Anxiety Down Under

In the big continent down under, the scattered cities and distant towns celebrate yearly with prayers, parades and boutonnieres of wattle* Australia's most important holiday, Anzac Day. Australians like to recall that it was on April 25, 1915, when Australian and New Zealand troops landed at Gallipoli, that the youthful nation "first got into trouble." Last week on Anzac Day, Anzac troops were again in trouble, fighting the last cruel hours of their desperate delaying action at Thermopylae, and Australians' anxiety for the safety of their soldiers and security of their nation ran high.

Politically the British defeat in Greece just about blew the delicately balanced lid off the Australian tea-billy. Much of the Australian press, a majority of Australians and almost all of the continent's vociferous Laborites wanted to know why the Anzacs had been sent into the hopeless Greek campaign in the first place, above all why Australia's Advisory War Council had not been consulted before they were sent.

Said one of the Council's Labor members, the brilliant "Red Judge," Herbert Vere Evatt: "It is unfortunate that early communiques suggested that the Anzacs in Greece were part of a large and fully equipped British Army. It is now known that this was entirely misleading."

Another Council member, lean, slum-born John Albert Beasley, co-leader of the Australian Labor Party, added to his criticism another note. "The battle for Britain is the kernel of the war, but there is also the battle for Australia. We must concentrate our minds on the Far Eastern position. . . . Frankly I am anxious to know whether sufficient naval assistance could reach us. Our strategy is necessarily a Pacific strategy. I want to insure in time that Australia is not left alone or communications with her forces abroad cut. Everything possible associated with the defense of our own shores must be uppermost in our minds while this crisis lasts." None too popular with Australia's potent trade unions, Prime Minister Robert Gordon Menzies' War Government is particularly vulnerable to Labor Party criticism. It is a fusion of Australia's two conservative parties, the United Australia and United Country Parties, and has had a majority of only one in the 75-seat Canberra Parliament. The Labor opposition refused to enter the Government after last September's general elections. And to add to Mr. Menzies' political troubles last week, the Government's Parliamentary Whip suddenly died, leaving the Government no majority at all.

To make things tougher for him, the crisis caught big, cagey "Bob" Menzies in London, where he had been conferring with Winston Churchill (and reportedly criticizing sharply British strategy in the Balkans and Africa). Deputizing for him in Australia was Treasurer Arthur William Fadden, a 45-year-old Queensland accountant whose political stock has been rapidly rising while Menzies has been in Britain.

Displaying beautiful teamwork halfway round the world, Messrs. Menzies and Fadden did what they could to simmer the crisis down. Mr. Menzies dictated and Mr. Fadden seconded a put-up-or-shut-up appeal to the Laborites to join up in the National Government. Then the Prime Minister saw to it that Australian Lieut. General Sir Thomas Albert Blarney was quickly upped to second-in-command in the Middle East under General Sir Archibald Wavell.

In a radio talk to Australia, Bob Menzies defended the sending of Australian troops to Greece. At home Acting Prime Minister Fadden got together with other War Government heads, announced a special session of Parliament for May 7. Unconfirmed at week's end were reports that Prime Minister Menzies would grab the first plane back to Australia.

The new session of Parliament will inevitably see Laborites in the driver's seat, but whether they will drive or not remains to be seen. Australian Labor, increasingly split among moderates, progressives and radicals, can put forward no single leader to head a government. The Laborites may prefer to use their advantage to get more social legislation rather than take over the War Government and its headaches by forcing and winning a general election.

Such an outcome seemed even more likely after the Labor Party's other leader, John Curtin, gave a statement to the press. "Australian workers and all Australians." he said, "are united in their determination. . . . It would be absolutely false if our foes mistook Australian liberty of speech as a source of strength for themselves, or if our friends construed this as evidence of doubt."

The outcome of the present crisis is particularly vital to Bob Menzies, who has made a great impression on Government circles, and most particularly on Winston Churchill, during his two-month stay in London. His best-wishers even say that he would be Mr. Churchill's most likely successor if anything happened to the Prime Minister.

* A mimosa-like flower of the acacia family, the wattle is worn (in season) by Australians as a national emblem.

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