Britain and the making of the Post-War World
misunderstanding if we and the Russians fully appreciated each other’s motives. The last thing he wanted was to see ourselves in conflict with the Soviet Union. Molotov asked: What else? The Foreign Secretary said that there remained the question of peace treaties, but this would be better discussed in the company of Mr Byrnes. Reverting to Iran, the Foreign Secretary said that he was not making any concrete proposals, but he would like Molotov to understand that for many reasons there was deep sympathy and feeling in the United Kingdom for Iran, and that constant questions about that country were put in Parliament. He had been at special pains in his replies to say nothing that could be provocative to the Soviet Union. The Foreign Secretary then turned to Indonesia, and explained that our position there was quite simple. Holland had declared war on Japan. The Japanese had attacked and occupied her islands. When the arrangements had been made for the division of commands in the Far East the duty of taking the surrender of the Japanese and of the restoration of the civil government in the Dutch islands had fallen to us. We had not expected any trouble in carrying this out. Our duty had been to remove some hundreds of thousands of Japanese and between 300,000 and 400,000 internees, Dutch, Europeans and Eurasians. We had set aside quite a small force to do this. Then the Indonesians had attacked us. We had been confronted by nationalist claims, now for a commonwealth and now for independence. First difficulties had been created by Soekarno, who was said to have collaborated with the Japanese. Nevertheless, we had advised the Dutch to negotiate with them and to send a plenipotentiary to settle the question. We in our turn had sent General Mallaby to meet the Indonesians and he had been murdered. That did not make things any easier. Our activities had been restricted to trying to rescue the internees and to gather up all the Japanese in the islands. We had advised the Dutch, and were still doing so, to negotiate with a man called Sjahrir in order to settle the constitutional question. Sjahrir had himself confessed that he could not control the situation. The Dutch representative, van Mook, had now gone home to confer with his government and the Prime Minister would probably see him. All we wanted was an early settlement, whatever it might be. Molotov might rest assured 202