Evening Post. THURSDAY, JANUARY 20, 1944. ANZAC AIMS, AERIAL AND STRATEGIC

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 16, 20 January 1944, Page 4

Evening Post. THURSDAY, JANUARY 20, 1944. ANZAC AIMS, AERIAL AND STRATEGIC

"With little expenditure of time, and apparently with no conflict whatever, the New Zealand and Australian Governments have agreed on a set of principles the success of which will depend entirely upon their application. If the ease with which aims have been co-ordinated is equalled by the ease with which the aims are realised, then history certainly will have been made by this latest demonstration of the Anzac spirit. The Anzac aims which are within comparatively near reach (if the Empire and the interested Powers approve them) are those deal- j ing with aviation, which stand at j present in the forefront of the picture, but the political-strategic-ethnographic-geographic problems raised by the complete list of aims are at least equally deep, far-reaching, and difficult. One gazes at them with a certain amount of awe, while recognising that the two countries certainly should tackle them early and with courage. The whole picture presents itself in three dimensions: regional, Empire, international. We say Empire and not Imperial, because the latter word, though perfectly good, is sometimes misunderstood. These aims that have been agreed on so readily by a regional bloc (which we shall call Anzac, to avoid repetition of the names New Zealand and Australia) rely for their realisation on the approval of (J) Britain and the Empire, (2) America and other interested foreign Powers, especially America. The power factor available at present to support the Anzac aims resides mainly in Britain and America. No New Zealander or Australian should forget that vital fact. Nor should he gloss over, for a moment, the fact that the proportion of power to be contributed by the Anzac bloc must be equal to our just obligations, if our aims are to be driven home. First, as to. the air aims: "The two Governments agree to support the principle that the ownership, operation, and control of international routes shall be vested in an international air authority." The first question arising out of this is whether the Governments that will attend the Empire conference1 (for which the Anzac conference is a preparation) will approve "ownership" of international air lines, which seems to mean nationalisation (of the property) as an inner compartment of internationalisation (of the control); also, whether, if the Empire conference approves, America and foreign Governments will also approve. Without prejudice to that radical issue, it can be said that nationalisation ought to make internationalisation simpler. The nearest parallel or near-parallel we can think of is another body controlling vital communications, the Inter-State Commission of the United States, whose task of co-ordinating the policies of two iets of Government —the Federal Government and the State Governments—might have been rendered much easier in the last twenty years had the Commission been the arbiter of railway freight rates as between rail-way-owning Governments, instead of between keenly business-like private railway companies. It should be added, however, that when an inter-State Commission tries to exert a federallyminded control of such a vast system of communication as the United States railways, the Commission is wrestling riot only with capital interests but with immense groups of organised labour possessing the right to strike. Should national ownership and international control enter aviation in the present infancy of the business, when powerful capital and labour factors like those of private railways have not yet arisen and may not arise, then internationalisation of aviation will. have at least "a flying start." The next question raised by the portion of the agreement summed up in the sentence above-quoted is: What is an international trunk airline, as apart from an internal airline? To put it in another way, what is international air traffic and what is intranational air traffic? .It may be recalled that lawyers and the United States Inter-State Commission often have wrestled with the problem of what is inter-State traffic and what intra-State. It may also be recalled that the United States would not admit non-American shipping to the America-Hawaii trade. Having in mind, no doubt, all this history, the Anzac conference took the line that' "Australia would be free to operate services to Papua, while New j Zealand could establish its own direct air link with Samoa. Services between Australia and New. Zealand, however, would come under the international authority." Many years ago, certain people in Fiji were minded to move I from British Colonial Office administration . towards New Zealand or Australia—according to whether Dominion or Commonwealth offered the better shipping tariff and trade connections — and though that agitation was not pushed to a finish, it has to be remembered that improvement of communications carries with it inevitable political-economic implications. And that consideration leads up to the Anzac decision that a South Seas Regional Commission should be set up with undefined membership—Australia and New Zealand, plus "Great Britain, the United States, and France as other probable members" —to deal with the host of problems that'will arise; but this Commission will be only advisory. Into the wider political and strategic subject-matter raised there is not space to go; but it is certain that, in the Pacific Ocean, trade, communications, strategy, and politics are all going to be linked up; they cannot be dealt with piecemeal, nor can they be dealt with apart from the power factor. Until the world alters radically, the whole fabric of which the Anzac conference has tried to lay the first stone will be no stronger than the power behind it—the actual power, and not merely the potential power. The failure of the potential power of the League of Nations, and even of the Great Power democracies, to stop Hitler has been an object-lesson to the world, So when the Anzac conference announces, among its "achievements," the achievement of "a clear understanding by both countries of each other's ideas on post-war strategic needs in the southern "Pacific," a now power-conscious world will sense a great hiatus. There must also be a clear understanding on whether there are geographic limits to the military service of New Zealanders and Australians, and, if so, what limits. And this clear understanding must also satisfy the other prospective partners who are to contribute power to Pacific stability and progress. Failing that,

it would be useless for two countries in a regional bloc to try to lift themselves by their boot-laces. The power factor is the foundation of the whole building.