 Although he did not specify a location , Jellicoe noted that the fleet would require a major dockyard somewhere in the Far East . A paper entitled " The Naval Situation in the Far East " was considered by the Committee of Imperial Defence in October 1919 . In this paper the naval staff pointed out that maintaining the Anglo @-@ Japanese Alliance might lead to war between the British Empire and the United States . In 1920 , the Admiralty issued War Memorandum ( Eastern ) 1920 , a series of instructions in the event of a war with Japan . In it , the defence of Singapore was described as " absolutely essential " . The strategy was presented to the Dominions at the 1923 Imperial Conference . 
