Australia Trapped
p. 29 · Read in the full issue
In Manus
To Be Bottomless Sink For Socialists' Millions
mHE Manus Naval Base will be handed A over by the Americans in December to the Australian Navy, according to a carefully prepared “hand-out” from the Australian Department of the Navy on September 29.
The “hand-out” continued:— “The Australian Government during the negotiations for taking over Manus from the United States announced that it would welcome arrangements for joint use of the island by United States forces in the future on a reciprocal basis. The United States was not prepared to keep Manus up to full standard as a naval base, and if Australia had not taken the base over it would have been reduced to skeleton maintenance status.
“Government plans for the base are that it will have built for it a garrison town, and Navy personnel posted there will be able to take their families during their terms of service on the island. To bring the base up to proper standards an anti-submarine net would have to be erected and electrical, installations and roads put back into first-class order.” 11THICH is nothing more or less than f? prevarication. The plain truth is that the Americans were quite pre pared to hold and maintain the great base, as a bastion of American-Austra lian defence against Asia, on condition that they were given possession of these few square miles of Territory.
The babbling little men who now direct the destinies of Australia; 5, instead of thanking God for this development—
which would have eased both their pockets and their minds in relation to future defence stood high upon their territorial “rights,” and insisted that Australian sovereignty should not be in vaded.
The replied simply by mak ing all preparations to withdraw. Then the politicians backed down, and offered hurriedly to share the base with the United States. So far as is known, the Americans would not even discuss the matter.
Australia already is bending under a terrific weight of taxation—the heaviest in the world, and the most stupidly con ceived—and Manus represents merely an other few millions added to the load.
Australia, in spite of her Socialist dictators’ inexhaustible capacity for spending money, cannot maintain the Manus base as it should be maintained, if it is to be of real use. Manus, like the rest of the New Guinea Territory, will become mererly a bottomless sink for Australian money.