DEFENCE CO-OPERATION

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23175, 22 October 1938, Page 12

DEFENCE CO-OPERATION

Few will dispute the need for co-operation in defence of Australia and New Zealand, as emphasised in an interview with Sir Charles Marr, a former Commonwealth Minister of Defence. Such co-operation would be no more than an application to Antipodean conditions of the principle of collective security, and no doubt it is being practised more or less at the present time. What Sir Charles advocates is more complete co-operation organised through a joint committee of experts. A good deal might be gained in that way, although the New Zealand Government would have to guard against 'the Dominion's being drawn too far into the Commonwealth orbit. The defence problems of the two countries are not identical, although the international risks they must underwrite are the same. But India, Malaya, South Africa and the East African colonies are .equally concerned in the security of the Southwestern Pacific and Indian Oceans. They should be just as interested in the defence of this vast region as Australia and New Zealand, and their adhesion to any defence committee and scheme of co-operation should be as natural as it would be valuable to every party. In fact a subsidiary Committee of Imperial Defence working for the collective security of the south-eastern portions of the Empire—a very considerable part of the whole—should have an important role to play. Each unit might be jealous to preserve its own sovereignty intact and yet should discover that it could work to a common general policy with manifest advantage. As it is, Empire countries use common systems of training and organisation, and similar types of munitions, and exchange information. Co-ordination and mutual support would thus not be hard to arrange in an emergency, especially if, while reserving to each Government complete freedom of decision and action, lines of co-operation were plotted* out in advance..