8.
enough. The greatest trauma in our history came because we relied too much on an ally,
Great Britain, who in the end could not help us. Fortunately, early in 1942 the United
States came to our aid but it would not necessarily have come to our aid if the strategy
of the American war-effort had not made Australia a vital place.
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Likewise there is at present, in Australia as elsewhere, the widespread idea that it
is wrong even to possess conventional weapons on any scale. This argument maintains
that to fight a conventional war is dangerous because it might soon lead to a nuclear
But hundreds of
conventional wars have been fought since the invention of nuclear weapons, and so far
not one of those wars has escalated into a nuclear war.
war.
Finally, guilt is widely felt at present, especially by idealists. Many
Australians imply that we have no moral right to defend this continent because we seized
it from the Aboriginals, and because we do not open our ports, open them freely, to any
Asian who wishes to enter. I have some sympathy with this view. And yet the fact remains that just as the Aboriginals, in their long reign over this land, had many
triumphs, so we too since 1788 have had our triumphs. We forget the greatest of our
trimphs. Today this land supports some forty times as many people as it supported in
Aboriginal times. This land, today, not only supplies the 15 million Australians with
nearly all their needs but supplies food to tens of millions in other lands stretching from
China and the Soviet Union to Egypt and supplies fibres to tens of millions in other
lands, and supplies minerals to hundreds of millions in other lands. Our occupation of this
continent, tragic for the Aboriginals, has been a gain to mankind as a whole.
If the founders of the Commonwealth could see Australia today, they would be proud and they would also be puzzled. They would be proud to see a nation possessing almost five times as many people as it did in 1901, possessing much greater prosperity, and exercising some influence in the intellectual and scientific world. But they would'
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