FOREIGN POLICY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 September 1939, Page 8

FOREIGN POLICY

DEDVELOPM ENTS IN AUSTRALIA

PACIFIC SITUATION CHANGED

"Pre-occupation with world affairs is a very new development in Australia, said Mr W. MacMahon Bell in a recent 8.8. C. broadcast. “Our interest is not only due to events in Europe; it is more directly due to the new situation here in the Pacific. We have a close interest in the affairs of Europe, but however important, it is in a sense an indirect interest, through Britain. But our interests in the. Pacific are direct and immediate; to Australia the Far East is the near north; this statement looks like becoming a sort of slogan for Australian foreign policy. There are two important ways in which the Pacific situation has changed since the World War: first, Japan is no longer an ally of Great Britain, and second, in spite of the Singapore base and the undertaking of the British Government to send reinforcements there in case of need, we feel that in the existing situation in Europe we cannot rely on Britain’s ability to give as full a measure of defence to Australia today, at least in the early stages of a war, as she was able to give in the past. That is why our concern with foreign policy is now informed by a new sense of responsibility. It helps to explain whv the Australian Government has decided to appoint its own diplomatic representatives to Tokio and Washington, and why for the first time in its history the Federal Parliament is now to have regular fulldress debates on foreign policy.”