, stalk tigers; but none of them had been hunted by animals before. They were confused by this enemy, and General Pownall's successor (who was secretly appointed early this week*) would have the job of unconfusing them, of inventing countermeasures, of applying them in desperate haste.
Three-Ply Weakness. But most of the causes of Britain's difficulty in Malaya did not stem from the enemy. They lay, deep as marrow, within Britain's men.
There was, first of all, professional jealousy of a very special sort. Before the Japanese attack, the British Navy, rightfully proud of (but somewhat muscle-bound by) its tradition, was unable to see why it should not have supreme charge of defending Singapore, the greatest naval base in the Far East. Wiser heads in London knew that the real dangers were by land and sky. They put an airman, Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, in command of all three services. At once the Army began to needle the R.A.F., the Navy to needle both.
Air Chief Marshal Brooke-Popham saw the need for scattered airfields all up & down the Malayan jungle, had them built, ordered their protection. Judging by the speed with which some of those airfields fell, the Army did not jump to its task with quite enough eagerness. The Repulse and the Prince of Wales are monuments, on the floor of the sea, to the Far Eastern Fleet's inability to comprehend the meaning of the word cooperation.
Shut-Eye Weakness. It is not clear whether Air Chief Marshal Brooke-Popham himself understood what it ought to mean. Surprisingly, for an airman, he represented the old school of the British Army. Although the Singapore custom was to take an afternoon nap, he began to drop off at odd and inconvenient hours—in conference, at dinner parties. He was full of a super-Anglo-Saxon complacency, told the public and his superiors that he was ready for come-Hell.
Air Weakness. The result was that the Japanese quickly got command of the air over Malaya, and the defenders were now badly in need of air power to help land power defend sea power. Last week the Japanese bombed, not only the forward posts of land power, but the base of sea power, Singapore.
In London a British spokesman explained how this shortage was putting a crimp in Allied naval action: "Without an umbrella of protecting planes from carriers or land bases, warships would be at the mercy of Japanese aircraft from dozens of bases. ..."
The City. General Pownall must have reported that his greatest disappointment, in his brief eye-opener in Malaya, was his discovery of the Singapore spirit. For what he found was not the old robust, acquisitive East, but an effete, tired, hypercivilized society.