AUSTRALIA AND U.S.

Hokitika Guardian, 26 September 1929, Page 8

AUSTRALIA AND U.S.

COMMISSIONER-GENERAL'S ARRIVAL. , SAN FRANCISCO, August 7. Before Mr Herbert Brookes, newly-' appointed Commissioner-General for the Commonwealth of Australia in the United States sailed from Sydney for his new post, the Prime Minister, Mr S. M. Bruce, requested that after reaching San Francisco he make haste slowly to Washington and to his-office in New York. For, said the Minister, epitomising a state of affairs that Europeans so amazingly ’fail to reeognise, “New York and Washington are not America.” And in this Mr Brookes, who has crossed the United States more than once, concurs. He knows that this is a large country, he understands its vastness not as one who merely looks at a map, hut as one who also lives in a vast country, and therefore thinks in terms of great spaces. He knows that all kinds of people make up Uncle Sam’s population, and that the shortest way home to knowledge is nearly always the longest way rounu. Commissioner-General Brookes, who has been stopping a few days in SanFrancisco, disclaimed all ambassadorial autnority and qualification. “The function of the Australian Commis-sioner-General,’’ said Mr Brookes, “is to represent Australia in the United States, and to assist in maintaining at .. gh level the good understanding and iriendly feeling for Australia that now exists in this country.” He naturally interests himself in reciprocal trade between the two countries, a trade that has become so one-sided as to cause a certain amount of concern at home. His mission immediately proved somewhat successful in that it awakened Americans to this fact that . mutual trading must be on an equal basis as regards the volume of commodities exchanged, and merchants and others interested in this international trading have realised that some means must be discovered fpr redressing the present, adverse trade balance. THE CLAIMS OF ANTIPODES. “1 do not know whether it is widely known in America tnat Australia and New Zealand offer to American products a market greater in value, per capita of population, than any other country in the world. While my position, unlike that of Canada’s representative, is not at all that of an Ambassador, there do rise from time to time matters between the Government of Australia and the United States, and the Commissioner-General naturally is expected to assist the British Embassy in dealing with such matters. So far it has never appeared necessary to to establish a legation at Washington. She has been content to conduct all negotiations through the British Ambassador, not only for sen’t’mental reasons but also because ' a legation would be costly, and expense is a consideration of importance just now.” In the three weeks they had been in California, Mr and IVfrs Brookes discovered, they said, what appeared to tnem as two fundamental misconcep- ’ tions about their Commonwealth ana Empire. “We have found,” they said, “that in some quarters our couptry, by its firm adherence tg its ‘White Australia’ policy, is regarded as holding back, unwarrantably, the development of its resources and the increase of its population; but we are satisfied that any sacrifices we have made in thjs direction have been worth while and" will rebound ultimately to our advantage. We have also repeatedly encountered the fixed idea that Australia’s progress has been held back, if not solely at least preponderantly, by her labour struggles and her labour legislation. I his we feel is not the fact. LABOUR AND CAPITAL STRUGGLE. “The struggle between labour and capital has perhaps arrested to a certain extent the Commonwealth’s commercial and industrial expansion. It has been in Australia as in every country, a difficult and costly struggle, but it was an inevitable struggle and the industrial sky at the moment shows signs of clearing. At its darkest it never indicated quite so menacing a labour tyranny as many Americans imagine. “The chief reason why Australia has not gone ahead as fast as sne snoula iii the last decade is not her ‘White Australia’ policy nor her so-called labour tyranny. It is indubitably, the staggering burden laid on her shoulders by the Great War. “It must be remembered that Australia though vast, is not so rich in natural resources as is America, an<! wealth and surpluses are not created there as easily as in this country. Australia earns her bread in the sweat ot her brow, and her debts have handicapped her cruelly in the march of progress. She has scarcely more than 6,009,000 people, and she has a war debt of approximately 1,500,000,000 dollars. One-third of her national revenue goes annually into interest and sinking fund. Out of the six million people nearly 500,000 were enlisted in the war; 60,000 were killed and more than twice that number were disabled. When the war ended, each State became involved in enormous additional expense in the rehabilitation and repatriation of its returned soldiers, a work carried out on a scale of genersity never before known.” The second of the two misconceptions that Mr Brookes had discovered in the minds of some Americans concerns the British Empire. He has for years been

a zealous worker for the League of Nations. He was a delegate from his country to the Congress at Geneva in 1923. He believes it lo be an entirely practicable institution and as justification for his faith he points to the British Empire or, as he calls it to make his point, the British League of Nations. Among Americans he finds a belief that the bond that holds together the autonomous nations of the Empire is so tenuous that it cannot possibly endure; but this.idea he flouts. “I can understand,” he said, “how it is possible for an American of the united States, thinking in terms of a federation like his own States, to visualise the disbemberment of the Empire because there is no longer a central authority to speak for all; but if tral aumdrity to speak for all, but if bo consider the widely separated geographical positions of the Dominions and the advantage, practical as well as ideal, that results from their association, his belief is possible dismemberment would be shaken. The bond that holds us together is, no doubt, tenuous, hut our faith in the strength of that tenuity is unbounded.”