AUSTRALIAN WAR EFFORT

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 30, 30 October 1942, Page 5

AUSTRALIAN WAR EFFORT

Praise By Observer ANSWER TO RECENT

CRITICISM (By Telegraph.—Press Assn. —Copyright.) (Special Australian Correspondent.) (Received October 29, 8.55 p.m.) ’SYDNEY, October 29. Australia has become sharply conscious of some American censure of her war effort. The recent article by the military correspondent of the “New York Times,” Hanson Baldwin, has now been followed by a further attack by Cecil Brown, the Columbia Broadcasting System reporter, in his book, “Suez to Singapore.” “I am convinced that Australians are resisting an all-out effort to fight the war,” Mr. Brown writes. "That resistance, I believe, is due. mostly to the absence of leadership and because of a general suspicion of the way politicians are playing their old games.” Mr. Baldwin said earlier that Australian labour’s insistence on its peacetime rights had hampered full development of the United Nations’ war effort within Australia. Mr. Baldwin has never been in Australia. Mr. Brown was in Australia in February of this year. “Seeking Scapegoats.” Your correspondent regards small factual evidence which may be adduced to support their cases as a distortion rather than a representation of the truth. With the war in the South Pacific taking a crucial turn, many commentators are bent on seeking sacrificial scapegoats—and they do not always find the right ones. Criticism at this juncture of Australia’s war effort tending to promote resentment and, perhaps, distrust is flagrantly unwise, as well as having only the flimsiest of factual foundation. An incident in which a small group, of Australian waterside workers, tvho were unloading vital war cargo ceased work because it rained too hard, leaving the unloading to be done by American servicemen, has been magnified out of all proportion. The division of the Australian Arrny into the volunteer A.I.F. (enlisted for service anywhere in the world) and the Militia (conscripted for service within Australian territories) is in no degree affecting Australia’s power to provide reinforcements wherever they are most needed, but the topic is being fermented till it may be swollen fo the size of a major political issue. Industrial Feat. In a population of some 7,000,000 people, Australia has 1,600,000 engaged in the war industries or the armed forces. By the end of the present year, according to the Minister of the Army, “Australia will have achieved a mobilization of labour as complete as anywhere in the .world.” For a country with such a small population to manufacture in increasing quantities all the essentials of war—ships, aeroplanes, guns, tanks and munitions —is a feat of industrial organization which defies all minor criticism. In proportion to that effort, Australia’s labour troubles have been diminishingly small —and the minor incidents have been increasingly resented by the great body of Australians. The volunteer transfer of the Militia army personnel to the A.I.F. has gone on at such a rate that Australia now has available for service anywhere an army vastly greater than at any previous time. It was a Militia unit which is generally 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 Australians themselves, but one which in no practical way lessens their ability to send troops to whatever theatre the global strategy of the United Nations may require. Suggested Visit. Timely overseas praise for Australia’s war effort comes from the London “Evening Standard,which declares that the recent events have justified the early demands made by M r - Curtin for united strategy in the South-west Pacific. “Mr. Curtin, in his 12 months of office, has so developed the plans of his predecessors that ohe-half of tho Commonwealth’s available manpower is engaged in war production,” says the paper. “This has been done not without the controversy which is part of the character of the young democracy, where politicians prefer knuckle-dust-ers to feather-dusters, but also with a vital unity which animates all sections.”

The suggestions that Australian politicians have placed limitations on General MacArthur are ridiculed by all observers here, but it is strongly suggested that a Ministerial mission to the United States should be made, preferably by Mr. Curtin. It would clear away many misunderstandings and offer hopes of improved co-ordin-ation of the Allied war effort in the South-west Pacific.