Plain Talker from Down Under

Not_ since Lord Lothian's death have U.S. citizens heard such plain talk from a British official as they heard last week. The plain talker was big (196 Ib.) Robert Gordon Menzies, Prime Minister of Australia. Homeward bound after a 30,000-mile tour of the British Empire, fresh from ten weeks with the War Cabinet in London, the Prime Minister stepped out of the Clipper to be greeted by Australian Minister Richard Casey. Then, with no kowtowing to supposed U.S. sensibilities, he let fly with a statement on war aims, flew in a camouflaged bomber to Ottawa, returned to Washington to talk with Secretary Hull, win over the correspondents, have an hour-long bedside conference with the President, in which they "circumnavigated the globe."

Robert Menzies is a conservative in a country that was New Dealish long before the New Deal, and where the labor movement is so tough that Australian-born Harry Bridges is just a pale expatriate compared to the sort they grow at home. Americans say that Menzies is like Wendell Willkie except that he won. A grocer's son and a prosperous lawyer before he went into politics, he was damned up & down under as the spokesman of the fiendish Interests, did not win labor's confidence until Australia's war production began to show results--and then only tentatively.

When he was in England he kept out of bomb shelters, watched rescue squads and fire fighters, aroused a popular enthusiasm second only to Churchill's. When he landed in Canada he turned on a tireless flow of effective speech that jarred lethargic Canadians :

". . . This is the common man's war. It is he and his wife and his daughter who are fighting back. I have seen their homes shattered and burning, all their little possessions gone and they themselves being led away dazed and bewildered, but never once have I heard a single person say we must make peace. ... I have found in them the spark of courage shining as brightly as it shines in the heart of any hero on the field of battle. . . ."

When he talked in the House of Commons in Ottawa, stuffed shirts lost their stuffing, an amateur piper broke out on his bagpipe, honorable members went cheering, tootling and parading in a grand march down the Chamber.

For the U.S., his first statement was strong. He said in effect:

It is not for me to tell you what to do. That is your business. "The first thing I want to say to you is--Britain can't lose. The second is that the speed with which she wins depends on you. . . . Australia has no more natural-born interests in the politics of Europe than you have. Like you we are a long way off and we have and love a life of our own. But this war is not about the politics of Europe; it's about the politics of the human race. . . . You are not being asked to make a donation to a deserving charity. . . . You are not being asked to fight for Britain with your factories and your skill just because you love the English. For all I know, you don't. You are really being asked to fight, as we are fighting in Australia, for the decent, suffering, ordinary people. . . . The cry going out for material is a tremendous challenge to the industrial genius of the United States. All the world knows you can do it if you put your mind to it. The question is, how quickly can you get going?"

New Dealers in Washington, suspicious of all conservatives, were hardly likely to approve of Robert Menzies' political ideas, however well he got along personally. But with long experience he seemed able to take care of himself. When he was elected Prime Minister a left-winger baited him in public:

"In your new office I take it that you will consult the powerful interests who control you before you choose your Cabinet."

"Yes," said Robert Menzies, "but, please, keep my wife's name out of this."

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