In Japan, Marius B. Jensen, the historian, says that the military was watching the people and had jailed some people for high-level defeatism, as it was called.
I think really as much as anything, his rhetoric is gearing up for a general election campaign in which he is going to invite the British public to choose between optimism and defeatism.
In fact, he did call it defeatist, but now that his troops were being defeated, it didn't sound so bad to retreat to the Bataan Peninsula and hunker down there for a siege.