AUSTRALIAN UNITY

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 April 1941, Page 8

AUSTRALIAN UNITY

FULLEST EFFORTS FOR WAR

LABOUR LEADER’S ASSURANCE

[BY CABLE —PRESS ASSN. —COPYRIGHT.]

SYDNEY, April 27.

In an outspoken statement to-day, Mr. J. Curtin, the Federal Labour Party Leader, assured the world that the Australian Labour movement was wholeheartedly behind the war effort.

“To-day I have been advised in a most authoritative way,” he said, “that in Japan and the United States a controversy that was set going last week in Australia has been capitalised by the enemy to the fullest extent, to the great detriment of our cause, and even of our security. In the United States, what was published in Australia is causing speculation as to whether Australia is pulling out of the war. It was reprehensible that this should have happened. There never has been, nor should there be, any doubt about Australia.

“As Leader of the Australian Labour Party, I say to Germany and to Japan that Australia, and its workers, are united in their determination to give their all in the war forced upon us. We are pledged to devote the entire resources of the nation to this end; to bear willingly any burden imposed to preserve our security; and to demonstrate to the Empire and to its Allies that we shall not be found wanting in this crucial struggle for human liberty. “To the United States I say that the Labour movement in Australia is unflinching and unyielding to the end. We have a common interest, a common fate in resisting aggression wherever it may come from. The suggestion that Australia is pulling out of the war is utterly false. The workers here know too well what has happened to trades unionism and to civil liberty in the lands of the dictatorships, and more poignantly, in the lands which the dictatorships have mastered.

“Finally I say to the world, friends or foes: There is no political disunity in Australia regarding the prosecution of the war. We face it a united and determined people. In this country, opinions are still free. Criticism is not muzzled. But it would be absolutely false for our foes to mistake the liberty of speech here as a source of strength to themeslves, and it would be wrong of our friends to construe it as an evidence of doubt. On the contrary, the liberty we now practise,’ even while the war rages, is the surest guarantee of our undiminished determination to continue the war for the preservation of that liberty to a successful conclusion.”

“WHISPERERS” WARNED

SYDNEY, April 27

“If I find any whisperers in this country I will hit them as hard and bitterly, as the law will allow, without respect to persons,” declared the Army Minister, Mr. Spender, in an address when opening a new military hospital, costing almost a million pounds, at Concord, a Sydney suburb, to-day. Mr. Spender trenchantly condemned the defeatists, whose voices, he said, have frequently been heard recently. He could only describe them “as a company of faint hearts and feeble guts, who ran whining for cover when the Empire suffered reverses overseas.” He appealed for national unity. He expressed the hope that Labour would take its courage in both hands and come into an All-Party Government.

NO NATIONAL GOVT.

(Recd. April 28, 11 a.m.) SYDNEY, April 28.

The “Telegraph’s” Melbourne correspondent says: Labour collaboration in a National Government, or even in a War Council with executive powers, is unlikely. The Federal Labour leaders are understood to hold the view that no change should be made in the existing Federal structure, in time of crisis. Labour spokesmen challenge the suggestions that there has been muddling in the Commonwealth’s war effort. They claim that the Advistory War Council has worked mosti successfully, and should carry on in its present form.

QUEENSLAND MERGER

(Recd. April 28, 12.10 p.m.) BRISBANE, April 28.

Federal and State members of the United Australia Party and the Country Party in Queensland, decided to unite and form a new party, to be known as the Country National Party. The move was made without the knowledge of party organisations. Mr. Fadden, who presided at a meeting of members, said later he hoped that the step would be the forerunner of similar moves in other spheres, leading to the formation of a National Government.