How America Is Tied

To Southwest Pacific

Now that the world has settles down, uneasily, after the Second 3 War, five cultures, or influences, stare* out aggressively across the Pacific* Ocean, and all that therein is.

THEY are contained in— • North America, which is completely Western and English-i speaking. • Asia, which is predominantly/ Mongol and Indo-Aryan, and speaks a wide variety of languages; andb which is divided in the main betweenn Individualism and Totalitarianism. J O South America, which is a con--i glomeration of countries by a fusion of Spanish colonists withn native Indians. • Australasia, which—like Northrl America—is completely Western andb English-speaking.

The tendency, before the last war,/ was to lump the Pacific Islands? countries in with Australia and Newv Zealand, and call the lot Australasia,.]

Oceania, or something indicating gnificance. The Southwest Pacific, so long, had been mostly a py hunting-ground for European ons seeking colonies to develop, ince World War 11, Australia and v Zealand (they are so alike, tically, that they must be re led as one unit in international irs) have come into general •gnition as part of the interna al wall surrounding the Pacific an. leanwhile, out in the middle of Ocean lie the Pacific Islands dories, staring around the dy circle, and wondering which er, or group of Powers, will put dutches upon them in the next years. reamers still imagine that there be established, in the Pacific m, a number of little indepen nations, where Polynesian or mesian lambs will lie down with n or European wolves, and share happy, well-fed destiny. But sts take one look at the 1,500 ons already jostling for bare ;nance on the Asian continent, another look at the southwards >t of the Muscovite and the gol—and that is the end of ty and hope in the Pacific pic as far as they can see it.

But academic researchers and writers still are doing their con scientious best to evaluate a situation of growing complexity and confu sion, especially since World War 11.

The writing of a book, based on historical facts and almost aggres sive honesty in the calculation of motives, is part of the procedure.

We have had, in the past 10 or 15 years, K. B. Cumberland’s South west Pacific, F. M. Keesing’s South Seas in the Modern World, J. I.

Brookes’ International Rivalry in the Pacific Islands, J. W. Ward’s British Policy in the South Pacific, W. P.

Morrell’s Britain in the Pacific Islands, and some useful compila tions by Masterman, Ryder, Ellison and others.

Not Enough Time In a world of normal evolutionary development, such alignments of facts and arguments could be of very considerable help. In the existing world, they are of doubtful value.

They are like Mr. Hasluck’s plans for establishing a Melanesian poli tical structure in New Guinea— there just is not time to give effect to them. Or like the process which next January I launches Western Samoa upon the tricky sea of national independence—in a financial

raft that inevitably will sink unless some big and kindly protector stays alongside.

In other words, there is no place in this tortured world today for either the political visionaries, who cling to evolutionary theories, or the honest academic worker, who supplies the planners with material.

However, here is another of them —the well-known and highly re spected Hartley Grattan, “one of the leading American experts on the history and current situation in the Pacific area”, whose new book is entitled The United States and the Southwest Pacific.

The material is cogent, effectively presented, well-documented. The argument is directed to the point that, whether Australia and New Zealand in any future struggle are expendable or not, United States simply cannot afford to leave the Southwest Pacific out of any con sideration of global strategy.

So far as North America and the Pacific are concerned, whatever threat is in the world today comes from Asia; and the Americans’ fight ing front must rest its flanks upon Alaska in the north, and Australia in the south. Therefore, all that has happened, and is happening in the Southwest Pacific, can be of vital interest to the United States; and C. Hartley Grattan’s book shows why.

For the South Pacific countries— especially Australia—it is a valuable book, and a heartening argument. If this is Washington’s viewpoint, we may receive, as a matter of course, the help in an emergency which we got so unexpectedly—and so effec tively—in 1942-45.

Enormous research has gone into this book. Hartley Grattan, in a special section, describes his sources.

That section should serve, in the future, as an invaluable bibliography brought up to the end of 1960.

R. W. Robson.

(The United States And The

SOUTHWEST PACIFIC. From Oxford University Press, Melbourne. 55/- )