Australia For The Americans

One of the puzzles faced by those Americans who give any thought to Australia at all is how the big country Down Under manages to share something of both the British and American point of view at one and the same time. Some help on the matter is now offered American readers by Australian writer Ronald Younger, in The Changing World of Australia.

MR. YOUNGER, who lives in San Francisco, has just published his book in New York especially for American readers, but it is also avail able in Australia in the American edition.

Mr. Younger felt the need for such a book when in 1951 he became the director of the Australian News and Information Bureau in New York, a position he held until 1955. He is now North American manager for the Australian National Travel Asso ciation.

His experiences have shown him, he says, what place Australia has in the world, and the book was written with this, and with the American image of Australia, in mind.

Mr. Younger has produced a comprehensive historical-geographical account of Australia’s growth, loaded with statistics, graphs and maps, and some excellent photographs. Some of its detail would even overwhelm an informed Australian reader, and Mr. Younger may in fact have sup plied more information than most American readers could comfortably absorb. But if this is a fault it is no doubt a fault in the right direction.

Mr. Younger does an excellent job of explaining how Australian kinship ties with Britain have been affected over the years by Australia's

geographical position in the South Pacific.

While remaining loyal to the Cown, Australians have found they have had to make their own way in an area of the world which has never much interested British politicians, and Australian attention has been forced to focus frequently on America.

Mr. Younger points out that Aus tralia has taken an interest in the South Sea Islands since last century and that in May, 1918, William Morris Hughes, Australia’s fiery Prime Minister, was telling President Wilson in Washington that the future of the Pacific Islands was of “life and death importance to Australia”, which could be swallowed up if the islands were not made secure.

Calling for an Australian Monroe Doctrine, Hughes told the New York Press that America, Australia and New Zealand had common interests in the Pacific and they had to be guaranteed against enemy aggression in the future.

Hughes could not in fact get his views across to Wilson but he went on fighting for what has long since been recognised. —Stuart Inder.

(The Changing World Op

AUSTRALIA. Franklin Watts Ir*c., New York. Rigby Limited, Adelaide. $6.95 and 47/6.)