Cablegram [296] [1] [14 June 1940] [2],
MOST SECRET
Your ‘secret and personal’ review of the present position has been handed to me by Whiskard. [3]
We are naturally reluctant, speaking from the comparative security of a great distance, to offer any advice to Great Britain.
We know that you will fight and we believe that you will win.
Our own position is that we are woefully short of army equipment, particularly artillery and other weapons exclusive of small arms, and although we are adopting extraordinary measures in order to stimulate production, we can hardly be an effective contributor to Great Britain on the munitions side except in small arms ammunition and some other classes of shell ammunition for a long time to come.
We will, however, go on with the air scheme vigorously, and we are pushing on with the training of the A.I.F. In each case, recruiting has been amazingly successful as we are well ahead of schedule with air force recruiting and in addition to the Division of the A.I.F. now abroad, have practically 40,000 further men enlisted and in camp.
Our material resources are of course at your disposal. In brief, we are, in collaboration with yourselves, prepared to do everything that seven million people, resolutely determined but at present ill-equipped, can do to achieve victory.
Without any sort of heroics I can tell you that if everything else failed and we were attacked in our own country we would fight to a finish. You will therefore be able to estimate just how completely we are thinking as you are thinking at this grave moment. [4]
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1 & 2 The number and date have been inserted from the copy on file AA: A1608, A41/1/1, x.
3 See Document 376.
4 This cablegram was sent through the U.K. Dominions Office.
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[AA: A981, WAR 45, iv]