From Melbourne To The Yalu River

This Month's New Reading:—

With The General

mo residents of the South-West X Pacific who saw out the war in that area and beyond, this is the most important book since Eric Feldt gave us The Coastwatchers.

MacArthur: 1941-1951, has as co authors Major-General Charles A.

Willoughby, who was MacArthur’s own chief of intelligence in the period covered, and John Chamber lain. It follows General Douglas MacArthur’s campaigns from the escape from Corregidor until his dismissal by Truman because of a conflict of views as to how the war in Korea should be run.

The book is, in a sense, a paradox in that it is frankly eulogistic and yet is in no sense a biography. It is no intimate portrait of Mac- Arthur, the man; the authors (although one of them was in close contact with MacArthur throughout the period under review) seem never to get near him, so far as this book is concerned, anyway, with the result that he remains throughout a remote spirit rather than a human being.

We learn belatedly, that he liked viewing Western movies with his son Arthur; and that although dur ing active campaigning in the Pacific he insisted that his “presence” at the scene of battle comforted his troops, with the oc cupation of Japan he assumed com pletely the reverse attitude and removed himself to an ivory-tower from which his “presence” was per mitted to percolate to the Jananese only through a process of invisible diffusion. (Probably there was method in this madness; the Japanese were conditioned to wor shipping without seeing.) But if there are few other details of his personal life, nothing is lack ing in the behind-the-scenes history of his campaigns that carried him from Melbourne to New Guinea, up through the Philippines and on to Tokio. Dozens of pieces missing from the jig-saw of the Pacific war are now for the first time filled in; mysteries of the time, in respect of tactics and policy, are now ex plained.

IN its earlier sections, the story is as much Australia’s as America’s —a somewhat revolutionary ap proach from American writers who are apt to regard the Australian part in the Pacific war as that of minor importance.

When MacArthur arrived in Aus tralia in early 1942, he was, as one of those close to him put it with un typical American understatement, “extremely disappointed in what he found.”

He had not wanted to leave the Philippines but was influenced by reports that a great American army was being prepared for him in Aus tralia. He was not long waiting for disillusionment on this score: Aus tralia’s crack fighting men' were still in the Middle East; one Ameri can infantry divison had arrived in Melbourne virtually unequipped and half-trained. Australia’s airforce consisted of a few Gypsy Moth and Wirraway planes and Australia momentarily expected an invasion— Australian grand strategy was to destroy everything north of Bris bane and, by the grace of God, make a stand there.

But, while “practically every able bodied Australian thought only to die with his boots on at the Bris bane Line”, MacArthur swallowed his disappointment and went onto the offensive. The Japs, he decided, would be stopped not at Brisbane but in the Owen Stanley Ranges behind Moresby; America, pre occuped with the war in Europe, could not be depended on for quick supply of war material, so Australia must ffil the gap—and this Aus tralia did once the Americans had slashed through Australian red tape and Australian love of sitting in committees, talking, Australia had an effective working force, when military requirements were met, of about 21 million, yet in the most critical period of the war she was supplying 70 per cent, of all requirements of the United States forces in the South Pacific as well as supplying her own forces and civilian population. Credit for this achievement is given to “Aus tralian Supply Council, Prime Minister Curtin, American Lend- Lease Administration and to Mac- Arthur himself whose skilful dip lomacy solved many wrangles between various Ministries.”

In the field full credit is given to the Australian part in the campaign that pushed the Jap back or by passed him, and much is made of what are called MacArthur’s cloak and-dagger men—the men of the Allied Intelligence Bureau whom Eric Feldt has already immortalised in The Coastwatchers. There is as well —for the first time for public perusal so far as we know—a full account of operations Jay wick (which was successful) and Rimau (which was not) designed to spread fear and havoc in Japanese occupied Singapore Harbour.

New Guinea had a special interest in these two operations as one of the officers concerned was Captain R. Page, DSO, son of the late Government Secretary of New

Guinea, Mr. H. H. Page, and Hf Page, now of Sydney.

On the first raid limpet mii personally placed on the hulls-; ships by the three officers off expedition operating from cart (Lyon, Davidson and Page) accoii ted for 40,000 tons of shipping a created panic beyond the fond) expectations.

Some time later a second I pedition was undertaken but t time the party was discovered! fore it could do its work. T three officers died fighting;! other members were executed byl Japanese and nine were unaccourj for.

If the General is presented! relation to his Pacific campaign! a Colossus bestriding the whole ai he is, however, a Colossus not w* out his frustrations.

If MacArthur had had his 1 he would have gone on to fl Netherlands Indies after Borne in which event the post-war hist of Australia’s near-north might h been somewhat different. M Arthur himself recorded: I had planned to move immediately 01 Java with the Australian troops and re« the Dutch Government under Van Mook w would have rapidly brought law and i there For some reason never un stood, this proposed movement ,1 peremptorily called oft and forbidden v Washington This was one of the * mistakes of the war and ultimately resulte the chaotic conditions which followed in part of Indonesia. It completely violated! basic principle of American foreign polic: support the orderly development of depen areas towards self-government.

In support of MacArthur’s attife towards the Dutch Indies, > authors publish a letter fi Admiral C. E. L. Helfrich, of Royal Netherlands Navy, written Batavia, in October 1945 to M Arthur. A damning indictment Allied —and particularly Britis muddled thinking and action those grim months when we stab the Dutch in the back.

When the MacArthur story eni the Japanese and Korean phases; of necessity becomes more entang in American politics, although less interesting for that. Whethe:; not the reader can, like the autlr subscribe to the idea of MacArtt as some sort of demi-god, he e not fail to be impressed by the t scope of this book, pulling toget as it does the tremendous amounr apparently unrelated detail t went to make up World Wan in the Pacific theatre. (Published by William Heinemann, Ltd. tralian price, 53/3.)

She Crossed the

Ruddy Ocean

mHE classic remark attributed JL Sir John Hunt (or someoD when asked why he wanteo climb Mt. Everest was: “It’s the The same sort of reasoning

be applied to people who sail j Atlantic (or the Pacific) lor handed in small boats: The oc© is indubitably there —why not s it?

There are, of course, more person or egotistical reasons for the marine adventures; sometimes!; desire to prove something, to soir one, if only to oneself. Ann Dav son writes in My Ship is So Smo “If I could navigate a ship acn the ocean on my own, it might, that I would be well on the way , learning how to live.”

Whether or not she achieved t) objective we cannot say—we I ported her in June PIM as hav: quit the sea and living in Califorr —but the story she writes of 1 adventures in 23-ft Felicity Ann amusing, entertaining—and a lit more.

There have been hundreds; books written about small-b< voyages, almost completely cc cerned with battles against the s Ann Davidson had plenty of th in addition she admits she \ scared stiff, knew little about si. ing, is always delightfully surprii when she surmounts the myn trials attendant upon being ala in a small boat, on the mig]; ocean, or when she actually arrii at the point at which she had b« aiming.

But Ann Davidson is so obviou a well-co-ordinated young wonr that the adventure remains i venture, without the appellatl hare-brained.

Although Ann is long on cour 1 : and endurance she is short on ds and it takes some calculation. arrive at the fact that she Plymouth (probably) about mi May 1952, made a leisurely voy\ down the French, Spanish s African coasts to the Canary lands and did not leave the lat for the long voyage across Atlantic to Dominica in the W Indies until (approximaely) Nove ber 20.

Her voyagings are punctuatedl meetings with delightful peoples port—not the least of which ’

Georges, a Dutchman who spc English and French with eq> accomplishment. Georges and friend were cruising, also, but ] been seven months in Douarne —going to sea was crazy, they hr The best part of cruising wass port, talking about it. A sentiim which will be heartily endorsed! thousands whose sense of advent does not lie with sea or ships..

It was latish November, 1952, wa Ann and Felicity Ann finally drt ged themselves adrift from Palmas for the 3,000-mile voy i across The Ocean. She had expeo; steady Trade Winds and encoc tered a series of near hurrica*. she hoped, under favourable f

;ances, to do the job in 30 and in fact took something 5. It was a period of misery, ;al endurance and great less. A period when nothing according to the book. . . . nuary 14 she wrote in her log: ew up worse than ever dur le night with very bad squalls some shocking knockdown I lay on the cabin-sole, ed there by a couple of sail . . . and fretted about the ession strain on the mast. It hardly possible that such a ship can take such a pasting. [ seem to get less and less o bad weather. Now, morn is as bad as ever. I cannot o look out at the fury of the storms and the winds blew t on January 18, she was able ;ord: “We cannot make it dark . . . but anyhow, we crossed the ruddy ocean” — gh adverse winds, more i, kept Felicity Ann from for five more days, when at she tied up off the jetty in Rupert Bay, Dominica.

Ocean crossed, the next 10 s, before journey’s end at New are occupied by recupera id cruising in the West Indies,

and through the inland waterways of the American eastern seaboard Ann Davidson is a skilled writer and has two other books to her credit. One, Last Voyage, tells the story of an exploit that ended in the death of her husband and was, in part, responsible for the voyage of Felicity Ann as a vindication of that disastrous earlier escapade.

As Ann tells it, Frank, her hus band, was mad about boats and it

was his ambition to sail around the world. With this in view they bought a 70-ft, fishing ketch and reconditioned her. But the job was too big for their purses, they got into debt and with the sheriff on the way to nail a writ on the mast they ran away to sea, heading for the West Indies, knowing that they were only postponing the in evitable.

They battled incredibly bad

ler for 19 days and did not get At night in a S-W gale, engine sand sails blown out, they he ship on the rocks at Port- Bill and tried to make shore life-raft. The raft kept turn ver, the cold was intense. It i killed Frank. Fourteen hours the raft was washed ashore inn climbed the cliffs to start gain, alone. perhaps, she had more to than most small-boat voyagers she decided to sail the oceans in a 23-ft boat. But it is a nge that few men and bly not one woman in 10 i would care to take up. shed by Peter Davies, Ltd., Australian 0/-.)

of the Same

lune

NK CLUNE’s passion for Aus ilian bush-rangers continues, test offering being Captain le. jably the nicest thing that 3 who does not share the same a can say about it is that, it y half the size of his other ost recent books on what Mr. insists on calling the Bad Old (Those two were about Ned and Martin Cash, respec-

Having written one book about the evils and perils that resulted from Australia’s unfortunate eany convict system, Mr. Clune seems fated, as in a recurring nightmare to go on saying the same old things] in book after book.

The abuses that attended the transportation system were prob ably real enough but one could become more worked up about them if Mr. Clune did not so obviously subscribe to the traditional Australian belief that all cops are low lots and deserve what they get, anyway.

So far as Captain Melville is concerned: His real name was Francis McNeish McNeil McCallum.

He arrived in Hobart on a convict transport in 1838 and thereafter, until he was found strangled in his cell in Melbourne gaol in 1857 contrived to be a pain in the neck to all concerned.

Mr. Clune tells the story of those

19 years in 216 pages that con tribute nothing new to history. (Published by Angus and Robertson, Ltd.

Sydney. Australian price, 18/9.)

love Me, Hate

My Wife

rjTHE flat, Romney Marsh country X. of Kent has been chosen as the scene for The Poison Cup board, a psychological drama by J. F. Burke.

Laura Swanton is a successful General Practitioner, having followed in her father’s footsteps at Brookchurch. Her twin brother Peter, on the other hand, is an un successful swindler and lands in gaol.

It is only then that Laura finds that Peter—for whom she has a possessive attachment —has a wife.

And it is only when Mrs. Swanton, mother to Peter and Laura, insists

on bringing wife Charlotte back to live at the family house that trouble really begins.

Charlotte is a slovenly modern —all that the rigid Laura most deprecates in humankind: and worst of all, Peter had committed the unforgivable affront of marry ing her. The reader knows from the outset that Laura will try to liquidate Charlotte, and the story becomes an account of how she builds up to this.

It ends, as it begins, in court— but with a surprising and un expected twist that will probably send most readers back to read the middle section again, very carefully. (Published by Martin Seeker and Warburg, Ltd. Australian price, 17/-.)

The Dimly Seen—

In 14 Parts

THE author, who is an American, does not rely on the slick or pointed ending dear to the transatlantic short story, but prefers to build up a situation to the point where what has been only dimly seen suddenly becomes crystallised. So we are instructed about Elizabeth de Vegh with her 14 short stories gathered together in a volume called A Case of Eye Shadow.

The trouble is that, for some people, these stories don’t suddenly become crystallised possibly due to the witless nature of the reader rather than to lack of genius on Miss de Vegh’s part, and these more-to-be-pitied than-censured individuals are apt to find themselves at the end still

floundering away, out in spacer Of course, you may not be we are) an inveterate readen jacket-flaps; but when the p lishers have obviously brought tl biggest literary guns to bear on writing of the blurb on the jacl; flap, and erudite phrases (“'* moment of illumination is of

atically reinforced by a 01, etc,”) stud it like fruit m pudding—well, this reviewer >t plainly suspicious, irt from this —the crystallised g that often fails to crystallise re is nothing wrong with Miss sgh’s stories. ished by William Heinemann, Ltd. Aus price, 15/6.)

ard's Tonga

)M America to Tonga to teach i a mission school went atricia Ledyard; and from md to Tonga to work in a tal went Dr. Farquhar—sur unmentioned. They met in j, fell in love and married, ua was not en rapport with lission, so completed her con then gave up the job in r of straight domesticity. ! story of Dr. and Mrs Far • and their Tongans is told 'riendly Island, written by ;ia and published recently in )n. It has few profundities ly dimension —a simple story grows upon you as you go but is overdue: Since ter wrote his piece about the -day life of the Tongans there >een no authentic account of people. have had, often enough, the statistics of Queen Salote, and ; entire Royal family; human st stories about the Royal se; guesses about the origin ie Haamonga; tourist notes the village of the flying- But an account of what it e to live with Tongans—no. mdly Island is helped along be obvious fact that both ia and the doctor like Ton and Tonga (which latter, in of their advocacy, is not >ne’s idea of the ideal Pacific group). One supposes that ns, like other people can be onally cussed; but in this it is not allowed to show — of course emphasises the hat so much in a book about south Seas (and elsewhere) ds upon the attitude of mind ; writer. r ards the end of this book is an amusing and lively de on of what things were like ; old Vavau Hospital—not in lew edifice that has just ly risen to replace it. au Hospital—like all Tongan als of that period—was run -style. If the patient had a ie took it along; if not, he his roll of mats. When a t moved in, so did his entire r , who cooked and generally for him. If an operation had performed, the entire village *ed around the broken win of the operating theatre to proceedings with a com ry of appropriate remarks, ves flitted in and out of the

theatre up to the moment the anaesthetic was administered, and when the offending piece of tissue such as an appendix—was re moved, an assistant displayed it ceremoniously to the appreciative audience, in a kidney-dish or some clinical piece of equipment.

As author Ledyard describes it, it is all part of the amusing Tongan pattern. At the hands of another writer it could become a damning indictment of the backwardness of a primitive Polynesian Kingdom.

It is all in the eyes of the be holder—but as Patricia beholds it, it makes a pleasant story. (Published by Peter Davies, Ltd., Australian price, 18/9.)

miip Q n i fln[ , Q to M Mr S I ™as marned

Noumea's Port PnS’ n*™ °f

larnh ’ Constant Noumea A Jacob , at Thp m^irSS. th6 f on August 13. rnni™ Sof f father ,’ Mr „ Mich el 0 f the French Both families are well-known in Tahiti where they were formerly resident If The Principal of the Teachers’

Training College, Tonga. Mr E A Crane, M.A. completed his term of service with the Tongan Govern ment» and proceeded on leave in August. His successor is Mr. I. W.

Lovett of New Zealand, who has already arrived in Tonga to com mence his duties.