The Grey River Argus THURSDAY, September 2, 1948. SOUTH-WEST PACIFIC DEFENCE

Grey River Argus, 2 September 1948, Page 4

The Grey River Argus THURSDAY, September 2, 1948. SOUTH-WEST PACIFIC DEFENCE

JT is w’orthy of note that in opening his first Parliament, the Governor-General of Australia, Rt. Hon. Mr McKell, yesterday gave particular prominence to the subject of defence. It used to be said that the centre of economic gravity was moving towards the Pacific, but it now can be said that military rivalry is likely ,in the next generation to intensify in. this hemisphere. During the late war, as the Japanese came southwards, Australians reminded Britain of her earlier warning to Japan that she could expect to face the weight of the Royal Navy if she attacked. When it was explained that British forces were already widely scattered, the Australians rejoined that with only seven millions on which to draw in the event of. invasion, they could" ill spare the expeditionary forces which they then had ill the northern hemisphere, and a Division in Africa consequently came home. For the future Britain will expect these Dominions to shoulder more of the defence burden, as reflected .in Mr McKell’s remark shat the Commonwealth regional defence scheme claimed Australian cooperation, including that of the rocket range. Reports from South-Eastern Asia are by no means such as to prompt complacency. The world generally has reached a critical pass, and disruptive activity which a generation ago few foresaw is now proceeding with no great check for the time being. In less than a decade, for instance, a fifth of the world’s population, and a vast area, has come under Communistic control, and while Russia’s western advance is extensive, the Far East and South-East Asia witness also to the increasing sway of the movement to which the Soviet leaders have harnessed the energy of an enormous population. Not only Northern China, Manchuria, and Northern Korea are more or less under Communistic sway, but the same impulse is evident in Malaya, Burma, Indonesia, India, and Siam. The interest of sections of the people, especially workers, is enlisted with an advocacy of independence and emancipation, but the ulterior object is to gain control. This strategy has been earlier exemplified in Eastern Europe, where to-day the results are seen in a dictatorial rule, without any advantage for the majority, but with rigid repression of all opposition. Malaya is a very palpable lesson for Australia, where there certainly are some who regard the insiirrectionaries as seeking native uplift, but where the great majority realise that the terrorism is an importation. It comes along with Communism from China, just as insurrection in half a dozen other south-eastern Asiatic

countries is now stated to have been revealed as the Communist plan of campaign throughout the area. Malaya has been benefited by British influence, economically, socially and morally, and that is the reason why Asiatics from other countries have been migrating there for many years past. The action of Britain in according autonomy to India, Burma, Ceylon, and "in. a large degree to Malaya, has lessened in some degree her military commitments in this quarter of the globe. ’ If, therefore, defence requirements therein should actually increase as regards communities essentially European, those communities must become more self-reliant, and combine at the same time in the regional defence scheme, which counts to some extent on the co-operation also of the United States as well as of Canada. It is stated that, just as in IndoChina the French have largely lost their hold, anything might now happen in the Hong Kong colony. Asiatic'feeling since the war has itself undergone changes, whilst the probable spread of industrialism in coming years will exert further changes. Nobody yet could predict whether Japan will fulfil General MacArthur’s hopes of a democratic transformation, and neither could anybody say that the past comparative safety of British communities in the South-Western Pacific will remain for even another generation. What has already given rise to the unrest and uncertainty throughout so much of the great Asiatic continent, might be yet capable of extending with insecurity. The determination of Australia and New Zealand therefore to co-operate in regional defence has every justification in the existing situation, let alone any further deterioration.