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earlier.
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We don't come just for our health-though we find Australia exhilarating—but because Australia is important to us. Also, in your own special field of communication you will have noted the close attention which Fleet Street is paying this country. Newspaper correspondents and television teams have been touring around the country and the British people are more aware of Australia today than at any time since body-line bowling. This is all to the good, and encouraging for all those who value British-Australian relations. I am glad, too, that this is reciprocal. More and more Australians visit Britain and next year we hope to welcome a record 100,000-a majority of them young people. Again, in your own field, our High Commissioner tells me that a group of editors from your leading papers is to visit London next month. I can promise them a very warm welcome.
Twice in this century Australians have crossed the world to fight shoulder to shoulder with us in the defence of freedom in wars caused by European conflict and disunity.
Need for greater European Community
The political and economic strength and stability that would result from the enlargement of the European Communities would benefit us all. I am sure that Australians understand very well this need for a greater European Community which includes Britain. Until 20 years or so ago your links with Europe were almost entirely with or in terms of the British Isles. But today you, like indeed the British people, have much more direct experience of other European countries through trade and travel and every sort of contact. Australia herself is becoming more cosmopolitan with the arrival of new Australians from the continent of Europe. Of course Australians who came to the aid of Britain and Europe in two world wars must always have seen clearly that Britain was deeply involved in the continent. But there is one great difference which must strike those Australians who knew Europe in wartime and now visit her in peacetime. Despite the suffering, waste and hatred of war, it must have been evident then that the protagonists, for example, Britain or France or Germany, were among the most powerful countries in the world. Those countries, and Europe generally, still decided the world's destiny to an extraordinary extent, as Europe had done for many centuries. America, Russia, China and Japan were waiting in the wings but the nations of Western Europe were still on the stage.
How different it is today. European peoples are more prosperous than ever before, the motor car and the television set are everywhere. But power in comparative terms, and indeed in the sense of being masters of our own destiny, has to a considerable extent fled from Europe even though in terms of human and economic potential the Europeans, if they could only pool their resources, would still be very formidable indeed. And indeed the European Communities, which Britain has aspired to join these 10 years past, have shown that Europe is capable of generating greater economic power and prosperity by eliminating barriers, and by building up its collective resources.
European culture
Australia is a long way from Europe but her origins and culture are profoundly European-never more so than today when her identity is more distinct and her culture more distinctive than ever before. The essence of European culture is surely variety and originality flowing from common sources. Australia has, like Europe, a great and indispensable friend in the United States and other good and valuable friends throughout the world. But it would surely not be in
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