NOT GOING ABROAD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 November 1943, Page 2

NOT GOING ABROAD

FEDERAL PRIME MINISTER INSISTS THAT HIS PLACE IS AT HOME STRONG PRESSURE. RESISTED (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, November 2. In spite of strong pressure from many quarters, there is no likelihood of Australia’s Prime Minister, Mr Curtin, going abroad in the near future. He has made it clear that he believes that his duty is to stay -in Australia. Some of those closest to him question whether he will leave this country before the war ends. Official circles believe that only an overseas conference of the highest importance could induce Mr Curtin to leave Australia within a year. Political correspondents have suggested that Mr Curtin and Mr Fraser should make simultaneous visits to London and Washington in order that Australian and New Zealand views on post-war policy in the Pacific Ocean might be adequately represented. Mr Curtin, defending his stay-at-home attitude, contends that such matters may well be left in the hands of capable senior Ministers. He points out that he alone of all Dominion Prime Ministers “is head of a country which finds itself still in the forefront of battle. Fighting on Australian territory is likely to continue for months to come. Neither General Smuts in South Africa, Mr Mackenzie King in Canada, nor Mr Fraser has that position to face, and so each has been free to go abroad. “Not till London and Washington know Mr Curtin at his best will Australia in the inter-Empire and international sphere get full value for the uncompromising vote of confidence it gave Mr Curtin at the August elections,” says the “Sydney Morning Herald’s” political commentator. “The prestige and authority of Mr Curtin would help to remove many of the difficulties which will face us at the peace table and during the years of reconstruction,” declares the Sydney “Telegraph - ” in an editorial. “These problems are so great and so important that no domestic issue should compete for the Prime Minister’s attentions.” But in the face of all persuasions that the Prime Minister himself should represent Australia’s case abroad and gather first-hand information on trends of world thinking, Mr Curtin remains adamant and say that his place is at home, directing his country’s war effort and supervising the' solution of her industrial and political problems.