England will not allow easy retreat!

Because even a small step back in the absence of national strength could provoke a chain reaction that would lead to the collapse of the entire colonial edifice – this is the dilemma that the British Empire is currently facing in the Far East.

In this era, the United States is still a hard-working productive country, with a very low degree of dependence on foreign countries, and foreign trade accounts for only 2%~3% of the national income of the United States. However, European countries have long enjoyed huge profits through the first-mover advantage of global maritime colonization, and the proportion of foreign trade income is as high as 20%~30% of the entire national income. For the island nation of the United Kingdom, the proportion of overseas trade revenue is even higher. If we fail to open up and maintain a vast international trade market, there will be no way to talk about domestic economic recovery.

However, in this era of the Great Depression, the Shijie powers are beggar-thy-neighbor, blockade markets, and build high tariff barriers, and only in their own colonies and semi-colonies can the major industrial countries of Europe dump large quantities of goods and pass on the economic crisis. For Germany, which had no colonies, could really no longer find any other way out "within the system" except for "artillery instead of butter" and expanding its armaments at all costs.

Fortunately, the gentlemen of England had the largest colony in all of Shijie compared to the destitute Germans.

-- At this time, Britain was known as the empire on which the sun never set, and 1/4 of the population of Shijie were subjects of the British Empire, and 1/5 of the earth's land area was the territory of the British Empire. From the British Isles to The Gambia, Newfoundland, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Myanmar, India, Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Malta and countless islands, the British Empire is part of 24 time zones on Earth. The international order under British hegemony was called "Peace under Britain". This gives a clear picture of the global influence of this vast empire. If you include the UK's main trading partners, such as Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland in Scandinavia, and Portugal and Greece in southern Europe. Iraq in the Middle East, Egypt in Africa, Asia and South America, the British Empire has the size, size, population, and resources of the world, and is capable of meeting any of the most serious challenges.

The British economist Jevons once proudly described the economic influence of the British Empire as follows: "...... The plains of North America and Russia are our cornfields. Canada and the Baltic Sea are our lumberyards, Australia is our pastures, and Peru is our silver mines. South Africa and Australia are our gold mines, India and China are our tea bases, the East Indies provide us with sugar cane, coffee and spices, and the southern United States is our cotton plantations...... "even after entering the 20th century." New core strategic resources. The production bases of raw materials such as oil, iron, aluminum, lead, zinc, copper, nickel, rubber, etc., were also mostly controlled by the British Empire.

Thus, simply by relying on the vast Colonial and Imperial System of Preferences, that is, the system of mutual preferential treatment in trade between the British mainland and the rest of the Commonwealth, Britain was able to maintain a sufficiently large dumping market for goods, and a worldwide use of the pound sterling, dumping commodities while imposing seigniorage on the heads of hundreds of millions of colonial second-class people. Thus gradually saving the local economy from the quagmire of the Great Depression.

But the problem is that for the British Empire. The vast colonies that spread across the globe were both a source of infinite wealth and a source of all troubles – in the twentieth century, when nationalism was awakening dramatically, anti-colonial movements were growing in every corner of the globe.

The dumping of commodities and the intensification of exploitation by the suzerains also brought great disasters to the colonial and semi-colonial countries -- for details, please refer to the realistic novel "Three or Five Buckets Overcharged"...... The colonies of India, Burma, South Africa, and West Africa were expropriated to an appalling extent by the British colonizers, and the flames of resistance of all kinds rose one after another and never went out.

For this reason, in the case of relatively weak national strength, Britain must slap its face and become fat, and ruthlessly use force to suppress any colonial rebellion, and must not retreat or hesitate -- if the anti-colonial movement in any place is easily successful, it may cause a chain reaction, causing the colonies to burst into flames one after another, making the situation unimaginable, and the seemingly huge colonial empire will also be annihilated and collapsed in an instant!

The reason why Britain had previously mobilized a huge fleet of thunderous troops to rush to Shanghai, thousands of miles away, to severely suppress the provocations of the Chinese Red elements was not only to safeguard its own aggressive interests in China, but also to prove to all the colonies of Shijie that the Liliang of the British Empire was still invincible, and that all provocations and rebellions were self-defeating -- once the proletarian revolutionaries in China won a complete victory, it would not only mean the total loss of the interests of the British Empire in China, It would also further strengthen the resolve of the peoples of the colonies to rebel against the British colonizers, leading to the loosening of the foundations of the colonial edifice: "Any victory of the uncivilized nations over the civilized nations would generally result in serious losses to Europe's overseas interests!" ”

-- For the truly strong people, self-confidence and openness are the norm, because they no longer need to deliberately emphasize their strength in front of anyone. On the other hand, blindly boasting about oneself and excessively flaunting force can only show that this once strong man is heading for weakness.

Because, this kind of brawl and conquest is not based on true self-confidence and mighty shili, but out of unspeakable anxiety and fear - the fear that one's empire, which has been cohesed together by violence, will collapse in the face of the mass attack of many challengers!

To put it mildly, dogs that can bite don't bark, and the dogs that bark the loudest don't actually bite people, and when the dog can't even bark, or when this strong man can't even maintain the force to show off, then it's time for him to step down from the shijie hegemony stage.

As a result, this round of intervention operations against China has been repeatedly frustrated, and even suffered major defeats and losses. After losing the face and prestige of the British Empire, the gentlemen of Whitehall in London suddenly fell into a dilemma: if they continued to fight to the death against the Bolsheviks in China, the future would be bleak and there would be no hope of victory. The cost is staggering; But if you compromise and back down...... Who knows if it's the sea and the sky after taking a step back?

-- Of course, it is possible that the wind and the waves are calm and everything is normal, but it is also possible that there is a volcanic eruption, and the whole British colony is in a collective uprising!

If the misfortune were the latter, it would be a devastating apocalypse for Great Britain, which was struggling to emerge from its economic crisis.

So, in spite of his apprehensions, in order to maintain the face and prestige of the British Empire, Prime Minister Baldwin decided to open the battlefield again in Hong Kong - "before a glorious retreat." At least show the damned Bolsheviks a little bit about the liliang in England! ”

As a result, Churchill, the Secretary of the Admiralty, took the order and began a new round of troop movements and build-ups around the world.

- Yet. Compared with the British Empire, which still has a little dry goods in its pocket, the other leader of the Far East intervention operation, the French Republic, which is more weak in strength and more politically chaotic, is already a force that can even be used to show off in the Far East. It's almost impossible to make up......

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Paris. French Chancellery

Exhausted and depressed, Edward. Prime Minister Daladier, looking up at his calendar from his chair, found that he seemed to have not been home for ten days.

――As Prime Minister, you have to be on call around the clock, so you usually have to sleep next to the office like a patrol officer on duty.

And the days of the French Chancellery are a day of constant repetition of exhaustion, dragging the exhausted body around. It is also necessary to deal with various emergencies urgently...... Compared to the president who lives in the Elysée Palace, it is simply the difference between hell and heaven.

in this position. The greatest joy is to go to bed at night, when you can forget all your worries.

However, when you wake up again, you will have to continue to face all kinds of cold and chaotic realities.

Fortunately, the French Third Republic was a product of compromise, even the prime minister, and the cabinet was always changing frequently. Since the end of the Franco-Prussian War, the vast majority of prime ministers in the French Third Republic have served sadly short terms, with 108 cabinets changing between 1870 and 1940, with each cabinet lasting an average of about eight months. The shortest-serving prime ministers simply stayed on the prime minister's throne for only a day or two...... Many prime ministers have had their ups and downs, so there is generally no risk of overwork.

However, Prime Minister Daladier still hopes to try to arrange everything properly in France before he steps down this time.

In fact, in the thirties of the twentieth century, the French economy was certainly hit by the global depression, but compared with Germany and the United States, it should have been quite good. As early as 1932, France's economic slump was nearing its end, and then it continued to grow and prosper, and has recently seen few headaches of unemployment and social unrest, making it a paradise compared to Germany next door......

Therefore, the French Prime Minister has no particularly intractable domestic social problems to deal with at the moment, and the main trouble is only to deal with the endless attacks and overthrowing movements of the various political parties in Parliament - until the tragic news from the Far East washes away all the whitewash of the peaceful years!

At this moment, the Minister of the Navy and the Colonies was holding a report from Vietnam: standing in front of Prime Minister Daladier: "...... According to the latest news from Haiphong Port, 85 percent of the personnel of the entire Far East Task Force have died of sudden illness, many ships have become unmanned ghost ships, and the ground forces that participated in the landing operation have been completely wiped out. So far, the number of casualties of our army has exceeded 20,000, the entire Far East Fleet has been paralyzed, and about 1,500 people are trapped on Zhoushan Island, in a dilemma. And the battle between us and the Chinese Bolsheviks is not over......"

Prime Minister Daladier listened absentmindedly to the appalling news and wondered what kind of turmoil it would set off in Parliament - although a significant part of these casualties were only worthless Algerian and Annam native infantry, but there were more than 10,000 pure French lads...... That number may not have been much in the past. But at the moment, it is enough to stir up the sensitive nerves of the public.

-- No way, in the Shijie battle twenty years ago, the French rushed to the battlefield with patriotic enthusiasm. I thought I could win a hearty victory and wash away the shame of the Franco-Prussian War. Who knew that the result was that he struggled in a cruel meat grinder for four years, paid the tragic price of more than a dozen provinces turned into scorched earth and more than 6 million military and civilian casualties, wiped out an entire generation of young men, and left millions of disabled people...... At the end of the day, he was stabbed in the back by the British at the Paris Peace Conference, which basically wiped out the hegemony of the European continent that was once within reach.

Since then. The whole of French society was not only drained of blood, but also suffered from "warphobia": when the cost of modern warfare is so painful, the gains of victory are so meager. So why waste the blood of millions of young men for the sake of the false name of a winner?

“…… Hehe, for a colonial conflict that happened on the other side of Shijie, tens of thousands of French boys were buried in one go. Turned the small half of the French Navy into an undead ship. and an atomic bomb that seems to be the content of Verne's science fiction novels......"

Prime Minister Daladier smirked self-deprecatingly, "...... I can already imagine what kind of storm will be in Parliament tomorrow. ”

In the French Third Republic. The overthrow is not a part of political life, but the whole of it, and this monstrous republic contains all the political ideas of the French, left, right, conservative, radical, royalist, Bobanian, republican...... Under the multi-party system, all the cabinets are coalition cabinets, and the political foundation is extremely fragile. It is almost impossible to do anything by living one day at a time. And the prime minister who seems to be in power. They are just temporary workers who work on a rotational basis, and only God knows how long their terms last for months, if not days.

Due to the cowardice and incompetence of successive governments, many French people also became increasingly disgusted, so that in 1935, a French fascist organization known as the "Fire Cross" was born, the leader of this organization claimed to learn from Hitler, anti-Semitism and dictatorship, but it did not have the ability of the Nazi Party, and the result was that in addition to adding to the turmoil in French politics and further paralyzing the government, there was little change.

In the midst of such chaos, Prime Minister Daladier led the French Republic into the pit of the colonial war.

Daladier was a standard French man, romantic and passionate, but his temperament had been smoothed out by decades of political struggle, and the result was that there was almost nothing left but the heart of a French man - he was not weak, but he was not tough, he was not radical enough, but he could not be said to be conservative, he was a politician trained in the political arena of the Third Republic, an opportunist like a wall.

Historically, Daladier was a man who tried to avoid any risk-taking, and although his policy of compromise and appeasement towards Hitler during his tenure was repeatedly criticized by later historians, it was not a reflection on the various mistakes of France during the First World War...... It's a bit overkill though.

-- France was already scared of the last Shijie battle and did not want to fight the second one, which was the general mentality of the whole society at that time.

Even if you are the prime minister, you cannot go against the tide and forcibly drive them to another battlefield against the people's fear of war.

Therefore, after discovering that the sacrifices on the battlefield in the Far East exceeded the worst expectations, and that a "regular operation" to suppress the indigenous unrest had been turned into a meat grinder, Daladier regretted it and even considered it the worst decision of his political career.

Although he is not unaware that, judging from the current situation in Shijie, a retreat from any colonial battlefield may lead to a chain reaction within the entire colonial system, but this Shijie will always be so helpless that the French Prime Minister must first consider the strongest will of his own people.

And the French people of this era are most afraid of war, and what they yearn for most is peace -- as for the heroic domination of Europe in the Napoleonic era, and the ideals of indoctrination in the era of the Great Revolution, they have all been left behind by the surviving French along with the accumulated bones in the trenches of the Western Front.

So, after a brief hesitation, Prime Minister Daladier picked up the pen: "...... In the present domestic situation, after suffering such heavy losses, it is impossible for me to send reinforcements that would satisfy the commanders of the front, nor to persuade the parliament to continue to devote more resources and military dollars to the Far East - the parliamentarians are more willing to spend money on the Maginot line on the German-French border...... So, let's let the troops of the Zhoushan Islands withdraw! They are only a few people, who stay under the noses of the red elements, and cannot do anything at all, but can only be frightened all day long......"

“…… It was a sane decision, Mr. Prime Minister. But what about another battlefield? The Minister of the Navy and Colonies continued to ask.

“…… Another battlefield? Didn't I already order the abandonment of the concession in Canton and the evacuation of the expatriates from there? Prime Minister Daladier blinked in confusion, then suddenly realized, "...... Could it be that the Red Elements still want to attack the idea of the Guangzhou Bay Lease (Zhanjiang Port)? ”

“…… Exactly, Mr. Prime Minister. The Secretary of the Navy and the Colonies replied, "...... The Red Army, which has just occupied Canton, is still about 400 kilometers away from our Canton Bay lease. But the problem is that our garrison in Guangzhou Bay is extremely weak, with only about 200 soldiers stationed in total, which cannot withstand a round of enemy attacks, and the situation in Vietnam is not very stable, and it is impossible to draw troops to reinforce Guangzhou Bay......"

This answer made Prime Minister Daladier frown - in order to avoid needless bloodshed, even the most discerning parliamentarians could not say anything about the abandonment of a leased territory that was besieged and difficult to defend. But abandon a trading base that is still far from the war...... There will be a suspicion of cowardice.

“…… In this case, transfer the troops stranded in the Zhoushan Islands to Guangzhou Bay and use them to strengthen the defense there! Then look at what the British are doing in Hong Kong. According to common sense, the first target of the Chinese Bolsheviks will certainly not be our ......"

Prime Minister Zuihou of Daladier made such a decision, "...... Of course, if the worst-case scenario happens and an attack is unstoppable, I also agree to authorize the front-line commander to be flexible, for example, to declare Canton Bay an undefended city......"

-- For the European and American powers, who are thousands of miles away, this stalemate war has already caused them such a headache. And the Japanese Empire, which had already suffered four nuclear bombs, was already on the verge of madness: especially when the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army put forward their terms for negotiation...... (To be continued......)

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