KEY TO THE PACIFIC

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 16, 20 January 1941, Page 9

KEY TO THE PACIFIC

AUSTRALIA'S FART

RELATIONS yt/ITH UNITED

STATES

BOSTON, January 18,

The Australian Minister to Washington, Mr. R. G. Casey, addressing the Sons of the American Revolution, recalled that the birth of Australia resulted from the American War of Independence. With the establishment of direct Australian-United States relations, "history came a full circle, and what may be called a stepchild of your revolution reached maturity and entered into formal diplomatic relations with you," he said.

Australians were increasingly conscious of being a Pacific nation, and believed they had an increasingly important part to play in the development of the Pacific area, he continued. They realised that after the war was won they, would have to co-operate to a greater- extent in this with the United States than they had previously.

"Many Americans think of. the western Pacific solely in terms of the Far East," Mr. Casey said. "They are insufficiently conscious of the southwestern Pacific, of which Australia is the central land mass and core—an area of great strategic significance which may well turn out to be the key of the Pacific area."