On January 24, 1941, Australia’s Prime Minister Robert Menzies began a journey on a Qantas Empire Flying Boat that took him to engagements in some forty-six towns and cities through some twenty-one countries across the globe. It was an extraordinary trip—made against the backdrop of a second global war, which Australians had, regretfully, joined in September 1939. Menzies was on a mission—but not to save the empire and challenge Winston Churchill’s hold on power, as historian David Day and the ABC TV documentary Menzies and Churchill at War have asserted. His was a mission to save Australia by saving Singapore.…