The measures which the United Kingdom Chiefs of Staff indicate page 250 in their message COS (W) 122¹ to the Joint Staff Mission at Washington as necessary for the defence of New Zealand are presumably based on the estimate of the scale of attack and the requirements set out in telegrams despatched by His Majesty's Government in New Zealand during February last and on the situation as it then existed. The position has since materially altered and the message appears now to have little application to the situation today. The New Zealand Government's views on the present necessities are as set out in telegram [No. 209] to their High Commissioner in London (a copy of which he was asked to deliver to the Dominions Office) and to Washington, and it is the forces specified in that telegram which His Majesty's Government in New Zealand now consider necessary to afford them a reasonable prospect of meeting the threat in this area.²