AUSTRALIA: Britain Told

I make it clear that Australia looks to America, free from any pangs about our traditional links of friendship to Britain. . . . Australian external policy will be shaped towards obtaining Russian aid and working out, with the United States as the main factor, a plan of Pacific strategy along with British, Chinese and Dutch forces.

These were harsh words for any Dominion to address to its Imperial grandmother, but they came last week from Australian Prime Minister John Curtin and were addressed by inference to Prime Minister Churchill in Washington. Australia was hopping mad at being left out of the Allied discussions of strategy, equally angry over Britain's feeble war effort in the Far East.

Australia thought she should have been consulted because she has more to lose in the immediate future than any other Pacific nation excepting The Netherlands East Indies. Singapore, tottering through past British complacency and unpreparedness (see p. 21), is to Australia what Hawaii is to the U.S. Japanese occupation of Singapore would open Australia to the danger of invasion. With most, and the best of Australia's equipped Army fighting Britain's desert battles, the smallest continent is in no comfortable position to withstand a Japanese onslaught.

The Imperial General Staff has allowed Australia no strategic voice in the defense of Singapore, although Australians have done more fighting in World War II than any other Allied country except Russia. This was what made the Australians hopping mad.

By last week Churchill's star was ready to drop below the Australian horizon. His strongest Australian supporter, Publisher Sir Keith Arthur Murdoch who would like to be the Commonwealth representative in the War Cabinet, thundered from London to his Melbourne Herald: "The Dominions cannot afford to be bound by decisions taken as at present. It is largely a matter of Mr. Churchill himself. ... Mr. Churchill ... would stoutly dissent from the view he is Atlantic-minded, but nobody can claim he has handled the Dominions well or shown breadth of sympathy. ..."