AUSTRALIA AND U.S.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19732, 24 September 1929, Page 5

AUSTRALIA AND U.S.

COMMISSIONER-GENERAL'S ARRIVAL. (nOX Ot> OWB COMLESPOHDXJfT.) SAN FRANCISCO, August 7. Before Mr Herbert Brookes, newlyappointed Commissioner-General for the Commonwealth of Australia in the United States, sailed from Sydney for his new post, the Prime Minister, Mr S. M. Bruce, requested that after reaching San Francisco he make haste slowly to Washington and to his office in New York. For, said the Minister, epitomising a state of affairs that Europeans so amazingly fail to recognise, "New York and Washington are not America.'' And in this Mr Brookes, who has crossed the United, States more than once, concurs. He knows that this is a large country, he understands its vastness not as one who merely looks at a map, but as one who also lives in a vast country, and therefore thinks in terms of great spaces. He knows that all kinds of people make up Uncle Sam's population, and that the shortest way home to knowledge is nearly always the longest way round. Commissioner-General Brookes, wfctf' has been stopping a few days in Sail Francisco, disclaimed all ambassadorial authority and qualification. "The function of the Australian Commis-sioner-General," said Mr Brookes, "is to represent Australia in the United States, and to assist in maintaining at high level the good understanding and friendly feeling for Australia that now exists in this country." He naturally interests himself in reciprocal trade between the two countries, a trade that • has become- so one-sided as to cause a certain amount of concern at home. His mission immediately proved somewhat successful in that it awakened Americans to this fact that mutual trading must be on an equal basis as regards the volume of commodities exchanged, and merchants and others interested in this international trading have realised that some means must be discovered for redressing the present adverse trade balance. The Claims of Antipodes. "I do not know whether it is widely known in America that Australia and New Zealand offer to American products a market greater in value, per capita of population, than any other country in the world. While my position, unlike that of Canada's representative, is not at all that of an Ambassador, there do arise from time to time matters between the Government of Australia and the United States, and the Commissioner-General naturally is expected to assist the British Embassy in dealing with such matters. So far it has never appeared necessary to Australia to establish ,a legation at Washington. She has been content to conduct all negotiations through the British Ambassador, not only for sentimental reasons but also because a legation would be costly, and expense is a consideration of importance just now." In the three weeks they had been in California, Mr and Mrs Brookes discovered, they said, what appeared to them as two fundamental misconceptions about their Commonwealth and Empire. "We have found," they said, "that in some quarters our country, by its firm adherence to lie <White- Autralia'

policy, is regarded as holding back, unwarrantably, the development of its resources and the increase of its population; but we are satisfied that any sacrifices we have made in this direction have been worth while and will rebound ultimately to our advantage. We have also repeatedly encountered the fixed idea that Australia's progress has been held back, if not solely at least preponderantly, by her labour struggles and her labour legislation. This we feel is not the fact. Labour and Capital Straggle. "The struggle between labour and capital has perhaps arrested to a certain extent the Commonwealth's commercial and industrial expansion. It has been, in Australia as in every country, a difficult and costly struggle, but it was an inevitable struggle and the industrial sky at the moment shows signs of clearing. At its darkest it never indicated quite so menacing a labour tyranny as many Americans imagine. "The chief reason why Australia has not gone ahead as fast as she should in the last decade is not her 'White Australia' policy nor her so-called labour tyranny. It is, indubitably, the staggering burden laid on her shoulders by the Great War. "It must be remembered that Australia, though vut, it mot m rioh is

natural resources as is America, and wealth and surpluses are not created there as easily as in. this country. Australia earns her bread in the sweat of her brow, and her debts have handicapped her cruelly in the inarch of progress. She has scarcely more than 6,000,000 people, and she has a war debt of approximately 1,500,000,000 dollars. One-third of her national revenue goes annually into interest and sinking fund. Out of the six million people, nearly 500,000 were enlisted in the war; 60,000 were killed and more than twice that number were disabled. When the war ended, each State became involved in enormous additional expense in the rehabilitation and repatriation of its returned soldiers, a work carried out on a scale of generosity never before known.'' The second of the two misconceptions that Mr Brookes has discovered in the minds of some Americans concerns the British Empire. He has for years been a zealous worker for the League of Nations. He was a delegate from his country to the Congress at Geneva in 1923. He believes it to be an entirely practicable institution, and as justification for his faith he points to the British Empire or, as he calls it to make his point, the British League of Nations. Among Americans he finds a belief that the bond that holds together the autonomous nations of the Empire is so tenuous that it cannot possibly endure; but thfc Jdes he floats.

"I ean understand," he aid, "hw it is possible for an Americas of th United States, thinking in terms «f federation like his own States, I visualise the disbeinbennent of the En pire because there is no longer a centri authority to speak for all; but if 1 would avoid analogy, and if he won] consider the widely separated geogrspl ical positions of the Dominions and tl advantage, practical as well as idea that results from their association, h belief in possible dismemberment weu be shaken. The bond that holds us t f ether is, no doubt, tenuous, but oi aith in the strength of that tenuil is unbounded."