384 J.-A. PEMBERTON
been suggested that unless such liberation proceeded or was guaranteed
to proceed as some fixed date, then American cooperation in respect to
maintaining the security of or advancing standards of living in Southeast
Asia could not be expected.^129
Hailey stated that as Britain recognised the need for the cooperation
of the United States and other members of the Pacific group, Britain
could not fail to take this demand into account. He then stated the fol-
lowing: ‘Nor can we fail to be conscious that the substance of it secures
a strong response within our own circle in Asia, insistent in the case of
India and Burma, far less vocal in Malaya, and not yet heard in Borneo,
yet bound in the natural order of things to be heard in due time there
also.’^130 Hailey was keen to stress that the current advocates of colo-
nial liberation could not claim to be the sole authors of the demand for
the liberation of subject peoples as that demand was wholly continuous
with the two guiding principles of British colonialism: ‘the moral princi-
ple of trusteeship...[and]...the political tradition derived alike from our
own history and from our relations with the one-time colonies which are
now the great Dominions, that the natural destiny of a dependent unit is
independent and responsible government.’^131
The British members of the conference were emphatic that the British
public were unreservedly of the view that the Atlantic Charter applied to
the whole world. Indeed, representatives of all the major colonial pow-
ers in Southeast Asia present, including the Fighting French, ‘hailed the
charter as giving added force to the progressive movements of native
welfare and native self-determination.’^132 The representatives of Fighting
France and the Netherlands-Netherlands Indies joined with the British
representatives in arguing that the full embrace of the Atlantic Charter
did not involve a sharp break from past practices: rather, it entailed an
increase in the ‘speeding up of tendencies long at work.’^133 Further to
(^129) Ibid., 9.
(^130) Ibid.
(^131) Ibid., 9–10.
(^132) International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations, War and Peace in the Pacific,
25, 52, 106, 122.
(^133) Astor, foreword to International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations, War and
Peace in the Pacific, iii, and International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations, ed., War
and Peace in the Pacific, 24–5.