by Stuart Slade
“Good God man, is there anything you haven’t looked at over the last month?” Stimson was impressed by the volume of work that was being presented here. “I have to say this. The political appreciation at this time is hardly favorable. I can say that the President views the possibility of a Nazi victory with deep concern. Three dictators, all hostile to the United States, are driving toward domination of important parts of the world. They threaten to completely upset the balance of power and with it world peace. Hitler and Mussolini have completed the conquest of Europe and appear to be contemplating the conquest of Western Russia and North Africa. England has been forced into a humiliating accommodation. On the other side of the world, the Japanese warlords are tearing China apart and look set to do the same to the rest of the Far East. Meanwhile, a fourth dictator, Stalin, though hardly a friend of America, is about the most valuable asset we have left in resisting Hitler. It seems likely that he too will be overwhelmed. If we cannot find allies, then we must fight this war alone and that appears a mighty and desperate endeavor.
“Stuyvesant, at first I doubted the wisdom of bringing a private sector industrialist into these meetings. I must say that the amount of work you and your team has put in to date justifies your presence here beyond any expectations we might have had. For that reason, I have authorized you to receive something so secret that even the President does not know the full scope of what we are achieving. We have cracked open a large number of diplomatic and military codes. Collectively, this work is called Ultra. It gives an insight into German and Japanese strategic planning. I want to expand your section’s responsibilities to include using that decrypted information in an effort to determine future German strategy. Our decrypts tell us what the Nazi leadership would like to do; we will use your section to determine what their resources will allow them to do. One thing I must say, right now. This information will not leak out. It must not leak out; for if it does, we may well lose the war that is surely coming.”
Government House, Calcutta, India
“We can’t sit on the fence any longer, Pandit. We’ve stalled the Colonial and Dominion Offices for ten days and that’s about as much as we can do. We are now facing the point where a decision has to be made. Do we defy Whitehall and stay in the war, or do we comply with their wishes and obey their orders?”
“Speaking as the leader of the Congress Party, I have to say that staying in the war is proving a very hard concept to explain to our membership.” Nehru spoke slowly and carefully. His meetings with the rank and file of the Party had not gone well. “Those who do not wish to remain under the British yoke also do not see why leaving it should involve us staying in a war that is far away and affects us little. Speaking for myself, I am convinced by your argument and believe that both honor and our safety as a new, untried nation demand that we remain in the war. I even believe that a continued alliance with the other dominions that have remained in the war will serve us best in the short term. But how to explain this so that our membership is convinced? This is beyond my abilities.”
Sir Martyn Sharpe twisted his mouth. He understood the problem and appreciated something else that, perhaps, Nehru himself hadn’t yet realized. That was that Nehru was beginning to set aside the beliefs of a lifetime in pursuit of the greater good.
“Perhaps, Martyn, you underestimate the degree of flexibility we have here. Or the use to which we can put any extra time that we buy.” Sir Eric Haohoa sipped gently at his tea.
“How so, Eric?”
“Well, people have argued with the Colonial and Dominion Offices before, they have tried to defy them and they have even tried to bribe them. Only in the latter case have they been successful and then but rarely. But, nobody has ever ignored them before. I don’t think they know how to cope with that. The longer our silence lasts, the greater will be the confusion at their end. A simple reply will be dealt with at a low level using precedent, but an unprecedented non-response? Nobody at a low level will be prepared to take the initiative in dealing with it. They’ll boot it up to a higher level for consideration and that will continue all the way up until it reaches the top. Then, the elephant principle will kick in.”
“What, pray, is the elephant principle?” Nehru was fascinated by this glimpse of the British bureaucracy at work.
“Pandit, if I may call you so?” Sir Eric waited and got a nod in response. “Pandit, making important decisions in the Civil Service is like the mating of elephants. There is lots of dust and noise, everything happens at a very high level, and there is no result for several years. Martyn is being much too pessimistic; we have weeks or even months before that situation becomes critical and we have to jump. In the meantime, we have time to deal with much more important issues.”
“What can be more important than the future independence of India?” Nehru sounded offended.
“Giving India a sound economy so that it can stand on its own feet as an independent country.” Sir Eric’s reply was smooth and urbane. “Avoiding the impending economic crisis would be a good first step in that regard.”
“Economic crisis?” Nehru and Sharpe replied in almost perfect chorus. “What economic crisis?”
“The one that presents us with the economic equivalent of being hanged tomorrow morning. And, like that notional event, it should concentrate our mind wonderfully. Do you know how our trade is managed under the Imperial Preference agreements signed at Ottawa?” Haohoa looked around and took the absence of response to be negative. “Well, we export raw materials to the motherland and import manufactured goods in their place. It’s a neatly-conceived system that means Britain has access to a guaranteed supply of raw materials and a guaranteed market for manufactured goods. Like all closed systems, it works very well as long as it remains a closed system. But, like all such systems, it cannot allow any degree of openness. It is either a completely closed system or it is no system at all. And Halifax’s ‘armistice’ has just blown a great hole in it.
“You see, we have virtually no industry here. We produce our own needs in cotton goods but that is all. Other than that, all our manufactured goods are imported from Britain. Now, if we remain at war with Germany and Britain does not, that supply of manufactured goods stops dead. Also, if Britain is at peace with Germany and we are at war, Britain cannot purchase our raw materials. I don’t think Halifax has realized the implications of that yet. What his armistice does is force Britain away from the Empire and ties its economy closer to Europe. That’s their problem, though. Ours is that we now have to sell our raw materials on the international market and buy our manufactured goods in the same place. And there is the problem. We have to buy manufactured goods with rupees. Now, what is a rupee worth?”
That was a question Sir Martyn could answer and he rattled off the rupee vs pound sterling exchange rate. “One shilling and fourpence.”
“You see, Martyn, that’s the problem. The rupee is valued against the pound sterling. Fifteen rupees equals one pound sterling. And that value is set by artificial fiat. Essentially, the pound sterling is a basket of Empire currencies and the value of each currency within that basket is what the British Government says it is. All those exchange rates are artificial; they are what the Government in London finds convenient. Since the rupee is only traded within a closed system, that doesn’t matter. That closed system doesn’t exist any more. So, I ask again, what is the Indian rupee actually worth?”
Sir Martyn and Pandit Nehru exchanged looks, both unwilling to say what they both knew to be the answer. Sir Eric waited for a moment before continuing. “I am afraid you are both right. The value of the rupee is what the international market says it is and that is less than the paper it is printed on. The only currency we have that is worth anything is the silver rupee and that is worth exactly the value of the silver it is made from. No more, no less. So we have to buy our manufactured goods. With what? Piles of dirty paper? For that is all our rupees are to the market. Most currency traders don’t even know what a rupee is. We wou
ld literally be better off selling the unprinted paper on the market than spoiling it by turning it into banknotes.
“The only way we can get currency that people will accept is to sell things to countries that have traded currencies. Like the American dollar. Only, what is it that we can sell to the Americans? We are barely self-sufficient in food, but we can sell tea. Americans drink coffee. We can also export raw jute, raw cotton and wheat. All three the Americans have in abundance from their own producers. We actually do export raw materials to the United States and Japan and we import manufactured goods from them and that is the one saving grace in the situation. Even better, the proportion of goods exported to and imported from those countries has actually increased over the last ten years. We export gold to the United States and that is our one hope of survival. It is also the one way we can retaliate against the British, for our gold sales were the major dollar earner for the Empire. They will kick us out of the Imperial Preference system and we will cut off the supply of dollars from gold sales. Britain will hurt but we will be in acute financial agony. Our reserves are already bleeding out as we buy the things we must have to survive as a country and soon, within six weeks in fact, they will be gone. And then we will be able to buy nothing.”
“I think there is a solution to this.” Pandit Nehru was appalled by what he was hearing, but in some ways it fitted well with his long-term plans for the country. “Not to mince words, the answer is socialism. The Indian princes have untold wealth, accumulated from centuries of exploitation. We can seize those funds and they will pay for the imports we need. And in doing so, we will be rectifying a grave injustice in the society of this country. Those princes roll in obscene wealth while the common people here starve.”
“India is marginally self-sufficient in food.” Haohoa was being his pedantic civil servant self. “But the specter of famine does still hang over the country. It takes just a few things to go wrong at the same time and we will see another great famine here. Be that as it may, the idea of confiscating the wealth of the princes is an attractive idea from many points of view, but it will not solve the basic problem that we face. The princely wealth is capital, not income. If we seize it and use it to pay for our necessary imports, then it will buy us some time. Eighteen months and then it will be gone, never to return. We will not even utilize its full value, for that wealth is mostly in the form of precious stones and other valuables. Turning them into cash we can use by selling them will flood the market for such things and severely depress their value. There is another point we must bear in mind. We can only develop the economy of this country by bringing in foreign investment. If we establish a reputation for seizing funds, then investors will fear for the safety of their money and go elsewhere. That would cripple us from the start. The princely wealth is indeed a tool we can use, but we must be careful how we do so; for it can easily break in our hands and leave us with nothing.”
There was a long, aching silence as the implications of Sir Eric’s summary of the impending economic catastrophe sank in.
“Then splitting away from Britain is impossible?”
To Sir Martyn, those words represented the end of a dream. From the expression on Nehru’s face, his dreams also had just been crushed.
“By no means.” Sir Eric decided that it was time to spread the good news a little. “What the current situation does mean is that we can’t split away from the Commonwealth. Our trade balance with Britain is tremendously disadvantageous, that is true. But that position has just ended. Our trade balance with the rest of the Commonwealth is very positive. In fact, the Commonwealth is the route by which our monies are transferred to Britain. As long as the Commonwealth remains in existence, we can continue to trade within it. Of course, Australia, and most especially New Zealand, will be much worse off. They have much the same position with regards to us as we do to Britain. Australia is headed for an even worse economic crisis than we are, And New Zealand? Well, I honestly believe that New Zealand cannot survive as an independent entity even within the Commonwealth.
“The fact is that we have raw materials that the other Commonwealth countries need and the same applies in reverse. What we lack is a medium by which that trade can be carried out. Since Halifax’s armistice has effectively torpedoed the pound sterling in the world exchange markets, we desperately need a substitute. The Commonwealth countries need their basket of currencies if they are to survive; it’s just that we now need one that does not include the pound sterling. We also need a source of manufactured goods. More precisely, we need a country that can take our raw materials and supply us with manufactured goods in exchange. I can think of only one country in this region that can fill that need.”
“Japan.” Sharpe made the statement with a degree of finality that was heavy with dislike for the idea.
“And we should create an alliance with one fascist power to avoid a relationship with another?” Nehru also disliked the idea, although he guessed that there was a wing of his party that would be more accepting of the concept. “Forgive me for not seeing how this is much of an improvement in our situation.”
“Forgive me for saying so, but Subhas Chandra Bose might disagree with you on that point.” One of the responsibilities of the Cabinet Office in any British-run government was supervision of the intelligence services. It just so happened that was one of Sir Eric Haohoa’s primary duties. His reward for the observation was an involuntary grimace on the face of Nehru. “But, there is saying, when supping with the devil, use a long spoon. We are not creating an alliance here, just finding a market for our raw materials to bridge the gap until we can stand on our own feet. Remember, Pandit, we’re running against the clock here. We have to do two things; one is to find markets for our produce and the other is to find a currency the Commonwealth can use as a world standard. For, on that point, if we do not hang together, we will all hang separately.”
“And we cannot have a new currency standard while the present situation remains unresolved.” Sharpe felt slightly foolish stating the obvious, but sometimes the obvious got overlooked because nobody bothered to state it.
“Agreed. Nobody is taking the lead in jumping ship because nobody wants to take the chance of carrying the blame if it all ends in tears. We will just have to hope that something forces our collective hands.”
Dumbarton Avenue, Georgetown, Washington, DC, USA
“What else is going on over there, Iggie?” Phillip Stuyvesant leaned back in his chair, fascinated by the insight into the current English state of affairs that Igrat was providing. She’d been speaking about her experiences at the Southampton flying boat terminals; reading between the lines, she’d enjoyed twisting the tails of the officials there.
“The big one? Nell, Gusoyn and Achillea have Winston Churchill and a dozen or so leading scientists and engineers either tucked away in an English stately home, or ready to move at a moments notice. They’ve gone and formed their own auxiliary police unit that’s throwing its weight around in the Nottingham area, so that they are cordially loathed by the local people and thus accepted as being legitimate by them. They picked me up at the station which got me some sympathetic looks from the locals. I’d have been scared, but I saw Gusoyn was the driver. So I went along with it.”
“Winston Churchill? They have him squirrelled away? Where?” Stuyvesant was amazed. The ‘where is Winnie’ question was causing arguments around the world, and the impression was already growing that he had been quietly killed by Halifax. Discovering that he was already in safe hands, if not precisely in a safe location, was a new piece to the intricate political puzzle that was forming.
“He’s in Nell’s ancestral home. He’s quite safe there. Nell and the others believe they can move him around if they want using their phony police unit. That’s why they formed it. By the way, they gave me something to bring out as an example of the sort of technology that they can smuggle out when we rescue Churchill.”
Igrat reached into her case and pulled out a metal
box. Carrying it as if it didn’t weigh anything had nearly given Igrat a strained shoulder, but she’d pulled it off. She opened it and pulled out a contraption with wires hanging from it.
“A revolver cylinder. One with eight chambers and obviously too big for a hand-held revolver. And its got lots of metalwork attached to it. So?” Stuyvesant was curious.
“It’s called a cavity magnetron.” Igrat spoke in a voice that had the lilt and inflexions of somebody else. Stuyvesant knew he was hearing an explanation that she’d been given by an expert and that she was relaying exactly as she had heard it. “It is a high-powered vacuum tube that generates microwaves using the interaction of a stream of electrons with a magnetic field. This piece of equipment has been generated by two scientists called Randall and Boot. The high power of pulses from the cavity magnetron makes centimeter-band radar practical and thus allows the detection of smaller objects. It also drastically reduces the size of radar sets so that they can be installed in aircraft and ships.” The alien timbre to her voice dropped away as she finished the prepared part of her speech. “There’s a lot more where this came form. Stuff on new engines for aircraft; all sorts of things. Some basic physics stuff as well. Don’t ask me if that’s any use.”
“And what’s this going to cost us?”
“Nothing. The British are giving it all to us, for the common good. All we have to do is come over and get it.”
Stuyvesant nodded. “So, we get the goodies if we rescue them and this cavity magnetron is a good faith gift to show us the goodies are real. This is a deal I can relate to. Has the gang any idea of how to get this group out?”
