Documents Relating to New Zealand's Participation in the Second World War 1939–45: Volume III
216 — The Prime Minister of New Zealand to the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs1
216
The Prime Minister of New Zealand to the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs1
24 March 1942
Your telegram of 19 March [No. 213].
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
1 Repeated to the New Zealand Minister, Washington.
2 Mr Nash was asked to send a copy of this message to the Joint Staff Mission.