WHY AUSTRALIA MATTERS
By PROFESSOR W. K. HANCOCK HE British public has this week been reminded by Mr. Malcolm MacDonald of the magnitude of Canada's superb war effort. is is as it should be ; but one cannot help regretting that there no similar opportunity of bringing home to people here an nderstanding of Australia's war effort, which is no less impressive, th on the field of battle, by land, air and sea, and in the sphere
f war production. Australia is so far away. The information either oes not come through, or comes through in the form of inert tatistics and lifeless generalisations. Those who have felt the pirit of fighting Australia are so very few, though the R.A.F. knows mething about it, and so do the men of the Eighth Army who ought side by side with the Ninth Australian Division. The erformance of this division in the jungle - is now beating—if hat be possible—its performance in the desert. One wonders, ncidentally, how many people in Britain realise that it is Aus- ralians who are bearing the brunt of the land fighting in this most liter New Guinea campfiign?
One also wonders how many people in Britain really understand ghat the Commonwealth of Australia means to the British Corn- onwealth of Nations, not only during the present war, but in the uture? Australia, as I'have said, is so distant. Moreover, it must e admitted that Australians have once or twice given themselves bad Press. A-few sensational newspapers are chiefly responsible or that. Headlines from Sydney, repeated in British and American eadlines, have given false impressions of Australian realities. Form- tely, these false impressions have now been cleared away by agnificent performance. There is one- sound rule for under- anding Australia. Don't ever judge by the noise of controversy ; art for the performance. During the economic depression of the arly nineteen-thirties controversy was vociferous, and made some nsational headlines. But the Australian effort of recovery, as it haped itself amid the political storms of the next few years, I stand comparison with thd effort of any other people which d been caught in the economic blizzard. Australian recovery en was an aid to recovery in - the United Kingdom. Economic- HY, Australia and Great Britain rendered great services to each ther in the period between the two wars, and amid all the changes
of the coming time they will still find that each has an immense contribution to make to the other's prosperity.
Strategically, Great Britain and Australia have a vital interest in each other's security and strength. That lesson ought by now to be burnt into us. Great Britain and her Allies must surely know by now that the war would have been lost if Germany and Japan had been able to join hands. We had to hold the Middle East and the Indian Ocean in this war, and we shall have to maintain their security on a permanent basis when the war is over, if our ideal of " United Nations " is not to dissolve like a dream into the hideous alternative of world anarchy. The Indian Ocean cannot be held secure unless Australia is firmly maintained as a great continental base. We shall see in the future a more equitable sharing of the responsibility for peace. What Great Britain cannot do alone by holding Singapore, Australia and Great Britain—in partnership with India, South Africa, and the Netherlands Indies—will be able to do effectively.
The partnership extends into the Pacific. Australia links up with New Zealand. Australia and New Zealand together form an essential buttress to the security of the United States. In this war, emphasis has been laid upon the deliverance which has come to Australia from America. The deliverance has been great indeed, and Australians are profoundly thankful for it. But they have not been passive recipients. What they have already given to America is no less real and essential than what America has given to them. In the future, they will give as much as they get. Australians can with confidence take their stand on manly, national independence. On this basis they can go further, and affirm—as indeed they have always done—their interdependence with like-minded nations. First of all, they hold fast to their fellowship with the other member- nations of the Commonwealth, and in addition to this they hope to maintain a permanent friendship with the United States.
Between the British Empire and the United States Australia, like Canada, is well qualified to play the part of interpreter. Canada's geographical situation in North America, and Australia's geographical situation in the South Pacific, are facts which dictate co-operation between the British Empire and the United States. They form part of a pattern of the rule of law on the world's oceans. They are not the whole pattern, which must fill itself out as the English- speaking world merges into a wider family of nations. This surely is the hope to which the peoples of this earth are clinging in the present hour of torture. We believe that we shall be strong enough to make this hope a fact ; yet we shall do well to realise that we are workinri on a narrow margin. Australia is a necessity for peace in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. She is an indispensable element in the structure of the British Commonwealth, in British-American co-operation, and in the wider design of world peace.
Behind economics and politics there are values which can no more be expressed in maps and statistical tables than could the national revival here in Britain at the time of Dunkirk. Australia faced her Dunkirk when Singapore fell, and her national response to danger, concealed though it was to some extent by the surface- eddies of journalism and politics, came from the same deep springs at which the British people renewed themselves. And this is the fundamental thing about Australia. The genius of the people, its way of life, its scale of values, derive from roots deep in the history of these islands. There has been transplanting. The history of this transplanting—a history too little known over here—is of fascinat- ing interest. In the Australian environment the seeds of com- munity-life taken from these islands have produced a luxuriant growth which many British people find queer. Most of this growth is healthy ; some of it the Australians will have to prune if they intend to keep their national garden trim. But national gardens can be too trim ; vigour, not trimness, is what a growing country most badly needs. Australia's growth has been and will remain vigorous. In an unbelievably short space of time it has brought to life in the last-discovered continent a strong democratic community of the British type. The survival and development of this community is a vital interest of Great Britain herself, of the whole Commonwealth, and of the wider brotherhood of peoples for which we are now fighting and working.
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