AUSTRALIA’S PART

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26274, 4 October 1946, Page 9

AUSTRALIA’S PART

Sir,—Your correspondent "Australia ” becomes very indignant that a " Balclutha correspondent ’’ should presume to criticise a statement by Mr A. R. Cutler, Australia’s High Commissioner in New Zealand. From the Olympian heignts of "Metropolitan Dunedin 1 ' he assumes the mantle of a schoolmaster lecturing his class, in this case composed of poor country residents who have not been able to get at the sources of knowledge possessed by “Australian.” What I mainly objected to in Mr Cutler’s remarks was the glorification of Australian troops in the New Guinea campaign while at the same time utterly ignoring the help derived from America. Yet Mr Cutler, and even more so “Australian,” with his unique sources of information, must have known that but for American naval and air support the Australian troops could never have waged a campaign in New Guinea at all w T ith any hope of success. Things were rather different at the close of 1941, when the then Federal Prime Minister, Mr John Curtin, was making frenzied appeals to President Roosevelt to send aid to Australia, and even went on to say: ” Without any inhibition of any kind I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America free of anv pangs as to our traditional kinship with the United Kingdom.’’ That is rather different from Mr Cutler’s "Alone we did it ” eloquence. In 1943 Admiral Nimitz’s powerful naval expedition was perched on the flank of the enemy’s New Guinea rear and cut his New Guinea route to Japan completely, while on the Australian mandated mainland coast Australians from Madang and Americans from Ajtape had pushed closer together. It was the Americans who captured Hollandia and by landing on Wake took the last great enemy bases in Dutch New Guinea. Admittedly the Australians did a great job in New Guinea. No one can dispute that, but they had powerful help from the sea and from the air. What I objected to was the entire lack of acknowledgment of this aid by the representative of a country that through its rulers had been content with a " hopscoch ’’ militia in its hour of greatest peril. The political party now in power had made that a corner-stone of its platform, that no Australian should ever be forced to serve abroad, and stilli does. Where, then, are the men to come from to police the south-west and south Pacific areas in sufficient force to discourage any would-be aggressors of the future? The League of Nations proved a broken buckler in the past. Will the United Nations Security Council enact a similar ignoble part?—l am, etc., Balcluth3. October 1. D. G. A.