Chapter 844 The Munich Expert

What followed was a whole lot of blood is thicker than water rhetoric, and that’s what the Australians believed in and were willing to work for.

Taking the PowerPoint carrier program, Alan Wilson began to highlight it, and also strung together the basic facts of its blockade of Indonesia, indicating that Britain very much hoped that Australia would shoulder the responsibility, the protector of the South Pacific.

Menzies nodded frequently, this is also the general public opinion in Australia, the British still understand Australia, do not understand that person, not just stepped down as leader of the Conservative Party, rolled out of it.

Menzies of course was more than willing to accept the latest British aircraft carrier, first of all Australia does need it, Australia, which has a continent all to itself, is actually about the same geography as the UK.

Arguably even worse, the European countries all have about the same population as the UK and Indonesia has almost ten times the population of Australia, with the two sides so close together, Australia would hate to sleep with one eye open on Jakarta.

As Alan Wilson once said, the Bamboo Curtain in the eyes of the US and the Bamboo Curtain in the eyes of Australia are not the same country at all.

“Australia is also very concerned about the spread of the Bamboo Curtain.” Menzies spoke in a double entendre.

“It’s like the cabinet minister who supports arms sales said, Australia should have sea power enough to defend itself.” Alan Wilson then didn’t dwell on who exactly the Bamboo Curtain was in the other party’s eyes, and continued, “But Honorable Prime Minister, there are some reasons why neither the Foreign Minister nor the Permanent Undersecretary came this time, and instead entrusted me personally to talk about it.”

“Oh? Commissioner Wilson can speak straight?” Menzies was very interested, in fact, Allen Wilson himself came to talk, it was not in line with common sense, the reason why Menzies was willing to meet was really entirely on the face of Governor Slim and Princess Margaret.

“It’s like this, because currently Britain still has a program to sell aircraft carriers to India.” Alan Wilson then began to explain how the sale of carriers to India might be jeopardized if the sale of the newest carriers that were about to be built were made public to Australia, and then logically began to sell up the buy one get one free thing.

The UK would pick a Kohaku class carrier to sell to Australia ostensibly, but of course only in name, while in reality the UK would send the Kohaku class carrier over as soon as Australia came up with the refit fee.

The Glory class carriers are a bit bigger than the Giant class carriers that are to be sold to India, but not enough to cause a fall out with the Indians, they are essentially the same generation of carriers, just bigger.

And now the cva01 aircraft carrier, which is almost a PPT, is hidden in the shadows underneath the Glory class carriers. The UK and Australia must keep plans for the sale of the new carriers a secret.

“Dear Prime Minister, there are now a large number of aircraft carriers in the Royal Navy for which no seller has yet been found. Once the potential sellers are made to feel that Britain is being generous, it may affect the sale program.” Alan Wilson explained with a solemn face, “And the new aircraft carriers will inevitably require a construction cycle, and they will naturally be sent over when construction is complete.”

“So that’s how it is.” Menzies accepted this explanation, Britain was indeed constantly looking for sellers to peddle the aircraft carriers in its hands after the war, and this was not the first time that Britain had done so, at the end of World War I, Britain was peddling battleships.

Now, of course, the UK wants to sell its battleships, which are very expensive to maintain, but the key is that no one will buy them.

Now who does not know that the era of the battleship is over, the role of the battleship for the United Kingdom, are limited to the threat of the colonies and coastal island countries, to other countries is even more useless.

Menzies promised to keep this arms sale top secret, and it was worth it, Australia could sing against other countries, but never against Britain and the US, and Britain was Australia’s number one investor.

In fact the UK has been the number one investor in the world year after year since 1945, just because the UK government is broke is true, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t beneficiaries of centuries of world dominance within the UK.

Pamela Mountbatten’s out to sea in Australia dug up a large iron ore, shaken into a huge rich, and then even more out of control, like a comet rising Mountbatten Group, naturally attracted British capital flocked to a large number of entry into Australia, this looks a desolate barbaric land.

And American capital ate so big dividends of World War II, the post-war U.S. economy has been bullish, stay in the United States is the biggest gain, naturally not much interest in the sea, and now Eisenhower began to big infrastructure, this wave of dividends do not eat up, the U.S. capital will not be a big move out of the country.

With the backing of the British move after World War I, Menzies of course believe that the British to sell to India aircraft carriers rhetoric.

The first chain of logic holds, and it is natural to believe the whole thing afterward.

Moreover, compared with India, Britain is going to sell the new aircraft carriers to be built soon, this result is enough to make him happy. Happiness is a matter of comparison.

This arms sale was already approved as far as Menzies himself was concerned, but it had to go through the parliamentary appropriation. Fortunately Alan Wilson had come up with a solution to cover the de facto arms sale in the name of the Glory-class carrier conversion.

“Honorable Prime Minister, there is also the matter of the uranium mine, entrusted by the Cabinet, and by his wife Pamela. Regarding the mining and attribution of the uranium.” Alan Wilson paused at this point, waiting for Menzies’ answer, he hadn’t forgotten the purpose of his initial visit to Australia.

“The previous government signed an exploration contract with the Mountbatten Group, which is certainly valid. And as Britain needs uranium to grow the power of the free world, we certainly won’t object.” Once again, Menzies reiterated that there would be no obstacles placed in the way of the uranium issue, especially for Britain, and that the two sides could sign a contract right away.

Alan Wilson breathed a sigh of relief, as for the arms sale he of course knew that such an arms sale was not up to Menzies alone, and Australia was not his own, so he composed himself and left the Prime Minister’s residence to wait for the good news.

He felt it was a non-issue, the Australians were a poor man’s version of the American mindset, with a much greater external threat. Especially in need of support from countries of the same language and race, nowadays Britain still retained its Asian colonies, and was also something Australia was very keen to pull on.

“Looks like a good talk.” Pamela Mountbatten saw her husband return and immediately asked how it was going.

“As soon as the Bamboo Curtain threat was mentioned, Menzies’ attitude loosened.” Alan Wilson hemmed and hawed, security was Australia’s highest priority, especially with many minerals being discovered one after another.

“Bamboo Curtain, China can’t even reach Australia.” Princess Margaret joined the conversation, wanting to talk to her brother-in-law.

“The Bamboo Curtain in the eyes of the Australians is not the country you are talking about, there are closer.” Alan Wilson opened his mouth to correct, and then emphasized, “There is also the fact that it is better for us not to start a conflict with China. I don’t want the Malayan colony to be unstable, blood is thicker than water for the Australians to think about, don’t think that the Chinese don’t think similarly.”

“Understood.” Princess Margaret replied in a small voice, “For the sake of Malaya’s stability. You seem to be very jealous of China.”

Alan Wilson answered this question from the side, “Our conflict with China is not as simple as it seems. You don’t think that in that war a hundred years ago, the expeditionary force came on an armed parade.”

By British statistics, the expeditionary force fought the Qing army a dozen times and won the entire war with 60 or 70 dead. It left East Asia almost unscathed.

But the Opium War British army a no-damage armed parade, how has been actively requesting the Qing dynasty to negotiate? All across the sea to fight the war, from one victory to another, how to seek peace than the Qing dynasty are active?

British casualty statistics are indeed only sixty or seventy people, but the expeditionary force in the category of death by disease and shipwreck reported a loss of more than two thousand people.

This is very spiritual, the British Expeditionary Force did not even deep inland, the place of combat is either Guangzhou or Zhenhai, not a small place, could it be that at that time the major cities of the Qing Dynasty were in the outbreak of plague? Or was it the Qing’s per capita biochemical weapons?

Take the U.S. Army as a comparison, the U.S. Army on the soldiers killed in action standard is very harsh. First of all, soldiers killed in action must be identified, such as corpses, labeled with their names of important items, which makes a lot of U.S. soldiers will be engraved in their names on helmets, boots or rifles, in order to avoid being treated as missing.

In addition, the soldier must have died on the spot; if he dies in a field hospital he is considered to have died in an accident or after a wound, and is not associated with being killed in action, so naturally he will not receive a full pension.

In the U.S. Army, only those killed in action receive a military pension, while the remainder of the dead can only receive compensation from commercial insurance companies.

Lieutenant General Walker of the U.S. Army, who was killed when his car overturned on a highway during a retreat, was not included in the list of U.S. Army dead, but was counted separately as a “traffic fatality”. The son of American General Van Fleet was shot down in an air battle and was also counted as missing in action.

There is no doubt that the British won the Opium War, but sixty killed in action and more than 2,000 died of disease? Off to the African rainforest?

However, in front of Princess Margaret, Alan Wilson did not question the glorious achievements of Great Britain, as all died of disease. It could be that the Europeans, who carried the virus that infected the Indians, encountered an unnamed virus in East Asia.

After waiting for two days, the uranium mine is the first thing to have a look, this is originally the purpose of his coming to Australia, for the United Kingdom and so on to go to the cheapest uranium mine, so that the United Kingdom to expand the nuclear arsenal of the maximum degree of cost savings.

It was only when the uranium mine had not yet begun to be discussed in depth, leading to the sale of the aircraft carriers, that he returned to London again in a hurry. While he was back in London, Pamela Mountbatten had also been in communication with the Australian government.

When Alan Wilson came back, he represented the British government, together with the Mountbatten Group and the Australian government to finalize the matter, and the purpose of his initial visit to Australia was considered to have been achieved.