utc to say that britain headed the commonwealth is simply wrong and it represents a misunderstand of what the commonwealth was and is onec again britain and the dominions or later commonwealth realms were considered to be equals in the commonwealth whereas british india in and the crown colonies were not hence the dominions declared war independently of britain in and the irish free state which was a dominion at the time remained neutral britain is not even a first among equals that is the difference between the commonwealth of nations and the british empire in fact for most of the war the vast majority of australian forces served under douglas macarthur in the south west pacific area rather than under british commanders anywhere else similarly it is a misrepresentation to say that the united states ran the kuomintang in fact the americans whose forces were technically under chiang kai shek when they served in china found it very hard to get chiang to fight the japanese as much as they would have liked since he was more concerned with stockpiling weapons and materiel to fight the communists in short i think the division into the big and subordinate allies is historically incorrect by the way many of the so called london exiles actually had their headquarters and major bases in the us or canada e g the netherlands talk may