Deputy Prime Minister of Australia accepted the view put to him by McEwen that to commission a Liberal temporarily as Prime Minister would give that person an unfair advantage in the forthcoming party room ballot for the permanent leader. McEwen's appointment was in keeping with the previous occasion when the main non-Labor party was without a leader; Earle Page of the Country Party was interim Prime Minister between 7 and 26 April 1939—the period between Joseph Lyons' sudden death and the United Australia Party naming Robert Menzies his successor. Since 1968 only two Deputy Prime Ministers have gone on to become Prime Minister: Paul Keating
United Kingdom declaration of war on Japan it costs nothing to be polite." Winston S. Churchill: The Second World War (vol.3): the Grand Alliance. (1950) United Kingdom declaration of war on Japan On 8 December 1941, the government of the United Kingdom declared war on the Empire of Japan, following the Japanese attacks on Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong. The British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Anthony Eden, was in transit to Moscow at the time, so Prime Minister Winston Churchill was in charge of the Foreign Office. The text of his letter to the Japanese Ambassador was as follows: Of the letter, Churchill later wrote: