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Some Honolulu Conference Angles

THE significance of the Pacific Security Pact, solemnly discussed in Honolulu in the first week of August by the “Foreign Ministers” of United States, Australia and New Zealand, does not lie in the Pact itself. It lies in the facts that (u) the two most British of all the British Dominions are entering into a relationship with America which is almost as close as that with their Mother Country; and ( b ) there was no representative of Britain at

Honolulu.

In the overall strategic picture, the Pact seems of little importance. It is gratifying to all dwellers in the South Pacific that the world’s greatest Power, United States, should formally lave met Britain’s two former South Pacific Colonies in this way, and ;reated them both as if they also svere Great Powers.

Actually, there are not as many people in Australia and New Zealand is there are in a major American :i ty; and apart from a possible halfmlhon first-class fighting men, the :wo Dominions have nothing vital to s ive the United States in the critical druggie for which she is preparing.

It World War 111 starts, American orces will come to the protection of the South Pacific countries just as quickly and efficiently as they did in World War 11, when there was

nothing resembling a Pacific Security Pact. This is not because United States loves us particularly, or needs our fighting power, but because the United States must at all costs guard its southern flank (resting on the South Pacific) against any hostile thrust from Asia.

One glance at the map will show what an enemy could do to USA’s Pacific coast and Panama Canal if he held the South Pacific countries.

It would make little difference if the South Seas were occupied by Cala thumpians or Eskimos instead of us Westerners if war comes, the Americans would want to get here first.

Still, it is very pleasant to have the whole arrangement blue-printed and made tidy and orderly by a formal Honolulu Conference—it swells the egos of our politicians, and gives cause for much complacent quacking by some types of Australian news papers. And the Pact does underline the amazing changes that have taken place in the British Empire within four decades.

TUfE Pact gives formal and official recognition to a fact that has been apparent for ten years—namely, that since Pearl Harbour we of the South Pacific have been under American protection. Little wonder

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unhappy wail from The Times and The Daily Maill Who would have imagined, in those not-far-distant days when we talked of Empire on which the sun never set”, that in 1952 two of John Bull’s lustiest sons should, for t^ r owr f security, enter into an alliance with a “foreign” Power—and {!jat ** a Conference from which the Man was conspicuously absent!

There are som c queer angles to t . thing such as our implied alliance with the Japanese, and the immi nent return of the Americans to M anus Base—but we need only consider the basic fact. It is that our safety* as free nations, is increasingly menaced by the Muscovite bloc. and we are ver y . happy indeed to t " e Protection of America.

Without America, there is no future at or us * n *he South Pacific, THHE strengthening of the British 1 Dominions’ ties with United States does not necessarilv mean the weakening of their ties with Britain On the contrary, this could be th beginning “ The only thing that finally can save Western civilisation from the mount ing power of the Reds—and another Dark Age—would be a close-knit alliance—amounting to permanent union—between the United States

and the British Commonwealth. That possibility depends upon Britain her self. She is so sick economically, and so distracted politically the combined result of two exhausting wars, and six years of bumble-footed Socialism—that she seems unable now to take a positive line in any thing.

It is not yet too late for the United States and British Commonwealth to do now what they should have done in 1945—become the world’s police man, to guard the laws of the free

nations and the decencies of mankind.

There is a most urgent need for a policeman. Under Red influence,, internationalism is steadily deteriorat ing into unchecked hooliganism.

UNO is useless. NATO is stumbling.

Honolulu has shown that United States and two British Dominions (probably three, for Canada is al ways with USA) are ready for the job. Maybe Honolulu will point the way for Britain. Maybe, there is more in the Pacific Pact than first meets the eye.