U.S. GLOBE TROTTERS

Grey River Argus, 30 October 1942, Page 5

U.S. GLOBE TROTTERS

SEEK SCAPEGOATS , For Solomons Crisis FALSE CHARGES AGAINST AUSTRALIANS. (N.Z. Press Special Correspondent) SYDNEY, Oct. 29. Australia has become sharply conscious of some American censure of her waf effort. A recent article in that strain by Mr Hanson Baldwin of the “New York Times” has now been followed by a further attack by Mr Cecil Brown, a Columbia Broadcasting System reporter, in a bock he has published, “Suez to Singapore.” M.r Brown writes: “I am convinced that Australians are resisting an all-out effort to fight the war. That resistance, I believe, is due mostly to an absence of leadership, and because of a general-sus-picion of the war in which politicians are playing their old games.” Mr Hanson Baldwin said, earlier, that: “Australian labour, by insistence on its peace time rights, had hampered full development of a United Nations’ war effort within Australia.”

Mr Hanson Baldwin has never been in Australia. Mr Brown was in Australia in the month of February of this year. The correspondent here of the New Zealand Press Association regards small factual evidence which may be adduced to support the cases of these American reporters as being a distortion, rather than a representation, of the truth. - With the war in the South Pacific now taking a crucial turn, many commentators are bent on seeking for sacrificial scapegoats—and they do not always find the right ones! Criticism, at this juncture, of Australia’s war effort of a nature tending to promote resentment. and pernaps distrust, is flagrantly unwise, as well as having only the flimsiest factual foundation. One incident, in which a small group of Australian waterside workierls unloading work was done by American servicemen, has been magnified out of all proportion. The division of the Australian Army—into the volunteer A.1.F., which is enlisted for service anywhere in the world, and the Militia, who have been conscripted for service within the Australian territories-—is in no degree affecting Australia’s power to provide reinforcements wherever they are most needed. Yet the division question is being fermented until it may have swollen to the size of a major political issue. In a population of some seven millions, Australian mow has sixteen hundred thousand engaged in her war industries or her armed forces. By the end of the present year, according to the Australian Minister for the Army, Mr F. M. Forde, "Australia will have achieved a mobilisation of labour as complete as that anywhere in the world.” For a country with such a small population as that of Australia, to manufacture in increasing quantities all of the essentials of war—ships, aeroplanes, guns, tanks and munitions—is a feat of industrial organisation vetoing all minor criticism. In proportion to that effort. Australia’s "labour troubles have been diminishingly small—and any minor incidents have been increasingly resented by the great body of Australians. The volunteer transfer of the Militia Army personnel into the A.I.F. has gone on at such a rate that Australia now has available for service, anywhere, an army vastly greater than she has had at any previous time. It was the Militia unit there which has generally been admitted to have put up the finest showing against the Japanese in New Guinea Voluntary service for overseas is'a disputed domestic issue, for settlement among the Australians themselves, but it is one which in no practical way lessens their ability to send troops to whatever theatre the global strategy of the United Nations may require. . Timely overseas praise for Australia’s war effort comes from the “London Evening Standard,” which declares: “Recent events have justified the early demands made by Mr Curtin for a united strategy in the South-west Pacific.” “Mr Curtin, in his twelve months of office, has seen -to it that the Commonwealth’s available manpower is engaged in war production,” says the paper. "This has been dons 1 , not without that controversy which is part of the character of a young democracy where the politicians prefer knuckle-dusters to feather dusters, but also with a vital unity, which animates all sections.” Suggestions that Australian politicians had placed limitations on General MacArthur are ridiculed by all observers here. But it is being strongly suggested that a Ministerial mission to the United States, made, preferably, by" Mr Curtin, would clear away many misunderstandings, and would offer hopes of an improved .co-ordination of the Allied war effort in the South-west Pacific.