This is John Batcher, a conversation with a colleague Grant Newsom, United States Marine Corps Retired,

author of When China Attacks. Grant here points to a presentation that came right away early in the 35th Indo-Pacific International Military

Law and Operations Conference.

He attended in Manila these last days.

The Philippines are asking for help, asking for the US help,

asking for the US to correctly apply the US

mutual defense pact with the Philippines

since the middle of the 20th century.

The Chinese aggression is overwhelming and obvious.

Here's Grant to explain. More of this later.

And... explain more of this later.

And Churchill decides that he will again speak to Congress.

And what we have to remember and it's fascinating to me is that Winston Churchill wrote

every bit of the speeches that he delivered when he was in the US. He wrote the speech

for the lighting of the Christmas tree. He wrote the first speech to the first speech to the Congress in December of 41. So he's back writing this

speech for May of 43 where he tries to sort of go down the middle. There had been a number of people who were suggesting

that they ought to emphasize the war in the Pacific even more strongly,

and he is trying to get by that and phrase it in such a way that he tries to

mollify, tries to mollify them.

But more than anything he is trying to establish his own thinking with the

Americans at the end of that visit he takes Marshall with him to the Mediterranean

to investigate the the war front there.

...