One of the more interesting historical examples of fantasy was that of the Far Eastern colonial empires before World War 2. They were addicted to fantasy because it was politically unacceptable to make the investments and endure the rigor which would perforce come with facing the facts. It was one thing for Europeans to spread the myth of Western invincibility to overawe the natives. It was quite another to believe it themselves. And they did, because they had become too lazy, too invested in the social rigamarole to make the effort that would result otherwise. The thought was the father of the deed. And the deed was fatal.
For the British military command in Singapore, war was still fought by the ‘rule book’. Social life was important in Singapore and the Raffles Hotel and Singapore Club were important social centres frequented by officers. An air of complacency had built in regarding how strong Singapore was – especially if it was attacked by the Japanese. When the Japanese did land at Kota Bharu aerodrome, in Malaya, Singapore’s governor, Sir Shenton Thomas is alleged to have said “Well, I suppose you’ll (the army) shove the little men off.”
Everything that was wrong about the European empires is contained in that one, throwaway phrase, which probably got some approving laughs. That attitude was the single greatest cause of the subsequent catastrophe. The lack of aircraft, the bad plans, the poor execution, the obsolete materiel. None of these compared to the curse of that arrogance. The incredible inability to even hear the threats the enemy makes today; to understand the plain language of his menaces when they are uttered unequivocally; the reluctance to believe the obvious facts now, in 2010, are every bit as dangerous as Shenton’s crazy attitude.
The collapse of Singapore was stunningly swift. People who had only a few weeks before worried about what they were going to wear to the Raffles were marched off to concentration camps where they would soon be glad of grubs and maggoty rice. The colonial empires had lasted so long that the generations who grew up within its system of privilege believed it was a part of nature. They began to mistake manner for actual superiority. Cocktail laughter, Oxbridge connections, polo playing ability became more important than competence. Today we elect people who look good and speak in complete sentences because it has become more important than the possession common sense. We choose leaders with no executive ability because they are ‘cool’. And are we any better than those ghosts of the Raffles? Or is it just the same old foolish reliance on fashion in place of brains?
Superiority became tautological. Doubters were reviled as rubes. The empires had to last because the yellow man was inferior. The fact of the Zero, the Kido Butai, the Japanese advance across China, even the collapse of the European governments before the Nazis did nothing to shake this terrible, terrible addiction to fantasy.
In fact the British Army in Singapore was completely and utterly overmatched. It was rapidly defeated by a much smaller force; a qualitatively superior force. Only after they had accepted this fact, after they had come to turns with reality was a recovery and eventual victory possible in Burma.
It was the existence of an unforseen circumstance — the power of the United States — that made even a small recovery of the old European empires possible. Left to themselves they would have been fighting the Japanese way into the 1950s if they had ever persisted that long. In the event the Empires themselves were eventually doomed. But it would have been a bold man to have claimed that in the spring of 1940.
Of all the handicaps that a culture can labor under, no disadvantage is quite so heavy as an addiction to lies. The sheer inability of the intellectual and cultural leaders, the priests of political correctness, to see past their own conceits is a terrible burden to endure.
