1

J.A. Lyons, the ‘Tame Tasmanian’; A Study in Australian Foreign and Defence Policy, 1932-39.

David Samuel Bird

Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree Doctor of Philosophy

May 2004

Department of History The University of Melbourne 2 i J.A. Lyons, Prime Minister of Australia, 1932-39, presided over twin policies of conciliation and rearmament in a search for peace. The thesis discusses his individual world-view, one chiefly constructed on principles of consensus, and analyses the foreign and defence policies of his government, thereby re- evaluating suggestions that Lyons was chiefly interested in only domestic policy. The foreign policy of the Lyons years was primarily directed at the Asian-Pacific region, especially at Japan. It consisted of an Australian variety of ‘cunctation’, superseded by the variety of ‘appeasement’ found in the Australian Eastern Mission of 1934, arguably the first time that appeasement was applied in East Asia and the first of three significant external policy initiatives of the Lyons years. Lyons himself lobbied in favour of appeasement in the broader imperial context from 1935, recognising that it needed to be targeted at Rome and Berlin, as well as at Tokyo. Any Australian government could not apply appeasement in Europe directly, in the absence of an Australian diplomatic service, although Lyons sought to advance conciliation through ‘personal diplomacy’ in certain foreign capitals. It was not, however, until the premiership of Chamberlain, after May 1937, that London and Canberra were united in the desire for the application of ‘wider appeasement’, the policy adopted at the 1937 Imperial Conference. At this gathering, Lyons presented a second major initiative, the proposal for a Pacific Pact of non- aggression; his magnum opus and the ultimate opportunity for his regional peacemaking. The Imperial Conference had also discussed and endorsed measures designed to enhance the process of imperial consultation and once Whitehall subsequently began to apply appeasement in Europe, Lyons was keen to ensure that the voice of his dominion was heard. This was especially so during the first Czech crisis of September 1938 in which, it is argued, Lyons and his appeasing circle sought to play a significant consultative and intermediary role. These efforts seemed to have been rewarded by the climax of European appeasement: the 1938 ‘Munich Pact’. Appeasement was, however, everywhere dissolving from late-1938, as was the mechanism of imperial consultation, and the response of Lyons as prime minister was to initiate the process of establishing an independent Australian diplomatic service, something long considered by his government, but hitherto delayed. This initiative came too late to prevent his reluctant admission of the failure of appeasement, in March 1939. The policy of conciliation was accompanied from the beginning of the Lyons years by a muscular defence policy. That policy involved five separate rearmament programs, September 1933-December 1938. Although mindful of imperial needs, this policy was chiefly directed at the requirements of home defence and the Lyons government remained wary of the Singapore strategy. Lyons’s character was stamped on it by his decisive opposition to conscription, 1938-39. Although it was his misfortune, as a leading Australian appeaser, that conciliation was everywhere overshadowed by rearmament, the considerable defensive preparations of the Lyons years ensured that a sufficient state of readiness was attained to match the hostile scenarios envisaged in defence planning after 1932. The attempts made to secure a level of joint, imperial defence planning, however, resulted in failure. In its examination of the foreign and defence policies of the 1930s this thesis augments the revision underway in current scholarship. It demonstrates that an identifiable Australian foreign policy existed and that it was chiefly a regional one - even if the application of that policy was retarded by the absence of a diplomatic structure and by the consequent reliance on London. It nonetheless adhered to the patterns of external policy that had evolved since Federation. When combined with an examination of the robust defence measures of these years, Lyons emerges as a vigorous premier with a clear vision of Australia’s place in the world. It is argued that the search for peace of the ‘Tame Tasmanian’, 1932-39, was sustained and considerable.

This is to certify that: i) the thesis compromises only my original work towards the PhD. ii) Due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used. iii) The thesis is less than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices.

Signed:

I acknowledge the protracted diligence and assistance of both my supervisor, Associate Professor Don Garden, and my assistant supervisor, Dr. Paul Nicholls, of the University of Melbourne, throughout the course of my candidature. Their contributions have been marked and their generous allotment of time to my project has been much appreciated. 3 I also wish to thank Professor Michael Roe and Dr. Richard Davis, both formerly of the University of Tasmania, who contributed to the development of my interest in the great variety of Australian history. The staff of the National Archives of Australia and of the Manuscripts Room at the National Library of Australia (Canberra) also deserve my gratitude for their particular efficiency. 4

ii

TABLE of CONTENTS: Introduction. Pages 1-42. Preliminary comments − patterns in external policy, 1901-31 − survey of the foreign policy and the argument − Lyons and policy formulation − aspects of defence policy − the contribution of the thesis − literature review − sources − methodology.

Chapter 1: Cunctation in East Asia, January 1932-December 1933. Pages 43-80. The political and personal background of Lyons to 1932 − the eastern situation in 1932 − sanctions and consultation − the question of ‘Manchukuo’ − disarmament − defence and the Japanese threat, 1933 − the first rearmament program − conclusion: the end of cunctation.

Chapter 2: The Genesis of Australian Appeasement − The ‘Australian Eastern Mission’ of 1934 and its Aftermath. Pages 81-116. Trade and diplomacy − the conception and nature of the AEM − diplomatic goals − defence goals − composition and itinerary − the diplomatic success of the AEM − the defence warnings of the AEM − diplomacy, trade and the Japanese perspective − the British perspective − Lyons and the aftermath − the Melbourne memorandum − the Hankey mission. Chapter 3: The ‘Amateur Diplomat’, February-September 1935. Pages 117-152. Preparations for the London summit − Lyons and the ‘pact’ − further London meetings − the war graves − Rome − Washington − sentimental reflections − the Debuchi mission.

Chapter 4: The Shadow of War, September 1935-June 1936. Pages 153-193. Qualified assurances − the question of sanctions − war in Abyssinia − the rebirth of External Affairs − the end of sanctions and Abyssinia − the Rhineland − the second rearmament program.

Chapter 5: annus mirabilis − The Imperial Conference and its Aftermath, May 1936-December 1937. Pages 194-254. Trade diversion – League reform – conference preparation − Italian appeasement – the Imperial Conference and the Pact proposal – initial responses – defence and the conference – conference outcomes –the third rearmament program – the October election and conscription.

Chapter 6: annus horribilis − The Climax of Appeasement, January-September 1938. Pages 255-319. Anglo-Italian accord – Anschluss – the fourth rearmament program – sanctions and Yampi embargo – the Czech crisis – September days and nights – ‘X-day’.

Chapter 7: ‘Parts of it Welcome’ − the Endgame of Appeasement, October 1938- April 1939. Pages 320-389. PART A: The aftermath of Munich – Kristallnacht and colonies – Abyssinian recognition – the Pact redux and diplomatic representation – the fifth rearmament program – conscription. PART B: the end of Mediterranean appeasement – the end of eastern appeasement – the debate on German appeasement – the Reichstag speech – the second Czech crisis – Singapore – the ‘new imperial policy’.

Conclusion. Pages 390-407. Estimates of Lyons – critical assessment of Lyons and external policy – critical assessment of Lyons and defence policy – future research.

5 Bibliography. Pages 408-436.

Appendices. Pages 437-440.

6

Introduction

‘A Pacific policy we must have.’1 Alfred Deakin, Melbourne, November 1910.

‘International peace is needed to-day more than ever it has been in the history of the world. Without it international co-operation is impossible and it is by international co-operation alone that we can triumph over the present world-wide economic depression.’2 J.A. Lyons, 14 March 1932.

Preliminary comments − patterns in external policy, 1901 -31 − survey of the foreign policy and the argument − Lyons and policy formulation − aspects of the defence policy− the contribution of the thesis − literature review − sources − methodology.

The cover of Time magazine on 8 July 1935 pictured a beaming Joseph Aloysius Lyons above the caption: ‘Premier of the Commonwealth of Australia. Up From Down Under, he topped the Irish Question.’3 Also referring to his reputation as a conciliator, the magazine elsewhere labelled him the ‘Tame Tasmanian’, an appellation that serves as a suitable title for a review of Lyons’s reputedly tame outlook on the world during his period in office, 1932-39.4 This thesis seeks to examine Lyons’s individual thinking, or world-view, chiefly through a study of the foreign and defence policies over which he presided as prime minister, largely setting aside discussion of domestic policy in the belief that such analyses may be distanced from the ‘trap of domestic affairs’.5 In doing so, it seeks to both revise and enhance the study of Australian policy in these fields and especially of the role played therein by this individual. It offers an account of the evolution of Australian foreign policy in this decade and of the contribution to policy-making of this particular prime minister, directing a particular focus onto the relevant acts of consultation and diplomacy involving Lyons himself. This foreign policy was chiefly one of ‘appeasement’, an Australian variety of which was evident after 1933, having evolved from an earlier form, ‘cunctation’. This latter term (originally coined in the Foreign Office to describe British policy) connoted modest engagement with a foreign power in the hope that an opportunity may arise for improved relations.6 The policy was predicated on waiting ─ in

1 The counsel of Alfred Deakin, Prime Minister, 1903-04, 1905-08, 1909-10; CPD, vol.59, 6859-60, 25 November 1910, quoted in R. Thompson, “First Steps in Diplomacy,” in Between Empire and Nation: Australia’s External Relations from Federation to the Second World War, eds. C. Bridge and B. Attard (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2001), 13. 2 Lyons to R. Watt, NSW League of Nations Union, 14 March 1932, CP30/3/25, NAA, Canberra, indicative of Lyons’s twin obsessions; peace and economic recovery. The former was the predominant after 1934. 3 Time, 8 July 1935, vol.26, cover. 4 ibid., 17-19. H. Lasswell, Power and Personality (New York, Norton, 1948), 26, for a discussion of the political type of the ‘diplomat’, the ‘bargainer’ and the ‘trader’, a description that fits Lyons, vide Chapter 1. 5 The view of G. Schmidt, “The Domestic Background to British Appeasement Policy,” in The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, ed. L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen (London: Allen and Unwin, 1983), 119, note 38. The thesis therefore falls neatly into Hill’s category of works about ‘particular Prime Ministers and the foreign policies they pursued in conjunction with their Cabinet colleagues’; C. Hill, Cabinet decisions on foreign policy: The British experience October 1938-June 1941 (Cambridge: CUP, 1991), 1. 6 On ‘cunctation’, vide W. Rock, British Appeasement in the 1930s (London: Edward Arnold, 1977), 1-2, where he employs this description coined by the civil servant Robert Vansittart. On Vansittart, vide D.C. Watt, Personalities and Policies. Studies in the Formulation of British Foreign Policy in the Twentieth Century (London: Longmans, 1965), 7 Canberra’s case waiting for British diplomatic activity in East Asia. The thesis will apply it to Australian conditions, arguing that Australian policy exhibited such characteristics until December 1933, when passive cunctation was first succeeded by active appeasement, before the similar transition at Whitehall during the Hoare-Laval episode of late-1935.7 The term of appeasement is applied in this thesis without ‘negatively accentuated commonplace’ references to describe both Australian policy towards Japan after December 1933 and gradually towards some European powers after May 19358 ─ it called for direct negotiation with the aggrieved in a more vigorous pursuit of détente, often through the personal diplomacy of statesmen or their agents rather than through more formal diplomacy, which the appeasers distrusted. Its aim was to prevent the recurrence of a general war of the character of 1914-18,9 for Lyons’s world-view was predicated on the belief that the international community had not yet recovered from this ‘other war’.10 In common with that of many policy-makers of the period, it was ‘beyond Lyons’s comprehension’ that the lessons of those years appeared to have been forgotten by the 1930s.11 This aim could be attained through offering political and/or economic concessions to the aggrieved, in the belief that these would lead to containment and international calm.12 Lyons insisted on describing its mechanisms in personal terms, as ‘man-to-man’ consultation ‘getting to learn something of the other fellow’,13 and was more inclined to its political aspects than to the economic appeasement espoused by many others, such as S.M. Bruce.14 The practices inherent to appeasement, viz. consultation, concession and compromise, came naturally to Lyons as personal

Appendix, 253ff. This thesis also applies ‘cunctation’ to Lyons’s eastern policy from 1932 until the announcement of the Eastern Mission in December 1933, vide Chapter 1. 7 After Rock, 25ff., quoted in R. Adams, British Politics and Foreign Policy in the Age of Appeasement, 1935-39 (London: Macmillan, 1993), 69, where the dichotomy of passive/active forms of appeasement is accepted. vide Chapter 4 on the Hoare-Laval proposals. 8 The description used to explain the manner in which ‘appeasement’ is most commonly applied as a policy which aims at safeguarding peace by means of yielding to unjustified demands, or satisfying the excessive requirements of an aggressive Power under the pressure of threats; R. Meyers, “International paradigms, concepts of peace, and the policy of appeasement.” War & Society, vol.1, no.1 (May 1983): 45. N Mansergh, The Commonwealth Experience (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), 276, suggested that policy only moved towards the appeasement of Japan in the last years of peace. N. Meaney, The Search for Security in the Pacific, 1901-1914. A History of Australian Defence and Foreign Policy, 1901-1923, vol.1 (Sydney: SUP, 1976), 129-33, traces the appeasement of Japan back to Deakin and Reid. 9 In part, this involved the reforming of the 1919 settlements, which were perceived by the appeasers as unduly harsh and as the cause of current turmoil, a view recently critically re-examined by M. MacMillan, Peacemakers: the Paris Conference of 1919 and its attempt to end war (London: J. Murray, 2001), passim; also A. Roberts,‘The Holy Fox.’ The Life of Lord Halifax (London: Phoenix Giant, 1997), 48. 10 Lyons Wollongong speech, 12 October 1935, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 October 1935, 11.e; vide Chapter 4. 11 Lyons’s view as reported by the journalist Trevor Smith; The Times, 8 April 1939, 14, c. N. Mansergh, Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs. Problems of External Policy 1931-1939 (London: OUP, 1952), 415, refers to the ‘war weariness’ of those in the 1920s. 12 M. Gilbert, “Appeasement in Action.” History of the 20th Century, vol.4, chapter 57 (1969): 1572, offers a similar description of appeasement. The term has murky origins, but Smuts used it in 1919; I. Cumpston, Lord Bruce of Melbourne, Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 1989, 157; A. Lentin, Lloyd George and the Lost Peace: From Versailles to Hitler, 1919-1940 (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 75 and passim, especially Chapter 4. On appeasement, vide R. Meyers, “British Imperial Interests and the Policy of Appeasement,” in Fascist Challenge, ed. L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen, 340-1. Rock, 23, noted the emotion, imprecision and ambiguities associated with the term. 13 Lyons on Munich, Age, 3 October 1938, 12, c, vide Chapter 7. Chamberlain had similar beliefs, Adams, 68. 14 The precise nature of Lyons’s personal conception of appeasement is examined passim. Whereas he believed in the distinct separation of ‘political’ from ‘economic’ appeasement, Bruce saw the policy as necessarily containing an economic element, vide Chapter 5ff. On S.M. Bruce, Prime Minister, 1923-29, and High Commissioner from 1933, ADB, vol.7, 453ff. 8 and political qualities. His quest for consensus, refined domestically as Tasmanian premier, 1923-28, and celebrated amidst the turmoil of 1930-31, was something of a personal obsession.15 Appeasement became the instrument through which he could extend that consensus, so much a part of his personal and domestic political nature, to the international arena by using the ‘method of negotiation’ rather than the ‘method of mass murder’.16 Idiosyncratic personality thus contributed to policy-making in the Lyons years, even if difficult to measure, and this thesis is premised on the following view: ‘It is often impossible to explain crucial decisions and policies without reference to the decision-makers’ beliefs about the world and their images of others.’17 This is particularly so in appeasement studies, which orient the perspective in foreign policy research away from the state and towards individuals such as Lyons, who it is argued throughout was a leading protagonist of Australian appeasement.18 This particular individual was not just one of the leading Australian appeasers and the most publicly prominent, as prime minister ─ Lyons was also, after September 1933, a substantial private and public advocate of rearmament, initially steered in that direction by Pearce, and he acquired a reputation that seemed to belie his reputed pacifism. The thesis will therefore examine his parallel policy of defence and rearmament, which was inseparable in the ‘thirties from matters of external affairs. Lyons clearly rejected the view of Professor Ball, in 1936, that ‘armaments are merely an instrument of foreign policy’, but he reluctantly acknowledged a connection between military and diplomatic strength.19 The thesis could additionally be subtitled ‘His Search for Peace’, for that is the perspective from which this Prime Minister viewed both appeasement and rearmament. Just as he took considerable pride in his early reputation as an economic manager, so too, it is argued, did Lyons covet the appellation of peacemaker in, as he came to see it, his quest to save civilization from the ravages of another major war. I Any survey of the foreign policy of the Lyons years from 1932 must acknowledge the earlier patterns which had developed in external relations, 1901-1931. Although the decade in which he governed was an especially demanding one for makers of external policy, by taking an interest in such matters, Lyons was following a path already trodden by most of his predecessors in the thirty years since Federation. The first of them, Barton, believed in February 1901 that Australia could have no ‘foreign policy of its own’, but still expected Britain to adopt the

15 vide Chapter 1 on Lyons’s life-long gentleness and belief in conciliation. 16 D. Lukowitz, “British Pacifists and Appeasement: The Peace Pledge Union.” Journal of Contemporary History, vol.9, no.1 (January 1974): 122, using the terminology of British pacifists. 17 J. Rosenau quoted in P. Twomey, “Australia and the Search for a Stable International Order, 1919-41” (Ph.D., University of Cambridge, 1989), 16. Meyers, “International paradigms…”: 56, had similar views; so too O. Holsti, “Foreign Policy Decision Makers Viewed Psychologically: ‘Cognitive Process’ Approaches,” in In Search of Global Patterns, ed. J. Rosenau (New York: The Free Press, 1976), 122, 138. The thesis thus allows for Hill’s ‘voluntarism’, given the part Lyons’s personality played in policy implementation & style; vide Hill, 10; vide below. 18 Meyers, “International paradigms…”: 56. 19 W. Macmahon Ball, Possible Peace (Melbourne: MUP, 1936), 119. 9 Australasian view as the basis of regional imperial policy.20 This position was soon strained by regional events, prime ministerial ambition and Australian nationalism for, as Deakin discovered during the 1906 New Hebrides episode, Whitehall was not always willing to listen or to heed Australasian advice when it was proffered.21 Thus a pattern of disappointed expectation was established at a time when the Commonwealth of Australia was in its infancy, although frustration did not inhibit the sustained Australian desire for consultation in imperial policy- making. This desire stimulated a related pattern, by which Australian governments and prime ministers lobbied their British counterparts for improved consultative methods. Some, like Deakin, sought formalised structures with new secretariats, councils and departments, but a streamlined system of consultation remained elusive outside of the periodic ‘Imperial’ conferences from 1907.22 The difficulties of the consultative process in these early years did lead to one temptation in external affairs ─ Australian unilateralism. Deakin again proved the pioneer, dispatching an unsolicited Pacific policy paper to the Colonial Office in 1905, followed in September 1909 by the major diplomatic initiative of his proposal for a Pacific ‘Monroe Doctrine’, or pact.23 The contents of this proposal were unwelcome enough to Grey, the Foreign Secretary, and to Crewe, the Colonial Secretary, but so too was Deakin’s earlier method of direct contact with foreign diplomats, without the knowledge or sanction of Whitehall.24 When, in December 1907, he had taken it on himself to invite the US ‘Great White Fleet’ to Australian waters, his action was the cause of some resentment in London.25 Nonetheless, a precedent for unilateralism had been set within the first decade of Federation, although it failed to materialise into a pattern, as Deakin’s immediate successors seemed reluctant to imitate his methods. Deakin did not depart, however, without some legacy for his successors. His November 1910 valedictory observation that Australia ‘must’ have a ‘Pacific policy’ indicated that at least some policy-makers in these early years had come to realise that the Australian focus ought to be a regional one.26 This realisation brought with it certain challenges and Deakin simultaneously acknowledged that these interests ‘may not be made the subject of public debate’, which ought to

20 Edmund Barton, Prime Minister, 1901-03, Sydney Morning Herald, 15 February 1901, in Meaney, Search, 91. 21 On Deakin’s anger about the lack of consultation over the Anglo-French negotiations on the New Hebrides; Thompson, 8, 10; Mansergh, Experience, 111; Meaney, Search, 100ff. F. Eggleston, Reflections on Australian Foreign Policy, ed. N. Harper with a biographical sketch by T. Buesst (Melbourne: F.W. Cheshire, 1957), 4, noted Whitehall’s disinclination to listen. 22 Deakin sought a new department outside the Colonial Office to act as a conference secretariat, and a new Imperial Council; Mansergh, Experience, 140-1; He was disappointed; ibid., 150, for the new secretariat remained an ineffective part of the CO; ibid., 103-5; Mansergh, Experience, 143. 23 Meaney, Search, 92-3, 103-4, 192ff. N. Meaney, “ ‘A Proposition of the Highest International Importance’: Alfred Deakin’s Pacific Agreement Proposal and its Significance for Australian-Imperial Relations.” Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies, vol.5, no.3 (November 1967): 200. He suggested an agreement amongst Pacific countries to contain German and Japanese expansionism. vide Chapter 5 for its influence on Lyons’s pact. 24 He was defeated in April 1910 before he could take the matter of a pact further, but not before he was discouraged by Grey and Crewe; ibid: 208-9; ibid., Search, 192ff. 25 ibid., “A Proposition…”: 203:Deakin had approached the US ambassador in London and the Melbourne consul- general directly. ibid., Search, 163ff, 166ff; 172. 26 CPD, vol.59, 6859-60, 25 November 1910. 10 be kept within the circle of the imperial family.27 The former prime minister thus warned the new Labor ministers preparing to depart for London that Australia was best placed within the Empire to discern the dangers and possibilities of the Pacific region─ the difficulty was to persuade London that the Australian regional perspective was the one that ought to be adopted in imperial policy. This possibility of differing perspectives between London and Melbourne (later Canberra) was to provide another pattern in early Australian external affairs and to fuel the related issue of ensuring effective consultation. Deakin left office without finding any resolution to these problems; his successors were to fare little better.28 Those new ministers insisted at the May 1911 Imperial Conference in London that the dominions be treated as ‘equals’ and were able to gain some minor concessions over consultation, but the dominions were insufficiently united to press for any standing conference committee, which could have provided a formal consultative mechanism through the use of high commissioners,29 conceding nominal equality and allowing a briefing on foreign policy by Grey, Prime Minister Asquith did make one issue clear at this gathering─ the dominions were to be excluded from the formulation of foreign relations, as the ‘responsibility’ for such matters could not be shared.30 Thus, in the years before 1914, at least some of the dominions wanted consultation and equality, but they were offered only information. There was never any suggestion from the centre of participation in policy-making or of the validity of regional perspectives and any improvements gained in consultation in the period remained uncodified.31 These pre-war patterns of disappointment, haggling over consultation and of differing perspectives survived the Great War intact.32 The ‘harshly realistic’ W.M. Hughes was certainly driven by a forceful regional perspective after 1918, seeing the Pacific as a ‘future stage’ for ‘world drama’, and was keen to see US-Australian co-operation, hence his support for the abortive efforts of 1921 for a tripartite (US-Australia-Britain) agreement in the region.33 However, any temptation towards Australian unilateralism, evident to some degree at the 1919

27 Thompson, 14. 28 In an effort to encourage unified policy-making, Deakin had even considered the ‘recentralisation’ of imperial institutions; Meaney, “A Proposition…”: 202. 29 New Zealand proposed an Imperial Council, but Canada was opposed. Britain did agree to consult before signing international agreements; Meaney, Search, 213, 220; Mansergh, Survey, 184-5. On the high commissioners; B. Attard, “The Australian High Commissioner’s Office: Politics and Anglo-Australian Relations, 1901-1939” (D.Phil., University of Oxford, 1991), 95. 30 ibid.; Meaney, Search, 222; Mansergh, Experience, 149-51. D.C. Watt, “Imperial Defence Policy and Imperial Foreign Policy, 1911-1939. A Neglected Paradox?” Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies, vol.1, no.3 (1961-3): 270, suggested that dominion consultation was impossible to reconcile with the concept of a Foreign Secretary initiating policy as the representative of the British cabinet. 31 Meaney, Search, 217-8. 32 D. Watt, “Paradox”: 269, suggested a revolution in Commonwealth diplomatic relations during the war, including ‘joint responsibility’ for foreign affairs but, if so, little survived after 1918. 33 Meaney, Search, 43, on Hughes and his views of international relations. W.M. Hughes, Prime Minister, 1915-23, ADB, vol.9, 396ff. The 1921 proposal, aired at the Imperial Conference by the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, was opposed by the Canadians in particular; D. Watt, “Paradox”: 271; W. Hudson, Australian Diplomacy (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1970), 24; T.B. Millar, Australia in Peace and War, External Relations 1788-1977 (Canberra: ANU Press, 1978), 84-5. The 1921 quotes from Hughes are found in Mansergh, Survey, 147-8. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 44-8, on Hughes, the US and the Pacific. 11 Peace Conference, was tempered by Washington’s determined post-war isolationism.34 The continued quest for consultation in British foreign policy-making seemed the strongest option in Australian external policy, in particular since American attitudes also hampered the efforts of the new-born League of Nations. Nevertheless, the Versailles settlement of 1919 served Australia’s Pacific interests well in the 1920s and Hughes seemed satisfied with retribution as the foundation of the post-war settlement, largely untroubled by the contradiction between this principle and those of peaceful equality and collective security found in the League Covenant.35 Solutions to this contradiction were left to the following decade; in the meantime, Australia, as a middle power, could continue to rely upon friends and/or alliances, supplemented by the new ‘international scheme’, as the AIIA analyst Eggleston described it.36 Imperial consultation, or the lack of it, continued to trouble Australian policy-makers in the 1920s ─ the Chanak incident of September 1922, which had threatened an Anglo-Turkish war without dominion counsel, illustrated the danger of accepting joint responsibility without prior, joint consultation.37 It also indicated the reluctance of Australian policy-makers to criticise British thinking or actions publicly, albeit whilst privately protesting with vehemence─ something that became a pronounced characteristic of the 1930s.38 So fractured were imperial relations in its aftermath that the 1923 Imperial Conference abandoned any attempt to construct machinery for the formulation of imperial foreign policy through consultation.39 The cumbersome Canadian model of separate dominion ratification of conference resolutions replaced any attempt to streamline consultation in pursuit of a common policy─ this reversal might have suited Mackenzie King, but it would irk many of his Australian counterparts in the following years in their quest for commonality of outlook. When Britain offered certain European commitments at Locarno in 1925, it unsurprisingly excluded the dominions from any involuntary obligations, not in itself an unwelcome procedure, but one that clearly indicated the strain of any attempt at common imperial initiative and acknowledged the difficulties inherent in the co-ordination of separate policies within the Empire ─ Bruce alone of the dominion prime ministers appeared to recognise the inherent dangers of this drift towards separatism.40 The Balfour Report that emanated from the 1926 conference acknowledged the post-Chanak status quo by talking of

34 On Hughes and the US; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 416. P. Twomey, “Versailles and the 1920s,” in Between Empire and Nation: Australia’s External Relations from Federation to the Second World War, eds. C. Bridge and B. Attard (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2001), 68-9 and 58 on Hughes’s diplomacy in Paris, quoting P. Spartalis, The Diplomatic Battles of Billy Hughes (Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1983), 122ff. 35 Twomey, “Versailles…”, 56, 68-9. D. Watt, “Paradox”: 55, noted this contradiction. 36 Eggleston, Reflections, 9. On F. Eggleston, politician, diplomat and prominent member of the Australian Institute of International Affairs; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 408. 37 Mansergh, Experience, 218-9. 38 The role of the high commissioner, Cook, was important in impressing Whitehall with the strength of Australian feeling over Chanak; Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 5, 180-3. Australia’s initial reaction had been favourable, unlike that of Canada and South Africa, but became privately critical of Lloyd George; Mansergh, Experience, 218ff; ibid., Survey, 186. 39 D. Watt, “Paradox”: 278; Mansergh, Experience, 225-6. 40 ibid., 226-7; Bruce was supported only by Newfoundland in his unsuccessful attempt to secure common dominion endorsement of Locarno. Twomey, “Versailles…”, 65. 12 dominion equality, autonomy and free association in a ‘British Commonwealth of Nations’, but equality did not extend to the formulation of any common policy, which remained as elusive a concept as ever.41 As a prime minister keenly interested in foreign affairs, Bruce did what he could to swim against the stream, attempting to secure some co-ordination of imperial policy from 1923-29.42 The increasing role of the high commissioner was of relevance here, as was the appointment of the specialist R.G. Casey as liaison officer in the Foreign Office at Whitehall in 1924, assisted as he was for the remainder of the decade by the civil servant Hankey and by sometime ministers such as Amery (the first ‘Dominions Secretary’) and Austen Chamberlain, themselves sympathetic to the goal of greater co-ordination, post-Chanak.43 The creation of the Dominions Office in June 1925 had seemed a step forward,44 but despite considerable informal diplomatic activity in the Bruce years and her prominence at Geneva, at the end of his premiership, 1929, the two predominant questions in imperial relations remained in a state of flux─ those of British- dominion equality and of the latter’s international status.45 The national economic emergency of 1929-31 gave the Scullin administration little appetite or opportunity to deal with such matters and rarely was the incumbent able to divert his gaze from internal matters towards external policy.46 The new Lyons administration, elected in December 1931 on the basis of its putative economic soundness, appeared ready to follow this example. International circumstances, however, soon forced this prime minister to take an interest in external policy in the vigorous manner of Deakin, Hughes and Bruce. When he did so, Lyons found all the difficulties encountered by his predecessors, and more.47 The patterns that had emerged since 1901 are all found in the foreign policy of the Lyons years─ the disappointed expectations of equality and prior consultation alongside the continuing desire to improve and

41 ibid., 228ff. 42 On Bruce as prime minister and high commissioner; Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 7, 306. 43 ibid., 33, 262-4, 266-7 and 339 on the appointments of McDougall, the economic specialist, ADB, vol.10, 258-9, and R. G. Casey, ADB, vol.13, 381ff., MHR for Corio from 1931, Assistant Treasurer from 1933 and Treasurer from 1935. M. Hankey was cabinet secretary and secretary of the CID. Austen Chamberlain, as Foreign Secretary, arranged for the dominions to receive Foreign Office confidential prints after 1926, putting the high commissioners in the same position as British cabinet ministers; Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 264, 268. W. Hudson, Casey (Melbourne: OUP, 1986), 73, on the Casey-Hankey links. 44 Leo Amery, Colonial Secretary after 1924 and Dominions Secretary from 1925, recognised the need to concede to dominion opinion on occasion, although he did not acknowledge any notion of a separate responsibility for foreign policy; Mansergh, Experience, 226. The Dominions Office had been established in June 1925 to ensure better consultation and to ‘eliminate the legend of Colonial Office officials writing to a nigger one minute and then turning round and writing in the same strain to Dominion Prime Ministers’; Leo Amery to G. Dawson, editor The Times, quoted in R. Holland, Britain and the Commonwealth Alliance 1919-1939 (London: Macmillan, 1981), 32. D. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 148, on the administrative reaction to Chanak and communication through the new DO. 45 Mansergh, Experience, 212. W. Hudson, Australia and the League of Nations (Sydney: SUP, 1980), 14-5, rejected the notion that Australia could not have had a foreign policy in the 1920s without formal diplomacy, citing her activity at the Peace Conference and at the League, where Canberra was active in committee work. 46 Eggleston complained to a 1929 Senate committee: ‘No parliament which is responsible for its own foreign policy has less discussion on foreign affairs than does the Australian Parliament.’; Ball, 114. 47 P. Edwards , Prime Ministers and Diplomats (Melbourne: OUP, 1983), established a dichotomy among prime ministers: the Watson-Fisher-Cook tradition, more concerned with domestic policy, as opposed to the Deakin-Hughes- Bruce tradition, more concerned with international affairs; also in P. Edwards, “The Rise and Fall of the High Commissioner: S.M. Bruce in London,” in Australia and Britain: Studies in a Changing Relationship, eds. A. Madden and W. Morris-Jones (London: Frank Cass, 1980), 43. 13 enhance the Whitehall-dominion consultative process; the possibility, even probability, of differing regional perspectives between London and Canberra (let alone between the dominions); even Deakin’s unilateralism was periodically revived. The ‘thirties was not only a period of the continuation of earlier patterns; some of them, such as the sense of regional perspective, were even accelerated, although to debatable effect─ yet the thesis concludes that while disappointment continued unabated and the process of imperial consultation even regressed in 1939, the sense of differing regional perspectives was stronger in that year than it had been in 1932, as indicated by the moves of 1938-39 towards full Australian diplomacy. The decade was thus a part of the process of transition from a dependent external policy towards a more autonomous one. In addition, the period after 1931 had contained further challenges, as the struggle to reconcile national interest with the idealism of the League of Nations became increasingly difficult.48 Joseph Lyons, however, was an optimist; he thought he could find a solution to these difficulties, old and new, through the techniques of consensus had that served him so well in domestic politics and in so doing sought to impose a new pattern on Australian external policy ─ cunctation and then appeasement. II The new Minister of External Affairs, J.G. Latham, gave no immediate indication of any pressing agenda in his portfolio in January 1932.49 The allocation of ministerial portfolios was itself inauspicious − Lyons, as Prime Minister (and also, significantly, as Treasurer), was the first chief minister not to take the external affairs portfolio in tandem since the re-establishment of that department in 1921.50 The choice of Latham was apt,51 for Lyons had no practical experience in formal diplomacy, whereas this delegate and jurist had written learnedly on international relations, as had the new, influential MHR, Casey.52 As Lyons was unschooled in external policy, it was unsurprising that their counsel, along with that of Bruce, was prominent in this period and of significant impact. Yet it is an error to regard Lyons as a bumbling rustic, uninterested and

48 Mansergh, Survey, 418ff. 49 New Cabinet Meets at Canberra, newsreel, 6 January 1932, Episode Title No.29652, ScreenSound, Canberra. J. Latham was a leading Melbourne lawyer and served in the Lyons ministry, 1932-34, before entering the High Court; ADB, vol.10, 2ff. Lyons’s extensive use of screen and sound was innovative, although Scullin had introduced the practice; J. Robertson, J.H. Scullin, A Political Biography (Perth: UofWA Press, 1974), 179, 207-8. 50 P. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 86-9. A. Watt, “The Australian Diplomatic Service 1935-1965,” in Australia in World Affairs, 1961-65, eds. G. Greenwood and N. Harper (Melbourne: F.W. Cheshire, 1968), 134-5. The department remained a minute, subsidiary component of the Prime Minister’s Department itself, until it was established as a separate department in November 1935, when Lyons again declined to serve as minister; vide Chapter 4; Documents on Australian Foreign Policy, ed. R. Neale (Canberra: AGPS 1975), vol.1, Appendix II, “The Organisation of Australia’s External Relations”, 545ff. 51 E. Andrews, The Writing on the Wall: the British Commonwealth and Aggression in the Far East 1931-1935 (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1987), 31. Latham had attended the Versailles conference in 1919 and was a prominent member of the Australian Institute of International Affairs; ADB, vol.10, 3; Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 56, 61, notes that he had worked at Versailles with Hankey. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 408. 52 Latham addressed imperial relations in Australia and the British Commonwealth (London: Macmillan, 1929). Casey had already penned Australia’s Place in the World (Melbourne: Robertson and Mullens, 1931). He continued to publish; R. Casey, The World We Live In: A Series of Speeches on Current Events, Foreword by J.A. Lyons (Melbourne: Specialty Press, 1933). 14 inexpert in the ‘unwanted irrelevancy’ of foreign policy, as many have done.53 This thesis reveals a man whose anxiety about the outside world saw him expend much energy in foreign affairs. It questions hypotheses of Lyons’s inadequacy, suggesting that many of them are unduly influenced by the prevailing, low estimation of appeasement.54 It is argued that the burden of the domestic economy, rather than any lack of international interest, made it impossible for Lyons, as Treasurer, to assume External Affairs in 1932. Yet he was soon forced by events, let alone by inclination, to assume by grades the management of external affairs alongside the appropriate minister ─ he behaved as an associate of Latham up to August 1934 and as if he were a joint minister alongside Pearce up to the Imperial Conference of June 1937, from which time he assumed the role of de facto minister (albeit one reliant on the counsel and assistance of Casey and Bruce) over the absent incumbent and then over Hughes, after November of that year.55 In this, despite early diffidence due to inexperience and the ongoing collegiality of much of his decision-making, Lyons ultimately proved no exception to the contemporaneous pattern of prime- ministerial dominance in foreign affairs, particularly as the institutions of Australian external policy were in their infancy56 ─ his ‘dominance’ might not have been in the same class as had that of, for example, Hughes or Bruce, but by mid-1937 Lyons had established himself as the managing executive of Australian external affairs. He generally remained a searcher for consensus, however, in this field as in all others; even during this period of prime ministerial dominance, Lyons often seemed merely primus inter pares, although he was capable of authoritarian unilateralism when it suited him ─ the thesis will offer many examples of this varied behaviour in the period 1937 to 1939.57 At first, Lyons seemed to find international affairs challenging and stimulating; later they over-burdened him to the point of mental and physical exhaustion. In addition to suggestions of unsuitability for this wider role, Lyons also stands accused of being unduly subordinate to British demands, whereas much of the evidence suggests otherwise and indicates that the view of Australia as merely a pliable tool of Empire, 1932-39, constitutes an ‘imperial fallacy’.58 Imperial co-operation, a common-sense and consistently formulated element of Australian foreign policy, had rarely, if ever, constituted subservience and

53 E. Andrews, “Patterns in Australian Foreign Policy,” in Selected Readings in Australian Foreign Policy, ed. M. Pettit (Melbourne, Sorrett Publishing, 1973), 96. Other suggestions of Lyons’s lack of interest in external matters are many- Andrews, Writing, 31; P. Hasluck, Diplomatic Witness, Australian Foreign Affairs 1941-1947 (Melbourne: MUP, 1980), 13; K. White, Joseph Lyons (Melbourne: Black Inc, 2000), 167; R. Megaw, “The Australian Goodwill Mission to the Far East in 1934: Its Significance in the Evolution of Australian Foreign Policy.” Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol.59 (1973): 260. G. Henderson, Menzies’ Child: The Liberal Party of Australia (Sydney: Harper Collins, 1998), 56. R. Murray, “Munich Revisited.” Quadrant, vol.62, no.6 (June 1998): 46-52, on Lyons as a bumbler. 54 Rock, 24ff. 55 G. F. Pearce, Minister of Defence, 1932-34, Minister of External Affairs, 1934-37; ADB, vol.11, 177ff. 56 Although Hudson, League, 4, thought he was. vide below for a discussion of this dominance and of these institutions. 57 vide Chapter 7 for examples of both consensus and unilateral authority in early-1939. 58 This term is found in K. Tsokhas, “The Wool Industry and the 1936 Trade Diversion dispute between Australia and Japan.” Australian Historical Studies, vol.23, no.93 (October 1989): 459; “Introduction,” in Between Empire and Nation: Australia’s External Relations from Federation to the Second World War, eds. C. Bridge and B. Attard (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2001), 2. 15 the Lyons years were no exception.59 Lyons’s imperial rhetoric has often been unduly taken at face value. It is argued that he never had difficulty using such rhetoric (such as ‘Tune in with Britain’),60 but that, like many of his contemporaries, he employed it for his own political purposes, which were sometimes counter to narrow ‘British’ interests.61 This was particularly so in his foreign and defence policies, where a sugar-coating of ‘imperial rhetoric’ often assisted the swallowing of the otherwise unpalatable.62 The policies remained ‘Australian’ in their substance, seeking to balance ‘imperial idealism’ with ‘national responsibility’ with the weight upon the latter element.63 Like many of his predecessors, he was seeking ‘to pursue Australian goals within a British world’64 ─ often a difficult balancing act, between appearing too subservient or too independent, but one familiar in this period, when national identity often stressed ‘Australianism’ whilst accepting ‘Britishness’.65 The evidence surveyed for this thesis reveals a man not overawed by his exposure to British politicians and institutions, one who privately acknowledged the differences between Canberra and London as freely as their mutuality.66 Yet, Lyons was certainly neither an isolationist nor a believer in ‘provincial detachment’.67 His primary concerns were regional, but within the scope of an appeasement policy that was global, with the imperial link necessarily an important element in these diplomatic designs.68 The thesis traces the course of Australian foreign policy 1932-39 chronologically, as the ‘linear movement of events through time’, in order to illustrate its evolution through the various ‘case-study’ crises of the decade.69 The policy is examined in breadth, so as to discount claims that Lyons was indifferent to external affairs, even in 1932-34, for he was successful enough at his economic management by late-1933/early-1934 to turn more of his attention towards external relations, thus joining that group of his predecessors particularly concerned with international affairs.70 This diversion was stimulated by, amongst other things, the

59 Eggleston, Reflections, 4, thus describes the concept of imperial co-operation. 60 On ‘Tune in with Britain’, Sydney Morning Herald, 3 December 1931, vide C. Lloyd, “The Rise and Fall of the United Australia Party,” in Liberalism and the Australian Federation, ed. J. Nethercote (Sydney: Federation Press, 2001), 152-3; B. Attard, “The Limits of Influence: The Political Economy of Australian Commercial Policy after the Ottawa Conference.” Australian Historical Studies, vol.29, no.111 (October 1998): 329. 61 For instance, in 1925 the republican premier employed the slogan ‘God, King and Country’, to the dismay of the conservative opposition leader, McPhee; L. Robson, A History of Tasmania, vol.2 (Melbourne: OUP, 1991), 403. Enid Lyons dated his acceptance of monarchy to the late 1920s, after he had lost office in 1928; Enid Lyons, So We Take Comfort (London: Heinemann, 1965), 145. 62 Hudson, League, 13, noted that ‘imperial rhetoric’ was ‘sometimes meant to convey reality and sometimes was merely for public consumption and had little to do with actual government behaviour.’ 63 This terminology is found in P. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 68-9. 64 “Introduction,” in Between Empire and Nation, eds. C. Bridge and B. Attard, 1. 65 On Australian ‘Britishness’; N. Meaney, “Britishness and Australian Identity: The Problem of Nationalism in Australian History and Historiography.” Australian Historical Studies, vol.32, no.116 (April 2001): 79 and passim. 66 I am in agreement with the picture of Lyons found in K. Tsokhas, “Tradition, Fantasy and Britishness: Four Australian Prime Ministers.” Journal of Contemporary Asia, vol.31, no.1 (January 2001): 27 and passim. 67 F. Alexander, “Australia and the United States,” in Towards a Foreign Policy: 1914-1941, ed. W. Hudson (Melbourne: Cassell, 1962), 91, correctly draws a distinction in the ‘twenties between US ‘isolationism’ and Australia’s ‘provincial detachment’. 68 It alone allowed Australia to wield influence above its weight; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 414-5. 69 On chronology and the ‘case-study’ approach, vide below. 70 Deakin, Hughes and Bruce, according to the dichotomy of P. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 86-9, who is right to view Lyons as falling [initially] into the Watson-Fisher-Cook tradition of those more concerned with domestic policy. 16 failure of the League of Nations over Manchuria.71 Within two years of assuming office, Lyons presided over what he referred to as a distinct ‘Australian foreign policy’ with its own aims and character ─ ‘international co-operation leading to political and economic stability’.72 That there was a ‘fundamental similarity’ of Australian and British outlook, he noted in 1937, did not preclude Australia’s pursuit of her own ‘special interest’.73 This policy was initially aimed at the conciliation of Japan, but was later geographically broadened through the practice of lobbying at Whitehall in favour of European appeasement. There were thus two arms of this policy; the Asian-Pacific and the European- Mediterranean. Lyons regarded the former as the more important and it was the one that first attracted his attention.74 Once Australian cunctation towards Japan had been abandoned at the end of 1933, a new policy of eastern appeasement was prosecuted through the first of what would constitute three ‘Pacific’ initiatives; all oriented towards protecting Australia’s interests and enhancing security in this region.75 The first initiative was the ‘Australian Eastern Mission’ (AEM) of 1934 and the hypothesis is that the decision to dispatch it (with which Lyons was associated) was innovative and a significant advance in Australian external relations─ it constituted a step towards a regional foreign policy, not unprecedented, but more cohesive than any earlier measure. The low level of prior consultation with Whitehall also indicated that Lyons was not immune from Deakinite unilateralism. As an attempt to establish a dialogue with Japan on the fringes of regular British diplomacy the mission was the first act of a regional ‘Australian’ quasi-diplomacy and an acknowledgement of the earlier view that Australia’s future was dependent on events in her own part of the globe.76 Lyons accordingly fits into the category of those ‘thirties policy-makers who helped to establish amongst Australians a greater awareness of being a Pacific community and of the need for a stable regional order,77 playing an important part in turning fully-opened Australian eyes towards the ‘Near North’, a claim asserted thereafter by many rivals.78 A consciousness of the region certainly existed before 1933-34, but the Lyons

71 vide Chapter 2. 72 Lyons speech, 4 September 1935, Hodgson Papers, M1516, NLA, Canberra. vide Chapter 3. 73 Lyons speech to Foreign Press Association, Savoy Hotel, London, 7 June 1937; “Mr. Lyons on Australian Proposal”, The Times, 8 June 1937, 13, b. 74 Lyons speech at Wollongong, 12 October 1935, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 October 1935, 11, e, where he referred to the Pacific basin as the site of ‘the future development of the world’. 75 I have used the term ‘Pacific’ in the manner employed in the ‘thirties, to apply to the Asian-Pacific basin, including East Asia (often referred to as the ‘Far East’). Most of Lyons’s initiatives were focused on Japan and the interests of the United States in the Pacific, although he was not neglectful of Indian Ocean trading routes. 76 D. Walker, “Survivalist Anxieties: Australian Responses to Asia, 1890s to the Present.” Australian Historical Studies, vol.33, no.120 (October 2002): 326, suggests that there were by the 1930s ‘highly placed converts’ who accepted that Australia was (geographically) an ‘Asian-Pacific nation’ dependent on regional developments. This thesis suggests that Latham and Lyons were in that category. 77 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 400-1. 78 The term ‘Near North’ became commonplace in the late 1930s amongst those writing about regional affairs, such as the contributors to the Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, e.g. P. Irvine, “Empire Defence in the Pacific.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.1, no.4 (October-November 1937): 13. Latham made a strong claim of his own; J. Latham, “Remembrance of Things Past, Mainly Political.” Meanjin, vol.21, no.88 (March 1962): 81. More self-serving were the claims of R.G. Menzies, The Measure of the Years (Melbourne: Cassell, 1970), 45; vide also N. Meaney, “Australia’s Foreign Policy: History and Myth.” Australian Outlook, vol.23 (August 1969): 179. Further claims of policy initiative after 1937 emanated from P. Spender, Politics and a Man (Sydney: Collins, 1972), 20-2. P. Hasluck, The Chance of Politics 17 government first translated this into policy through the AEM. The genesis of the second Pacific initiative is arguably found in the first; Lyons’s particular proposal for a Pacific Pact of non- aggression ─ not publicly unveiled until May 1937, but prefaced by an informal approach to the US in 1935, itself a significant moment in measuring Australia’s Pacific outlook.79 This was a notable initiative and acknowledged as such even by those who see it as an exception rather than as part of an evolving process.80 The third Pacific initiative, the tardy establishment of Australian diplomatic representation in the capitals of the chief Pacific powers in 1939, was related in motive.81 Lyons associated himself with the genesis of the first, although it was chiefly the work of another, but he became the manager of its aftermath, 1934-37. He was directly associated with the second initiative to an extent that damaged its prospects of success, it being widely seen as a pet project ─ ‘Mr. Lyons’ proposal’.82 He appears to have accelerated the onset of the third, having spent some years, however, retarding its progress. The thesis argues that while the first two of these initiatives failed to fulfill their promise, they all nevertheless represented substantial steps in Australia’s evolving, Pacific-oriented, view of the world. They also indicated a level of evolving diplomatic maturity, conducted as they were after only cosmetic consultation with Whitehall and sometimes contrary to British wishes. All of these initiatives were indicative to some extent of the appeasement that predominated in Canberra during the Lyons years. It is contended that they constituted the only attempts to apply appeasement in East Asia, at least its political form.83 The other arm of Lyons’s foreign policy, the desire for European-Mediterranean appeasement, was more indirect than these regional initiatives. It aimed, like the measures of many of his predecessors, to influence British policy in a manner conducive to Australian interests, the modus operandi of any far-sighted, dominion prime minister.84 It was equally

(Melbourne: Text, 1997), 145, noted the ‘historically false’ assertions of the adherents of Holt that he had ‘discovered’ Asia for Australia. 79 vide Chapters 3 and 5. By raising certain issues and making certain proposals in Washington in July 1935, Lyons may be allotted some responsibility for turning the direction of Australian foreign policy towards the US as a Pacific power. Deakin’s efforts were the preface; G. Souter, Lion and Kangaroo. The Initiation of Australia 1901-1919 (Sydney: Book Club Associates, 1976), 140ff. Curtin’s call of December 1941 for US-Australian co-operation was built on foundations put down by Lyons. His modest standing in the ‘popular reading’ has been cited by C. Bridge, “Relations with the United States,” in Between Empire and Nation, eds. C. Bridge and B. Attard (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2000), 172. 80 D. Day, The Politics of War (Sydney: Harper Collins, 2003), 11. 81 vide Chapter 7. 82 vide Chapter 5 and the 1940 assessment of External Affairs. 83 That ‘appeasement’ was never attempted in Asia; S. Newman, March 1939: The British Guarantee to Poland (Oxford, OUP, 1976), 217-8; A., Iriye, “The Asian Factor,” in ‘The Origins of the Second World War’ Reconsidered, ed. G. Martel (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1986), 230; W. Louis, British Strategy in the Far East 1919-1939 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971), 11, 238. This view is valid only for British politicians, but P. Shen, The Age of Appeasement: The Evolution of British Foreign Policy in the 1930s (Trowbridge: Sutton, 1999), Chapter 1, contends otherwise, his description, 22ff., 53ff., of Britain’s ‘middle road’ is more akin to cunctation. McCarthy noted that Lyons suggested eastern appeasement on two occasions; J. McCarthy, Australia and Imperial Defence, 1918-39 (St.Lucia: UofQ Press, 1976), 148-9. On suggestions that Britain contemplated in eastern economic appeasement; A. Best, “Economic Appeasement or Economic Nationalism? A Political Perspective on the British Empire, Japan and the Rise of Intra- Asian Trade, 1933-37.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol.30, no.2 (May 2002): 79ff. 84 “Introduction,” in Between Empire and Nation, eds. C. Bridge and B. Attard, 4. Accordingly, I agree with B. Attard, “Australia as a Dependent Dominion.” Working Papers in Australian Studies, no.115 (1999), Sir Robert Menzies Centre for Australian Studies for Institute of Commonwealth Studies: 14, that there was no Australian foreign policy as 18 important to Australia’s security as a regional policy, for it was acknowledged in Canberra that ‘Britain can never be effective in the Pacific until there is appeasement between Britain and Germany’.85 The original form of this policy arm, up to mid-1935, constituted support for the British policy of cunctation,86 even bordering on acquiescence during the tergiversations of the 1935-36 Abyssinian crisis. Any public support was, however, accompanied from this time onwards by strident, private counsel intended to ensure that Australia’s voice was heard at Whitehall, according to the practice advocated by Casey in the ‘twenties.87 With the threat of a major European war in March 1936 during the Rhineland episode, Lyons sought to encourage the already incipient transition in British policy from cunctation to appeasement, a process complete in Australian policy, and offered diplomatic mediation in an attempt to lubricate the process, the first example of a desire for ad hoc participation in imperial policy-making (which was repeated in 1938).88 This was also evidence of his faith in ‘personal diplomacy’, something in which he had dabbled in the previous year on his first journey overseas.89 This crisis generally showed that Lyons was now dissatisfied with just information from Whitehall, whatever the quantity, seeking more comprehensive consultation in its place ─ a desire that he made explicit in London in 1937 as head of the Australian delegation at the Imperial Conference.90 Like his predecessors, however, he found the path to better consultation a rocky and disappointing one.91 The thesis argues that improved imperial communications were the more important in his view given the serial failures of the League of Nations in Manchuria, Abyssinia and the Rhineland, which taught Lyons by mid-1936 that ‘collective security’ was an illusory, even dangerous, concept.92 His now strained faith in international institutions was replaced by a conviction that only appeasement could preserve the peace. He was accordingly keen to broaden its application and intensity: after May 1937 this involved enthusiastic support for Neville Chamberlain’s own conciliatory policy, for in the new British premier, Lyons found

such in Europe, but that Canberra’s aims were to make its views heard at Whitehall. This, however, was not exclusively the case in the Far East, where Australian initiative was taken. 85 Anon., “Appeasement and Security.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.1, no.6 (February-March 1938): 1. 86 On British cunctation, especially under S. Baldwin, Prime Minister 1934-37; Rock, 1-2. Lyons began to show discomfort with cunctation in Europe at the London summit of April-May 1935; vide Chapter 3. 87 P. Edwards, “Rise and Fall…”, 45, made such observations about the general thrust of ‘Australian foreign policy’. In arguing that Lyons combined public support for British policy with private attempts to influence that policy, the thesis is in direct disagreement with Andrews’s hypothesis that Australian foreign policy has never followed such a pattern; Andrews, “Patterns…”, 101. Casey, as Australian liaison officer in London in the 1920s, sought to create an atmosphere in which Australia’s voice played a part in the formulation of imperial foreign policy; Hasluck, Light, 99ff, 103. 88 vide Chapter 4 and pace P. Hasluck, The Government and the People 1939-1941 (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1952), 92-3, that a shift from ‘acquiescence to participation’ was not evident until September 1938. 89 vide Chapter 3 on his 1935 Mediterranean diplomacy, as well as his efforts in Washington. 90 P. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 68-9 on imperial communication in this period. Mansergh, Survey, 433, refers to a ‘flood’ of information’ from Whitehall in this period. 91 Meaney, “Britishness and Australian Identity”: 88, suggests that Britain failed to meet Australian aspirations on consultation ‘time and time again’. 92 Mansergh, Experience, 276, gives a similar summary of events, 1931-36. 19 an eager partner for his appeasement, one who seemed more responsive to dominion opinion and with whom coincidence of opinion was evident.93 Lyons thus embraced the ‘wider appeasement’ agreed upon at the 1937 Imperial Conference as a policy for the broader Commonwealth, for it was his own home-grown policy on a larger scale, now to be applied via Whitehall in Europe and via each dominion in its ‘own’ region.94 This brought together the two geographically-separated arms of Australian appeasement and turned it into part of a global, imperial strategy. Lyons’s evolution into something of an ‘imperial statesman’, at least in his own mind, was indicated at the same gathering by his announcement of a second Pacific initiative, his particular proposal for a regional pact of non- aggression.95 He regarded this as his greatest moment in foreign affairs although insisting that he was merely a ‘beacon’ rather than a ‘pilot’.96 The Pact’s nature and prospects are examined, with the hypothesis that its eventual failure was not inevitable even granted the enormous obstacles in its way, but rather than an eccentric and fanciful personal project, it was arguably a notable attempt to settle affairs in the region in a manner conducive to Australian security. It proved the climax of Lyons’s eastern appeasement, his magnum opus and his opportunity ‘to have some mark, however tiny, in history’ as a peacemaker.97 It also illustrated the long-standing Australian desire to consult as an equal in the formulation of imperial foreign policy, which Lyons had never confused with ‘British’ foreign policy, as he made clear in his opening address to this conference.98 These demands for consultative equality were made despite the fact that there had been little consultation with Whitehall over the proposal, which was accordingly seen by some in London as an unwelcome act of unilateralism and as something advanced largely for domestic political purposes. His penultimate year, 1938, saw Lyons dealing with the ramifications of failed peacemaking in the Far East.99 He accordingly increased his efforts to encourage rapprochement in Europe, in order to concentrate British attention on his own region.100 A revamped system of ‘imperial consultation’ agreed upon in London in the previous year was being implemented and, towards the end of a troubled year, Chamberlain’s peacemaking seemed to be rewarded by the

93 Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister, 1937-40. The two had developed a friendship from December 1933, a working relationship from May 1935, made closer from May 1937. Their relationship was referred to in Lyons’s obituary as ‘a notable friendship’; The Times, 8 April 1939, 14, d. On Chamberlain and the dominions; D.C.Watt, How War Came. The immediate origins of the Second World War, 1938-1939 (London: Heinemann, 1989), 180. 94 vide Chapter 5 on the 1937 Imperial Conference. 95 The Pact of 1937 has its origins in the Australian Eastern Mission of 1934, vide Chapters 2 and 5. 96 From an undated (but probably 1937) Lyons broadcast, in Mister Prime Minister: Joseph Aloysius Lyons, ABC video, 1966. 97 Lyons had expressed this ambition in April 1934 in a draft article “On Politicians”, CP 103/19/8, NAA Canberra, cited in J. Hart, “J.A. Lyons: A Political Biography” (Ph.D., ANU, 1967), 231. I have searched for this article on several occasions without success. It must now be considered lost. On the Pact, vide Chapter 5. 98 pace Andrews, “Patterns…”, 96; vide Chapter 5 on the 14 May 1937 speech. 99 I have occasionally employed the term ‘Far East’ for its utility, despite the fact that many, including Lyons, were already conscious that the term was inappropriate from the Australian perspective; vide above on the coining of the expression ‘Near North’. 100 Lyons had always sought to encourage a European settlement in order to secure the undivided attention of Britain in any future dispute with Japan. Chamberlain’s policy was the reverse. He encouraged an Asian settlement in order to secure undivided dominion support in any future dispute in Europe. It suited each to support the other’s efforts. 20 ‘Munich Pact’, resolving the first Czech crisis. Lyons felt that he had played a role in this peacemaking, with good reason. His contribution to the preceding negotiations is examined in unprecedented detail − the hypothesis being that his post facto suggestions of participation in imperial policy-making are understandable and demonstrable.101 The Munich Pact certainly represented the apogee of his European lobbying and the thesis argues that by late-1938, Lyons rightly believed that he had fulfilled his earlier ambition ‘to have played a part in such a critical period’.102 Although this sense of putative participation proved short-lived and without any enduring effect, it is argued that his efforts to ensure a dominion voice at Whitehall had been nonetheless considerable.103 The apparent success at Munich stimulated Lyons’s optimistic hope of a parallel settlement in the Far East, driving him to further efforts in 1939 in his obsession for peace.104 His final months brought only disillusionment, including a second Czech crisis, but it was only in the fortnight before his death that the champion of Australian appeasement candidly admitted the grim probabilities now confronting the world.105 He was still able in these last months, however, to crown his foreign policy with a lasting wreath; finally acknowledging that Australia could no longer be reliant upon British diplomacy, Lyons launched a third Pacific initiative with moves towards an independent Australian diplomatic service, against the opposition of much of his cabinet. This final, tardy initiative, like the first, represented a substantial step forward for ‘Australian’ diplomacy.106 It was to be his most enduring achievement in external affairs, although ironically he had resisted it for at least four years. The overall argument is that Lyons’s appeasement met with little success either in Asia, where he applied it with vigour, or in Europe, where he relied on Baldwin and Chamberlain’s efforts, subject to Australian counsel. At the time of his death, 7 April 1939, the new pattern that he sought to impose on Australian policy was in ruins and the process of conciliation considered discredited, as it largely remains in political and scholarly imagination.107 The thesis analyses this failure, conscious of Newman’s recent observation that it remains arguable whether appeasement was ever fully ‘implemented’, assuming that the process entailed the granting of a ‘free hand’ to certain powers in certain regions (and a politically risky strategy given the commitment of

101 vide Chapters 6 and 7. 102 He expressed this desire in July 1935, in a New York interview, saying: ‘I have gone through stirring times, full of worries and anxieties, but I found it fascinating all the same and as time goes on and it all becomes a part of history, it will be something to have played a part in such a critical period.’; Joseph Lyons Papers, MS 4851/3/24, NLA, Canberra, interview appearing in America: A Catholic Review of the Week, vol.53, no.16 (27 July 1935), 397-9. 103 vide Chapter 6 on the shift from consultation to putative ad hoc participation and Chapter 7 on Chamberlain’s back- sliding. 104 His private advisers, A.C.V. Melbourne and Ambrose Pratt were of a similar mind; vide Chapter 7. 105 vide Chapter 7 for the national broadcast of 23 March 1939, which was had been preceded by similar, but more veiled, suggestions. 106 W. Hudson, Australian Diplomacy (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1970), 22, amongst others, was sceptical of Lyons’s achievements. 107 As recently as 4 October 2001 the Israeli PM, Sharon, disparagingly likened American policy in the Middle East to ‘appeasement’ and to ‘Munich’, Tel Aviv press conference, BBC World news report, 5 October 2001. Australian Foreign Minister Downer suggested on 11 July 2002 that only ‘a fool would support…appeasement’, referring to Iraq and Nazi Germany; ABC news report, 12 July 2002; Herald Sun, 13 July 2002, 8, c-f. 21 democratic governments to ‘collective security’).108 Although an assessment of appeasement must be separated from a discussion of its prospects, these were real enough. Even given the dubiousness of some of its assumptions, the policy could still have reaped benefits. The thesis argues that whilst any failure was highly likely (after 1936) in regard to Nazi Germany, the policy had some prospects of success in both the Mediterranean and East Asia (especially before 1935), if it had been applied with the force and consistency that Lyons, amongst others, advocated.109 Had Whitehall accepted conciliatory counsel on Manchuria and Abyssinia, it is possible that the old threads of connection that Japan and Italy retained with Britain could have been maintained, even strengthened, after de facto recognition of territorial ‘adjustments’.110 Lyons himself certainly came to believe that considerable opportunities had been lost, especially fearing that Australia would pay the greatest cost of the failure of the other powers to appease Japan. Although disagreeing with many criticisms of the motives of the policy, the thesis ultimately accepts the retrospective conclusions of many ─ that the appeasers did not comprehend the nature of some of the ideologies opposing them until too late.111 Perhaps the assessment of Lyons by one contemporary as ‘too trusting’ is relevant here.112 This conclusion was not as obvious before 1939-45 as it seemed afterwards and Australian appeasement, like its other forms, should not be dismissed as a ‘simple phenomenon’ or as a ‘morally bankrupt policy of surrender’;113 any ‘thin line’ between ‘peacemaking and abject appeasement’ was more blurred before September 1939 than after.114 The policy may arguably be assessed as a rational, if sometimes morally tenuous, response to the geopolitical circumstances of the devil’s decade through proposals that served Australia’s national interests in the Far East, while working to avoid an Anglo-German and/or Anglo-Italian conflict in Europe that could only threaten a second world war.115 It was not quite a policy of ‘peace at any price’, but in seeking the containment of

108 Newman, 217-8, argues that ‘appeasement’ was never fully implemented, especially in Asia, by the giving of a ‘free hand’ to Japan in northern China. Similarly, Oswald Mosley was among the first to observe that Chamberlain’s ‘appeasement’ did not go as far as offering Germany a ‘free hand’ in eastern Europe. Halifax had worked against this; Roberts, Holy Fox, 147. vide the similar discussion on Mosley and appeasement in R. Skidelsky, Oswald Mosley (London: Macmillan, 1975), 423-5. 109 Both Lloyd George and Churchill believed that there was a real prospect of some agreement with Germany up to the period 1936-7; Lentin, 105. Chamberlain and Lyons believed so until March 1939; M. Gilbert, “Appeasement in Action”: 1576, discusses such propositions. 110 Mansergh, Experience, 276, noted that the government never questioned the wisdom of appeasing Italy in an attempt to detach her from Germany, which is correct except for the episode of sanctions over Abyssinia. 111 E. Andrews, Isolationism and Appeasement in Australia. Reactions to the European Crisis, 1935-1939 (Canberra: ANU Press, 1970), 103-4; Rock, 89; D. Mack Smith, “Appeasement as a Factor in Mussolini’s Foreign Policy,” in Fascist Challenge, 258; M. Gilbert, “Appeasement in Action”: 1576. N. Rose, The Cliveden Set. Portrait of an Exclusive Fraternity (London: Jonathan Cape, 2000), 136, suggested that it was difficult for those ‘weaned on liberal principles’ to grasp the true nature of Nazism. Roberts, Holy Fox, 50ff., on Halifax’s appeasement. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 326, on the dictators’ desire for expansionist war. vide Conclusion. 112 A. Reid, “Prime Ministers I have known,” Bulletin, vol.101, no.5196 (29 January 1980): 363. 113 These were the terms used by P. Kennedy, “Appeasement,” in ‘The Origins of the Second World War’ Reconsidered, ed. G. Martel, 156-7, to describe common assessments of British appeasement; Rock, 24ff., on the criticisms directed against the policy. 114 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 326. 115 One commentator has even referred to it as ‘a rational and liberal policy’; B. Primrose, “Equipment and Naval Policy, 1919-42.” AJPH, vol.23, no.2 (August 1977): 165. This work accepts ‘rational’, after Meyers, “International paradigms…”: 48, and notes the ‘liberal’ influences of Gladstone on Lyons’s concept of appeasement. 22 the aggressive powers by other than military means, ‘peaceful change’, it appeared that a great deal was expendable116 ─ peace-at-almost-any-price.

III This thesis illustrates the essentially private, personal, almost amateurish, nature of much Australian policy-making and diplomacy in this decade.117 The observation that early Australian foreign policy ‘was often simply what the Prime Minister of the day told the UK High Commissioner in Canberra’ has its resonance in the ‘thirties, although the US consul-general should not be excluded from this equation after 1935, but nonetheless a foreign policy as such did exist, even if it seemed an intensely personal one at times.118 Australian foreign policy in the ‘thirties was never a one-man-show, but there were times when Lyons gave it such an appearance through the exercise of the ‘quasi-presidential’ prime ministerial dominance (that had been an occasional feature since Deakin), particularly in the later years of his administration from mid- 1937 onwards.119 Especially notable were his attempts to stifle public debate and to act as the government’s sole spokesman in such matters, even at the expense of the appropriate minister, which offered the appearance of the prime minister alone determining policy. This was not the case.120 Policy formulation was usually collegial, perhaps even more so than in previous administrations, with Lyons acting as a presiding, conciliatory chairman.121 The chairman, however, invariably pressed for an agenda of appeasement and he generally prevailed ─ with few exceptions, that of 1935 Abyssinian sanctions among them, the policy agreed upon was the one that suited him and the circle of like-minded appeasers that notably included Casey and Page.122 Lyons was not, of course, the only appeaser in Canberra during those years; all of his leading ministers were committed to the policy at some time and to some extent, but none with greater consistency or intensity and few with the same commitment to universal, as opposed to regional, appeasement. In this way, Lyons’s personality and beliefs influenced policy and he came to

116 ibid. 117 As noted by P. Edwards, “Australia’s Foreign Policy in the 1930s and 1940s: Problems of Documentation.” Australian Outlook, vol.29, no.3 (December 1975): 336. 118 ibid. 119 P. Edwards, “Rise and Fall…”, 52. On prime ministerial dominance; P. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 109-114, 189-90; “Introduction,” in Between Empire and Nation, eds. C. Bridge and B. Attard, 3-4; Thompson, 16-17; Meaney, Search, 92, 191; M. Grattan (ed. and intro.), Australian Prime Ministers (Sydney: New Holland, 2000), 16; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 23-4. Mansergh Survey, 431-2, discusses the drawbacks of this predominance. vide also Chapter 4. 120 I agree in part with the New York Times assessment, quoted by J. Starke, The ANZUS Treaty Alliance (Melbourne: MUP, 1965), Foreword, that foreign policy may not be spoken of ‘as a single will or purpose…’, while disagreeing that it is neither ‘a series of fixed and identifiable objectives’. The latter part of the observation is not applicable to Australia in the ‘thirties, where Lyons’s desire to prevent another world war at all costs represented such an objective. 121 On Lyons acting as a conciliatory cabinet chairman; Enid Lyons, Mister Prime Minister: Joseph Aloysius Lyons, ABC video, 1966; The Times, 31 May 1935, 15, e; Cumpston, Bruce, 111; B. Stevens, “J.A. Lyons.” Australian Quarterly, vol.11, no.2 (June 1939): 5-8; Murray: 49; A. Reid, 359. It was later conceded that the UAP was electorally ineffective without his conciliatory leadership; A. Martin, Robert Menzies, A Life, 1894-1943, vol.1 (Melbourne: MUP, 1991), 419, quoting the Institute of Public Affairs in 1943. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 24, thought Lyons consulted more than his predecessors. 122 Thomas Playford, the wily SA Premier, noted that Lyons’s consensual agreements were always the ones ‘that the Right Honourable Mr. Lyons desired.’; C. Hughes, Mr. Prime Minister. Australian Prime Ministers, 1901-1972 (Melbourne: OUP, 1976), 92; interviewed in Mister Prime Minister, ABC video. 23 symbolise Australian appeasement to both its supporters and detractors. Such identification was understandable given the small number of policy-makers acting in an environment where individual beliefs were of greater comparative influence due to the absence of an elaborate bureaucracy.123 None of this is to say that Lyons was an original thinker, or an ‘ideas man’, but he was adept at taking the ideas of others and implementing them, according to Bruce’s dictum that a chief minister’s job was ‘to pick everyone’s brains, to have the judgement to know what ideas are good and the ability to put them over.’124 The thesis will accordingly illustrate that he variously and selectively followed the precedents and precepts of Deakin, Hughes, Bruce, Latham, Pearce, Menzies and Casey, sometimes acknowledging their contribution, sometimes not.125 It will also attempt to determine when Lyons was acting according to the counsel (either official or unofficial) of others and/or when he was acting out of some private conviction independently arrived at, as he frequently did.126 Australian external policy in this period, like those in other dominions, was certainly not formulated by especially complex processes.127 There was no permanent cabinet sub-committee on foreign affairs (as at Whitehall and as existed in Canberra for defence purposes), nor was there a group of ministers, a ‘foreign policy executive’, meeting on any regular basis to discuss such matters.128 The Lyons cabinets rarely discussed external affairs and when they did, even during international crises, their deliberations tended to consist of the reciting of cables from and, less often, to the Dominions Office.129 Many of Lyons’s ‘PERSONAL’ and ‘CONFIDENTIAL’ cables to Chamberlain, Bruce and others, however, were never sighted by cabinet (ostensibly on the grounds of their urgency) and thus do not appear in the cabinet papers, for he generally preferred to consult immediately and informally with some of the selected ministers mentioned above and/or with Bruce in London, in both his capacity as a former prime minister and as high commissioner. Lyons also found the telephone especially useful and pioneered a practice that Hughes recognised as early as 1926 had the potential to advance the process of consultation, something that became more common after 1939.130 Its immediacy, privacy and directness allowed him to play a part in Whitehall lobbying by September 1938 that was to be unprecedented. Most cabinet members, like their fellow parliamentarians, accordingly remained

123 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 16ff. 124 A. Reid, 359, where he denied Lyons any originality of thought, describing him as ‘pedestrian’. The Bruce dictum could describe Lyons’s Tasmanian premiership; vide Chapter 1. 125 P. Edwards, “Rise and Fall…”, 18-19, on Lyons, Menzies and Bruce. 126 vide below on methodology. 127 Contemporary observers thought the process underwhelming; E. Ferguson, T. Fry, J. Holmes and A. Murray Smith, “Australian Foreign Policy-Formation and Expression of Australian Opinion”, Australian Supplementary Papers, Series D, prepared for the British Commonwealth Relations Conference, Glenbrook, NSW, Australian Institute of International Affairs, no.2 (September 1938): passim. vide Chapter 4. There has been no Australian study of foreign policy formulation to equal works on the British equivalent such as D.C. Watt, Personalities and Policies and Hill. Mansergh, Survey, 417, on the lack of any foreign policy machinery in the dominions. 128 The term applied by Hill, 7, to Whitehall; vide Chapter 4. vide Chapters 2 and 6 on the Council of Defence. 129 For a discussion of the cabinet papers, vide below; N.B. the section on foreign policy deliberation; DAFP, vol.2, xii. 130 Hughes on the telephone; CPD, vol.114, 1974-5, 8 July 1926, quoted in L. Fitzhardinge, The Little Digger 1914- 1952, William Morris Hughes, A Political Biography, vol.2 (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1979), 553. Lyons and his use of the telephone; Mansergh, Experience, 287. 24 unaware of many details of policy formulation and initiative─ such internal secrecy and lack of method remained Lyons’s modus operandi throughout, despite his public reputation for openness and thoroughness.131 In the absence of any structured system of counsel outside of cabinet, that is of any so- called ‘foreign policy élite’,132 Lyons merely continued his old Tasmanian practice of seeking the input of many diverse and scattered men.133 This approach too was not especially methodical, almost ad hoc, an indication that in diplomacy he remained an amateur outside of convention. What he lacked in style, however, he made up with industry─ he consulted with some Australian-based diplomats (such as Moffat, Whiskard, Liesching, Asmis, Murai and Wakamatsu) and with others based in London, with some public servants (such as Hodgson and Shedden) and with those outside the bureaucratic structure, such as the Asianists, Dr. A.C.V. Melbourne and Ambrose Pratt.134 Through what the latter called the ‘new democratic diplomacy’ of ‘come-clean’ appeasement, he also sought to circumvent old-style, formal diplomacy with the face-to-face negotiation of statesmen inter se (or their trusted agents) in what he called ‘personal diplomacy’.135 Lyons sought to employ Menzies, Bruce and Pratt in such missions, following Latham’s 1934 precedent, and encouraged Chamberlain in his use of the same methods. His own interlocutors included Roosevelt as well as Chamberlain and he met with Mussolini on two occasions in the belief that consensus was universally applicable.136 Confident of his own statesmanship, Lyons even sought an interview with Hitler, which was aborted at the last minute.137 He would certainly have been comfortable with the description of ‘amateur diplomat’ later employed by his wife− it was intended as a compliment, yet candidly revealed the chief characteristic of foreign policy making in the Lyons years.138

131 The parliament was always poorly informed and it became a Lyons trademark to refuse its recall during international crises; vide Chapter 7. 132 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 19, refers to such an élite as including the Governor-General, prime minister, a few parliamentary colleagues, the high commissioner and a small number of public servants. 133 Often the advice outside of party is more important than that within; Hasluck was critical of the biographer Norman Lee’s failure to adequately examine Curtin’s working relationship with non-politicians such as Essington Lewis, Dedman, Shedden, Blamey and Evatt; P. Hasluck, Light That Time Has Made (Canberra: Goanna Print, 1980), 117. 134 DAFP, vol.1, Appendices, 569ff., for details on these leading diplomats and public servants. A.C.V. Melbourne, ADB, vol.10, 479ff., was the most important external influence on Lyons’s thinking about Japan. I have assembled an almost complete record of his correspondence with Lyons from archival sources. Many of these letters are missing from the A.C.V. Melbourne Papers, Reel 2, University of Queensland Archives, St.Lucia. The journalist Ambrose Pratt, ADB, vol. 11, 274-5, was an old friend and political associate. W. Hodgson, ADB, vol.9, 321ff., was the head of External Affairs from 1935, vide Chapter 4. F. Shedden was head of the Department of Defence from 1937. 135 A. Pratt, “The Diplomacy of Democracy.” Australian National Review, vol.1, no.3 (March 1937): 29ff. It was often referred to as ‘amateur’ diplomacy, vide Chapter 3. 136 This work contains the only reference in Australian historiography to both the Lyons-Mussolini interviews in Rome on 27 June 1935 and 15 April 1937. Mack Smith noted that negotiation and consensus were considered by Mussolini to be ‘unfascist’, although he willingly engaged in them; Mack Smith, “Appeasement…,” 258, 260-1. Lyons also met De Valera, the Irish premier, in 1935, and Leon Blum, the French premier, in 1937. 137 There has been only one discussion of Lyons’s proposed visit to Germany on 17 June 1935 and that an inaccurate one; J. McCarthy, “Australia and the German Consuls-General 1923-1939.” AJPH, vol.27, no.3 (1981): 344-53, where he has mistaken the planned itinerary for an actual trip; vide Chapter 3. 138 Enid Lyons, So We, Chapter 35 title; vide Chapter 3. She seemed unaware that the term ‘amateur diplomat’ was applied by the critics of appeasement; Sir Charles Webster, “Munich Reconsidered: A Survey of British Policy,” Stephenson Memorial Lecture No.10, RIIA. International Affairs, vol.37, no.2 (April 1961): 152. 25

IV If Lyons has been underestimated in the historiography of foreign policy, he has been similarly treated in that of defence policy, where his efforts were also considerable. Here too he was an ‘Australianist’, seeking to create a regional instrument of deterrence, as free as practicably possible of external interference, albeit part of an imperial network. It is maintained throughout that just as Lyons’s external policy was not unduly subservient to British interests, so too were Australian interests foremost in his defence policy. Enid Lyons, his posthumous mouthpiece, later described this as a feeling of wanting to ‘stand on our own feet’ and ‘to run our own show’.139 While his diplomacy aimed to prevent the need for any imperial military commitment in international trouble-spots, his defence policy ensured that the Australian armed services were in a state of readiness should war come, as the rearmament programs of the previous decade, particularly those of Bruce from 1924, were refreshed by five successors (September 1933, December 1935-June 1936, the ‘New Programme’ of August 1937, March-April 1938 and December 1938).140 The thesis critically addresses one of the more contentious defence issues of the period, the Singapore strategy, which involved the forward deployment of Australian naval, land and air forces in defence of that imperial base (and other British possessions in the region). This strategy has received the same criticism normally reserved for ‘the equally bankrupt appeasement policy’ and this is not the place to assess its strategic strengths, but it is argued that this strategically uneducated prime minister did not place undue reliance on specific British assurances about Singapore, or on more general assurances of imperial co-operation, as is often supposed.141 The archival evidence suggests that Lyons and his conservative administration were not in thrall to Singapore, despite the obvious attractions of the ‘Blue Water’ concept of forward naval deployment, of which it was a component.142 Rather, he was arguably among the Australian defence policy-makers who refused to adhere to any imperial schemes that did not provide for ‘security in the Pacific’.143 It is suggested that Lyons was as much of an amateur in strategic thinking as he was in diplomacy, but that pragmatism allowed him to countenance alternatives

139 Enid Lyons audio interview with Mel Pratt, March 1972, Oral History TRC 121/30, Tape 1, NLA, Canberra. 140 Lyons foreshadowed a sixth program in March 1939. The Bruce five-year program of rearmament began in 1924 and more than doubled the size of the RAN; P. Twomey, “Small Power Security through Great Power Arms Control?─Australian Perceptions of Disarmament, 1919-1930.” War & Society, vol.8, no.1 (May 1990): 86ff. 141 vide, for instance, comments on Lyons’s ‘intransigent’ faith in the mother country; Primrose, “Equipment…”, 166, and the assessment of M. Murfett, “The Singapore Strategy,” in Between Empire and Nation, eds. C. Bridge and B. Attard, 233. Also in J. McCarthy, “Singapore and Australian Defence 1921-42.” Australian Outlook, vol.25 (1971): 180. The comment on the historiographical link between the Singapore strategy and appeasement is made in M. Murfett, “A Keystone of Imperial Defence or a Millstone Around Britain’s Neck? Singapore 1919-1941,” in Between Two Oceans, joint authorship of M. Murfett, J. Miksic, B. Farrell and C.M. Shun (Oxford: OUP, 1999), 150. 142 ‘Blue Water’ implied the use of Australian vessels in imperial naval forces, to which Lyons had no objection, but he encouraged their deployment in the region; vide especially Chapter 5. I. Hamill, The Strategic Illusion. The Singapore Strategy and the Defence of Australia and New Zealand (Singapore: SUP, 1981), passim, alone suggests that Lyons was not as wedded to Singapore as is generally supposed. 143 Meaney, “Britishness and Australian Identity”, 87. Professor Brian Farrell (Singapore) suggested that neither Whitehall nor Canberra was fooled by the Singapore strategy; ABC Video, No Prisoners (Four Corners), 2002. 26 beyond those advocated at Whitehall (or by Frederick Shedden at Canberra), owing to fear of inadequate British resolve in the region─ as the incumbent prime minister he was among the Australian defence establishment that ‘attempted to resolve… strategic dilemmas as best it could’, including through attempts to influence British policy.144 There was no question of any commitment to Singapore without prior, concrete British commitments, which were not forthcoming, at least not in satisfactory quantities (despite considerable efforts to secure them from 1932 to 1939).145 Lyons’s Singapore scepticism, however, was only expressed in private and the thesis is in agreement with Hirst’s 1994 observations that ‘the fulsome rhetoric of non-Labor leaders about Empire loyalty misled their opponents and some historians into thinking they had lost sight of Australia’s interests which might well be different from Britain’s’.146 This observation is never more accurate than when applied to the defence policy of the Lyons years. This policy was a strategically sound blend of ‘Empire defence and Local defence’, mindful that Britain remained the only ‘feasible candidate’ for the role of protector in the short term.147 As a small power, it was unquestionably accepted that Australia needed such a powerful friend. This of course, raised the issue of consultation, as relevant to defence as it was to foreign policy. At least Whitehall seemed more receptive to the sharing of defence responsibilities and there had been far greater commonality in this area since 1911.148 The Committee of Imperial Defence had received some dominion input since 1911-12 by invitation, even though Fisher rejected the offer of permanent dominion representation (as Deakin had proposed), but the CID still provided an institutional structure lacking in external affairs.149 The Lyons years continued the struggle to improve such consultation and its five rearmament programs, 1933-38, indicated that blending imperial and local concerns remained a difficult balancing process, but the task was tackled with immediacy.150 As an orthodox economic manager (despite a streak of Keynesianism),151 Lyons certainly decried the necessity to spend vast sums on armaments, but spend and borrow he did.152 The

144 “Introduction,” in Between Empire and Nation, eds. C. Bridge and B. Attard, 4. 145 J. Robertson, “The Distant War: Australia and Imperial Defence, 1919-41,” in Australia Two Centuries of War and Peace, eds. M. McKernan and M. Browne (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1988), refers to ‘growing doubts’ about Singapore amongst Australian governments at this time, 225. vide especially Chapter 5. 146 J. Hirst, “Australian defence and conscription: a reassessment (part II).” Australian Historical Studies, vol.26, no. 102 (April 1994): 39. He also concluded, and this work affirms his statement, that: ‘Every new archive that is opened shows this assumption to be false.’ 147 Lyons at Council of Defence meeting, 17 December 1937, Hughes Papers, MS1538/42/1, NLA, Canberra, on the blend; vide Chapters 5 and 6. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 400ff., on strategic thinking between the wars. ibid., 405, discusses the compelling links of kinship with Britain. 148 D. Watt, “Paradox”: 266, although he concludes, ibid., 275-6, that this permanent alliance lacked a common policy. 149 Fisher, Prime Minister, 1908-09, 1910-13, 1914-15, rejected the offer in December 1912, despite his complaints about poor consultation; Meaney, Search, 149, 217, 237. Reid, as high commissioner, had been invited onto the CID in February 1911; Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 269. Mansergh, Experience, 144-5, on the CID and 148ff., on the advances in defence consultation since 1909. 150 vide Chapters 1, 4,5,6,7. Archdale Parkhill, Minister of Defence, Statement of the Government’s Policy regarding the Defence of Australia, Sydney Morning Herald, 3 December 1935, 8, f, vide Chapter 4. 151 Lyons referred to Keynes as ‘one of the most distinguished economists in the world’ in the pamphlet Murrumbidgee Prosperity Drive, July 1932; Lyons to R. McCosker, Riverina, NSW, CP 103/19/1/28, NAA, Canberra. Enid Lyons suggested that he was favoured Keynesianism, but believed that the Australian economy too small for experimentation; 27 fiscal conservatism that made him a political pariah in early-1931 was not an obstacle to staggering levels of defence spending, that were, by 1938/39, consuming almost one-fifth of the national budget.153 This rearmament went hand-in-hand with appeasement from late-1933 ─ Lyons’s assertion, in November 1938, that appeasement equalled ‘strength with conciliation’ was no idle boast.154 The thesis argues, however, that Australian appeasement was not driven by any sense of military weakness, despite the old sense of vulnerability and the new sense of imperial ‘overstretch’ that became pronounced from 1935─ it was chiefly motivated by the desire for conciliation and was seen as a substitute for military preparation only in retrospective, post facto accounts.155 Nor did Lyons accept the converse suggestion that escalating rearmament was a consequence of the failure of appeasement, even after March 1938, when the former over- shadowed the latter in East Asia and soon after in Europe as well.156 Rather, the policies of appeasement and rearmament were seen by their Australian practitioners as two branches of the same tree, intended for simultaneous application in order to prevent war and to maintain security: ‘détente and defence’ could co-exist.157 They were difficult to balance, as Deakin had found, but not inherently contradictory.158 Whilst Lyons the appeaser was naturally inclined to conciliation, the cloak of rearmament was not one that he wore comfortably or willingly, for he was thoroughly anti-militaristic. He was not a ‘pacifist’, but a ‘pacificist’ in the British liberal tradition (a person keen to avoid war and to maintain the peace through rational, regulated international relations).159 He never admitted any

Enid Lyons audio interview with A. Clarke, n.d., but late 1974-early 1975, Tape 1, Oral History collection, TRC 1148, NLA, Canberra. 152 In doing so, he was acting contrary to his sense of economic caution, not conceded by Andrews, “Patterns…”, 96, where Lyons is wrongly stated as having continually observed the economic orthodoxy against priming the economy with defence spending. In fact, he later claimed to have done just that and, in an attempt to justify this massive defence expenditure in the face of Labor hostility in November-December 1938, Lyons argued the specific benefits to employment levels of economic expansion; CPD, vol.157, 1285, 4 November 1938 and vol.158, 2816, quoted in Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, 262. Lyons’s commitment to orthodox economics was not as deep as has often been assumed, vide A. Millmow, “L.F. Giblin: ‘The Economist Who Had Everything’.” Tasmanian Historical Research Association Papers and Proceedings, vol.48, no.2, 84-96, passim, where Lyons used Giblin in the battle for more expansive policies. 153 This was below the 31% of the spending in the years before 1914; Meaney, Search, 140, 261. 154 Lyons to J.C. May, Ross, Tasmania, 30 November 1938, A981 AUS 39(1), NAA, Canberra. Chamberlain had used such language at Birmingham in April; Meyers, “International paradigms…”: 47, and in January 1939, described the policy as seeking ‘to drive two horses abreast: conciliation and rearmament’; R. Ovendale, “Britain, the Dominions and the Coming of the Second World War, 1933-9,” in Fascist Challenge, eds. L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen, 332. 155 On the old sense of isolation; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 400ff. On post-war imperial overstretch; Murfett, “Keystone…”, 149, and Meyers, “International paradigms…”: 46ff., on imperial ‘overextension’, after Liddell Hart. Lyons did not live long enough to offer the apologia that appeasement provided a year’s respite prior to war, as was suggested by Earle Page, Truant Surgeon (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1963), 259. Alan Watt, The Evolution of Australian Foreign Policy 1938-1965 (Cambridge: CUP, 1967), 19, correctly noted that these were not the views he had expressed in October 1938. The thesis disputes the suggestion of Murray, 50, that the sacrifice of the Czechs was due to a sense of poor defence readiness, vide Chapter 6. 156 A. Colley, “Australia, Great Britain, and the League.” Australian Quarterly, vol.10, no.2: 49. On the over- shadowing of appeasement by rearmament, vide Chapters 6 and 7. 157 As noted in G. Niedhart, “British Attitudes and Policies Towards the Soviet Union and International Communism, 1933-9,” in Fascist Challenge, eds. L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen, 291. 158 Thompson, 11, noted the appeasement of Japan by Reid and Deakin at the same time as increases in military expenditure. 159 pace ADB, vol.10, 188. The latter definition is found in M. Bentley, The Climax of Liberal Politics: British Liberalism in Theory and Practice 1868-1918 (London: Edward Arnold, 1987), 121-2. Lukowitz: 115, suggests terms for those inclined to pacifism, but prepared to accept war as a last resort, as people of ‘peace sentiment’ or of ‘anti-war feelings’. It is rare to find any public utterance by Lyons after 1932 that does not contain the word ‘peace’. 28 contradiction between this pacificism and the commitment to rearmament, although the paradox exercised his mind considerably. It was one of the ironies of the ‘thirties that the greatest peace-time rearmer in Australian history was the man thought by some critics to be ‘a peace-man’ married to an ‘ardent pacifist’.160 Nevertheless, Lyons grimly accepted in a radio broadcast of December 1938 the assumption that preparation for war is the best guarantee for peace─ the ‘price of peace’ as Hughes had earlier called it.161 He consistently maintained the view, 1933-39, that armaments could be used to prevent ‘the horrors and sufferings’ of war, rather than to increase its risk.162 Together with his wife, he also maintained that only successful appeasement would create the international situation whereby a ‘peace dividend’ would allow the diversion of funds from armaments to social services.163 V The contribution of the thesis to the historiography of the period is four-fold. Firstly, it contributes to the scholarship of early Australian foreign policy. In doing so, it will moderate suggestions that the ‘thirties was a period of quiescence, without a delineated external policy.164 It is an error to either suggest that this was the case, or that what did exist was based only on a ‘traditional British outlook’.165 In recent years, the hypothesis of imperial acquiescence has undergone moderation, with a recognition that the governments of the inter-war period were capable of ‘independent thought and action’ (as the UAP then called it), but much work remains to be done in rehabilitating the role of the Lyons administration in the evolution of external policy.166 The thesis will augment the challenge to the ‘imperial fallacy’,167 already undertaken in the ‘neo-nationalist interpretations’ of Tsokhas (in economic policy) and Ross (in defence policy).168 Its stance is somewhere between this latter school and that acknowledging the role of Australian leaders as following the national interest within the imperial framework.169 The

160 The view of Keith Murdoch, Murdoch to Clive Baillieu, 4 January 1939, Keith Murdoch Papers, MS2823/27, NLA, Canberra. 161 Vegetius Epitoma Rei Militaris: ‘qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum’ (‘Whoever desires peace, let him prepare for war’; 4th century AD). W. Hughes, Australia and War Today: The Price of Peace (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1935), 160. Lyons owned a copy; Personal visit, Home Hill, 21 December 1999. He paraphrased Vegetius by stating that ‘we must be prepared to go to war if we hope to avoid it’; Text of National Broadcast, 4 December 1938, A5954/69 item 1949/4, NAA, Canberra. vide Chapter 7. 162 Lyons to Mr. Wardman, Devonport, Tasmania, 13 January 1939, CP 167/2 item Defence Part 1, NAA, Canberra. In parliament, he professed the hope these armaments would never have to be used; CPD, vol.157, 1110, 2 November 1938. 163 Senator Foll, in his “Ministerial Statement to Senate by Minister of Repatriation”, 28 April 1938, Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, 1937-40, vol.2, no.40, referred to the government’s intention to increase or decrease defence spending according to ‘the trend of the international situation’. Street, the Defence Minister, hoped that the success of appeasement would lead to a reduction of armament expenditure; CPD, vol.158, 2754-61, 6 December 1938. 164 As suggested, inter alia, in Andrews, “Patterns…”, 101; Attard, “Australia as a Dependent Dominion”: 14. 165 S. Smith, “Towards Diplomatic Representation,” in Facing North, ed. D. Goldsworthy (Melbourne: MUP, 2001), 92. 166 Smith, 92, quoting 1937 UAP electoral material suggesting that Australian foreign policy must be based on ‘independent thought and action’. vide Chapter 5 on the October 1937 poll. 167 Tsokhas, “The Wool Industry…”, 459. 168 ibid. A. Ross, Armed and Ready: the Industrial Development and Defence of Australia, 1900-1945 (Wahroonga: Turton and Armstrong, 1995). The descriptive term is from Attard, “The Limits of Influence…”, 326. 169 “Introduction,” in Between Empire and Nation, eds. C. Bridge and B. Attard, 2, referring to the school of Meaney, Thompson and Hudson. The first school is that of Millar and Bell, that Australia always followed Britain by default. 29 initiatives of the Lyons years were evidence that the period was one of the reinforcement of earlier patterns and also one of renewal, with a reinvigorated regional outlook and a renewed impetus for involvement in imperial policy-making. When Lyons helped to formulate Australian appeasement, it was as a part of what he had called in 1935 a distinct ‘Australian foreign policy’.170 The private, or personal, nature of much policy-making in the ‘thirties has been noted− this was despite the reincarnation of the External Affairs Department as a separate department of state in November 1935. The department awaits a broad historical examination, but this thesis will contribute to a study of its development. The interaction between prime minister and External Affairs is examined, as are the attempts, from 1938, of the new bureaucracy to dilute an appeasement policy over which it had little control and from which it now largely differed. The department’s influence in Canberra during the Lyons administration was minimal under the leadership of W.R. Hodgson (himself initially sympathetic to appeasement) and this study indicates some of the factors responsible for the marginalisation of West Block.171 These factors included a gradual prime ministerial dominance, an often uninterested cabinet, pressing trade imperatives and the inter-departmental bickering that saw the arriviste at the bottom of the pecking-order.172 Secondly, the thesis contributes to the broader study of ‘British’ or imperial appeasement through an examination of the part played by one man and one dominion, thereby enhancing earlier studies of imperial relations (notably those of Ovendale and Attard).173 Any study of Australian external policy in this period is also a study of aspects of British policy, with which it was linked. It is argued that Lyons was not only a significant figure in Australian foreign policy from 1934 onwards and one of the leading Australian appeasers, but that he was also a notable ‘British’ appeaser throughout the period 1934-39, in part ex officio as a major dominion prime minister, who were encouraged by Whitehall to be the ‘exclusive formulators of policy’.174 Lyons did what he could to stimulate the British variety of appeasement, continually urging a conciliatory attitude towards continental aggressors in advance of Chamberlain, who was unable to implement his variety of appeasement until he became premier, on 28 May 1937. Lyons was

170 Lyons speech, 4 September 1935, Hodgson Papers, M1516. vide Chapter 3. 171 Hodgson later washed his hands of appeasement; Hodgson Address, 24 February 1945, Hodgson notes, vol.1, MM 1516, NAA, Canberra. West Block, directly behind (old) Parliament House, housed the department’s headquarters. 172 P. Edwards, “Australian Foreign Policy…”: 338-9, refers to the continual failure of the Prime Minister’s and Defence Departments to pass on many cables to External Affairs; after Hasluck, Diplomatic Witness, 10. vide also P. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 104, 109-114, where he notes that departmental weakness strengthened the position of the prime minister. Andrews, Isolationism, 26, made similar suggestions. From the inside, Alan Watt admitted the same, believing that Defence was the most powerful department; A.Watt, Australian Diplomat (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1972), 22 and “The Australian Diplomatic Service 1935-1965”, 138. vide Chapter 4 on External Affairs. 173 R. Ovendale, “The Influence of United States and Dominion Opinion on the Formation of British Foreign Policy 1937-1939” ( Ph.D., Oxford University, 1971), expanded into Appeasement and the English Speaking World (Cardiff, UofWales Press, 1975). His “Appeasement”, in Between Empire and Nation: Australia’s External Relations from Federation to the Second World War, eds. C. Bridge and B. Attard (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2001), 185-204, is an imperfect copy of this earlier work. 174 P. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 189-90, also quoted in P. Weller, First Amongst Equals (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1985), 184-5. 30 not ‘an ultra-Chamberlainite’ ─ his commitment to continental and global appeasement predated the Chamberlain period.175 It is suggested that the coincidence of opinion between these two prime ministers gave some resonance to Lyons’s Whitehall counsel from 1937; if Chamberlain respected any dominion opinion, it was that of Lyons (and of his fellow appeaser, Bruce). In the Far East, Lyons remained the definitive appeaser from 1934 onwards, given the departure of Latham from politics, and its chief ‘British’ practitioner, for although Chamberlain had advocated a similar approach in the same year, he was unable to persuade his cabinet colleagues of its merits.176 This pioneering application of eastern appeasement is a neglected aspect of the more general studies of this policy, which are frequently limited to Europe and the Mediterranean. Thirdly, the thesis contributes to the debate about defence policy in the ‘thirties, adding the prime minister’s own perspectives, as well as examining the political background of decision- making. Foreign policy is invariably linked to defence and Lyons acknowledged the link between armed strength and diplomatic influence: ‘In an armed world you must be armed yourself in order to be listened to.’177 He also accepted Hughes’s maxim that any dominion that wished to have a say in imperial foreign policy needed to share the burden of imperial defence.178 In recent years much work has been done to qualify the view that the Lyons administration made inadequate defence preparations prior to 1939, although such assessments remain current.179 The thesis enhances the process of revision, parallel with its primary aim of moderating certain views about Australia’s external policies, for just as ‘Honest Joe’ was active in foreign affairs, so too was ‘General Joseph’ active in defence matters.180 Although Lyons was a novice in defence, the thesis draws attention to his important role in such policy-making. Australian rearmament in the ‘thirties was not only a considerable feat of technical skill, it was also a major political battlefield. The unlikely Lyons, despite his dovish reputation, played a prominent part in steering towards rearmament, influenced by ‘hawks’ such as Pearce and Hughes. As a work of biographical focus, the thesis analyses the prime minister’s stance during these skirmishes and reveals his decisive

175 H.G. Wells’s disparaging reference to Lyons; Smith’s Weekly, 28 January 1939, 1-2. Meaney, “Foreign Policy…”: 178, suggests correctly that the Lyons cabinet was more pro-appeasement than the British cabinet and that it persisted for a longer period with the policy; he failed to mention that it also began earlier. A common apologia for Australian appeasement was the suggestion that Chamberlain forced the policy upon the reluctant dominions at the 1937 Imperial Conference; G. Fairbanks, “The Australian Foreign Policy and Defence Debate, 1931-41” (M.A., University of Sydney, 1966), 111. It is now difficult to sustain such a conclusion, vide Chapter 5. 176 pace Shen, Chapter 1, passim. Chamberlain was then Chancellor of the Exchequer. 177 Lyons’s conclusions in preparing debating notes, typed debating notes, n.d. but mid-1938, Joseph Lyons Papers, MS 4851/2/25, NLA, Canberra. Dame Enid later quoted Chamberlain’s similar suggestion that military strength enhances diplomatic influence; National Broadcast, 4 December 1938, A5954/69 item 1949/4. 178 Hasluck, Government, 10. He said as much at the 1937 Imperial Conference, vide Chapter 5. 179 Ross, Armed and Ready, Conclusion, 432-3, provides a comprehensive account. Lyons’s ‘rearmament’ has been noted by Lloyd, “Rise and Fall…”, 156, and the level of spending has been acknowledged in A. May, “Fortress Australia,” in Between Empire and Nation, eds. C. Bridge and B. Attard, 206. The view of defence inadequacy is still found in Day, Curtin, 364. 180 The latter was the derogatory tag applied by Frank Brennan; CPD, vol.157, 1100-1110, 2 November 1938. 31 role in one, when he opposed attempts to reintroduce militia conscription, 1937-39.181 This opposition has not been hitherto examined in any depth─ the thesis offers s ome explanation for Lyons’s passionate, immovable and successful stance against ‘universal training’, viewing it as a personal and psychological ne plus ultra. Fourthly, the thesis seeks to make a substantial contribution to the scant biographical historiography of Joseph Aloysius Lyons. Whilst it is not a biography, its focus on the years 1932-39 and his pivotal role in that period will contribute to any expanded biographical study, or to any more general account, through providing ‘a window looking onto a yet larger historical world’,182 a part of which is the world of appeasement studies, which are oriented towards the role of the individual rather than the state.183 The thesis is a necessary work of biographical revision, for many of Lyons’s achievements were largely unacknowledged at the time or were buried alongside appeasement during the war and post-war years: ‘Such is the price of failure on the international stage.’184 The vacuum was filled in the years of archival unavailability with myth-making for, as Hudson noted in 1970, foreign policy is an area that lends itself easily to the development of a number of myths, one of which was that ‘J.A. Lyons was a parish-pump politician except when he was an appeaser of fascists.’185 This thesis questions the premise behind those myths, using much archival material previously unconsidered. It suggests that Lyons brought to office in 1932 many of the precepts which had served him well in his earlier personal and political life, including an all-important belief in conciliation and compromise: he then attempted to translate these qualities to international relations, for his appeasement was predicated on his belief that there were no problems incapable of resolution through consensus.186 This might have been an ‘optimistic and Christian hope’ unsuited to the world of Realpolitik, but it was one widely shared and such idealism ought not to be confused with ineptitude.187 The need for debate about Lyons’s level of competence in external affairs has been apparent for some decades, in order to counterbalance ‘historical overreaction’ and ‘negativism’.188 Dame Enid Lyons was conscious of the need for re- assessment, but her understandable, partisan concern about her husband’s unduly modest

181 Conscription was generally defined as compulsory military training in the militia and/or for overseas service, the former was abolished in 1929 by Scullin; C. Wilcox, For Hearths and Homes. Citizen soldiering in Australia 1854- 1945 (St. Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1998), 91. 182 The role of biography, according to N. Hamilton, “The Role of Biography,” in Contemporary History. Practice and Method, ed. A. Seldon (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 166. 183 Meyers, “International paradigms…”: 56. 184 Smith’s Weekly, 7 January 1939, 10, suggested: ‘For acquiescent apathy and flatulent flabbiness, Mr. Lyons has no rival in the history of Australian Prime Ministers.’ The quote refers to the Singapore strategy and appeasement; Murfett, “Keystone…”, 150. 185 Hudson, Diplomacy, Preface. 186 It is beyond the scope of this work to examine Lyons’s life prior to 1932 in much detail, but references will be made passim (and especially in Chapter 1) to his earlier personal and political traits. 187 Lentin, 85, on the prevailing intellectual and social milieu of British appeasers (elitist, public school, Oxbridge, High Church). Roberts, Holy Fox, 47ff., notes Halifax’s belief that the negotiating skills he honed in India with Gandhi were equally applicable to Hitler. 188 Hamilton, 168, on the biographer’s quest for balance. 32 historical reputation was shared by many others who had worked closely with him.189 The views of these contemporaries are worthy of consideration and this thesis, through its own reassessment, also shares her belief that Lyons’s ‘very modest estimate of himself’ was inappropriate190 ─ the evidence suggests that he was a capable politician of conscience, who proved receptive to innovative thinking about Australia’s place in the world. Lyons was not himself an original thinker, but it is inaccurate to suggest that he was therefore not an innovator, for he brought to much policy-making the open-mindedness of the amateur, unmindful of convention.191 It concludes that his contributions to policy-making and implementation were considerable and that the image of a ‘slow, bumbling Joe Lyons’ is one that bears little resemblance to reality.192 VI The amount of literary material on Australia in the 1930s is considerable, but the Lyons biographical corpus is scant. As early as 1967, Hart expressed surprise that little had appeared on this individual.193 He must still be considered one of the outstanding Australian political figures referred to in 1973 as awaiting a comprehensive biographer.194 The Enid Lyons Papers reveal correspondence with Hart (in the 1960s) and with Kiernan (in the 1970s) on mooted biographies, but neither proposal came to fruition; nor could the unrevised, brief study by White (1987) be any longer considered adequate, despite its recent reissue.195 Two theses are relevant to the biographical focus: Hart (1967) wrote the only biographical thesis exclusively dealing with the husband; Sells (1987) wrote the only one dealing with the wife.196 Hart became a Lyons specialist, concentrating on domestic politics and the detail he amassed was substantial, but his thesis devoted little attention to external relations or defence. He offered little illumination on the only major foreign policy topic on which he did comment (the Pacific Pact), for at his time of

189 Dame Enid thought him too self-effacing; E. Lyons, Among the Carrion Crows (Adelaide: Rigby, 1972), 69. Enid Lyons audio interview with Mel Pratt, Tape 1, quoting Menzies to the effect that Lyons’s achievements were unrecognised. Staniforth Ricketson to Enid Lyons, 6 May 1965 and 18 December 1965, Enid Lyons Papers, MS4852/6. Shedden to Enid Lyons, 10 August 1966, A5954 1197/5, NAA, Canberra. On Ricketson; National Archives of Australia. 14 November 2002. “Australia’s Prime Ministers”: Joseph Lyons. Available [Online]: http:/ /primeministers. naa.gov.au/ [14 November 2002]. 190 Enid Lyons interview in Mister Prime Minister; E. Lyons, Carrion Crows, 69. B. Crick, “Biography and ‘Character’,” in George Orwell: A Life (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980), 29-30, suggested that the observations of contemporaries were a useful guide for the biographer. 191 D. Whitington, Twelfth Man (Melbourne: Jacaranda, 1972), 63, stated what remains the prevailing view. 192 Ross, Armed and Ready, 127. 193 Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, Preface. 194 D. Aitkin, “Writing Political Biography,” in Historians at Work: Investigating and Recreating the Past, eds. D. Duffy, G. Harman and K. Swan (Sydney: Hick Smith and sons, 1973), 85. In the meantime, biographies have appeared of Barton, Bruce, Cairns, Casey, Chifley, Curtin, Gorton, Hasluck, Hughes, Menzies, Pearce, Scullin and Shedden. vide also the list in J. Walter, “Biography, Psychotherapy and Cultural Space,” in Shaping Lives. Reflections on Biography, eds. I. Donaldson, P. Read and J. Walter (Canberra: ANU Humanities Research Centre, 1992), 260-87. 195 White, Joseph Lyons, relied too heavily on Enid Lyons’s papers and memoirs, understandably so on the earlier part of Lyons’s life. The 2000 reissue has not corrected many factual errors contained in the 1987 original. The most recent work on Lyons is substantially based on White; A. Henderson, “Joseph Aloysius Lyons,” in Australian Prime Ministers, ed. M. Grattan, 152-67. 196 Hart, “J.A. Lyons”; A. Sells, “Enid Lyons: the ‘National Housekeeper’-A Biographical Study 1897-1951” (M.A., University of Melbourne, 1987). Hart drew a picture of a malleable character without any clear political direction, although in his later work, such as “The Piper and the Tune” in Australian Conservatism. Essays in Twentieth Century Political History, ed. C. Hazlehurst (Canberra: ANU Press, 1979), 138-9, he modified this view. 33 writing (c.1967) the archival material was largely unavailable. He was thus overly reliant on Lyons’s personal papers. The same difficulties are found in his discussion of conscription (1938- 39). Although Hart correctly noted that this was the one area in which Lyons refused to seek consensus, he was unable to examine the archival material to illustrate the full nature and effect of his opposition. His work therefore requires augmentation. The Sells thesis contains much useful material concerning the career of a woman who had been regarded as both ‘half the Premier of Tasmania’ and later as either Lyons’s greatest asset in the Lodge, or his chief liability.197 Her work acknowledged that any study of Joseph Lyons was incomprehensible without some parallel assessment of Enid Lyons, a view accepted by Hart and White. The corpus dealing with Australia’s external relations in the ‘thirties is comprehensive, although much of it is in need of some augmentation and redress, being unduly critical of appeasement and unduly concentrated on policy (via Whitehall) towards the European aggressors.198 Much of it arguably underestimates the contribution of Lyons to foreign affairs─ in accord with the ‘myth’ that he was a ‘parish-pump politician’, ill at ease in foreign affairs.199 Two theses are relevant and complementary to the task of revision undertaken here─ Twomey (1989) gave signs of revisionism with his comprehensive tracing of the perceptions and thinking of Australian policy-makers in the inter-war period, acknowledging Lyons as one who offered a more regional focus after 1937; Attard (1991) revised much of the picture of Anglo-Australian relations in the period up to 1939 through tracing the evolution of the high commissioner’s office and indicating Australian diplomatic maturity.200 While some general research has recently been conducted on Asian-dominion relations in the 1930s, there has been little debate about Australian appeasement.201 The field is open for a narrower, more detailed study of these relations and of this policy. Two theses have attempted the first task, Murphy (1975) and Harrison-Mattley (1969), but both require augmentation given more recently available archival material.202 The work of E.M. Andrews remains relevant to any discussion of appeasement, still serving as the basis for the foreign policy assessments made by a recent biographer.203 The Andrews corpus is impressive and extensive. He contributed the only major work, The Writing on the Wall, dealing with Australian eastern policy, 1931-35.204 There is scope, however, for a re- examination of his conclusions. Similarly, his impressive Isolationism and Appeasement (1970)

197 For joint Premier, Table Talk, 7 July 1927, “Prominent Personalities”. Keith Murdoch took a critical view; Murdoch to Clive Bailieu, 4 January 1939, Keith Murdoch Papers, MS 2823/27: ‘When he speaks, she speaks; when he gives a Christian message, she gives one. When he appears at the microphone she wants to appear also-and she does.’ 198 The body includes works by Andrews, Attard, Beaumont, Bridge, Cumpston, P. Edwards, Hasluck, Hudson, Mansergh, Meaney, Millar, Smith, Twomey, D. Walker and A. Watt et al. vide Bibliography. 199 Hudson, Diplomacy, Preface; P. Edwards, “The Rise and Fall of the High Commissioner”, 43, vide Chapter 6. 200 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 400-01. Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, passim. 201 Notably the collection Facing North, ed. D. Goldsworthy and D. Walker, Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia 1850-1939 (St.Lucia: UofQ Press, 1999). vide bibliography on Smith, Walker, Jones and Mackie. The Bridge and Attard collection, Between Empire and Nation, contained the unrevised views of Ovendale, “Appeasement”, 185-204. 202 P. Murphy, “Australia-Japan Relations 1931-41” (Ph.D., University of NSW, 1975) is unduly reliant on Andrews. 203 Especially his Isolationism. Day, Curtin, passim, did not employ any more recent material on appeasement. 204 Andrews, Writing. Megaw’s articles also provide detail on British and Australian eastern policy, vide bibliography. 34 did not employ a great deal of the archival material utilised here.205 It also contains a number of conclusions about Lyons’s contribution to imperial policy that are arguably unwarranted from its own documentary material.206 Cumpston largely shared the Andrews interpretation, although she did point in her later work towards the conclusions of the present thesis that Lyons had made some contribution towards Whitehall policy. The body of British (and to a lesser extent American) scholarship on appeasement is considerably larger and more balanced than its Australian counterpart. This trans-Atlantic debate began somewhat earlier and continues.207 Its nature is indicated in the important collection of Kettenacker and Mommsen (1983), which contains a series of British and American articles without a single Australian contribution.208 These studies were predominantly concerned with European appeasement, lending a geographical slant to the debate away from the orient. Whilst substantial studies of British military strategy in the Far East are available, eastern appeasement has not received due attention.209 Where such scholarship has taken cognizance of British eastern policy, it has been with little or no acknowledgement of Australian sources and has tended to be dismissive of any suggestion of dominion influence.210 The few British exceptions to this dismissive outlook are telling. D.C. Watt was the pioneer, initiating British ‘revisionism’ towards appeasement as early as the ‘sixties.211 Mansergh further warned (1970) of the need for such revision, a call taken up by Ovendale, whose work this thesis supplements and clarifies, similarly seeking to illuminate the degree of Australia’s active input into ‘British Appeasement policy’.212 Watt also mused on the importance of the Lyons- Chamberlain communications, but he admitted that insufficient archival material made conclusions difficult.213 No detailed attempt was made, however, to test his theory that Lyons’s intervention during the first Czech crisis of September 1938 was probably decisive, although

205 Much of the relevant archival material in Canberra was not opened until the mid-70s. 206 vide later chapters for an analysis of the material in Andrews, Isolationism. The Andrews of the 1970s remained convinced that great powers did not consult, whether Britain in the ‘thirties or the US at his time of writing; E. Andrews, “The Broken Promise-Britain’s Failure to Consult its Commonwealth on Defence in 1934 and the Implications for Australian Foreign and Defence Policy.” Australian Journal of Defence Studies, vol.2, no.2 (November 1978): 113. This conclusion needs to be qualified when dealing with the period 1937-39. 207 It includes works by Charmley, Fuchser, Gilbert, Gott, P. Kennedy, Lamb, McDonough, Middlemas, Newman, Offner, Ovendale, Parker, Robbins, Rock, Rotunda, D.C. Watt and MacMillan, et.al.; vide bibliography. 208 L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen, The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement (London: Allen and Unwin, 1983). J. Lampe, “Introduction,” in Reappraising the Munich Pact. Continental Perspectives, ed. M. Latynski (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1992), 3, noted two-thirds of the articles dealt with British policy. 209 On putative British eastern appeasement; Shen, Chapter 1; A.Trotter, “Tentative Steps for an Anglo-Japanese Rapprochement in 1934.” Modern Asian Studies, vol.8, no.1 (1974): 59-83. On British eastern strategy; Haggie, G. Kennedy, Louis, Lowe, Murfett, Neidpath, Tarling, Thorne. 210 vide bibliography; Holland, Meyers, Rock and Shen. There is some Australian support for this; P. Edwards and Hasluck maintain throughout their works that dominion consultation had not been of any significance in the final determination of imperial policy. 211 D.C. Watt, “Appeasement: The Rise of a Revisionist School?” Political Quarterly, vol.36, no.2 (1965): 191-213.this revisionism is discussed in Rose, 212. Smith, 61ff., gives a sign of emerging Australian revisionism. 212 Mansergh’s Round Table (November 1970) reservations are quoted in D. Carlton, “The Dominions and British Policy in the Abyssinian Crisis.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol.1 (1972): 59 and 75, footnote. On Ovendale, “Introduction,” in Between Empire and Nation, eds. C. Bridge and B. Attard, 3. 213 vide Chapter 6. 35 Cumpston showed some interest in the matter.214 This thesis has done so and both affirms and supplements Watt’s suspicions with a ‘probable deduction’ that this action played some part (not necessarily the decisive one) in the process of seeking Italian mediation.215 In doing so it uses newly-exposed archival material ─ a timely re-examination, given recent evidence that the British debate is following a circular trajectory.216 The literature on Australian defence policy is as problematic. Recent scholarly interest has been shown in the connection between defence and foreign policy within the imperial context, a topic neglected since Fairbanks (1966), now also superseded by the availability of archival material.217 Nevertheless, most Australian defence scholars have worked in isolation from considerations of external affairs. One area of debate has recently been addressed in detail ─ whilst it was widely accepted for some decades that Australian defence preparations by 1939 were manifestly inadequate (oblivious of even Hasluck’s detailed official history), there now seems little doubt about the extent of 1930s rearmament, given the technical data amassed by Ross (1995) and the contribution of May (2000). There are, however, three essential gaps in the defence literature. Lyons’s broader role in in defence policy-making has been passed over without much comment, Ross aside. Although the literature has recently been supplemented with material on the defence bureaucracy, Horner (2000), there is further scope for an examination of the politics of rearmament, in which Lyons was an important player.218 It has also failed to address the issue of conscription, 1937-39 (and Lyons’s role in its obstruction), despite some good general accounts.219 Finally, whilst British and Commonwealth scholarship has given some attention to issues of imperial strategy, there has been little revision of the view that Australian conservatives were wedded to the Singapore strategy, a view that is now difficult to sustain. The important works of McCarthy are especially relevant to such a debate, as are those cited of Lodge, Murfett, Tarling and Cumpston. VII The sources for a study of Australian external policy in the ‘thirties are rich and together provide the sought after ‘occasional but essential moments of illumination’.220 The published documentary material alone is extensive. Post-1936 material is found in the series Documents on

214 Cumpston, Bruce, 166 and Appendix B, re-examined Andrews’s assertions that timing prevented any Lyons influence on Whitehall policy, (repeated in Andrews, “Patterns…”, 96); vide Chapter 6. 215 G. Kitson Clark, The Critical Historian (London: Heinemann, 1967), 59, on the taxonomy of evident facts, ‘probable deductions’ and inferences. M. Stanford, The Nature of Historical Knowledge (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 59, that historians draw a number of ‘probable conclusions’ whose probabilities reinforce one another. 216 F. McDonough, Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement and the British Road to War (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1998), passim, repeats some of the older views on dominion impotence. 217 vide Thompson, Murfett and May in Between Empire and Nation, eds. C. Bridge and B. Attard. Fairbanks, passim, does provide a comprehensive survey of contemporaneous press opinion. 218 D. Horner, Defence Supremo. Sir Frederick Shedden and the Making of Australian Defence Policy (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2000). 219 R. Forward and B. Reece (eds.), Conscription in Australia (St.Lucia: UofQ Press, 1968), particularly K. Inglis, “Conscription in Peace and War, 1911-1945”, 22-65. Wilcox also underestimates Lyons; vide Chapter 7. 220 A. Raspin, “Private Papers,” in Contemporary History. Practice and Method, ed. A. Seldon (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 91, on the narrative record coming from a combination of private papers, printed records and printed sources. 36 Australian Foreign Policy (DAFP); British material covers the whole decade in Documents on British Foreign Policy (DBFP) and the Chatham House collection, Documents on International Affairs; other perspectives are found in Documents on German Foreign Policy (DGFP), I Documenti Diplomatici Italiani (DDI) and Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), all of which have been used in this thesis, along with several less comprehensive collections. DAFP is the most relevant collection, although not without its deficiencies, as outlined by Edwards in his 1975 apologia, where he noted that the lacunae were significant.221 He also accepted that future researchers were likely to uncover material worthy of inclusion in forthcoming appendices.222 This thesis draws upon several significant, unpublished documents, both Australian and British, which warrant inclusion in such collections. The published material also includes a number of political memoirs (such as those of Pearce, Page, Menzies, Casey and Eden). Some are more reliable than others, but together they offer a substantial account of Lyons’s behaviour, as well as clarifying the domestic and international environment in which his policies were conceived.223 Chief among them are the memoirs of Dame Enid Lyons (stretching from the late-1940s through to the early-1970s) ─ tendentious and selective though they are, they make a substantial contribution to the Lyons historiography and prove useful, if carefully employed, as it will be found that they generally accord with contemporary sources. Given the extraordinary political intimacy between this husband and wife and their openly acknowledged partnership, they provide at the very least what may be taken as the ‘posthumous’ memoirs of the prime minister himself. The view from 1932 remains valid: ‘They are not two people. They are one.’224 Other contemporary published material has also been used in an attempt to comprehend the external affairs and defence debate of the period. Journals such as the External Affairs Department’s Current Notes, the Australian National Review and the Austral-Asiatic Bulletin consciously sought to expand Australia’s world view, as did certain lobby groups such as the Australian Institute of International Affairs in its writings.225 The period also yields much valuable unpublished material. The separately collected, but overlapping, papers of Joseph and Enid Lyons in the National Library of Australia are indispensable, with much correspondence and several travel diaries.226 These papers should be

221 P. Edwards, “Australian Foreign Policy…”, 335-40. 222 ibid. 223 Although such memoirs need to be treated with caution, I agree with Hill’s implication, 16, that excessive caution can lead to the undue marginalisation of valuable historical sources. They must be separately treated from bona fide contemporary diaries, vide below. 224 Enid Lyons, So We, 191, quoting the Australian Christian World in 1932. The US diplomat Jay Moffat noticed: ‘When she is not with him he seems to lose some of his self-confidence.’ Moffat Diary, 25 August 1936, Microfilm collection, Jay Pierrepont Moffat Diary, NLA, Canberra. 225 For example, H. Harris, Australia’s National Interests and National Policy (Melbourne: MUP, 1938), published for the Australian Institute of International Affairs, reviewed favourably in R.M. Crawford, “Men and Debates of the Hour.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.2, no.3 (August-September 1938): 21. 226 Enid Lyons Diaries, Enid Lyons Papers, MS 4853/30, NLA, Canberra. I accept Hill’s assessment, 16, of the importance of bona fide diaries such as these. 37 treated as a joint collection, in order to avoid the problems encountered by some scholars, like Hart, who relied too heavily on the papers of the husband.227 The NLA also contains the papers of many other Australian public figures relevant to a study of Lyons (including those of Hughes, Latham, Menzies, Pearce, Page and Casey), which have been extensively utilised in this thesis.228 The British manuscript material is often no less important, particularly the Neville Chamberlain Papers and those of Anthony Eden, both at Birmingham. The former allow an unmatched insight into the dominion contribution to imperial foreign policy and contain evidence of an episode in September 1938 of singular importance to any study of Australian appeasement. The Australian archival material, chiefly at the National Archives of Australia, is of equal importance, filling many of the manuscript gaps.229 The material dealing with the period before 1936 (not included in DAFP) is often not well-known and one editor warned of the chaotic condition in which the researcher was likely to find much of it.230 Nevertheless, it casts enormous light on Lyons, refuting Hart’s suggestion that there is little in the prime ministerial correspondence that reveals his political philosophy or that is of use to a potential biographer.231 Rather, it is possible to gain significant insights into his mental processes from the archival material, for Lyons was a frank and assiduous correspondent. The extensive departmental collections in the NAA, especially those of External Affairs (at Canberra) and of the Defence Department (at Melbourne), then serve to illustrate his attempts to implement policy. Edwards’s apologia on disorder remains relevant in regard to the cabinet papers. This is despite the fact that the first cabinet meeting of the new administration, on 6 January 1932, resolved to establish a system of recording based on that employed by the Lyons administration in Tasmania, 1923-28. The three separate series of Lyons cabinet records provide summaries of the issues under discussion (plus a selection of the papers presented for consideration), but only an incomplete account of the subsequent decisions.232 It is not always possible to learn the opinion of ministers from these records alone, but it is clear that foreign affairs were rarely an issue of major cabinet discussion in this period. Any scholar of Australian foreign policy in the ‘thirties must also consult relevant, British archival material, chiefly at the Public Record Office.233 The British cabinet papers are better

227 Others, like White, were too heavily reliant on the more voluminous collection of the wife. 228 vide Bibliography for other NLA papers. Those of Casey do not contain much material for the period 1932-39, except for boxes 32-73 (press cuttings). The Casey collection at the NAA, Melbourne, does not cover this period. 229 The papers of Bruce and Shedden are kept at the NAA, Canberra. 230 P. Edwards, “Australian Foreign Policy…”, 337-9. Much disorder has been recently rectified. 231 P. Hart, “J.A. Lyons, Tasmanian Labour Leader.” Labour History, Journal of the Society for the Study of Labour History, no.9, (November 1965): 33. 232 The Lyons cabinet papers consist of three series at the NAA, Canberra: A3258 contains agenda papers, memoranda and submissions (selectively microfilmed as CRS A6006); A3257 contains an agenda summary and acts as an index; A2694 provides incomplete ‘minutes’, often little more than cabinet decisions. Hill, 3, noted the difficulty of ‘inherently incomplete versions of life in Cabinet’. 233 Some relevant Dominions Office and Foreign Office material is available through the Australian Joint Copying Project. A fuller insight into British policy is gained through PRO access to the Prime Minister’s correspondence. 38 ordered and more comprehensive than their Australian counterparts.234 They offer valuable insights into Whitehall assessments of Australian policy, many of which were concealed from Canberra. The records of the Dominions Office and the Foreign Office also contain considerable material relating to Australia. Especially instructive are the comments appended in Whitehall to Australian correspondence, intended for departmental eyes only, as well as other British material clearly not intended for circulation to the dominions. It is necessary to use much of this British and Australian archival material in conjunction in order to establish the likely contents of the many vital telephonic communications of this period, especially the calls between Lyons and Chamberlain. Many of these calls may be reconstructed with great accuracy, especially given Lyons’s working method of dispatching subsequent cables that contained a written version of the substance of these conversations.235 Finally, there is a great deal of audio/visual primary evidence that has been useful for this thesis. Lyons employed the new media of sound and cinematic recording to an extent well beyond the tentative steps of his predecessors. The image of ‘Honest Joe’ projected in the cinema and broadcast over the air-waves in the first ‘radio election’ helped to propel him into the Lodge in December 1931.236 His subsequent, unprecedented electoral successes of 1934 and 1937 testified to the continuing success of that image. Lyons never lost this populism ─ during the international crises of the later ‘thirties, he found it a source of relief to share his intense anxiety with the ‘wireless’ listeners of the nation, unwittingly providing a durable historical source. His period in office ended too as it had begun, with mass meetings and broadcasts aimed at motivating people in the service of great national goals (in 1930-31, fiscal probity and economic salvation; in 1938- 39, international peace, national defence and voluntaryism).237 The sound and visual recordings of the period (preserved at ScreenSound) provide an excellent insight into the public image of the man and indicate his obsession with the role of international ‘peacemaker’.238 The NLA audio interviews with Enid Lyons (from the early 1970s) also provide some important clues about the political behaviour of husband and wife, despite her shaky chronological recall. The widow was probably more candid than she realised and there are some remarkable admissions that illustrate the utility of the medium, in accord with the hypothesis that such interviews often have their own dynamics and that even incidental comments may contain useful material.239 They are especially useful in reconstructing the ‘methods and roles of personalities’, in explaining ‘underlying motives and assumption’ and in clarifying ‘confusion over facts’.240

234 Described in N. Cox, “Public Records,” In Contemporary History. Practice and Method, ed. A. Seldon (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 86. 235 ibid., 82, notes the problem of undocumented telephone calls, as does Aitkin, 83-4. 236 C. Hughes, Mr. Prime Minister, 89. 237 vide Chapter 1 on the 1930-31 meetings and Chapter 7 on similar meetings in December 1938-January 1939. 238 A. Reid, 359, used this description of Lyons’s role within a turbulent cabinet. 239 J. Hooton, “Women’s Life-Writing: Power and Alterity,” in Shaping Lives. Reflections on Biography, eds. I. Donaldson, P. Read and J. Walter (Canberra: ANU Humanities Research Centre, 1992), 138-40. 240 A. Seldon, “Interviews,” in Contemporary History. Practice and Method, ed. A. Seldon (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 8-9 and 4, quoting Martin Gilbert on interviewing Churchill’s contemporaries. 39 VIII Although this thesis is not a biography, it employs a biographical focus in its attention to Lyons’s world-view and chiefly examines policy through a biographical lens, conscious of the difficulties of such an approach─ it accepts Aitkin’s caution about biography sometimes being ‘poor history’ that produces a ‘lop-sided’ account of reality.241 This includes the dangers of being unduly sympathetic to the subject and seeing events too much through their eyes.242 Such inclinations could lead to the obstructions of hagiography.243 Additionally, biographical focus often demands the provision of extensive background material, a practice unsuited to the writing of a thesis and inappropriate to a study of such a well-documented period as the ‘thirties.244 This thesis has been mindful of all of these difficulties. Any lop-sidedness is undesirable, but unavoidable to some extent, and may be redressed in a more general study of the period that is equally conscious of the need for some revision in the historiography of the ‘thirties.245 Even a partial account, however, can provide a window looking onto a larger picture.246 As the formulation of foreign policy concerned only a small number of politicians and public servants in Canberra during the Lyons years, the study of an individual is worthwhile, for ‘the interaction of individuals… produces the decisions on which events hinge’.247 It is justified to see Lyons as a leading Australian appeaser and the most publicly prominent one, as prime minister, and thus to concentrate on his role in a biographical study, in the same way that a ‘structuralist’ historian like Kershaw justified his concentration on one individual in the history of pre-war Germany.248 In doing so, it is hoped that any unconscious inclinations towards being a sympathetic, but aloof, ‘participant-observer’ have not blurred the critical assessment of the thesis about Lyons’s place in Australian history.249 Coherence and ‘objectivity’ (noted by Martin as unfashionable) have been the aims and there is no place for hagiography in this process250 ─ Lyons had accepted the role of martyr in 1931, but he was not a saint and my assessment of him is intended to be a critical one.251 I have not sought to ‘downplay’ Lyons’s role in the way that Kershaw suggested he had done with Hitler, nor have I sought to exaggerate his part in complex historical processes ─ I

241 Aitkin, 85. I reject Freud’s view of the biographer as liar, quoted in A. Kazin, “The Self as History: Reflections on Autobiography” in Telling Lives, the Biographer’s Art, ed. M. Pachter (Washington D.C: New Republic, 1979), 74. 242 Aitkin, 84. Tuchman warned against too closely identifying with the subject, quoted in W. Phillips, “Historians, Biography and History,” in Tracing Past Lives. The Writing of Historical Biography, ed. R. Broome (Melbourne: History Institute Victoria Inc., 1995), 3. 243 Hasluck was critical of these obstructions in Lee’s biography of Curtin and in Tennant’s biography of Evatt; Hasluck, Light, passim. 244 Aitkin, 77. W. Phillips, 5, advocated brevity in background discussion. 245 Hamilton, 166. Aitkin, 85, thought the ‘general historian could expand a biographer’s partial account. 246 Hamilton, 166. 247 ibid., 167. 248 I. Kershaw, Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris, vol.1, (London: Allen Lane, 1998), xii, on his concentration on Hitler, in reflections about being a ‘structuralist’ historian attempting biography (without any similar sense of identification). 249 R. Joyce, “Samuel Griffith, the Biographer and the Matter of Sources,” in Biographers at Work, eds. J. Walter and R. Nugent (Brisbane: Institute for Modern Biography, 1984), 17, on the dilemma of the biographer, in that a good biography requires a degree of identification with the subject, the writer needing to become a ‘participant-observer’. W. Phillips, 3, quoted Harold Nicolson that a biographer should have ‘fundamental respect’ for his subject. 250 Martin, Menzies, Preface xi. 251 J. Dollard, Criteria for the Life History (New York: Peter Smith, 1949), passim; criterion 7, summarised in A. Davies, “The Tasks of Biography,” in Essays in Political Sociology (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1972), 110-11. 40 have chiefly sought to illuminate Lyons’s thinking and to delineate his attempts to formulate policy along the lines of that thought. Where there are ‘impersonal’ elements in the latter process (such as the role of others or of events beyond Lyons’s control) I have given them their due alongside the ‘personal’.252 This task has proved fulsome and throughout the thesis background discussion has been necessarily minimised in the belief that a ‘life and times’ approach to this period would be superfluous.253 Given the argument that Lyons’s deep commitment to appeasement was based on his life- experiences and subjective reasoning, a biographical methodology that attempts to account for personality is especially appropriate to this study. The thesis seeks to offer some account of what Martin called ‘the real live man’,254 somewhere between the contemporaneous accounts of Keith Murdoch’s ‘Honest Joe’ the Labor martyr and Joynton Smith’s political ‘marionette’.255 As Day recognised in his recent study of Curtin, only a biographical study is able to do this, even if this search for the ‘whole man’ often produces only a partial rendering.256 Nevertheless, in its attempt to provide a rounded picture, the thesis employs the structure suggested by Dollard’s ‘seven criteria’ (themselves conscious of Lasswell’s analysis of political psychology), as expanded and amended by Davies.257 It has also employed Martin’s suggested ‘four foci’ for the same purpose.258 Whilst restrained in its use of what have been recently called ‘psychoanalytical ideas’, it has found them relevant to its account of Lyons’s psychological development and of his perceptions of the world, so important to appeasement studies.259 Whilst the thesis has attempted to avoid subjecting the reader to the ‘minutiae of …everyday existence’,260 much personal detail has been employed to gain a better understanding of the motivation and thinking behind a leading

252 Kershaw, Hitler, vol.1, xii. 253 Crick, 34, suggested that such an approach for this period was ‘absurd’. Joyce, 25, justified his ‘life and times’ approach to Griffith by the absence of a general history. 254 Martin, Menzies, Preface xii. 255 The image of ‘Honest Joe’ was cultivated in the Murdoch press after January 1931, although Murdoch’s king- making has been exaggerated; Hart, “Piper…”, 126; C. Lloyd, “Reporting Caucus: The press and Labor crises,” in True Believers, eds. J. Faulkner and S. Macintyre (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2001),184-5, 198-9; C. Lloyd, “The Rise and Fall of the United Australia Party” in Liberalism, ed. J. Nethercote, 141. On Murdoch and Lyons, D. Day, Chifley (Sydney: Harper Collins, 2001), 258; D. Whitington, The House Will Divide. A Review of Australian Federal Politics (Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1969), 73; D. Zwar. In Search of Keith Murdoch (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1980), 89-90. Smith’s Weekly cartoon, 23 November 1935, ‘Sir Keith Murdoch…plays with his marionettes’. 256 Day, Curtin, Preface x, in accord with Joyce, 25. He was attempting to address the concerns of Hasluck, Light, 117, who critically noted the absence of any attempt in Lee’s biography of Curtin to tackle the ‘whole man’. D. Kearns, “Angles of Vision,” in Telling Lives, the Biographer’s Art, ed. M. Pachter (Washington, D.C: New Republic, 1979), 91, expressed doubt about the possibility of realising the ‘dream’ of the ‘whole man’. vide also Joyce, 25. 257 Lasswell, passim. Dollard, in Davies, 110-11, urged the following; examine of the subject as a specimen in a cultural series; consider the body; stress the role of the family; show the learning of traits and attitudes; stress related character of experience from childhood to adulthood; specify the social situation and use a coherent, objective set of terms. Davies suggested additions to criteria 1 and 2 to map the subject’s political outlook and to specify his style of work. 258 A. Martin, “Elements in the Biography of Henry Parkes,” in Biographers at Work, eds. J. Walter and R. Nugent (Brisbane: Institute for Modern Biography, 1984), 11-15, lists four foci: Identity, Personality, Role and Outlook. 259 On this method, J. Brett, “Introduction,” in Political Lives, ed. J. Brett (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1997), vii ff. vide Chapter 1. On the importance of policy-makers’ perceptions, vide above; . Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 16; Meyers, “International paradigms…”: 56; Holsti, 122, 138; Hill, 10. 260 Ziegler, 226. 41 Australian appeaser and rearmer, even though conscious of the warning that it is ‘impossible’ to get into the mind of another.261 There are additional challenges in a work of this biographical nature, which include identifying the viewpoint of a particular individual and then isolating it from the thinking of others. There must also be some attempt to isolate and to gauge that person’s influence, alongside that of others upon him. In dealing with the first aspect, it is often straightforward to identify the views of Lyons the individual, but sometimes difficult to isolate the views of the private man from those of the prime minister, as the leader of government and its chief spokesman, especially since Lyons often allowed the two spheres to overlap ─ his individual world-view extended from private into public life and his political attitudes were built around the framework of personal values. While this is true of many political executives, it was especially so with this individual, whose political style was extremely sentimental, subjective and ‘personal’ to an extent that would be considered extraordinary today. Most political biographers, such as Martin, have made some attempt to separate the analysis of their subject ‘as man and politician’, although their methodology for doing so has remained unstated262 ─ there is no definitive way of separating these two spheres of individual operation in the sources, except where Lyons made it clear in which capacity he was communicating, but I have attempted to do so through careful documentary and linguistic analysis (as outlined below in the discussion on ‘official’ documents) paying particular attention to the language employed─ the use of the first -person pronoun (‘I’) alone will normally indicate personal views; other language will indicate a mixture of the personal and prime ministerial (except for private papers) and there will then be an attempt to distinguish between the two. In making my documentary analysis, Kitson Clark’s guide has chiefly been followed by posing a series of questions on the history, context, authorship, purpose, style, completeness, authenticity and bias of a source─ I have found the documentary drafts in the various collections (particularly the NAA) extremely useful in this process, as they often reveal the evolution of a particular source and the role of Lyons, if any, in its construction.263 Additionally, I have been conscious of Stanford’s suggestion that evaluating the purpose of the author(s) remains a vital key to understanding.264 It sometimes requires a speculative ‘leap of imagination’ to place oneself in the position of the author and to understand their purpose, or ‘reason’ as Cox calls it, but often the evidence is strong enough to do so with confidence265 ─ where it is not, I have declined to leap or identified ‘probable deductions’ through the use of ‘probably’ to identify something to which the evidence strongly points, whilst attempting to avoid

261 Crick, 29-30. 262 Martin, Menzies, Preface xi. 263 Kitson Clark, 64-5, 81; also Holsti, 133. 264 Stanford, 66. 265 Cox, 74. 42 the ‘likely guess’.266 These likely guesses have been identified in the text by the use of ‘perhaps’ and offer a suggested interpretation that is speculative but to which indirect evidence points267 ─ neither probable deductions nor likely guesses are to be given the status of ‘evident facts’, as suggested below.268 In following this process, I have also hoped to avoid confusing the views and actions of the individual (both private and public), as the primary focus of this thesis, with those of his government, as a secondary focus. The personal views of Lyons the individual are particularly isolated and revealed through private papers and verbal, extra-parliamentary public statements such as his many speeches and broadcasts. Some written public statements are also useful. It is not therefore often necessary to reconstruct his individual thinking by means of the ‘probable deductions’ referred to above, although the thesis may contain examples where I have done ─so these instances have been identified as speculative and cannot be given the same status as the instances where Lyons’s thinking was made clear in the sources. Fortunately the latter are more common than the former and there is little need to argue from the absence of evidence, a practice to which I might have inadvertently succumbed as a student of ancient history. There is sufficient correspondence between Joseph and Enid Lyons (and between them and others) in the various collections, especially those of the NLA, to gain an insight into the particular, personal views of this couple on many issues of the day─ from 1935 onwards those issues included foreign affairs to an increasing extent, an interest stimulated by their first overseas travel in that year. Their obsessions, such as peacemaking, are manifest in this private material, such as in the Enid Lyons travel diaries. They may be taken as private views except where Lyons indicated otherwise. The first couple was not reluctant to share these views with the public, priding themselves on doing so as a part of the political style referred to as ‘uprightness’.269 Thus, many of Lyons’s verbal public statements made in extra-parliamentary speeches and broadcasts candidly expressed and acknowledged their private views or mingled them with the stated views of the government─ linguistic analysis (as discussed below) and surrounding sources can normally disentangle the two where the differences are not stated; where not, these statements are assumed to be the prime ministerial view.270 After the tumult of early-1931, ‘Honest Joe’ cultivated the art of speaking his mind in public and gained a political reputation for that plain-speaking. Documentary drafts overwhelmingly reveal that Enid Lyons was truthful in her suggestion that it was her husband’s working style either to write his own speeches, or to monitor and alter the drafts of others to his own purposes, often wandering off a script and using his own rough notes─ accordingly, many

266 Kitson Clark, 59, inferences may be promoted to ‘evident fact’ and ‘probable deduction’ or remain a ‘likely guess’. Stanford, 59, on ‘probable conclusions’, whose probabilities reinforce one another. I have ‘employed ‘probably to identify ‘probable deductions’ in the text. 267 These speculative interpretations point to the need for future research in an area where there is not currently ‘adequate evidence’ to make a conclusion; Stanford, 63ff. 268 After Kitson Clark, 59, and his scale of ‘likely guess’-‘probable deduction’-‘evident fact’. 269 Lasswell, 29, which builds a reputation for rectitude and can become the subject’s ‘Life Myth’; Walter, 279. 270 vide below on official documents. 43 of the speeches are largely personal in nature and use first-person pronouns liberally; many others are more formal and prime ministerial and will use more objective language. The same methods will be used to distinguish these verbal sources as have been described below for written ‘official’ statements. This practice of close personal supervision was also often applied to written public statements such as those issued to the press, many of which were also very personal in their nature and language, despite their prime ministerial aegis, and therefore may also, in part, fall into the category of private views.271 Press conferences and interviews, of which there were many in this period, similarly provide frequent insights into often spontaneously expressed, personal views.272 In combination, these sources provide a useful chart of individual, personal belief, except where Lyons stated that he was reciting government policy, as he was at pains to do on a number of formal occasions particularly in the period 1932-1934, when his attention was chiefly away from external affairs and he was relatively circumspect and formal about such matters (as opposed to his outspokenness and idiosyncrasy after that time).273 From 1935 onwards external and defence concerns came to increasingly dominate both his private and public thinking and this is reflected in the richness of the recorded, verbal sources from that period─ again careful linguistic and documentary analysis can normally distinguish private statements from those made in his capacity as a government spokesman. These observations are not generally applicable to parliamentary sources which largely retained a formal character. Whilst Lyons preferred to air his personal views on the podium, he was generally more accepting of the prime minister’s role as governmental spokesman in the parliament from 1932 and he generally avoided personal statements in this forum ─ there was to be no repeat of his emotional, personal apologia in the parliament of 12-13 March 1931.274 His parliamentary statements on external and defence affairs tended to be restrained, bland, prime ministerial recitals of official policy and were usually as unenlightening as his cautious answers to parliamentary questions, although they sometimes contained important, revealing flashes of personal insight in interpolations that may be traced back to Lyons, especially during moments of crisis. This was particularly so in the period after mid-1937, when Lyons’s began to lose much sense of the distinction between his own world-view and government policy, as his predominance in the management of external affairs consolidated. Especially during 1938-39, there are occasional asides and inclusions in prime ministerial, parliamentary statements that are very

271 Enid Lyons to P. Hart, n.d., but c.1967, MS 9410/4, P.J. Hart Papers, NLA, Canberra. 272 Holsti, 134, on the ‘spontaneity’ of these unrehearsed situations. Lyons normally held twice-daily Canberra press conferences; G. Reid and M. Forrest. Australia’s Commonwealth Parliament, 1901-1988. Ten Perspectives (Melbourne: MUP, 1989), 452. vide above on the spontaneity of interviews. 273 Much of the material assembled in Chapters 1 & 2, from the period 1932-34, consequently exposes the views of the Lyons government, rather than that of Lyons the individual. This is not the case in Chapter 3 and following, where both elements are examined, with individual views the primary focus. 274 Lyons, CPD, vol.128, 229ff., 12-13 March 1931, when he withdrew himself from the ALP. 44 ‘personal’, first-person and quite revealing, buried amidst a plethora of official material. They are the more revealing because they are the exception in such parliamentary statements. Other written ‘official’ sources, however, cannot be as easily categorised as largely statements of government policy in the same way as these parliamentary ones. As the separation between the personal and prime ministerial was never complete with Lyons, even official, extra- parliamentary documents can provide an insight into personal views and some will be examined in this thesis that were marked ‘PERSONAL’ for good reason.275 They also offer clues to the sense of distance that sometimes existed between Lyons as prime minister and his colleagues. There are three, overlapping categories of such ‘official’ written documents, each of which uses language of varying degrees of collegiality, but all of which may contain evidence of an individual’s viewpoint ─ those of the first-person (‘I’, ‘we’) and those of the third-person. In the first, Lyons was generally cautious enough in the drafting, even when it was a collegial process (as it usually was in the first instance, unlike most of his speeches), to employ the singular first- person-pronoun ‘I’ where he sought to emphasise any particular personal and/or prime ministerial viewpoint, whether shared by the bulk of his colleagues or not ─ documents that employ this pronoun throughout (or in the appropriate part) may be taken absolutely as expressing the views of this individual in a private and/or official capacity. It can be difficult then to separate the personal from the prime ministerial in these instances, except where Lyons stated the capacity in which he was writing─ ‘I’ is taken as personal where confirmed as such by other largely ‘personal’ sources mentioned above (private papers, extra-parliamentary verbal statements etc.) and where the language employed and context of the document make the distinction clear; otherwise it is assumed to be a prime ministerial ‘I’, where Lyons was acting as a spokesman for the government, but expressing a particular point of view with which he especially concurred in so doing. Into the second category fall the documents that largely or in part employed the plural first-person-pronoun ‘we’, used to emphasise the collegiality of a view which Lyons shared with some proportion of his colleagues. Again, they may be taken as expressing in the appropriate part the views of this individual, either as a private man and/or in his capacity as prime minister─ given the deliberate collegiality of the expression, a prime ministerial viewpoint seems the more likely where Lyons did not specify the capacity in which he was writing, although often surrounding evidence and language analysis suggests that ‘we’ can also contain the expression of Lyons’s personal view. Through this category of document, Lyons sought to communicate an individual viewpoint within a broader collegial context that was acceptable to his colleagues. The third category is more problematic─ these are the official documents issued under the name of ‘the Commonwealth Government’ or some similar third-person collegial epithet.

275 Even though this epithet chiefly indicated that the messages contained therein were not for general circulation, they can also often contain ‘personal’ and confidential views. 45 Here, Lyons was primarily speaking as the head of government on behalf of others, a point emphasised by the choice of language ─ sometimes these prime ministerial items do not seem to express his personal view as indicated by surrounding sources and may be taken as the preferred expressions of the bulk of the other ministers (and sometimes drafted by them), even though issued under the name of ‘LYONS’ as prime minister. Even these documents, however, may contain a subsidiary paragraph or insertion that can be traced to Lyons’s hand and reveal a dissenting, individual, personal viewpoint. On other occasions, surrounding sources, the language and the origins of particular documents suggest that Lyons was in agreement in either a personal and/or prime ministerial capacity with what are stated to be the collective views of the ‘Commonwealth Government’ and hence the first person pronouns (‘I’, ‘we’) were used in parts of such communications ─ it is unclear under these circumstances why Lyons had then preferred to employ the collegial epithet in the main body of these communications, but the context of many of these documents suggests that he was often seeking to disguise dissension in his cabinet and/or reinforcing a particular point by offering the overall impression of consensus. Collegial documents of this third category can therefore still demonstrate the thinking of this individual (again as a private man and/or prime minister), when carefully examined in tandem with others sources and scrutinised for their origins according to the guides mentioned above. The overall language of any of these documents assists the process of evaluating broader meaning─ the careful construction of official documents by Lyons and others show how official language, carefully chosen to have an impact on the communication target, often helps to reveal the ‘real’ beliefs and attitudes behind a source; Holsti’s ‘representational’ and ‘instrumental’ models of language have been used in these documentary analyses.276 Having established the thinking, or world-view, of the individual with a satisfactory level of clarity, it is then necessary to distinguish this thinking from that of those around him and in so doing attempt to gauge his influence. Careful documentary analysis according to the guide of Kitson Clark and the others cited here, combined with the linguistic analysis discussed above, can together serve to distinguish Lyons’s thinking from that of his colleagues where such differences existed, particularly when much of the more private Lyons material is compared with official sources.277 Usually any differences over external policy were matters of degree rather than principle in the early years, for conciliation was widely accepted by the Lyons government as a guiding principle from the beginning, but Lyons demonstrated that his own commitment to broad appeasement, 1933-39, was unsurpassed in intensity and duration, although arguably matched by Casey and Page after 1934-35. Sometimes, however, there were real differences of principle and conscience within cabinet, particularly in the later years when conciliation came under strain and

276 Holsti, 133, differentiates between a ‘representational’ model (where verbal expressions are valid indicators of belief) and an ‘instrumental’ model (where selected official language may convey a deeper meaning). Kitson Clark, 65, on documentary language: ‘Am I quite sure that I know what the words used meant to the writer?’ 277 Kitson Clark, 64, lists the questions to be asked of a document, including, history, origins, completeness, authorship, circumstance and purpose of writing, sources of information and bias. 46 different perspectives on defence emerged. Should documentary and linguistic analysis distinguish any difference between the prime ministerial view and those of the bulk of his ministerial colleagues (either in cabinet or in other circumstances), the extent of Lyons’s influence on policy-making may then be exposed through examining subsequent policy adoption and implementation. Cabinets are rarely unanimous in their decision-making and the Lyons cabinets were noted for a personal disharmony that was generally considered held in check only by Lyons’s skill as a chairman.278 Where unanimity of opinion between prime minister-cabinet existed (or something close to a convergence of opinion between prime minister and the great bulk of his colleagues) and it was followed by the implementation of an agreed-upon policy, collegiality may be deduced. Lyons’s influence is, however, more measurable when his opinion was opposed to that of the bulk of his colleagues. If, for example, policy implementation was entirely contrary to his views (such as with Abyssinian sanctions, 1935-36), a prime ministerial bowing to consensus, or lack of authority, may be deduced; if implementation was entirely in accord with his own views and in opposition to those of the bulk of his colleagues (such as with voluntaryism, 1938- 39), prime ministerial influence and authority may be deduced. Where something between these two extremes occurred, with Lyons uncommitted or the cabinet divided, some level of collegiality has been assumed, unless the evidence is strong enough to suggest a personal role (such as with the Pacific Pact proposal, where Lyons largely followed his own interrupted agenda from 1935 to 1937 with little input from his colleagues). Similarly, if the evidence is not ‘adequate’ for conclusions of personal role or influence (such as with the 1934 eastern mission and the 1936 trade diversion episode, where other individuals played the prominent parts),279 some collegiality is assumed, except where it can be shown that the views of Lyons and like-minded colleagues over-rode those of any dissidents in subsequent policy implementation. Here again a certain level of prime ministerial influence may be deduced. The more prominent ministers of the Lyons governments included Latham, Bruce, Hughes, Pearce, Casey, Gullett, Parkhill, Page, Menzies and Street and it is often straightforward to determine which of Lyons’s colleagues was exercising a particular influence upon him at a particular point, for the sources reveal that he was frequently happy to endorse and subsequently to repeat their views, sometimes with acknowledgement and sometimes implying that they had originated from his own musings. In this manner, for example, it may be illustrated that all of the colleagues mentioned above played some part in the evolution of Lyons’s thought and in the policy formulation of the Lyons years; Latham, Casey, Bruce, Pearce, Page, Menzies and Hughes all contributed to external affairs and/or defence deliberations. Latham, as Lyons’s first Minister of External Affairs, introduced him to the practices of international relations and also served as a

278 Enid Lyons, Mister Prime Minister; The Times, 31 May 1935, 15, e; Cumpston, Bruce, 111; B. Stevens, “J.A. Lyons”: 5-8; Murray: 49; A. Reid, 359. 279 According to the principle of ‘adequate evidence’ (enough to satisfy a rational person); Stanford, 63ff. 47 defence lobbyist on several occasions; while Bruce, as High Commissioner in London (and representative at Geneva) from 1933 served an invaluable diplomatic function and proved to have important connections within the British services. This diplomatic function was complemented at home by the unofficial counsel of Casey, a Bruce protégé and man of some diplomatic experience, who acted as a go-between for Lyons and Bruce on the thought and intentions of the other, as well as playing an important role, as Treasurer, in the later rearmament programs.280 Pearce and Hughes, as ‘elder statesmen’, served as mentors in defence matters and contributed to policy formulation, additionally having some periodic input into matters of external policy. The impact of particular individuals waxed and waned in the years 1932-39, with perhaps only Casey and Bruce maintaining a consistently high level of influence, but the thesis will make some attempt through the type of documentary analysis mentioned above to gauge that of particular persons at particular times, including the influence of those outside the government, for Lyons was known to often utilise to such counsel.281 All of the above methods of distinguishing attitudes and of gauging influence are imperfect and sometimes arbitrary, but they provide some measure of both Lyons’s individual thinking and of his leverage within government, both of which are important aspects of any study of a world-view and its impact on policy. Finally, the thesis employs the ‘distinctive historical paradigm’ of linear, chronological discussion, accepting (after Aitkin and Ziegler) that this approach is an indispensable component of a work of this nature.282 Chronology is treated as the ‘spine’ of biographical study and ‘the key to causation’, although not at the expense of decision-making theory.283 Within the chronological framework, the thesis uses the ‘case-study approach’, suggested by Hill as a method for the study of foreign policy ─ an approach that calls for a detailed study of particular episodes, in sequential order, in order to form theories on patterns of political behaviour.284 It can also reveal biographical patterns although, like the biographical approach in general, the method has its weaknesses through providing only a partial account.285 Nevertheless, the crises of the Lyons period, from Manchuria in 1932 to Prague in 1939, are examined in detail to cast light on the evolution and application of Australian appeasement, as well as on the thinking and methods of one of its chief proponents.286 This allows for the observation of the subject in a variety of

280 Lyons’s Foreword to Casey, The World We Live In (1933), contained a complimentary introduction to Casey and the admiration was returned in the text. 281 The text will discuss the influence of those outside government such as A.C.V. Melbourne and F. Shedden. Pearce was critical of this prime ministerial practice; vide Chapter 1. 282 Hill, 9. Aitkin, 77-85; P. Ziegler, “Biography: The Narrative,” in Shaping Lives. Reflections on Biography, ed. I. Donaldson, P. Read and J. Walter (Canberra: ANU Humanities Research Centre, 1992), 230ff. vide Joyce, 16-17. 283 B. Tuchman, “Biography as a Prism of History,” in Telling Lives, the Biographer’s Art, ed. M. Pachter (Washington D.C: New Republic, 1979), 144. 284 Hill, 5ff. 285 J. Brett, “The Tasks of Political Biography,” in Political Lives, ed. by J. Brett (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1997), 13, calls for the analysis of such biographical ‘patterns and disruptions’. I am mindful ‘that [foreign policy] is more than simply a series of responses to international stimuli.’; quoted in Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 18. 286 The case-study approach has been applied in later chapters to Manchuria (1932-33); Abyssinia (1936-36); the Rhineland (1936); the Anschluss (1938); the first Czech crisis (1938) and the second (1939). 48 (usually stressful) situations287 ─ it was during these crises that the psychology of appeasement was the most exposed, as well as the ‘psychologic’ of its adherents, Lyons among them.288 The decisions made in such ‘non-routine’ situations often seemed ill-judged and self-serving in the light of subsequent months, but to an appeaser like the ‘Tame Tasmanian’, peacemaking was its own reward and, in the end, his sole consolation.289

Chapter 1: Cunctation in East Asia, January 1932−December 1933

‘The World’s most immediate need, I suggest, is to keep a clear head and a steady hand until order is evolved out of the present chaos…Mutual and international co-operation are being sought as the only way to peace…The solution of these problems demands a spirit of compromise, the suppression of national selfishness and the emergence of an outlook and spirit of world co-operation.’290 J.A. Lyons, 23 November 1933.

‘I have yet to meet an Australian who opposed Japan’s Manchurian policy or desired to see Japan out of Manchuria.’291 US Consul, Jay Moffat, 12 October 1935.

The political and personal background of Lyons to 1932− the eastern situation in 1932 −sanctions and consultation − the question of ‘Manchukuo’ − disarmament − defence and the Japanese threat, 1933 − the first rearmament program − conclusion: the end of cunctation.

It is argued that the nature of Australian foreign policy, 1932-39, is partly explained by an examination of the man who presided over it for, in the case of Lyons, the man and the policy were intimately bound: his personal and political traits were sharply reflected in Australian cunctation/appeasement. Accordingly, it is important to trace these traits, so as to understand the world-view that Lyons brought to the Lodge in January 1932. His conception of appeasement had its origins in earlier experiences, but the chief difficulty for this ‘consensus-builder’ would lie in the attempt to translate them into international relations, where they were arguably less applicable.292

The first external problem, Manchuria, existed from the beginning of his administration, but a diplomatically impotent Canberra could do little directly to address the issue, vital as it was

287 A practice advocated by Crick, 29-30. 288 Holsti, 120-1, on the rational fragility of decision-making made under extreme stress, during which the subject often resorts to ‘psychologic’, as opposed to ‘logic’. 289 ibid., 127. 290 J.A. Lyons’s contribution, “What Does the World Need Today?” Christian Science Monitor, 25th “Anniversary Progress” section, 23 November 1933. Other contributors, aside from FDR’s introduction, were less prominent and included a former French foreign minister (on Versailles revision); a former Spanish premier (on confidence); Lord Cecil, the former British disarmament ambassador (on disarmament) and Wang Ching-Wei, Chinese parliamentary president (on the suppression of aggressive nations). The journal was especially grateful for Lyons’s response; Agnes Isaacs, managing representative, to Lyons, 16 January 1934, CP103/19/55, NAA, Canberra. 291 Moffat to the State Department, Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, 1933-39 (Washington: US Government Printing Service, 1950), 1935, vol.3, 363-5, 12 October 1935. 292 The ‘consensus-builder’, or ‘diplomat’, is found in the taxonomy of Lasswell, 26. 49 to Australian security.293 What it could do was lobby at Whitehall, in the traditional Australian manner, and wait for some consequent British diplomatic activity. This was the course followed in the first two years, 1932-33 (the period of Australian cunctation), without much success. While Lyons was amongst those who successfully resisted the imposition of sanctions against Japan, he was arguably unable to interest Britain in any diplomatic solution of the eastern problem. Overall, his first forays into international affairs were disappointing: before 1933 was over Lyons was accordingly persuaded to discard passive cunctation in favour of a regional variety of the more active appeasement. The cunctation years were also those in which Lyons first concentrated on matters of defence and national security. Disarmament, one of the great post-war hopes, did not survive his first year in office. It was replaced, in 1933, by the first steps towards Australian rearmament, a process chiefly motivated by fear of the very power Lyons hoped London would conciliate─ Japan. That Lyons proved to be a rearmer, as well as an appeaser, has escaped the notice of many commentators: in time, rearmament would over-shadow his policy of conciliation.294 Whitehall’s diplomatic inactivity made the rearming process the more urgent by late-1933. It is argued that it was a process centred on Australian needs: Lyons, while conscious of the obvious military advantages of the imperial connection, became steadily convinced that local efforts ought to be the chief imperative, a priority his administration never abandoned, despite convenient rhetorical flourishes that often gave the opposite impression.295 I

By December 1931, it was widely acknowledged that the new Opposition Leader had a political reputation for placing conscience above party, the national interest above partisan politics, consensus over factional division and economic probity over repudiation (although to others he was simply a ‘Judas’).296 These putative political traits were matched by less controversial personal traits, on which friend and foe alike generally agreed─ ‘Honest Joe’ was accepted as being a modest, gentle, uxorious, family man. These perceptions also formed the basis of Lyons’s self-perception (his ‘identity’ or ‘life-myth’) and his power base was built on a

293 The Manchurian crisis (1932-33) provides a suitable case-study, after Hill, passim, of ‘cunctation’, not ‘appeasement’. ‘Manchuria’ was the term applied to this north-eastern area of China until 18 February 1932, when Japan announced the birth of the client-state ‘Manchukuo’; Documents on International Affairs, vol. 1, 1932, no.29, London, 1933. This thesis employs contemporaneous terms; ‘Manchuria’ as a geographical term and ‘Manchukuo’ to describe the new polity. 294 It is argued that rearmament over-shadowed eastern appeasement by March 1938 (vide Chapter 6) and European appeasement by later in that year (vide Chapter 7). 295 McCarthy’s assertion, “Singapore and Australian Defence…”: 180, that the UAP was bound to the Singapore strategy by its simplicity and was incapable of ‘serious critical thought’ is disputed below and passim. 296 Day, Curtin, 334. vide interjections at the time of Lyons’s March 1931 resignation speech; CPD, vol.128, 229ff., 12- 13 March 1931. E.J. Holloway in his 1966 Mister Prime Minister interview still referred to Lyons as a ‘traitor’. Herald, 7 May 1931, 7, g, quotes Frank Brennan MHR that, ‘Mr. Lyons was a type with something of a Judas Iscariot in him.’ vide J. Faulkner, “Splits: Consequences and lessons,” in True Believers, eds. J. Faulkner and S. Macintyre (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2001), 208ff; also J. Iremonger, “Rats,” in ibid., 268ff. To Keith Murdoch, Lyons represented ‘Plain Politics for Honest People.’; Herald, editorial, 3 December 1931, 6, c-d. 50 reputation for ‘rectitude’.297 Such qualities did not suddenly appear on the hustings in late- 1931; they had evolved since childhood. Since Lyons brought them to bear in his considerations of foreign and defence policy after January 1932, it is accordingly necessary to examine their origins and evolution in the period 1879-1931 (albeit briefly) and to make some comment on ‘the making of the man’ and the ‘process of becoming’.298 The first period (childhood and youth, 1879-1909) indicated his sense of ethnic and religious identity, an enduring gentleness and a sense of prudence. The second (early political career, 1909-23) indicated further gentleness and a related abhorrence of war, as well a move towards the political centre. The third (premiership, 1923-28) indicated his consequent belief in consensus and conciliation, qualities that afforded him a level of political success he had not previously enjoyed. These first two elements were prominent aspects of Lyons’s fourth period (his federal Labor career, 1929-31) also marked in its final year with a sense of political rectitude and destiny. All of them significantly impacted on Lyons’s policy-making in subsequent years. The first period (1879-1909), gave the child and youth his sense of ethnic and religious identity.299 The young Tasmanian became conscious of the Irish-Catholic blood of his grandparents, as well as that of his Kildare-born mother, Ellen Carroll, an identity reinforced by her radicalising childhood tales of Irish history and politics.300 The mother also inculcated in her son a life-long admiration for Gladstone ─ Enid Lyons called it ‘hero -worship’ and its intensity could account for elements of Gladstonian morality and liberal tradition (including ‘pacificism’) evident in Lyons’s world view and foreign policy.301 Although the son subsequently made no attempt to conceal his mother’s Irish radicalism,302 he was more circumspect about the family’s catholicism, a faith that can only have contributed to his sense of difference (and inclination towards personal tolerance) in a society that was the most Anglo-Protestant of all the Australian colonies.303 His liberal catholicism and tolerance later disposed him to take a more sympathetic

297 Lasswell, 29, on ‘rectitude’ as basis for power. Edel’s concept of ‘life-myth’ is discussed in Walter, 279. Martin, “Elements…,” 11-15, referred to the subject’s self-perception as ‘identity’. 298 It has been necessary to confine a discussion of formative influences to this preliminary chapter, although conscious of Brett’s warning about doing so; Brett, “The Tasks of Political Biography,” 11. The quotes and italics are from Martin, Menzies, Preface xii. 299 Childhood influences are important, as suggested by Dollard in Davies, 110-13, criteria 3-5; Laswell, 50. 300 Enid Lyons So We, 45; White, Joseph Lyons, 21; Whitington, Twelfth, 64. Such tales could only have been anti-British in sentiment. It has been suggested that the members of the Lyons household in the 1880s were more interested in Anglo- Irish politics than in the politics of their own colony; Personal conversation with Dr. Richard Davis, University of Tasmania, April 1992. Enid Lyons, So We, 56, on his interest in local politics awakening only later. 301 Gladstone as boyhood hero; Enid Lyons, So We, 45; K. White, A Political Love Story (Ringwood: Penguin, 1987), 8. His appeasement owes something to the principles of foreign policy espoused by Gladstone in 1879 in his Third Midlothian campaign (good government at home; preserve blessings of peace; maintain balance of power; avoid needless entanglements; acknowledge equal rights of all; be inspired by freedom); K. Bourne, The Foreign Policy of Victorian England 1830-1902 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970), 420ff.; R. Jenkins, Gladstone (London: Macmillan, 1995), 421ff. vide Meyers, “British Imperial Interests…,” in Fascist Challenge, 340-1, and his discussion of the roots of appeasement. Bentley, 121-2, on ‘pacificism’. 302 Hart, “J.A. Lyons,” 5, quoting Lyons on his mother’s Irish nationalism in Herald, 20 November 1930. vide Chapter 3 on his own 1935 Irish visit. 303 Irish Catholics constituted fewer than 4 per cent of the Tasmanian population in those years, whereas on the mainland their per capita percentage was nearly five times that figure; Sells, Enid Lyons, 29, citing M. Lake, A Divided Society: Tasmania during World War 1 (Melbourne: MUP, 1975). Clive Turnbull’s obituary suggested that Lyons remained ‘Irish, Catholic and anti-conscriptionist’ all his life; Herald, 8 April 1939, 4, b-d. 51 view of certain disgruntled politicians and powers (such as Mussolini and catholic Italy) than would otherwise have been expected from the leader of a conservative, overwhelmingly protestant political party (the UAP).304 Supplementing this nurturing of a young Irish radical was Lyons’s consciousness that he was the son of a native-born father, Michael.305 It was this ‘native’ paternity that mattered most to the adult and both his foreign and defence policies contained important ‘native’ elements perhaps stemming from this childhood consciousness. Lyons never described himself as ‘Irish’ and was studiously unsentimental about this connection.306 It was no coincidence that he used the occasion of his only visit to the old country, in 1935, to remind his listeners that Australia was his ‘homeland’.307 He never described any part of the United Kingdom as ‘home’,308 only rarely referred to himself as ‘British’, and then meaning a member of the broader imperial family. Rather, he habitually termed himself ‘Australian’.309 Both elements of his heritage, Irish-Catholic and native, contributed to the formation of a world-view that was ambivalent towards some elements in British institutions and cautious about aspects of British policy where it was felt to be insensitive towards Australian needs.310 Lyons, unlike Menzies, was never a ‘natural’ or even ‘ideological’ imperialist, although he was generally a pragmatic one.311 He retained his caution throughout, although it did not generally express itself in hostility to the concept of Empire per se, aside from some youthful hesitancy about it during the Boer War (a sentiment shared by Hughes).312

304 On his religious tolerance, especially after an anti-Catholic demonstration in Edinburgh on 10 June 1935; Enid Lyons, So We, 234-5; Lyons interview, America: A Catholic Review of the Week, 27 July 1935, vol.53, no. 16 (27 July 1935): 397-9; Enid Lyons Diary, 28 February 1935, MS 4853/30, shipboard conversation with Father Kingen. vide Chapter 4 on Anglo-Saxon catholic views of Mussolini. 305 His father, Michael Lyons, also of Irish parentage, was born in Tasmania on the Woolnorth estate of the Van Diemen’s Land Co.; White, Joseph Lyons, 20; T. Luscombe, “Two Prime Ministers: James Scullin and Joseph Lyons,” in Builders and Crusaders (Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1967), 156-74. ADB, vol.10, 184; Tsokhas, “Tradition, Fantasy and Britishness…”: 15; C. Hughes, Mr. Prime Minister, 87, and the Lyons’s obituary in The Times, 8 April 1939, 14, b, are all incorrect on the father’s birthplace. Lyons meticulously corrected incorrect perceptions of all-Irish parentage; J.A. Lyons to Rev. Heney, Derry, Eire, 18 February 1932, CP 103/19/23, NAA, Canberra. 306 This was especially so during his sole visit to Ireland, 21-27 April 1935. White, Love Story, 172, is incorrect to suggest that there were two visits. There was only a single private visit, 21-27 April 1935, with some official receptions. Lyons was keen to stress its ‘unofficial’ nature; Irish Times, 24 April 1935, 7, c. Enid Lyons stressed that the trip was an exercise in tracing family roots; Enid Lyons, audio interview with A. Clarke, c.1974-5, Tape 2. The Times, 23 April 1935, 12, d, stressed it as a ‘Holiday Tour’. Luscombe, 171, on this tour, especially to Galway. 307 Irish Times, 26 April 1935, 8, a, during his address at the Belfast Cenotaph on Anzac Day. Enid Lyons also referred to Tasmania as ‘home’; Enid Lyons Diary, 21 March 1935, MS 4853/30. 308 Disappointment with England was a salient feature of Enid Lyons’s 1935 Travel Diaries from their arrival at Dover onwards, ibid. This was in contrast with Menzies, who referred to their destination as ‘Mecca’ and the ‘gateway to high romance and endeavour’, Menzies Diary A, 21 March 1935, Menzies Papers, MS 4936/13/397, NLA, Canberra. Martin, Menzies, 148, observed the differences between the diarists without making any significant comment. On Menzies’s enduring fascination with Britain, vide J. Brett, intro. and ed., “Robert Menzies and England,” in Political Lives (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1997), 71-84. Even he, however, was conscious of a sense of difference between Australia and Britain; Tsokhas, “Tradition, Fantasy and Britishness…”: 23-4. 309 There was no necessary conflict in this duality, as examined in Meaney, “Britishness and Australian Identity”: passim, although his ‘Irishness’ presented a problem for Lyons when he assumed the leadership of the conservatives. 310 Tsokhas, “Tradition, Fantasy and Britishness…”: 16-17, on this ambivalence. 311 The first two terms are used by Murray: 50. 312 Lyons was amongst the liberals, Irish Nationalists and socialists opposed to the war against the Boers; D. Nash, “The Boer War and its Humanitarian Critics.” History Today, vol.49, no.6 (June 1999): 42-9, which discusses the roots of appeasement; T. Pakenham, The Boer War (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997), 465. He later recalled his ‘fears’ 52 Lyons’s childhood and youth also gave him a gentleness that was never to leave him and which contributed to his ready acceptance of conciliation. Its origins are elusive, but the close maternal connection may be relevant, given Brett’s view of the intensity of childhood experience in shaping the political personality.313 One explanation offered was that Lyons’s early private life was ‘always in the world of women’ (first the mother and then the formative maiden-aunts), in an atmosphere in which qualities such as gentleness, charity and brotherly love were stressed over class-consciousness and violence.314 A childhood incident ought not to be overlooked in accounting for this gentleness, despite its anecdotal nature: the schoolboy was said to have witnessed the aftermath of the fall of a cow from the great height of ‘the Nut’ at Stanley. This gruesome sight had its psychological impact and in later years his wife recalled: ‘He could never again bear the sight of blood and never again could he see pain of any kind unmoved. He had sympathy for every living creature.’315 Time and politics may have diluted this gentleness, but it remained characteristic of Lyons until his death and an important factor in any consideration of his peacemaking quest through appeasement.

Whatever influence the father lacked in the formation of the other character traits of his son, he certainly contributed to his sense of prudence through the family disaster of November 1887.316 The resulting poverty triggered Laswell’s ‘compensatory response’ and made Lyons into an ambitious young man.317 It also gave him a lasting sense of economic prudence, playing a part in his assumption of the mantle of ‘economic manager’: ‘I learned then what it is to suffer, what it is like to be poor.’318 The experiences of the boy influenced the behaviour of the politician, making him fiscally cautious and determined to avoid similar trauma in other families.319 Later, this sense of calm and steady economic management was arguably translated into considerations of international relations, where Lyons readily accepted the ‘mercantile’ concept of appeasement with its desire for negotiation in pursuit of a middle point of overlapping interests.320 In the second period of his life (1909-23), Lyons further evolved traits relevant to a study of international relations. The Irish radicalism, such as it was, was moderated by the translation to

about British policy at that time; Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, fourth meeting, 23 May 1935, A981 IMP135, NAA, Canberra, vide Chapter 3. Meaney, Search, 47, on Hughes’s and the Boer War. 313 J. Brett, “Robert Menzies: Psychobiography and the Public Man,” in Tracing Past Lives. The Writing of Historical Biography, ed. R. Broome (Melbourne: History Institute Victoria Inc., 1995), 29. 314 Clark, 263; Whitington, Twelfth, 65. 315 G. Souter, Acts of Parliament (Melbourne: MUP 1988), 289; Enid Lyons, So We, 53. This is far removed from the unlikely picture found in Murray: 49, where Lyons is depicted as shooting rabbits in Canberra before dinner. 316 Lyons was alienated from his father at the age of 8, when Michael Lyons lost the family’s savings at the 1887 Melbourne Cup, White, Joseph Lyons, 22, suggests foul play; ADB, vol.10, 184. Whitington, Twelfth, 64, has the wrong name for the fated horse. The family never recovered financially or emotionally. 317 Laswell, 50, on economic deprivation eliciting compensatory responses; 46, on emotional deprivation. Whitington, Twelfth, 158-9; Grattan, Prime Ministers, 14 and footnote 24, referring to Iremonger’s study of the fractured childhoods of British PMs. 318 Lyons speech in Adelaide, 9 April 1931, in White, Joseph Lyons, 128. 319 A. Reid, 359, described him as ‘conscious of Depression hardships’. 320 Meyers, “British Imperial Interests…,” in Fascist Challenge, eds. L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen, 340-1, quotes Harold Nicolson on appeasement being a concept appealing to the ‘mercantile or shop-keeper’ set of mind. Meyers, “International paradigms…”: 48. 53 Tasmanian parliamentarianism (in 1909), his elevation to ministerial status (in 1914) and his marriage in the following year.321 It would be an error, however, to suggest that it had disappeared, but gentleness and moderation were now the predominant factors, as the first steps were taken in the transition from ‘Irish radical to bourgeois nationalist’.322 As Minister of Education, for instance, Lyons preferred to destroy convict records ‘because why should we persist in reminding ourselves of such a past’.323 This purblindness was later extended to other distasteful, international examples of brutality. Exercising power for the first time, Lyons found that he preferred reconciliation to revenge and that it was politically expedient to set aside old animosities in favour of turning-the-other-cheek ─ in March 1916, for example, he praised the work of the recently removed departmental director, W. Neale, despite the fact that this man had notably persecuted a number of outspoken teachers (including Lyons himself), a factor later thought to be instrumental in his taking the chance of politics.324 He favoured the olive branch over the bludgeon from this time onwards, ready to admit good in others wherever he could discern it and often where he could not.

The gentleness was challenged by the stresses of the Great War, but not dislodged. The conflict only strengthened his abhorrence of violence, although he had not personally experienced it ─ Lyons shared the status of non-combatant with many other future leading appeasers.325 By 1916, for example, although he viewed the Irish Easter rebels as ‘heroes’, he regarded them as ‘misguided’ in their preference for arms over negotiation.326 A growing antipathy to war was also evident during the conscription debates (1916-17), which also did much to keep alive Lyons’s sense of ethnic identity.327 In this period, he proved himself too gentle a man to contemplate

321 ADB, vol.10, 184, for the new Labor MHA’s concern for education and the small-farmer. He became a minister under Earle. 322 Tsokhas, “Tradition, Fantasy and Britishness…”: 15. 323 Lyons to Enid Burnell, 30 October 1914, Enid Lyons Papers, MS 4852/29; Robson, History, 288, contains an incorrect reference. Reminders of the convict system were ubiquitous in Tasmania; Enid Lyons, My Life (Melbourne: Herald and Weekly Times, n.d., c.1949), 16, related her contact with an elector, the son of convict parents. Young Tasmanian social reformers of this period were disgusted by the convict past and looked to ‘a better world’; Enid Lyons, The Role of the Christian Moralist in Present Day Australia (Hobart: Adult Education Board, 1973), 4. 324 Lyons Launceston speech, Examiner, 24 March 1916, 7, a-c. Lyons left the Education Department under a cloud in 1909. His claims of victimization were not unjustified, pace Whitington, Twelfth, 66, vide Enid Lyons, So We, 27-8. On the vindictiveness of Neale after 1905; D. Phillips, Making More Adequate Provision (Hobart: Education Department, 1985), Chapter 2, passim and 98. J.A. Guy, a later UAP associate and former Lyons deputy premier, thought Neale’s persecution as the most important factor in Lyons’s ‘politicization’; quoted in D. Snowden, “1921-1941,” in Labor in Lyons: The Wilmot-Lyons Story to Celebrate the Labor Centenary 1891-1991 (Hobart: Lyons ALP Electoral Council, 1991), 12; C. Hughes, Mr. Prime Minister, 87, 90. 325 Roberts, Holy Fox, 50; A. Roberts, Eminent Churchillians (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1994), 12. The other chief Australian appeasers (Latham, Pearce and Menzies) were also non-combatants. 326 ADB, vol.10, 185. Hart, “J.A. Lyons,” 17, quoting Lyons still being in favour of (Gladstonian) Home Rule, Daily Post, 21 November 1916. 327 Personal conversation with Dr. Richard Davis, University of Tasmania, April 1992. Lyons, now Opposition Leader, had earlier accepted the vice-presidency of the Hobart branch of the United Irish League. M. Lake, “John Earle and the Concept of the ‘Labor Rat’.” Labour History, no.33 (November 1977): 35, thought the 1916 party split precluded another more ‘logical’ one that would have left Lyons and Earle, as moderates, on the same side. On the ‘Irish’ element in the 1916-17 debates; Robson, History, vol.2, 355; A. Gilbert, “The Conscription Referenda, 1916-17: The Impact of the Irish Crisis.” Historical Studies, vol.14, no.53 (October 1969): 54-72; R. Davis, “Tasmania,” in Labour in Politics, ed. D. Murphy (St.Lucia: UofQ Press, 1975), 429. Tsokhas, “Tradition, Fantasy and Britishness…”: 16, underestimates the sectarianism of this period. 54 forcing others to take life.328 Lyons remained proud of his principled stance and obdurately refused to be shifted towards compulsion even two decades later.329 Conscription became for him the definitive matter of individual conscience.

Lyons shift towards the political centre was aided by his new wife. The Dollard/Davies suggestion that a change in political style is often founded on changes in personal life is relevant here, given Lyons’s marriage and ever-increasing family.330 The centre of that new family, Enid Burnell, was a formidable moderating influence. Like her husband, she had a native-born parent and an ‘Australian’ outlook.331 Her independence and force of will, both important factors in Lyons’s later policy-making, were evident from the beginning.332 So too was his reliance on her counsel, when he asked in 1914 for ‘nothing more than to live my life in your service’.333 Even before their marriage, Lyons the parliamentarian and minister was prepared to accept advice from a young woman half his age and with no political experience, for in the same letter he wrote: ‘You have wisdom far beyond your years, in fact that is one of the facts that draw [sic] me to you.’334 This uxorious attitude extended into his years at the Lodge, when his wife’s advice remained an important influence on him335 ─ by her own admission, she was the first person he turned to in times of political stress, a claim supported in the sources.336

Amidst the Great War, this emerging political partnership turned its attention to matters of defence. Mrs. Lyons moved an amendment to a motion at the May 1918 state party conference in Hobart to the effect that Australia ought not to become involved in ‘any war without a referendum’, tempered by the proviso ‘unless Australia be directly attacked’.337 These amendments expressed the defence outlook maintained by herself and her husband for the next two decades ─ pacificistic and anti -militaristic, yet tempered with the realisation that Australia may need to fight for her self-preservation and must, therefore, be prepared. Their outlook was

328 Daily Post, 19 November 1917, 8, in Hart, “J.A. Lyons,” 13; similarly in Hart, “Tasmanian Labour Leader,” 36. 329 vide Chapters 5 and 7 on the conscription debates, 1937-39. 330 Dollard, criterion 4 in Davies, passim, criterion 4b. Clark, 263, suggested that Lyons had ‘changed the apron strings of his aunts for the apron strings of his wife’. 331 White, Joseph Lyons, Chapter 5, on Enid Lyons’s Devon-Cornish, Methodist ancestry and family background. 332 D. Langmore, Prime Ministers’ Wives. The public and private lives of ten Australian women (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble, 1992), 83; Enid Lyons, So We, 73, where she insisted that her conversion to Catholicism had been the result of inner struggle and determination, not the mandatory condition of a ‘mixed’ marriage. 333 Joseph Lyons to Enid Burnell, 13 October 1914, Enid Lyons Papers, MS 4852/29, NLA, Canberra, also quoted in Langmore, Wives, 80 and White, Joseph Lyons, 16. Their correspondence often contained similar sentiments, for example in Enid Lyons, So We, 97 where he assures his wife that he ‘worships’ her. 334 Lyons to Enid Burnell, 13 October 1914, also quoted in Sells, “Enid Lyons,” 56. He had already offered her a position as his private secretary, White, Joseph Lyons, 57-8; Joseph Lyons to Eliza Burnell, 21 November 1914, Enid Lyons Papers, MS 4852/29, NLA, Canberra. 335 His uxoriousness was noted in a joint-interview with the Premier and his wife; Table Talk, “Prominent Personalities”, 7 July 1927. In later years she was keen to down-play the unmeasurable influence she had enjoyed; Enid Lyons, My Life, 27. Sells, “Enid Lyons,” 85-6, discusses her role in their partnership. Enid Lyons could still be explicit about the role of women in influencing their menfolk, such as in her wartime broadcast, “Can Women Prevent War?” n.d. c.1940, Enid Lyons Papers, MS 4852/25, NLA, Canberra. 336 Enid Lyons, audio interview with A.Clarke, Tape 2, says that he always wanted to speak to her when any issue was worrying or depressing him. This was in contradiction of the impression left by her memoirs. 337 The original motion referred only to a ‘European’ war; White, Love Story, 81; Lake, Divided Society, 141. By 1923, federal Labor had accepted these premises in its defence policy; Hasluck Government, 20. 55 not ‘isolationist’, but it was clearly ‘Australian’ rather than ‘imperial’ in its priorities, if not necessarily ‘anti-imperialistic’.338 It was entirely in accord with Gladstone’s injunction to ‘avoid needless and entangling engagements’, one of such the war of 1914-18 appeared to have been to many on the left to in the following decade.339 These essentially ‘Labor’ views remained in their ideological baggage following their departure from the ALP in March 1931.

The most revealing political episode of Lyons’s life before the Lodge was the third period (October 1923-June 1928), his Tasmanian premiership.340 The immediate post-war years were especially marked by the drift towards the political centre and he was able, after 1923, to implement a new, consensus approach to politics with a success that encouraged him to transfer it to the federal sphere after 1929.341 The restoration of economic stability in Tasmania in these years gave Lyons a sense of political righteousness and self-confidence that he also transferred to Canberra and later onto the international stage, where consensus was transformed into appeasement.342 Before assuming office in 1923, Lyons had indicated an interest in a ‘third way’ between socialism and capitalism: ‘New methods must be devised for the new day.’343 These new methods were to exclude those of the revolutionary left (in the ‘twenties) and later of the extreme right (in the ‘thirties) for, whatever his later, ‘fellow traveller’ interest in fascism, Lyons never suggested that such methods were appropriate to Australian conditions.344 His ‘third way’ was one of consensus and moderation. Given the penurious condition of Tasmania in 1923 there seemed little alternative. Lyons accordingly initiated a practice, followed until the end of his career, of calling together representatives from diverse interest groups for consultation: ‘He used to get together representatives of every section of the kind of working community…to get them together, to get a discussion,’ noted Enid Lyons in 1972, recalling that he later did the same as

338 They adopted the typical Labor attitude of the time and later, which distinguished between wars of ‘aggression’ and those of ‘self-preservation’; Hasluck, Government, 29. Similar views were held in the federal party at this time, vide J. Hirst, “Australian defence and conscription: a reassessment (part I).” Australian Historical Studies, vol.25, no.101 (October 1993): 627, for Scullin’s view at the 1918 national conference. Tsokhas, “Tradition, Fantasy and Britishness…”: on Lyons’s transition to “Australian nationalism and anti-imperialism”. 339 Gladstone, Third Midlothian speech, point 4, Bourne, 420ff. They appeared to share the Labor, Marxist analysis of the causes of war; E. Andrews “Australian Labour and Foreign Policy 1935-39,” in Towards a Foreign Policy: 1914-1941, ed. W. Hudson (Melbourne: Cassell, 1967), 126, and “Australian Labour and Foreign Policy 1935-39. The Retreat from Isolationism.” Labour History, no.9 (November 1965): 23. 340 Even though Lyons lost the May 1928 election, he had gained a majority of the votes cast and had returned a Tasmanian Labor government for the first time in June 1925. 341 Lyons remains the only post-Federation ‘premier’ to have reached the prime ministership (George Reid, PM, 1904- 05, was the colonial chief minister of NSW, 1894-99); pace NAA. 14 November 2002. “Australia’s Prime Ministers”: Joseph Lyons. Available [Online]: http:/ /primeministers. naa.gov.au/ [14 November 2002]. 342 Following his premiership, Lyons’s political outlook was largely set as a ‘restorer of order’, after Lasswell, 22, 29. I have followed the suggestions of Davies, 111-12, where he urged amendments to Dollard’s 4th and 6th criteria to chart the subject’s political outlook. 343 World, 14 March 1921, 4, also quoted in Hart, “Tasmanian Labour Leader,” 37. Lyons’s library included the 1932 volume by Oscar Neufang, Capitalism and Communism: A Reconciliation; Home Hill, Personal visit, 21 December 1999. Such an interest continues in contemporary socialist circles; N. Farrell, Mussolini: A New Life (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2003), xvii-xviii. 344 He rejected Bolshevism for its violence and unsuitability; Lake, Divided Society, 183. On Lyons and fascism; Lyons to W. Maher, 7 November 1932, CP 30/3, M Part 2/10, NAA, Canberra, where he stated his belief that the legislative system was capable of solving Australia’s problems ─ yet he falls into the category of sympathetic ‘fellow traveller’, as applied to some British conservatives; R. Griffiths, Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany 1933-9 (London: Constable, 1980), passim. 56 Prime Minister.345 She had earlier recalled that his ‘unorthodox idea of calling together all sections of the community, regardless of political affiliations’ had been a great political success with business.346 It was a procedure of ‘encouraging people to come…with the best idea that is in them and help with the job’, according to Lyons’s later description, after which he (as chairman) would ‘take the ideas and transform them into something bigger and more comprehensive’.347 These practices were judged as expedient and successful; Lyons repeated them in his foreign and defence policies after 1931. That they were similar to those impressed by Bruce upon any future prime minister could only have reinforced their effectiveness in Lyons’s mind, assuming that he was conscious of his predecessor’s views, for it will be seen that he respected Bruce’s counsel.348

Premier Lyons began to see himself as above party in these years, to the chagrin of the party machine.349 The opposition leader, McPhee, might have been a ‘colleague and mate’, but Lyons extended that description to few on the left of Labor by June 1928.350 He alone was responsible for this alienation, given formulation of the principle of ‘Deloraining’, which he unveiled in a ‘studiously moderate’ election policy speech given in that town in May 1925.351 Here Lyons asserted that he governed for all and would no longer entertain any political initiative not previously placed before the electors, nor would he diverge from any electoral promise so made.352 This attitude constituted the effective termination of Lyons’s domestic radicalism and completed his shift to a centrist platform elevated, in his view, above the tussle of partisan politics. He adhered to these Olympian principles thereafter: ‘That was one of the things about which he was always adamant, he would not depart from anything he had promised in an election.’353

Despite a narrow electoral defeat in May 1928 and some ungrateful observations from his new conservative friends, Lyons remained convinced of the correctness of consensus politics.354 His ‘Cheerful Philosophy’ was, he said, that the welfare of state, not party, was foremost─ he

345 Enid Lyons audio interview with M. Pratt, 25. This practice was imitated by R.J.L. Hawke in the period 1983-85. 346 Enid Lyons, My Life, 21. She suggested in So We, 121, that business recognised Lyons as a sincere and capable leader, who would not govern for ‘narrow, sectional interests’. Her suggestion is supported by the response of Tasmanian conservatives, who urged Lyons to defect and to form a non-party administration, R. McMullin, The Light on the Hill (Melbourne: OUP, 1991) 137; Mercury, 11 February 1928, quoted in Hart, “Tasmanian Labour Leader”, 41. 347 Hart, “Piper...”, 138-9, quoting correspondence with Lyons in 1932-33 from his Tasmanian associates, Medwin and Broinowski, analysing his Tasmanian consensual practices and advocating similar practices federally. 348 A. Reid, 359; vide Introduction. 349 Including the visiting Queensland premier, E. Theodore, in 1925, who recommended a ‘gerrymander’ to a horrified Lyons, Enid Lyons audio interview with M. Pratt, 57. Whitington, Twelfth, 70, suggests that Lyons’s 1931 defection was in part due to a reluctance to sit in cabinet with a ‘tainted’ Theodore. Enid Lyons’s anecdote supports this idea. 350 McMullin, Light, 136; ADB, vol.10, 185. In 1931, Lyons would similarly refer to his new Nationalist associates as ‘my mates’; Argus, 14 April 1931, 7, h. 351 R. Davis, Eighty Years Labor: the ALP in Tasmania 1903-83 (Hobart: Sassafras Books and the History Department, University of Tasmania, 1983), 19-20; Snowden, 25. Deloraine, the largest town in his Wilmot electorate, had been Lyons’s political base for much of his career. This view of the parliamentary free agent was in accord with his rejection of the concept of the One Big Union in 1919; Lake, Divided Society, 180; Davis, Eighty Years, 15. 352 McMullin, Light, 136, cites the example of his opposition to the 44-hour week on these grounds. 353 Enid Lyons audio interview with M. Pratt, audio interview, 68. 354 The ALP won a majority of votes cast in the state election of 30 May 1928. The Mercury, editorial, 14 June 1928, 8, b, thought the state’s economic position now worse than in 1923. 57 bore no grudges.355 This affability and lack of rancour, appropriate to the local politics of a small, homogeneous society, was later to prove unsuited to the larger arena of international relations. Immodestly describing his administration as having the best record of any Tasmanian government, Lyons was likely to have felt that his achievements had been built in spite of his party detractors and were a testament to the force of his personality.356 This psychological factor assumed great importance in his later political development.357 The Lyons of the future would often prove himself no more malleable in the face of federal ALP, UAP or cabinet disaffection than he had been to that within Tasmanian Labor, despite any contradictory profession of consensus. He remained convinced after 1928 that he could perform the tasks before him more effectively than other contenders, including the task of peacemaking, 1932-39. Lyons had not been alone in his self-confident use of power, as his wife had been ‘half the Premier of Tasmania’:358 this formidable political partnership was now ready for bigger things. That she was likely to remain his chief adviser was implied in June 1928: ‘Many decisions which have come from me have come only after consultation with her.’359

The retiring premier gave two additional indications of likely future political behaviour. The first was his sound sense of prudent, economic management and the second was evidence of a highly strung personality. His pride in the economic recovery of Tasmania was understandable given that in March 1923 he had suggested the need for ‘a miracle’.360 That miracle had been consensus politics,361 through which he sought and implemented the advice of professional economists (the most outstanding of whom was L.F. Giblin).362 Lyons had found, however, that leadership came at a personal cost. He had been close to nervous exhaustion during the 1916-17 ructions,363 and now, in 1928, looked forward to ‘having a rest’.364 Always highly-strung, he failed to resolve the tensions between his desire to exercise power and the physical and emotional toll it exacted.365 Although physically durable, he had apparently inherited his father’s nervous temperament and in later years Lyons suffered nervous exhaustion and ‘breakdown’ when

355 “Mr. Lyons’s Cheerful Philosophy”, Mercury, 8 June 1928, 3, e; Robson, History, 401. 356 Davis, Eighty Years, 19, makes this suggestion about Lyons’s appointment in 1923. It also applies to his later achievements as premier, vide M. Denholm, “A Study in Achievement: the Lyons Tasmanian government 1923-28 and the career of J. Lyons” (M.A., University of Tasmania, 1973), 86. 357 It demonstrates the relevance of Brett’s suggestion that psychoanalytical theory has a place in political biography; J. Brett, “Introduction,” in Political Lives, ed. J. Brett, xv. 358 C. Bradish, Table Talk, “Prominent Personalities”, 7 July 1927. 359 White, Joseph Lyons, 104, quoting Lyons in June 1928. He also praised her intellect and sagacity. 360 Lyons, 28 March 1923; Snowden, 24. 361 Enid Lyons, My Life, 21. 362 Lyons’s political transgressions never alienated him from Giblin, a sometime fellow Tasmanian MHA, whom he continued to patronise as PM, placing him on several economic committees and boards, often in an attempt to utilise his persuasive powers in favour of expansive policies; A. Millmow, “L.F. Giblin: ‘The Economist Who Had Everything’. ” Tasmanian Historical Research Association Papers and Proceedings, vol.48, no.2: 86, 88, 92, 96. 363 Enid Lyons, So We, 94. After addressing a tough public gathering at Wynyard at this time, Lyons was on the verge of a breakdown. vide Chapter 7 on his nervous exhaustion in 1938-39. 364 Mercury, 8 June 1928, 3, e. 365 Lasswell, 95-6, discusses personality factors which impede the success of a political career, including the ‘impaired working ability’ brought about by ‘neurotic limitations’; Holsti, 127, 138, on the ‘tensions’ of power and their impact. 58 political pressure was greater in Canberra than it had ever been in Hobart.366 The decisions made during these periods of nervous tension were often open to accusations of irrationality.367

The fourth period (1929-31) of Lyons’s life before the Lodge has been the most scrutinised in the historiography.368 His pivotal role in the Scullin government is beyond the scope of this thesis, other than to distinguish further the relevant traits that he carried with him after 6 January 1932. His occupation of the Tasmanian political centre was extended to the federal sphere in those years, as was his overwhelming sense of political principle, when self- confidence evolved into a new, self-righteous sense of destiny. Scullin elevated the newcomer immediately into federal cabinet in October 1929,369 and the Postmaster-General managed his department quietly until he was thrust into the limelight during Scullin’s absence from the country (August 1930-January 1931).370 Although a capable acting Treasurer (and by some estimates de facto acting Prime Minister),371 Lyons proved himself temperamentally unable to handle some of the wilder men in the caucus, to whom consensus was weakness and collaboration with class enemies (a view similar to that later directed at appeasement by its diverse critics, mutatis mutandis). The failure of consensus within federal Labor, 1930-31, ought to have taught Lyons a political lesson about the fate of conciliation in the face of ideology. Rather, it strengthened the conviction of his own rectitude and his belief in the primacy of individual conscience over party.

This sense of conscience became pronounced following the stormy caucus meeting of 6 November 1930 that rejected consensus.372 The subsequent period was a tense one for Lyons, in part because he insisted on bringing matters of principle to the fore when a more calculating politician might have licked his wounds. His fall from Labor grace also further indicated that he did not cope well with stress ─ his resolution to follow the chosen path remained unimpeded, but it was at great cost to his physical and emotional well-being (something again evident at the end

366 ADB, vol.10, 188. Michael Lyons suffered a nervous breakdown after November 1887 from which he never recovered. As early as 1932, Bruce observed Lyons in a similar state; Bruce, Melbourne, to Latham, London, 22 March 1932, M104/1, NAA, Canberra. 367 Holsti, 120-1, on the ‘fragility of rationality’ in times of extreme stress. 368 A. Martin, “The Politics of the Depression,” in The Australian Century. Political Struggle in the Building of a Nation, ed. R. Manne (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 1999), 96ff., draws a detailed picture of Lyons in this period. vide also Hart and Lloyd’s ADB entry, vol.10, 184ff. 369 Scullin had asked Lyons to stand in Wilmot in 1929; Enid Lyons, My Life, 27. Lyons and Theodore were the only former ministers in caucus; W. Denning, James Scullin (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2000), 33. P. Hart, “Lyons: Labour Minister-Leader of the UAP,” in The Great Depression in Australia, ed. R. Cooksey (Canberra: Australian Society for the Study of Labour, 1970), 38-41, that in 1929 Lyons was fifth in the rank of ministerial seniority; also in Robertson, Scullin, 173. 370 This was also the period of Theodore’s disgrace. Robertson, Scullin, 268ff. Lyons found mainland machine-politics an unpleasant experience, ADB, vol.10, 185; Denning, 34. 371 Fenton was the acting PM, but Lyons soon became the dominant figure, Robertson, Scullin, 268ff. Lyons later described himself as acting PM in this period; the official curriculum vitae prepared for the 1937 Imperial Conference flattered him with the suggestion that he had then served as ‘acting Prime Minister’; Statements Regarding Imperial Conference, n.d., CP 4/2/1, NLA, Canberra. 372 P. Weller (ed. and intro.), Caucus Minutes 1901-1949, vol.2 (Melbourne: MUP, 1975), 396-7. At this meeting, Lyons, Fenton and 14 others were outvoted by 22 of their colleagues, who supported an amendment to coerce the Commonwealth Bank. The minority resolved that ‘in view of the vote they would consider their position’. 59 of the decade).373 Beneath the carapace of principle lay softer tissue of personal interest that also played its part in his defection from Labor on 13 March 1931;374 whilst Lyons was certainly motivated to leave the ALP by principled concern about its leadership, direction and economic ideology, a sense of personal affront also played its part. Affronted by his caucus defeat, the ‘economic manager’ then took his advocacy of the political centre during the dispute over ‘loan conversion’ to a wider audience: the Australian public.375 Although no spell-binding orator, Lyons was a capable and appealing speaker, able to use plain language in order to simplify complex economic proposals.376 He also proved to have an effective grasp of the techniques necessary for the new media of radio and cinema. A master of the homily, Lyons frequently sought to draw domestic analogies to which his audience was generally responsive and from this period onwards, he successfully paraded on the federal stage his own simplicity as a political virtue. These last months in the Labor movement were not the first time that Lyons balanced growing public esteem against falling party reputation; nor were they the last.

On 23 January 1931, the acting Treasurer was removed in favour of E.T. Theodore.377 As his nervous tension came to the fore, Lyons cultivated the suggestion that ill-health was a factor in his decision to go,378 seeking immediate refuge at his house, ‘Home Hill’, at Devonport.379 It had become his custom, since at least 1929, to make important decisions in the isolation of ‘the orchard’ (where the counsel of the materfamilias predominated).380 Until the mid-‘thirties (when Tasmania was first connected to the mainland by telephone cable), Lyons was generally unable to access his accustomed broad level of advice from Devonport: Home Hill’s isolation might have been restful, but it was potentially politically perilous, especially as Lyons was often in a state of psychological turmoil during such periods of otium. Visiting friends, such as the Hobart political editor Broinowski, noted in early-1931 that Lyons was sustained amidst party turmoil by two

373 Lasswell, 95-6, on ‘neurotic limitations’. vide Chapter 7. 374 Enid Lyons later claimed to be have been already sceptical about the wisdom of party edicts and about the fallibility of majorities; Enid Lyons, My Life, 21, on her 1924 dispute with the party over the Victoria League. 375 For instance, at the Melbourne Town Hall on 12 December 1930, during this campaign, which dealt with the voluntary acceptance by bondholders of lower interest rates; Hart, “Labour Minister…”, 42. This was a venue which always welcomed Lyons in the coming years, vide Chapter 7, where he regained the passion of this period in his campaign against conscription, 1938-39. David Dow to Cecilia Schwind, Time, 11 July 1935, Dow Papers, correspondence S, University of Melbourne Archives, where the trade commissioner in New York, reports that Lyons took umbrage at the suggestion that he had compelled bondholders to convert in 1930, insisting on the element of voluntaryism. 376 A. Reid, 359. His associate, Guy, referred to him as ‘a splendid platform speaker’; Snowden, 12. Menzies referred to him as a ‘great parliamentarian’; R. Menzies, Afternoon Light; Some Memories of Men and Events (Melbourne: Cassell, 1967), 121ff; similarly in his interview in Mister Prime Minister, as ‘the best Parliamentarian of my time,’ George Adlington Syme Oration, Melbourne, 28 May 1963, Enid Lyons Papers, MS 4852/25, NLA, Canberra. The Times, 8 April 1939, 14, b, thought few capable of understanding his financial policy, but acknowledged widespread public confidence. 377 This was despite cables of support from Scullin; the nature of those cables of November 1930 became controversial following Lyons’s defection. Herald, 8 May 1931, 4, b., 18 December 1931, 9. Lyons claimed that he jumped: ‘I went out voluntarily. I sought no position.’; CPD, vol.128, 236, 12-13 March 1931. Martin, “The Politics of the Depression,” 96 Robertson, Scullin, 302, and McMullin, 169, thought his claim accurate. Hart and Lloyd did not; ADB, vol.10, 186. 378 Advocate, 23 January 1931, quoted in Hart, “Labour Minister…”, 43. Being his local journal, this newspaper was, unlike the Mercury, invariably supportive of Lyons. 379 McMullin, 159. 380 Enid Lyons, So We, 137; Enid Lyons, My Life, 27, on the decision to enter federal politics in 1929. P. Mercer, “Home Hill, Devonport,” 40ºSouth Tasmania, no.25 (June 2002): 52, on their affection for their Tasmanian home. 60 forces, ‘his conscience and his wife’. He then posed the rhetorical question: ‘I wonder which comes first?’381 Many thought they knew the answer.382

The decision to cross the Rubicon was made in this hot-house atmosphere. Lyons first resigned from the ministry in February,383 a signal that was followed by his party-suicide in the parliament, on 12-13 March 1931.384 It was evident that his wife had been the chief source of counsel in the meantime─ her contempt for democratic wisdom was now complete. She later railed against the deluded doctrine of the ‘infallibility of majorities’, admitting her own refusal ‘to sink my independence of thought in a mass of common acceptance’.385 Significantly, she also admitted her failure to share her husband’s party loyalty: ‘I had never experienced the feeling of complete identity with the Party that he had known.’386 Although Enid Lyons later suggested that she simply confirmed her husband’s decision to defect,387 she came extraordinarily close to admitting decisive influence when recalling that he had later expressed regret, but that: ‘I straightened him out.’388 Clearly, any decision made by Lyons had not been without some domestic duress: ‘If he had done anything else I should have been ashamed of him.’389 In due course her husband purged his contrition, observing in December 1931 that the passing of every day convinced him of the rightness of defection.390 Nevertheless, as with so many other decisions that followed in the Lodge, it was one over which ‘he suffered tremendously’.391

The transition from fallen back-bencher to exile, Opposition Leader to Prime Minister, was as extraordinary as it was rapid. It is, however, a gross under-estimate of Lyons to suggest that at any time before March 1931 he was ever regarded as a ‘relative unknown from the potato plots’.392 By April 1931, after only a month of popular enthusiasm, he emerged as the potential leader of all anti-Labor forces:393 consensus was again in the air. When its chief prophet emerged from a Melbourne conference, on 7 May 1931, as the new leader of a united opposition movement, at Latham’s expense, it was a formidable achievement for a man who only three

381 Broinowski in the Sydney Sun, later quoted by Enid Lyons, So We, 167. He was a personal friend. Broinowski was the political editor of the Mercury, having been private secretary to Edmund Barton and a Nationalist candidate in 1922; Robson, History, vol.2, 396. He was considered to be unduly pro-UAP in Tasmanian Labor circles, being referred to by the Tasmanian premier, Ogilvie, in May 1935 as ‘Broinarski’, Ogilvie to Dalton, 28 May 1935, A.G. 1548/37/1935, Archives Office of Tasmania, Hobart. I am grateful to Professor Michael Roe for supplying me with a copy of this letter. 382 Table Talk, “Prominent Personalities”, 7 July 1927, referred to ‘that fat, uxorious look in his face’. A. Reid, 363, was struck by how frequently Lyons referred to his wife in conversation. 383 Lloyd, “Rise and Fall…”, 141. 384 Lyons, CPD, vol.128, 229ff., 12-13 March 1931, in a speech prepared by Ambrose Pratt. 385 Enid Lyons, So We, 174: ‘The doctrine of the infallibility of majorities had never greatly impressed me.’ 386 ibid., also quoted in Langmore, Wives, 90. Identical sympathies are found in Enid Lyons audio interview with A. Clarke, Tape 1. 387 Enid Lyons to Broinowski, quoted in Langmore, Wives, 88. 388 Enid Lyons audio interview with A. Clarke, Tapes 1 and 2. In this and the Clarke interviews she admitted her influence. 389 Langmore, Wives, 88. 390 Lyons quoted in Herald, 3 December 1931, 1, b. Sells, “Enid Lyons,” 203, footnote 84, cites Scullin’s view, via Fred Daly, that it was her influence which alone led to Lyons’s defection. 391 Enid Lyons, My Life, 28; similarly in Mister Prime Minister. He was said, however, at the end to have confessed that he remained ‘a Labor man’; Clive Turnbull, Herald, 8 April 1939, 4, b-d. 392 Whitington, Twelfth, 63, on Murdoch having selected him ‘from the potato plots of Tasmania’s north-west coast’. 393 By the sympathetic Argus, 14 April 1931, 6, c, “A New Opening for Nationalism”. 61 months earlier had been facing political irrelevance.394 It was also a testament to the success of his reputation as a man of moderation. Lyons could again have been forgiven for concluding that his achievements were due to his own abilities rather than to the support of any party apparatus. In his first press statement as Opposition Leader, he exercised a theme that became common from this juncture, that ‘personal and party ends must be entirely subordinated to the national welfare’.395 The new UAP never replaced residual Labor sentiments, rather it served Lyons merely as the instrument of government, later allowing him to stay in office in pursuit of his peacemaking ─ he had stressed the ad hoc nature of the new movement even before the December 1931 election.396 Keith Murdoch elegantly summarised this theme in his pre-election editorial: ‘Mr. Lyons is the leader of a movement rather than of a political party organisation.’397 This might have been a fine distinction to many electors, but it was not to Joseph and Enid Lyons ─ much of their later behaviour is only comprehensible in the light of the belief that they were now beyond party and ideology.398

This element of self-righteousness represented the final component of the political evolution of Lyons prior to 1932. The nine-month transformation (the ‘triumphal tour’) from political oblivion to putative national salvation left a psychological imprint.399 The man who took office on 6 January 1932 was a coalescence of his earlier character traits, but was also newly convinced of his broader destiny. The Age had questioned Lyons’s capacity for ‘the highest form of leadership’ in 1931, but by January 1932 he was in a position to bring to bear all of the characteristics refined in over twenty years of political life.400 Once he was hailed as the economic ‘saviour’ of the nation by Latham (in August 1934), the process was complete.401 It was unsurprising that Lyons later privately exaggerated his domestic achievements as having ‘saved Australia from ruin’, a view of himself as a saviour that may be applied, mutatis mutandis, to his peacemaking quests in external policy.402

II

394 Argus, 7 May 1931, 6, e. Latham believed he had sacrificed himself in 1931; Latham to Ambrose Pratt, 31 March 1931, Pratt Papers, MS6594/329/11, Australian Manuscripts Collection, La Trobe Library, Melbourne, citing the sense of ‘national emergency’; Hart, “Labour Minister…”, 50, for suggestions of bitterness. The change was not made public until 7 May. The term ‘united federal movement’ evolved into the ‘United Australia Party’. 395 Argus, 8 May 1931, 7, g; “Hope in Unity,” 6, f. 396 Lyons described the UAP as being formed ‘to bring about national unity in a time of national crisis’; Herald, 18 December 1931, 8. 397 Herald, 3 December 1931, 6, c-d. 398 Lyons was described by his dissident minister Charles Hawker as ‘independent of -isms and dogmas and -als and – ives,’; Souter, Acts, 295. 399 The term used by the Argus, 11 April 1931, 19, f, to describe Lyons’s journey from Adelaide to Murray Bridge, but which suitably describes the period April-December 1931. 400 Age, “The Swing to the Right,” 6 April 1931, 6, d. The Syme press was later forced to deny bias against Lyons, Age, 18 December 1931, editorial, 10, e-f, “The Campaign of Calumny.” 401 Latham on Lyons, Enid Lyons Papers, MS4852/6, from Sun-News Pictorial, 2 August 1934. This is an outstanding example of Lasswell’s category of ‘political specializations’, where certain leaders are viewed as restorers of order in troubled times; Lasswell, 22. 402 On his later assessment of his domestic achievements; vide Conclusion. Lyons’s later desire to be seen as a peacemaker forms part of Martin’s ‘identity’; Martin, “Elements,” 15. 62 Since Australians were engaged in the savage politics of the Great Depression during the course of 1931, it was not surprising that little attention was diverted towards distant Manchuria following the Sino-Japanese clash of 18 September.403 The conflict was not debated during the December campaign ─ the Opposition Leader failed to mention it in his final electoral speeches.404 Only the political novice but skilled analyst, Casey, who had been Bruce’s eyes and ears in London, raised the issue of external affairs by calling for an Australian external service, thus providing a clue to the advisory role he would play in the coming administration, in which he acted as both a counsellor to Lyons and as a go-between for both prime minister and high commissioner.405 After the poll, the Mercury alone of the major newspapers gave an indication, on 21 December 1931, of the Herculean labour that lay before the Prime Minister-elect, when the editor noted with some foresight that there could be no peace in the ‘Far East’ without Manchurian autonomy, thus drawing attention to a pressing regional issue.406 It proved one that the infant ‘1932’, the ‘Welcome Little Stranger’ of the Bulletin, could not afford to ignore.407 That stranger could only address the issue with his characteristic mix of gentleness, prudence, abhorrence of war, consensus, conscience and a new sense of destiny. Lyons, the economic manager, was more absorbed with domestic policy in the years 1932-late-1933/early-1934 and Manchuria provided a distraction from that primary focus, although it would be an error to assume that he took no interest in matters beyond Australia’s shores, for on his assumption of office, the domestic peacemaker was faced with the immediate necessity of addressing an eastern war and within weeks he expressed in parliament his keenness to avoid any Australian involvement in it,408 but this ‘reawakening’ of Asia now forced Canberra to take a more active part in world affairs.409 Lyons’s subsequent response was a mixture of the old fear (of Japan) felt by his predecessors since 1905, combined with a desire for the new détente.410 It was not as trusting of the ‘Europe-oriented’ League as Scullin had been.411 The first

403 Scullin was advised by Keith Officer, liaison officer in London, that Japan’s intentions were not aggressive; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 369ff., 294. 404 Hasluck, Diplomatic Witness, 13; Hudson, League, 69, on Scullin’s desire to distance himself from the issue. Examiner, 9 December 1931, 10, b-e; Lyons spoke about unemployment, tariff reform and economic reputation, nor had he mentioned foreign affairs in his policy speech at the Sydney Town Hall on 2 December 1931. 405 Casey, in Corio, did recognise that economic knowledge was the chief measure of success at this time; Hudson, Casey, 86. Whilst liaison officer in London, he had also been an adviser to the Australian delegation at the 1925 sixth League Assembly in Geneva; Hudson, League, 190. On the closeness of the Bruce-Casey relationship in the 1920s; ADB, vol.13, 383; Hudson, Casey, 61, 74. Casey was right to see himself in the forefront of foreign policy analysis, although he too noticed that the isolation of Australia tended to dull the appetite; R. Casey, “Australia in World Affairs.” Australian National Review, vol.2 (July 1937): 3. 406 Mercury editorials “The Verdict of the People” and “Far East”, 21 December 1931, 8, b-c. Lyons was a careful reader of the Tasmanian press and favoured it through more privileged access and by penning articles for its sole publication. 407 Bulletin, 30 December 1931, 15, depicting an infant Lyons cosseted by Latham, Bruce, Hughes and Page, whilst Scullin and Theodore exited by the back door. 408 Lyons, CPD, vol.133, 276, February 1932, quoted in Mansergh, Survey, 149. His attention had elsewhere been drawn to Manchuria; Empire Parliamentary Association to Lyons, 28 January 1932, enclosing the latest issue of its “Report on Foreign Affairs” with a covering letter on Manchuria, CP103/19/18, NAA, Canberra. 409 Mansergh, Survey, 144. 410 Australian fear of Japan became a prominent theme after 1905; Meaney, Search, 50, 121, 123, 127, 299, on Deakin and Pearce; ibid.,“Australia’s Changing Perception of Asia.” Paper presented at the Japan Cultural Centre, 25 November 1996, (Sydney: The Japan Foundation, 1997), 5; Mansergh, Survey, 137; Twomey, “Versailles…”, 60. It was not universal, especially amongst Labor politicians; ibid., “Small Power Security…”: 72, 82. 63 steps in his peacemaking journey required the development of some eastern policy, which contained two elements. Firstly, Lyons hoped to prevent the imposition of economic sanctions against Japan, threatened by the League from September 1931 onwards and under consideration at Whitehall.412 Secondly, he became conscious that any strident British position of the ‘non- recognition’ of ‘Manchukuo’ would be regarded by the Japanese as an act of hostility. This was not a perception widely accepted at Whitehall, although it was shared by some British diplomats at Tokyo.413 In neither instance could the Australian government act in its own right; it could only hope to dissuade Whitehall from any course that did not suit Australian interests. It was thus a policy of waiting for Britain to act, conceived in the hope that London would allow itself to be persuaded by Canberra to grasp a suitable opportunity for eastern détente once ‘order… evolved out of the present chaos’ in Manchuria─ cunctation, the early form of appeasement. 414 Accordingly, the high commissioner, Ryrie, was soon cabled by the minister, Latham, stressing the government’s desire for a peaceful settlement in Manchuria.415 At the same time, the Prime Minister offered the assurance that his government would take every opportunity to participate in a ‘proper solution of the present crisis’, without clarifying what type of participation he had in mind.416 Lyons and his government proved reluctant to voice any ‘policy’ as such at all, but the evidence suggests that several themes emerged in Canberra’s response, 1932-33; a concern about Japan’s methods but, notwithstanding, an acceptance that the status quo had been irreversibly disturbed and that the new condition ought to be accepted on the merits of the case ─ themes that Lyons would adopt and adapt throughout the decade in his various responses to the aggressors. Of those with Lyons’s ear, only Casey offered much public analysis that pointed in these directions, stating that he thought Manchuria an appropriate region for ‘westwards’ (rather than southwards)

411 P. Murphy, “Australia-Japan Relations 1931-41” (Ph.D., University of NSW, 1975), 59-60, for Scullin’s faith in the League to address the issue. Contemporaries mused on how a Labor government might have handled this crisis; F. Aarons, “What the League of Nations means to Australia”, Australian Supplementary Papers, Series E, prepared for the British Commonwealth Relations Conference, Glenbrook, NSW, Australian Institute of International Affairs, no.4 (September 1938), 7. On perceptions of the League as Europe-oriented; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 50. 412 Lyons was unaware that the Far Eastern committee of the British cabinet had suggested on 8 February 1932 that sanctions were ‘out of the question’; J. Neidpath, The Singapore Naval Base and the Defence of Britain’s Eastern Empire, 1919-1941 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 123-4. 413 The likely Japanese response was recognised by only a minority in Whitehall; Foreign Office Memorandum by Sir V. Wellesley, Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-39, ed. E. Woodward and R. Butler (London: HMSO, 1949), 2nd series, vol.9, 239, 1 February 1932. In Tokyo, the ambassador noted in December 1931 that Japan could run ‘amok’ in the event of sanctions; DBFP, 2nd series, vol.9, 33, 28 December 1931. Later he warned that the Japanese regarded sanctions as acts of hostility and even war; DBFP, 2nd series, vol.9, 462, 15 February 1932; assessment of Sir Francis Lindley (HM ambassador in Tokyo), conveyed to Secretary, Prime Minister’s Department by F. Shedden, Defence Department, London, n.d. but shortly after February 1933, A981 JAP 185 PART 2, NAA, Canberra. He was attached to the British Cabinet Office and CID secretariat, 1932-33; vide Cumpston, Bruce, 107; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 28. 414 Mansergh, Experience, 271. J.A. Lyons, Christian Science Monitor, 23 November 1933. Later he believed that order had come from chaos; Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, third meeting, 9 May 1935, A981 IMP 135, NAA, Canberra, vide Chapter 3. 415 Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 234-5, quoting Latham to Duffy, Geneva, 8 February 1932, A981/114/3/9/10, NAA, Canberra. 416 Lyons to H. Moore, League of Nations Union, February 1932, A981 China 114/3, NAA, Canberra, quoted in Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 296. 64 Japanese expansion, although uncomfortable with naked militaristic methods.417 Cabinet endorsed these views as guiding principles in June 1932, some clue to the respect already granted to Casey’s expertise418 ─ on many subsequent occasions this new MHR seemed to be employed as a government spokesman/advocate on external affairs, raising issues in public and putting forward ideas that circulated among the government’s foreign policy-thinkers. Whatever Casey’s influence, Lyons soon found that he had backed the wrong horse, for Whitehall generally preferred (with its extensive Shanghai financial interests) to favour China in any Manchurian dispute.419 It was significant that the first external issue with which the Lyons administration concerned itself starkly outlined the differences in perspective between Whitehall and Canberra. III The most immediate imperative for Australian cunctation was the issue of sanctions against Japan or, more precisely, how to prevent them, once their imposition was foreshadowed, following Japanese threats against British interests in Shanghai.420 Although Lyons was unversed in diplomacy, sanctions were a bread-and-butter issue of compelling interest to him as Treasurer. It was as much in Canberra’s economic interests to obstruct sanctions as it was in those of the League’s supporters at Whitehall to implement them, for Japan was a major and growing trading partner at the time, taking some ten per cent of Australia’s primary products.421 The trading balance between Canberra and Tokyo was up to four times in favour of the former and growing exponentially422 ─ by 1932 Japan was absorbing over twelve per cent of all Australian exports, at a time when Britain (before the Ottawa agreement of August 1932), was curtailing her imports of dominion produce.423 Lyons the economic manager would not willingly jeopardise this lucrative, but fragile, eastern

417 Casey radio broadcast, 19 October 1931, Officer Papers, MS 2629/9/973, NLA, Canberra, quoted in Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 50, 369ff. His concerns came in March 1932; “Manchuria” in The World We Live In, 13ff. 418 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 371, quoting Latham to Bruce, 3 June 1932, MS 1009/55/53-62, NLA, Canberra. 419 Just as Australia’s economic attention in East Asia was focused on Japan, so was that of the UK fixed on China, through her Shanghai investments. The city was the centre of some 60% of British investment in China. British trade with China was significantly greater than that with Japan; the trade statistics quoted in DBFP, 2nd series, vol.9, 239, 1 February 1932. British investment in China constituted 36.7% of all her foreign investment and would have been cut by over a quarter in the event of the separation of Manchuria; G. Kennedy, “1935: A Snapshot of British Imperial Defence in the Far East,” in Far-Flung Lines: Essays on Imperial Defence in Honour of Donald Mackenzie Schurman, eds. G. Kennedy and K. Neilson (London: Frank Cass, 1997), 190-216. 420 Ovendale, “Appeasement,” 187, where it is noted that Latham made Australia’s opposition to sanctions clear from February 1932 onwards. Officer had warned him of the likely economic impact of sanctions on 10 February 1932; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 294. 421 T. Millar, Australia in Peace and War, External Relations 1788-1977 (Canberra: ANU Press, 1978), 127ff., summarises the economic imperatives against any Australian opposition to Japan’s aggression. Japanese imports included a quarter of the wool clip; E.M. Andrews, “The Australian Government and the Manchurian Crisis 1931-4.” Australian Outlook, vol.35, no.2 (December 1981): 310. 422 ibid.; R. Megaw, “The Australian Goodwill Mission to the Far East in 1934: Its Significance in the Evolution of Australian Foreign Policy.” Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol.59 (1973): 251. Precise trade statistics are provided in J. Crawford, “Australia as a Pacific Power,” in Australia’s Foreign Policy, ed. W. Duncan (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1938), 73 and Appendix, vide Chapter 2 where figures in Australian and Japanese currencies are cited. 423 E. Andrews, Writing, 37-8; ibid., A History of Australian Foreign Policy (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1988), 66; J. O’Brien, “Empire v. National Interest in Australian-British Relations During the 1930s.” Historical Studies, vol.22, no.89 (October 1987): 569, vide Chapter 5 on trade diversion. 65 trading balance, at least not until 1936 (when his now-more-prosperous hand was forced). His policy-making, 1932-33, was continually cognizant of the fact that Australia had everything to lose by confronting her chief eastern trading partner and little to gain─ few in Britain acknowledged the reality that British and Australian economic interests in the region were at direct variance.424 These different economic positions nourished the existing differences in regional perspectives.

In the meantime, the Australian cunctators maintained a close interest in Japanese success in Manchuria.425 The establishment of a new order in north-eastern Asia, with consequent benefits to the Japanese economy, could only be of benefit to Tokyo’s southern trading partner, as noted by the trade consultant H. W. Gepp (in September 1932) and later by the Asianist, I. Clunies-Ross.426 Other observers, like Dr. A.C.V. Melbourne, thought Manchuria ‘a legitimate area of [Japanese] economic exploitation’, thus providing the policy- makers with an academic foundation for any policy of abandonment.427 Such ‘national selfishness’, later deprecated by Lyons in others, could not be explicitly admitted given the efforts being made in Geneva to address the problem from 2 February 1932, but it must have concerned him that any League decision on sanctions could impact savagely on Australian trade.428 Thus, from the beginning, his concern for Australia’s economic position tussled with the concept of collective security, as interpreted by the League of Nations.

The new Prime Minister gave every indication that he was a natural adherent of that institution’s philosophy and that he was in accord with the internationalism and anti-war sentiments that had motivated many policy thinkers in the 1920s.429 He stated in March 1932 in a private capacity that Geneva deserved ‘the whole-hearted support of all those who believe in international peace’.430 Yet a nagging reservation about ‘collective security’ had already crept into his personal thinking after barely three months in office, for at the same time Lyons admitted a disappointment that the League ‘may not have been able to achieve all that its

424 Holland, 168-9, quotes Runciman in the British cabinet to this effect on 20 March 1934. vide Andrews, Writing, 54. 425 Murphy, 72; G. Fairbanks, “The Australian Foreign Policy and Defence Debate, 1931-41”, MA thesis, University of Sydney, 1966, 46. 426 Megaw, “Goodwill…”: 251 on Gepp in China and Japan. Clunies-Ross, a close observer of Japan in particular, noted in 1935 that the demand for Australian wool in Manchuria was likely to lead to increased Japanese demand overall; I. Clunies-Ross, Australia and the Far East. Diplomatic and Trade Relations (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1935), 184; also in Ball, 120-1. 427 A.C.V. Melbourne, “Australia and Japan”, n.d. but 1936, A.C.V. Melbourne Papers, Reel 2, University of Queensland Archives, Brisbane. He was a prominent Asianist and participated in the Sydney conference on eastern trade convened by the Commerce Minister, Frank Stewart, in February 1933. He outlined his views in the series of articles in the Brisbane Daily Mail, 14-19 August 1933. Melbourne became an important influence on Lyons’s thinking from October 1934; also G. Bolton, “A.C.V. Melbourne: Prophet Without Honour,” in The Discovery of Australian History 1890-1939, ed. by S. Macintyre and J. Thomas (Melbourne: MUP, 1995), 112. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 372. 428 J.A. Lyons, “What Does the World Most Need Today”, a special article for the 25th “Anniversary Progress Section”, Christian Science Monitor, 23 November 1933. 429 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, Preface. 430 Lyons to R. Watt, NSW League of Nations Union, 14 March 1932, CP30/3/25, NAA, Canberra, where he accepted the vice-presidency of the NSW branch. 66 supporters and others may have expected of it’,431 something he later referred to as ‘setbacks’.432 One may speculate that the deepening Manchurian crisis was uppermost in his mind when contemplating such disappointment, for that was the chief challenge facing the League in March 1932. When these sentiments are combined with the querulous attitude Lyons continually expressed about the cost of League membership, the picture develops of an early, growing scepticism about the efficacy of this institution, as yet largely expressed in private or in the confidence of cabinet.433 When asked in late-1933, as one of a series of private contributors, to pen an essay on ‘What Does the World Most Need Today’, Lyons significantly failed even to mention the League, despite his theme of peace and international co-operation.434 What overwhelmingly concerned him in this private essay was the economic imperative of restored world trade, which the League could only hamper by its use of sanctions.435 Over the coming years those reservations would deepen and eventually result in a complete loss of faith in collective security, constituting an important factor in the evolution of Australian cunctation into appeasement under his prime ministerial supervision ─ if Lyons had ever been a ‘naïve’ pacifist and internationalist, an arguable proposition, then the realities of international relations soon militated against such tendencies.436

Lyons was not alone in his reservations about sanctions, concerns that were likely nourished by Latham, as jurist and minister. Here, Lyons’s economic prudence met Latham’s jurisprudence, for the latter believed, along with Casey, that sanctions could lead to a general conflict, particularly through any attempt to compel their universal enforcement.437 In his view, the League was ‘not an independent entity able to take action or apply economic sanctions’.438 Lyons, as utterly unversed in international law as he was in diplomacy, was in no position to question these Latham-Casey conclusions and there is no evidence that he did so, instead regarding the suggestions of sanctions emanating from the League in 1932 with the greatest antipathy. There was little opportunity, however, for this Australian government opposition to be implemented in diplomatic policy, given the absence of any sort of diplomatic service, to Casey’s chagrin.439 At least Canberra’s voice could be clearly heard at Geneva and, more importantly, at

431 ibid. 432 Lyons essay, Christian Science Monitor, 23 November 1933, “What Does the World Most Need Today”. 433 Cabinet Minutes, 25 May 1932, A2694, volume 3, NAA, Canberra; Lyons, 20-21 October 1932, CPD, vol.136, 1517, 5-6 April 1933; CPD, vol.138, 896; Lyons to Bruce, 27 February 1933 and July 1933, quoted in Andrews, Writing, 96. Mansergh, Survey, thought these objections ‘banal’. 434 Lyons essay, Christian Science Monitor, 23 November 1933, “What Does the World Most Need Today”. 435 ibid. 436 This is the picture of Lyons found in Andrews, Writing, 105, where he maintained that he was more interested in this period in disarmament than in Manchuria. 437 Latham, Australia and the British Commonwealth, 42-3ff., expressed many of his legal concerns about the League; CPD, vol.135, 1079, 30 September 1932. Although he had been prominent in the League of Nations Union in the 1920s, Latham’s ardour had cooled by the 1930s; Hudson, League, 5. R. Casey, “The Need for a United British Foreign Policy,” (17 October 1932) in The World We Live In: A Series of Speeches on Current Events, 69. 438 Latham, 27 January 1933, quoted in External Affairs letter to Ernest Scott, AIIA, 21 March 1939, CP167/1/2, NAA, Canberra. 439 R. Casey, “What Have We Learnt?” (25 August 1932) in The World We Live In: A Series of Speeches on Current Events, 39ff.; ibid., “The Need for a United British Foreign Policy,” (17 October 1932) in ibid., 72ff. 67 Whitehall through the liaison officer, Keith Officer, according to the system established in the 1920s by Bruce.440 Lyons was fortunate that Officer’s memoranda were supplemented (and sometimes overseen) by Bruce’s own wider-ranging accounts, written a roving minister in London and Geneva and, after September 1933, in his expanded, quasi-diplomatic role as high commissioner, where he was offered considerable freedom in formulating official Australian responses out of regard for his reputation and abilities.441 Through these sources and the Dominions Office circuit, Lyons received a comprehensive picture of Whitehall’s attitude and was able to offer a comprehensive account of Canberra’s.442 Bruce, in his turn, insisted on consultation at Whitehall and maintained his own knowledge of Canberra developments through both official channels and through his strong, confidential relationship with Casey.443 The former prime minister, Hughes, fired the first Australian shot against sanctions in an interview given to a London correspondent in February 1932, when he asserted that Britain ought to restrict herself to measures aimed at protecting ‘British’ lives and property.444 Whatever its origins, this statement by a back-bencher expressed the cabinet’s views on sanctions.445 There is no evidence of any Lyons-Hughes complicity in these comments, but they marked the beginning of an unlikely, turbulent collaboration between the two Labor renegades, which endured until the death of the former.446 Their views were to prove conveniently complementary on the League and rearmament, with a brief interruption towards the end of 1935, if not on broader appeasement and both men proved willing to collaborate despite some personal antipathy.447 The first official indication of a partnership came in June 1932, with Hughes’s formal inclusion in Australia’s delegation to the League Assembly, at Lyons’s personal request and without ministerial consultation.448 This was not to be the last time that Lyons sought the co-operation of the

440 Officer, a friend of Casey, had held his position since 1928; Andrews, Writing, 53, and had been prominent at External Affairs since 1930; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 28. Casey had been the first liaison officer in London, 1924- 27 and 1927-31; P. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 86-9; P. Edwards, “The Rise and Fall…”, 48; Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 5, 33, 262ff., 339; Hudson, Casey, 71. Throughout the period, Australia played a prominent role at Geneva, thanks chiefly to Bruce; Hudson, League, 6-7, 157, 190. 441 Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 7, 185, 259ff., 309. Bruce did not want to return to Australian political life; Cumpston, Bruce, 106; Bruce to Lyons, 11 April 1933, M2270/1/8, NAA, Canberra; Bruce to Lyons, 9 September 1933, Joseph Lyons Papers, MS4851/2/11, NLA, Canberra; Lyons to Bruce, 13 October 1933, Joseph Lyons Papers, MS4851/2/11. 442 Bruce normally wrote directly to Lyons and most of Officer’s memoranda are marked ‘Seen by PM’. The DO circulated its own material to the dominions every Thursday morning, including copies of Foreign Office material; “Memorandum of Procedure for Communication of Papers on Foreign Affairs to Dominion PMs”, September 1932, AA1970/559/4, NAA, Canberra. 443 Hudson, League, 170, 173. Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 278-9, 289, 309. 444 The Times, 24 February 1932, 12, b, also quoted in Murphy, 74. 445 There is nothing in the Hughes Papers, however, to suggest any use of Hughes by Lyons as a mouthpiece. 446 Even though H.V. Howe, Hughes’s former secretary stated that his boss regarded Lyons as never having had any Labor convictions; Mister Prime Minister. For his part, Lyons told Whiskard, the UK High Commissioner, that he could not decide whether Hughes was a greater menace inside cabinet or out; Whiskard to Inskip, 28 April 1939, DO 121/46, PRO, London. Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, 200, believed Hughes ‘friendly and supportive’ of Lyons. 447 vide Chapter 4 for their brief falling out over sanctions in late-1935 in the interests of cabinet solidarity.. 448 Lyons’s cable reached Hughes on vacation at Naples, per Oronsay, on or about 29 June 1932; Hughes Papers, MS1538/35/1/1, NLA, Canberra; Fitzhardinge, 611. This was the first political acknowledgement of Hughes since 1923. Lyons also flattered him by asking Hughes to preside over the unveiling of a Port Said war memorial (now in Canberra); Bruce to Hughes, Geneva, 26 September 1932, Hughes Papers, MS1538/35/1/1. 68 seasoned former prime minister, elder statesman and fellow Labor renegade for an ad hoc purpose.

The Hughes interview was noted at Whitehall and provided fuel to those British policy- makers disinclined to employ sanctions. In March, the cabinet secretary, Hankey, circulated an anti-sanctions Committee of Imperial Defence sub-committee report within the British cabinet, drawing attention to the suggestion that Australia could only suffer economically from their employment.449 There seemed little resolve in London to take any action until the League’s Lytton Commission could table its report, a delay that suited the cunctators, like Lyons, although it was made bluntly plain to Whitehall in mid-1932 that ‘Australia’ remained anxious.450 Lyons helpfully offered Britain support in any approach it may make to Japan, provided that this came after consultation with Australia and Canada,451 but London was soon told that not only were sanctions not to be ‘applied’ by Canberra, they were not even going to be ‘considered’.452 These were early indications that Lyons was not subservient to British interests and that his administration was seeking improved consultation in British policy-making after only six months in office. This practice of offering Britain support conditional on greater consultation became part of Lyons’s working style from this time onwards. Again, Casey gave voice, by coincidence or design, to the ideas circulating in Canberra, when he called in October for ‘a share in shaping the common British policy’ and ‘an attempt to obtain closer Imperial co-operation in the political sphere’ through a Deakinite ‘imperial Secretariat’.453 Only days later he explained his calls in the parliament, reviewing the history of inadequate consultation and concluding that Australia needed to ‘learn, think and decide [for itself] about international affairs’, hence the ‘definite necessity’ for a small, specialised department such as the External Affairs.454 How much endorsement these views received from Lyons remains uncertain, but Casey’s principles predicted the course of prime ministerial thinking over the following years. Lyons too was learning, thinking and deciding about international affairs in the course of the sanctions dispute. Once the Lytton Commission issued a report critical of Japan (1 October 1932), it was left to Bruce to exercise his growing influence in the League Assembly against any motion condemning Japanese actions.455 The government in Canberra did not wish to support the Lytton findings, preferring to contain their impact─ a sign of incipient eastern appeasement. 456 Even

449 C. Thorne, The Limits of Foreign Policy: the West, the League and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1931-2 (London: Hamilton, 1972), 264-5. Hankey was considered to have an ‘imperial’ background making him favourable in outlook to the dominions; S. Roskill, Hankey, Man of Secrets, vol. 3 (London: Collins, 1974), 127; Andrews, “Broken Promise…”: 105; ibid., Writing, 109. 450 V. Duffy, External Affairs officer, to Dominions Office, 15 August 1932, A981/4 CHIN 166 part 1, NAA, Canberra. 451 ibid. Canada too was thought to be compliant about Japanese expansion on the Asian mainland. 452 Lyons cable to Bruce, n.d., but late 1932-early 1933, A981 China 125/22/6, NAA, Canberra. 453 Casey, “The Need for a United British Foreign Policy,” (17 October 1932) in The World We Live In: A Series of Speeches on Current Events, 71. 454 ibid., 72ff. 455 Millar, 127. 456 J. Shepherd, Australia’s Interests and Policies in the Far East (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1939), 22, A981 AUS 32, NAA, Canberra noted Australian reluctance to offend Japan with sanctions. 69 though a League resolution refusing legitimacy to ‘Manchukuo’ followed on 24 February 1933, it was evident with the passing of time that sanctions would not be imposed.457 This was not due to the opposition or influence of the cunctators, but it was in accord with their wishes and represented victory of a kind for them, as well as for Australian national interest over the advocates of collective security and British unilateralism.458 The prime minister made no comment, leaving Latham to manage the issue in parliament. The minister continued to express Australia’s vague support for League ‘conciliation’, but he would make no post-Lytton commitment to economic measures against Japan other than to offer, on 9 March 1933, his hollow ‘co-operation’ in limiting the export of war materiel; otherwise, in accord with Lyons’s conception of economic management, the government was not prepared ‘to limit Australian trade with the East’ while others traded without restrictions.459 Within a week of this statement, Britain announced its intention to abandon such arms embargoes in the absence of international agreement.460 The sanctions episode, 1932-33, taught Lyons that Whitehall lobbying was worthwhile, even if there was no apparent link between the practice and British dithering over sanctions: it was clear, however, that candour to the point of offence was in Canberra’s interests. Especially notable had been the assertiveness of the government’s warning to London via Bruce that Canberra would under no circumstances consider sanctions.461 Lyons and Latham had also learned, like their predecessors, that Britain could be evasive and reluctant to consult, which did not augur well for future Australian cunctation.462

IV Another aspect of Australian cunctation in this period was more complex than a simple lobbying against sanctions: Canberra became conscious of the need to avoid offence being offered to Tokyo by any British (or US) insistence on a policy of the ‘non-recognition’ of Manchukuo, following its creation in February 1932 and a Japanese request to the Foreign

457 Shen, 24, on Japan’s recognition of the independence of Manchukuo on 15 September 1932, A981/4 item CHIN 166 PART 1, NAA, Canberra. The League ultimately did not make any formal request for the adoption of sanctions; Sir John Simon, Retrospect: The Memoirs of Viscount Simon (London: Hutchinson, 1952), 191. 458 Eggleston, Reflections, 7, denied any Australian influence on Britain over sanctions. 459 Latham to Eddie Ward, CPD, vol.138, 139, 9 March 1933. This commitment was given only in the knowledge that British cabinet discussion, dominated by Chamberlain, of such matters in February 1933 had been inconclusive; E. Andrews, “The Great Temptation: The Australian Government and the Sales of Arms to China, 1931-3.” AJPH, vol.23, no.3 (December 1977): 353. 460 Latham, 14 March 1933, CPD, vol.138, 181. He had earlier said the opposite; Latham statement, CPD, vol.136, 2167, 9 November 1932. 461 Lyons cable to Bruce, n.d., but late 1932-early 1933, A981 China 125/22/6. 462 Latham to Bruce, 13 April 1933, Latham Papers, MS1009/35, NLA, Canberra; Megaw, “Goodwill…”: 252. P. Jones, “Trading in a ‘Fool’s Paradise’? White Australia and the Trade Diversion Dispute of 1936,” in Relationships: Japan and Australia, 1870s-1950s, eds. P. Jones and V. Mackie (Melbourne: University of Melbourne History Dept., 2001), 148, quotes Latham’s criticism of the British lack of consultation; Latham to Bruce, 2 and 3 March 1933, in N. Meaney, ed., Australia and the World (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1985), 387. Eggleston, Reflections, 4, on Whitehall’s disinclination to listen. 70 Office for recognition in March.463 The absence of any outright statement of non- recognition would constitute an acknowledgement of the de facto transfer of power in the region (although not a de jure recognition) and Lyons personally seemed little troubled by the fact that this would appear to reward aggression. Rather, he seemed motivated by fear, informing London on 15 August 1932 that Australia was ‘watching the situation in Manchuria with anxiety’.464 Fear was combined with the hope that Japan, if engaged in Manchurian expansion, would turn her gaze away from the south, a theme that was frequently stressed in the coming years.465 According to this formula, it was in Australia’s national interest for others to be sacrificed, a principle that did not apply in the south-west Pacific.466

That Mercury editorial of 21 December 1931 had already distilled what was to become the essence of Lyons’s private and public outlook on north-east Asia: ‘If Manchuria is given autonomy…peace should be secured and China itself saved, perhaps, from a far worse disaster, while the breathing time should save the world.’467 He was to interpret ‘autonomy’ as the transfer from the Chinese to the Japanese sphere of influence.468 The simplicity of such a solution to the Manchurian impasse was likely to have appealed to a man without diplomatic experience, quite aside from the fact that Japanese hegemony in Manchuria seemed irreversible without war. No sacrifice or action was required on Australia’s behalf to effect any policy of inoffensiveness to Japan ─ all that was needed was that London desist from any aggravating diplomatic position, especially any overt statement of non-recognition.469 The issue of Manchukuo’s status assumed greater importance once it became evident that the Lytton report was still-born and that Japan was there to stay, as the Foreign Minister, Uchida, had told Lytton himself.470 His profession, however, fell on deaf ears in London and Washington, where Secretary Stimson had evolved his own doctrine of non-recognition (‘moral disapproval’) against Japan (‘the highway robber’), one that he sought to press on a less keen Whitehall.471 Canberra alone of the Anglo-Saxon capitals was listening and Lyons became a strong public and private advocate of the view that, at the very

463 Canberra was informed of this request; Copy of March 1932 Japanese request for recognition sent to Foreign Office, A 981/4 item CHIN 166 PART 1, NAA, Canberra. 464 V. Duffy to Dominions Office, 15 August 1932, A981/4 CHIN 166 part 1. 465 Casey radio broadcast, 19 October 1931, Officer Papers, MS 2629/9/973, in Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 50, 369ff. Lyons expressed similar views; vide Chapter 3, Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, third meeting, 9 May 1935, A981 IMP 135, NAA, Canberra. The link between mainland or southwards Japanese expansion was already of concern to E. Piesse (Pacific Branch, Prime Minister’s Department) in 1919-20; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 150. 466 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 412. 467 Mercury, editorial, 21 December 1931, 8, b. 468 This had arguably been so since 1905, when Russia transferred her interests in the province to Japan after the end of Russo-Japanese hostilities; W. Beasley, The Modern History of Japan (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1963), 172-3. 469 Later, from 1935, he advocated de jure recognition, vide Chapters 2 and 3. 470 Uchida was said to have ended every sentence spoken to Lytton with the comment, ‘But you…must remember that Japan will not leave Manchuria.’; F. Cutlack, The Manchurian Arena (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1934), 56. This was in the manner of the ancient Cato and his ‘delenda est Carthago’. 471 The Stimson doctrine suggested that no diplomatic recognition should be offered to aggressors; Simon, Retrospect, 191; R. Esthus, From Enmity to Alliance, U.S.-Australian Relations, 1931-1941 (Melbourne: MUP, 1965), 10-11; N. Tarling, Britain, Southeast Asia and the Onset of the Pacific War (Melbourne: CUP, 1996), 11. The diplomats thought this doctrine unrealistic; Sir Francis Lindley to Sir John Simon, 21 March 1932, A981/4 CHIN 166 PART 1, NAA, Canberra. Simon later attempted to downplay Britain’s refusal to collaborate with Washington, Retrospect, 190. 71 least, the British Empire ought to avoid any diplomatic offence to Japanese sensibilities.472 Meanwhile, the crisis in diplomacy and Australian cunctation deepened after Tokyo’s own de jure recognition of the ‘independence’ of Manchukuo, on 15 September 1932473 ─ whilst Canberra was without diplomatic representation, any issue of an Australian recognition of the fledgling state was ultra vires, as Pearce acknowledged shortly after.474 External Affairs was already of the opinion that Australia could never recognise ‘Manchukuo’ as an independent state, although there had been no direct request for recognition from Tokyo.475 In due course, the ‘amateur diplomat’ would disagree. Japan’s angry departure from Geneva in February-March 1933, following the critical report of the League’s Committee of Nineteen, represented Lyons’s nightmare,476 for any sympathy for the Japanese capacity to restore order ought not to disguise his parallel fear of unmuzzled Japanese militarism. This anxiety was nourished by Officer’s attachment from London on 16 April 1933 of Japanese observations on the League’s processes.477 This document was important, as the bulk of it reappeared at various times over the following years in the private and public utterances of Lyons himself ─ it appears to have co nstituted the germ of his thoughts about the need for a longer-term, diplomatic solution. Officer had informed him that the Japanese now believed that any deferral of ‘non-recognition’ was insufficient and that de jure recognition was now ‘the only way to consolidate peace and security not only in the region of Manchukuo but throughout the whole Far East’.478 This was not the first time that the Japanese had voiced such a view, nor was it likely to have been the first time that Lyons became conscious of their insistence, as Tokyo had been sending similar messages since Uchida’s address in the previous August, all of which had made their way to the Prime Minister’s Department.479 The Officer memorandum was, however, the most detailed analysis of the Japanese position that had passed over Lyons’s desk and been ‘Seen by PM’.480 It signalled that Australian cunctation was moribund, with its desire for British diplomatic neutrality, for, as the British ambassador Lindley had earlier noted,

472 vide Chapter 3. 473 External Affairs file, A981/4 item CHIN 166 PART 1, NAA, Canberra. 474 Pearce Statement to Senate, September 1932, A 981/4 item CHIN 166 PART 1, NAA, Canberra. 475 Deputy Secretary, External Affairs to R. Biddulph, Sydney, 6 May 1932, A981/4 CHIN 166 PART 1, NAA, Canberra. A direct request came in March 1934, on the eve of the first act of Lyons’s diplomacy; vide Chapter 2. 476 The Japanese refused to participate in further debate and gave the League the statutory two-year notice, commencing on 27 March 1933; H. Frei, Japan’s Southward Advance and Australia. From the Sixteenth Century to World War II (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991), 138; Documents on International Affairs, vol.1, 1932, no.57. 477 Officer to Secretary of Defence, 16 April 1933, B197/1877/7/59, NAA, Melbourne, enclosing the observations of the Japanese Delegation on the Draft Report, Geneva, 21 February 1933. 478 ibid. 479 Uchida expressed similar views in a speech to the Diet on 23 August 1932; I. Nish, Japanese Foreign Policy, 1869- 1941. Kasumigaseki to Miyakezaka (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), 297-8. The NAA holds a Japanese pamphlet “The Question of the Independence of Manchuria” by General Matsui, expressing such views, also from the middle of 1932, but it is unknown if Lyons had seen this; A5954 /69/979/1, NAA, Canberra. A later and similar Uchida address, in February 1933, was known to External Affairs through the British ambassador in Tokyo; Lindley to Simon, 21 February 1933, A981 JAP 181 PART 2. 480 Officer to Secretary of Defence, 16 April 1933, B197/1877/7/59. 72 Manchurian recognition had become something of a ‘fetish’ in Tokyo.481 Additionally, Lyons learned via Officer that Tokyo was ready to co-operate in the task of maintaining the peace with any friendly power ‘willing to go hand in hand with her in the great task of re-establishing peace and order in the Far East’.482 Whatever the attractions of such offers, Canberra had no immediate option other than to continue the wait for some British initiative. That initiative never came, despite the opportunity presented by the cease-fire of Tang Ku on 31 May 1933, which provided evidence of Chinese flexibility, in Lyons’s later view.483 Instead, London extinguished what little life was left in eastern cunctation after June 1933 by accepting the report of the League Assembly Advisory Committee, which advised against de jure recognition.484 The indirect Australian desire for a policy of diplomatic inoffensiveness was doomed, although Lyons seemed slow to abandon it, given the continuing support for the practices of cunctation in External Affairs.485 Only direct negotiation, however, could now satisfy Tokyo’s desiderata and she offered indications after August 1933 of a desire to be brought in from the cold. The Japanese delegation at the Institute of Pacific Relations conference at Banff, Canada (14-26 August 1933) sought the ‘peaceful readjustment’ of Pacific borders,486 an offer made more official by the Minister of Defence, Araki, in October, when he proposed an international conference to secure the de jure recognition of Manchukuo.487 The offer of regional peace was there, even if a pax Japonica. Such a peace would both spare China further miseries and ensure Japanese interest in north-east Asia, an attractive proposition to Canberra, if not London. The perceptions of Whitehall and Canberra were drifting apart by late-1933. British diplomacy had failed to make the faintest acknowledgement of the new order, although London had resisted the Stimson doctrine and refrained from any outright policy of ‘non-recognition’. British diplomacy in the period, however, had alienated everybody─ the Japanese by a consistent, pro-League stance;488 the US champions of ‘non-recognition’ (including the new Secretary of State, Cordell Hull) by a refusal to be more forthright against the aggressor.489

481 Lindley, HM ambassador, Tokyo, to Simon, 21 February 1933, A981 JAP 181 PART 2, reported by Frederick Shedden, London, n.d., A981 JAP 185 PART 2. 482 Officer to Defence Department, 16 April 1933, B197/1877/7/59; similarly in Uchida to Diet, 23 August 1932. 483 Documents on International Affairs, 1933, Part D, I; A.J.P. Taylor, English History 1914-45 (Oxford: OUP, 1965), 372; I. Hsu, The Rise of Modern China (London: OUP, 1970), 649; Shen, 25. vide Lyons’s assertions in 1937 that China was willing to accept the loss of Manchuria, Chapter 5. 484 Andrews, “The Australian Government and the Manchurian Crisis 1931-4.”: 311. The Committee’s recommendation against recognition was later adopted by the League Assembly, A981 MAN 7, NAA, Canberra. 485 J. Starling, External Affairs advice, October 1933; Andrews, “The Australian Government and the Manchurian Crisis 1931-4”: 311ff. 486 The Japanese Banff proposal is detailed in B. Lasker and W. Holland, eds., Problems of the Pacific, 1933. Economic Conflict and Control. Proceedings of the Fifth Conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations, Banff, Canada, 14-26 August 1933 (London: OUP, 1934), Document XI, 441-50; in Murphy, 254-6. 487 Japan Times, 30 October 1933, A981 JAP 185 PART 2, NAA, Canberra. 488 Foreign Office memorandum by Sir V. Wellesley, DBFP, 2nd series, vol.9, 239, 1 February 1932. Mussolini similarly complained in May 1935 that Britain placed the League before Anglo-Italian friendship, vide Chapter 3. 489 W. Louis, “The Road to Singapore: British Imperialism in the Far East, 1932-42,” in The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, eds. L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen (London: Allen and Unwin, 1983), 373. Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull (London: Hodder and Stoughton,1948), 270. 73 Further British diplomatic delays were consequently a disadvantage to Australia’s national interests, as Lyons now perceived them─ before the end of 1933, he was in the process of accepting the [Japanese] view that the de jure recognition of Manchukuo was the sine qua non of peace in the Far East, contrary to British advice that this was a peripheral matter.490 Accordingly, at some time in the last months of 1933, some Australian ministers took the opportunity to abandon cunctation and instead to assume the role of ‘honest broker’.491 Latham’s instructions to his department on 25 February 1934 that no further action was to be taken on the issue of Manchurian recognition was not therefore indicative of a ‘do-nothing’ policy or of any Australian ‘non-recognition’ policy, as has been suggested.492 Rather, they were indicative of the decision to pursue the matter down another path ─ the ‘personal diplomacy’ of appeasement. Lyons, for his part, saw no reason why consensus could not be extended into international relations, as Casey had advocated in 1931.493 The need for such consensus was pressing, given indications of a potential threat to regional peace at a time when fractures had appeared in the structures of international conciliation. The Manchurian episode, 1932-33, demonstrated that the writ of a non-universal League did not run in the Pacific.494 Geneva’s failure marked a watershed in the post-war outlook of peaceful international relations that had prevailed through the 1920s.495 It was, according to Eggleston, a ‘critical blow’ to the League system, which exaggerated the ever-present Australian sense of vulnerability, given that there was no British base east of Suez.496 Lyons was one of the policy-makers who shared the anxieties of this new era. V That the Manchurian conflict was a threat to regional peace was recognized by the Lyons administration at an early stage, with serious ramifications for Australian defence thinking, including the prospects of ‘disarmament’, by which was meant arms limitation in the style of the well-received 1922 Washington naval treaties.497 This had been part of the ‘searching spirit’ of the 1920s, supported by Capt. Bruce as early as 1921 and championed in the early years of his government.498 Yet, scepticism had set in early, notably that of Latham, who warned in 1919 and 1926 that disarmament was unenforceable, and that of Casey, who in 1925 had thought disarmament talks ‘window-dressing’ ─ this did not augur well for the Lyons period.499

490 For example at the Dominion PMs meeting, 9 May 1935, where Dominions Secretary Thomas stated the British view, contra Lyons, that the Japanese were not concerned about Manchurian recognition; vide Chapter 3. 491 Jay Moffat noted this Australian desire to act as an ‘honest broker’ between Japan and the western powers as late as October 1935; Moffat to Hull, FRUS, 1935, vol.4, 12 October 1935, 363-5. It was present to the end, vide passim. 492 Andrews, “The Australian Government and the Manchurian Crisis 1931-4”, 311-2. 493 Casey, Australia’s Place, 57, radio address over 3GL, 12 August 1931. 494 Mansergh, Experience, 271. 495 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 299. 496 Eggleston, Reflections, 7. 497 Twomey, “Small Power Security…”: 71, 77-8. 498 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, Preface, on the 1920s search for international security without war. ibid., “Small Power Security…”: 72-3, on Bruce and Casey. The economic advantages of disarmament were considerable. 499 ibid., 74. 74 Lyons the consensus-builder was a man of peace, who (as noted above) could only have been expected in January 1932 to be a natural adherent of collective security and its concomitant of international disarmament. Those interested in the latter, however, like the supporters of the League, soon found the new prime minister and government’s commitment to such measures short-lived, for which Manchuria was in part responsible, as Casey explained in August 1932: ‘The disturbance in Manchuria will not make any easier the task of persuading nations to reduce their armaments.’500 The Lyons government had seemed responsive enough to disarmament at the beginning, with Casey listing it as one of the four ‘world problems of 1932’ on 1 February.501 Pearce at Defence and Latham at External Affairs were appointed to a disarmament sub-committee at only the second cabinet meeting, on 7 February.502 Latham, with his Versailles credentials, was also appointed the chief Australian representative to the Geneva Disarmament Conference, which had opened a week earlier, after nearly seven years of preparation.503 In London, en route (in March-May 1932), the minister gave indications of the initial seriousness of the new government about disarmament by floating a proposal to abolish the miniscule RAAF, although he soon allowed himself to be persuaded otherwise, after 3 May 1932, by Londonderry, the Secretary for Air.504 The strategic arguments of a parallel Air Staff Memorandum might also have been persuasive, utilising phraseology designed also to appeal to Lyons’s sense of frugality.505 Nevertheless, the preserved RAAF was not, as yet, to have a bomber squadron, for Latham was clearly instructed to support a British proposal for the universal abolition of such offensive weapons.506 The origins of that instruction are unclear, but it was not difficult for the strategically-uneducated Lyons to endorse such a proposal, chiefly aimed at protecting London, as Australia was herself well protected by geography from any air attack and had never possessed any bomber force of her own.507 Later, even though Lyons struggled to

500 R. Casey, “The World Situation” (1 February 1932) in The World We Live In: A Series of Speeches on Current Events, 11. Twomey, “Small Power Security…”: 71-2, came to a similar conclusion. 501 ibid., 9. The others were war debt/reparations, the readjustment of credit and tariffs. 502 Cabinet Minutes, 7 February 1932, A2694, vol.1, NAA, Canberra. 503 Latham at the Peace Conference in 1919; ADB, vol.10, 3. The Geneva Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments opened on 2 February 1932; DBFP, 2nd series, vol.9, 153. Until Latham’s arrival, the delegation at Geneva was headed by the High Commissioner, Sir Granville Ryrie. On Latham at the Geneva conference, which he attended for only two of twenty-three weeks; Hudson, Australia and the League, 109ff. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 329ff.; ibid., “Small Power Security…”: 84. 504 McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 37-40. Lord Londonderry to Latham at Australia House, 3 May 1932, Latham Papers, MS1009/56, NLA, Canberra. 505 “The Most Effective Apportionment of Monies Available in Australia for the Purposes of Defence”, 31 May 1932, AIR 9-56 (22), PRO, London, in McCarthy, “Singapore and Australian Defence”: 169. It suggested the utility of air attacks on an enemy fleet. 506 McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 41-2, mistakenly believed that the proposal was not taken to Geneva. South Africa and Canada opposed it, when it was raised by the British delegation on 7 July 1932; Latham, CPD, vol.135, 1076, 30 September 1932. 507 W. Hudson, “Strategy for Survival” in M. McKernan and M. Browne, (eds.) Australia Two Centuries of War and Peace, Canberra, 1988, 36, suggested that concern for London was the chief motivation, elsewhere quoting Latham’s candid acceptance of the need to protect the ‘nerve centre of the Empire’; Latham to Pearce, 3 June 1932; Hudson, Australia and the League, 112-3. 75 maintain a distinction between ‘offensive’ and ‘defensive’ armaments, he would reconsider the matter.508 Whilst in London, Latham also received early indications that Lyons as prime minister was not committed to any continuation of the unilateral disarmament pursued by Scullin,509 with his insistence in May 1932 that Latham arrange ‘Conferences on Defence matters’ with British service chiefs.510 This insistence was the first indication in his federal career of Lyons’s pacificistic (not pacifist) concern for national security, a concern that arguably ran contrary to the ‘widespread’ spirit of disarmament then prevailing at Whitehall.511 Latham, however, soon found that the MacDonald government was more interested in disarmament than in defence allocation.512 The tortuous Geneva Disarmament Conference itself was an immediate disappointment, grinding on through 1932 with little prospect of unanimity.513 Latham’s delegation pressed for the abolition of chemical weapons and for some definite decisions on disarmament over a five-to-ten year period, but in vain,514 thereby illustrating that a unilaterally disarmed nation like Australia could have little role in the task of persuading others to do likewise.515 Lyons showed little public enthusiasm for disarmament in his 1932 parliamentary utterances, which were generally expositions of government policy, something that bore a similarity to his simultaneous complaints about the League.516 By November 1932, he seemed to share Ramsay MacDonald’s pessimism about the whole process, perhaps influenced by Bruce’s earlier scorn: ‘But, after all, does it matter.’ 517 Latham’s eventual report to parliament had suggested not and was neither illuminating nor optimistic, despite its profession to be both.518 Clearly, as it entered 1933, the Lyons government was both cautious and anxious about arms limitation, with its ‘many buts’,519 and close to being convinced that Australian security could not be adequately protected through it or by collective security, the same realisation that had come to Hughes immediately in the period after the 1922 treaties and to Bruce before the end of 1924.520

508 vide Chapter 7. 509 Robertson, Scullin, 270, on Frank Brennan’s boast in the League of Australian disarmament as ‘a gesture of peace’. On Brennan, MHR, National Archives of Australia. 14 November 2002. “Australia’s Prime Ministers”: Joseph Lyons. Available [Online]: http://primeministers.naa.gov.au/ [14 November 2002]. 510 Latham to Lyons, London, 19 May 1932, Latham Papers, MS1009/56, NLA, Canberra. Latham was unenthusiastic. 511 pace Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 329ff., which suggests that the two impulses were not contradictory, as great power disarmament is assisted by client-state self-sufficiency. The description of Whitehall’s attitude is found in Simon, Retrospect, 179. 512 vide below. Cumpston, Bruce, 136. D. McIntyre, The Rise and Fall of the Singapore Naval Base, 1919-1942 (London: Archon, 1979), 106. 513 A. Cadogan, Foreign Office, in D. Dilks, ed, The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan 1938-45 (London: Cassell, 1971), introduction, 5-9, described its confusion and frustrations. 514 Millar, 126; Latham, CPD, vol.135, 1076-7, 30 September 1932, where he referred to agreement having been reached on chemical weapons ‘with many buts’. 515 vide Horner, Defence Supremo, 41. 516 For example, his reply to Eddie Ward; CPD, vol.137, 2687, 23 November 1932. 517 A. Parkhill MHR (later Defence Minister), London, to Latham, 15 November 1932, Latham Papers, MS1009/56, NLA, Canberra, relayed MacDonald’s views. Bruce, Melbourne, to Latham, London, 22 March 1932, M104/1. 518 Latham, CPD, vol.135, 1069ff., 30 September 1932. 519 ibid., 1076. 520 Twomey, “Small Power Security…”: 78, 83. 76 When Bruce, on 20 March 1933, foreshadowed from Geneva the severe consequences for economic and political stability of a German withdrawal from the League and its processes, Lyons’s anxiety was likely to have increased.521 His prediction came to pass in October 1933 and there were now two ‘rogue’ states outside the League.522 Latham, in Canberra, attempted to put a brave face on this departure, issuing a statement on 16 October 1933, endorsed by cabinet, in which he argued that German participation in the disarmament process was ‘not essential’, but also ominously warning that the whole represented a ‘last chance’.523 That chance had, in fact, already passed and Lyons’s behaviour at this time suggested that he had privately written off the prospects of disarmament, diminished as they had been by the League’s stumbling. His revealing essay of 23 November 1933 provided a window into such thinking, for neither disarmament nor collective security were mentioned in this assessment of the world’s immediate ‘needs’─ this was unsurprising given the economic focus of the work and the fact that Australian rearmament had just been triggered, but his failure to address such issues remained notable.524 His future comments on arms limitation would be vague, wistful and more expressive of utopianism than of any policy intention. They were always placed in the context of some future possibility, a ‘peace dividend’ that would follow only after an extended period of rearmament and after the success of the ‘secret diplomacy’ referred to by Casey in August 1932 as an alternative to disarmament525 ─ a possibility that was never realised, for the spirit of the ‘twenties had been permanently replaced by the new keynote of confrontation.526 VI In the same way that Lyons was soon attentive to foreign affairs, so too was his attention quickly turned to defence, owing to a putative threat from Japan that had been first identified as early as 1919.527 In the defence arena too Australia was ‘watching the situation in Manchuria with anxiety’ and whilst Lyons always extended an open hand to Japan, the other was (from September 1933) a clenched fist.528 Although anti-militaristic, this pacificist did not preclude due attention to matters of national defence; nor was there an inherent contradiction between cunctation/appeasement and a muscular defence policy. It was Lyons from 1933 (not Chamberlain in 1938), who first implied and demonstrated that conciliation and rearmament were

521 Bruce specifically warned Lyons of the dire consequences for disarmament of such a withdrawal; Bruce to Lyons, 20 March 1933, A981 EUR 6/1, NAA, Canberra. vide also P. Twomey, “Munich,” in Munich to Vietnam: Australia’s Relations with Britain and the United States since the 1930s, ed. C. Bridge (Melbourne: MUP, 1991), 20. 522 The withdrawal was signalled on 6 October 1933 by a German diplomatic note; Documents on International Affairs, 1932, Part II, no.4, i. vide also Kershaw, Hitler, vol.1, 493ff. Berlin simultaneously discarded disarmament; Bruce to Lyons, 20 March 1933, A981 EUR 6/1. Hitler thought it a conspiracy intended to disarm Germany alone; B. Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna (Oxford, OUP 1999), 386. 523 Cabinet Minutes, A2694, October 1933, NAA, Canberra, where Latham’s press statement “Germany’s Presence Not Essential” endorsed; Argus, 17 October 1933, 7, c,f. 524 Lyons, “What Does the World Most Need Today”, Christian Science Monitor, 23 November 1933. On the beginning of rearmament, vide below. Often such statements are just as revealing for what is excluded, as for what is included. 525 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 414. R. Casey, “The International Situation” (24 August 1932) in The World We Live In: A Series of Speeches on Current Events, 56. 526 On the ‘peace dividend’, vide Introduction and Chapter 7. 527 By Admiral Jellicoe, RN, in August 1919 on his tour of Australian defence facilities; Murfett, “Keystone…”, 147. 528 V. Duffy to Dominions Office, 15 August 1932, A981/4 CHIN 166 part 1. 77 compatible.529 This was especially so since he habitually maintained that Australian (and British) armaments would only be employed in defensive postures.530 In the face of sustained Japanese aggression, albeit in Manchuria, it was difficult for any Australian policy-maker not to feel some discomfort. Therefore, Lyons turned towards the insurance policy of rearmament from September 1933, in what was to be the first of five such programs, 1933-39. This must have been a difficult process for the man who prided himself on his economic management to divert scarce funds towards the bottomless maw of the military, (as Chamberlain was to discover later),531 but Lyons had begun the process of subordinating his antipathy to armed readiness as early as the party resolution of May 1918, where he stated that there must be no commitment to war ‘unless Australia be directly attacked’.532 This was the loophole in his anti-militarist creed ─ any perceived direct threat to Australian security warranted armed readiness, although he never lost his personal antipathy to things military and his passionate hatred of war. Manchuria had brought about the necessity to turn such thinking into practical policy. Whilst Lyons continued to maintain for some years his belief that Japan was well disposed towards the Empire, he was unable to set aside a nagging doubt, that the forces currently arrayed against China may one day be directed southwards.533 He therefore never lost his keenness to see Japan occupied in her continental empire-building, as the US consul, Moffat, later noted in his observations of Australian policy-makers.534 This nationally self-centered anxiety about Japan was widespread (if more among conservatives than in Labor circles),535 especially by the elder statesmen Pearce and Hughes, as well as by many in military and civil administration, such as Hubert Murray and E.L. Piesse.536 The Minister of Defence, Pearce, was later to sum up Australia’s attitude as being one which rejoiced in the Japanese advance into Manchuria, there being no alternative other than to be friendly towards Tokyo.537 This rejoicing did not, of course, preclude a robust attitude to defence.

529 vide later chapters and Meyers, “International paradigms…”: 47. The FO held the view by 1935 that British policy was ‘peace and defence’; FO memorandum quoted in ibid. 530 For example on 3 September 1938 in his speech at Glenbrook, NSW, Second Unofficial Conference on British Commonwealth Relations, Current Notes on International Affairs, vol.5, no.5 (September 1938). 531 From as early as March 1932 Chamberlain was arguing that the UK was in no financial state to consider rearmament and financial factors were an important part of his proposals for a pact with Japan during 1934; Andrews, Writing, 108-9. 532 vide above, White, Love Story, 81; Lake, Divided Society, 141. 533 vide Chapter 3. 534 Jay Moffat, US consul-general at Sydney from 1935, noted Australian happiness with Japanese attention being concentrated on Manchuria; FRUS, 1935, vol.3, 363-5, 12 October 1935; Esthus, 10-11. 535 In November 1933, Senator Dunn (ALP) dismissed any suggestion that Japan would ever attack Australia; CPD, vol.136, 1823, 3 November 1933. Scullin had told the 1930 Imperial Conference that he had ‘never been greatly impressed’ by suggestions of a threat from Japan; Minutes of the First Meeting, Committee on the Singapore Base, 16 October 1930, CAB 32-91, PRO, London, quoted in McCarthy, “Singapore and Australian Defence…”: 174. 536 Professor Hank Nelson quotes Sir Hubert Murray, Administrator of New Guinea at this time, likening the Japanese threat to Australia to that of Germany against France. On Murray, Hudson, Australia and the League, 166ff. The intelligence officer E. Piesse (Albatross), sceptical of any Japanese threat in the ‘twenties, had changed his outlook due to Manchuria; History Institute of Victoria lecture, ‘Defining the Nation: Australia and the Near North’, 2 August 2001; D. Walker, Anxious Nation, 174; Smith, 87; Twomey, “Small Power Security…”: 82; ibid., “Australia and the Search…”, 150; vide Chapter 4. 537 Pearce to Moffat, 3 October 1935, The Moffat Papers, ed. N. Hooker, 129, 78 Quite aside from the Manchurian motive, attention to defence matters was due, for the Australian armed forces were in a parlous condition in January 1932, following the recent defence cuts that began in July 1929 under Bruce and continued under Scullin.538 The new government accordingly commissioned a strategic assessment, which was delivered to Lyons within the first five weeks, wherein the cabinet disarmament and defence sub-committee (Latham and Pearce) recommended an immediate strategy of land and air preparation against ‘light raids’, rather than ‘invasion’.539 Lyons was in no position to question such an assessment and seemed to prefer from the beginning an effective preparation against such raids over any ineffective preparation against invasion. He refused to be budged from it in future years, despite considerable resistance from many in the services. In any case, the economics of rearmament made preparation against the prospect of invasion unthinkable in 1932-33540 ─ whereas Lyons stretched the restraints of economic orthodoxy in the defence spending of the later rearmament programs, this was not an option in these straitened early years.541 Regardless of financial commitment, however, the adoption of a ‘raids’ defensive policy was evidence that the Lyons government was already concerned about an ‘inflammable Pacific’, for Japan was the only conceivable regional power that could launch such an act of aggression in the foreseeable future.542 The two countries were, after all, neighbours of a kind, as their mandated territories met at the Equator. Any southward expansion required only a single paddle over that line. The Japanese were not reluctant to remind Australia of this proximity,543 nor were some of the more extreme Australian observers, such as the Sydney journalist and publicist, E.G. Marks, who warned in 1933 that Thursday Island was closer to these mandates than it was to Sydney.544 The need for some policy co-ordination at least was already in Lyons’s mind whilst Latham was in London in mid-1932 for, under prime ministerial instruction,545 the minister attended ‘Conferences on Defence matters’ with the British service chiefs on 2 June 1932,

538 Twomey, “Small Power Security…”: 72-5, notes the pre-Bruce cuts dating from 1922. Bruce announced his 1929 intention owing to an unforeseen deficit; Frei, 123. For a discussion of Labor’s defence cuts from November 1929 and March 1930; Fairbanks, 28; Robertson, Scullin, 215ff. On the Labor attitude to defence at the time: E. Andrews, “Australian Labour and Foreign Policy 1935-39,” in W. Hudson (ed. and intro.) Towards a Foreign Policy: 1914-1941, (Melbourne: Cassell, 1967), 126; Hasluck, Government, 20, 29. 539 Pearce to Lyons, 13 February 1932, CP103/19/30, NAA, Canberra. McCarthy, “Australia and Imperial Defence…”: 26; N. Gow, “Australian Army Strategic Planning 1919-39.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.23, no.2 (August 1977): 170. A “Defence against Light Raids” assumed raids by fewer than 200 lightly armed men, landed from (Japanese) cruisers; Ross, Armed and Ready, 110. 540 vide ibid., 121-3 on the economics of rearmament in this decade. 541 Andrews, “Patterns…,”, 96, maintains that Lyons continually observed economic orthodoxy against excessive defence spending. This is correct only in the early years. 542 R. Meyers, “Britain, Europe and the Dominions in the 1930s: Some Aspects of British, European and Commonwealth Policies.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.22, no.1 (1976): 42. 543 Y. Tsurumi, “Japan Speaks to Australia.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.2, no.4 (October-November 1937): 10. 544 E. Marks, Pacific Peril: Or The Menace of Japan’s Mandated Islands (Sydney: Wynyard Book Arcade, 1933), 90. Marks was considered a spokesman for the Australian Navy League; I. Friedman, “Australia and Japan: Conflict in the South Pacific.” Political Science Quarterly, vol.52 (1937): 396. On his extreme anti-orientalism; D. Walker, Anxious Nation, 175. 545 Latham to Lyons, London, 19 May 1932, Latham Papers, MS1009/56, NLA, Canberra. 79 assisting in the preparation of a comprehensive CID report on Australian defence.546 Here, Latham discovered that Britain’s overall defence readiness was of a low order, as Bruce was to find in the following year, but of more immediate concern was the confirmation that little work was proceeding on the Singapore naval base547 ─ a bone of contention between London and Melbourne/Canberra since at least 1922, when Pearce sought its exclusion from the Washington provisions, and especially since 1924, when Bruce opposed the Labour government’s cessation of works.548 The news was not all bad, however, for on 9 June 1932 the CID reversed an earlier policy of decelerating work on the base, chiefly for reasons of its own, but perhaps also in response to some pleading from Latham (although there is no direct evidence to that effect), who was present at their deliberations and had relayed his government’s reliance on ‘the Base being made usable in the near future’.549 Even if this reversal was welcome, the intended rate of construction was unacceptable to Canberra and Lyons would be forced to take up his Singapore cudgel on many occasions in the following years. In general, to judge from subsequent policy-

making, Latham’s experiences in London seem to have eroded Canberra’s confidence in the ‘Singapore strategy’ and the British aversion to rearmament, encountered at a time of increasing regional vulnerability, arguably served as a wake-up call to the Lyons government.550

The year 1933 served only to deepen Lyons’s anxiety about security, for he had some knowledge, through Bruce, of further debates on Singapore within the CID in April, where the pro-dominion arguments of Hankey were discarded in the interests of the cost-cutting of the Chancellor, Chamberlain.551 Although it was not until July 1934 that a slashing of British naval expenditure (from £21.7 million to £13 million) was foreshadowed, the warning signs for Canberra were evident by 6 April 1933, with Chamberlain’s assertion that Japan presented no threat.552 This became the prevailing view of the CID and Bruce was unable to erode it at a September Admiralty conference or in the CID itself, in November.553 Canberra had already responded with caution to the swinging Whitehall pendulum even before the high commissioner’s efforts for, in May, Pearce foreshadowed an extra £1 million in defence spending in the 1933

546 Latham’s testimony to the COS assisted the preparation of the 1932 CID paper “The Defence of Australia”, that reassured Australia of Britain’s commitment to naval assistance; Roskill, 129. On the CID, vide Andrews, “Broken Promise…”: 117; it met on Thursdays on the day after the regular cabinet meetings. There were some 25 sub-committees of imperial defence, the most important of which were the Defence Plans Committee and the Defence Policy and Requirements Committee; I. Colvin, The Chamberlain Cabinet (London: Gollancz, 1971), 21. 547 Bruce in the CID, 9 November 1933, quoted in Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 329ff. 548 McIntyre, 109. Twomey, “Small Power Security…”: 77, 81. Murfett, “Keystone…”, 148, 151ff.; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 412, on the history of the base in the ‘twenties. 549 McIntyre, 110; Neidpath, 125; Hankey note, 20 April 1934; McCarthy, “Singapore and Australian Defence…”: 174. The British cabinet accepted this change on 11 October 1932; Murfett, “Keystone…”, 161. 550 On British reluctance to rearm; vide Andrews, “Broken Promise…”: 105ff.; ibid., Writing, 108ff. Baldwin, MacDonald and Chamberlain were opposed to rearmament and by July 1934 the cabinet postponed defence readiness; ibid., 149-50. 551 The CID’s desire to accelerate Singapore construction in June 1932 had come to little; McCarthy, “Singapore and Australian Defence…”: 174. Hankey wrote on two occasions to Ramsay MacDonald seeking to defend the Singapore concept against Chamberlain’s assaults, 24 February 1933 and 5 April 1933, PREM 1/152/10, PRO, London. Bruce too had argued unsuccessfully contra Chamberlain; Andrews, “Broken Promise…”: 106. 552 Andrews, “Broken Promise…”: 106-9. 553 Bruce at Admiralty Conference, 19 September 1933; McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 55. Bruce at CID meeting, 9 November 1933; Louis, British Strategy, 208. 80 budget, including the probability of new cruisers for the RAN in supplement to those constructed under Bruce by 1928.554 Japanese aggression, League impotence and British lassitude had brought about the first signs of greater industry and self-reliance in Australian defence policy.555 The move towards rearmament did not occur in a political vacuum. Hughes had returned home from Geneva, in December 1932 following his employment at Lyons’s request, with fresh memories of Japanese abrasiveness and grave reservations about the international situation.556 Consequently, at Sydney on 21 August 1933 he officiated, with Thomas Blamey, at the foundation of the ‘Defence of Australia League’, a formidable policy ginger-group with a distinctly anti-Japanese persuasion.557 Only weeks before, Hughes had told an American correspondent that the international situation was as dangerous as in 1914 and that Japan ‘might take risks’ in the light of the weakness of the British fleet in the Pacific558 ─ Australia must be prepared, he said, ‘to hold her own’.559 Lyons, as prime minister, necessarily and prudently remained silent in public about any perceived Japanese threat but, in this instance, Hughes’s activities provided a suitable backdrop for significant budgetary increases in defence expenditure, whether by design or coincidence ─ the DAL withered thereafter, until revived for new purposes by Hughes in late-1938 with Lyons’s complicity.560 Some later commentators have suspected that the Japanophobia of 1933 was artificially inflated,561 but UK high commissioner Crutchley had no doubt by 6 September that there was a genuine, growing sense of ‘nervousness’ about Japanese intentions, later described as ‘rumours of designs’.562 Informed Australian observers of the East and of Australian responses to it, such as Clunies-Ross, similarly noted the depth of that anxiety.563 It was not one shared in Whitehall, to judge from Officer’s dispatches, which gave

554 Pearce, Argus, 2 May 1933, 7, a; Murphy, 138. The Bruce five-year program of 1924, opposed by Labor, had resulted in two new cruisers; Twomey, “Small Power Security…”: 82-4. 555 pace Andrews, “The Australian Government and the Manchurian Crisis, 1931-4”, 311, which suggest that League weakness brought about a greater reliance on Britain. 556 Fitzhardinge, 618ff.; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 245. 557 Hughes gave many defence addresses at this time, e.g. Manly speech, 28 September 1933, Hughes Papers, MS1538/32/1/1, NLA, Canberra; vide Murphy, 135ff.; Fitzhardinge, 507. Blamey was later to see service in the rearmament programs of the Lyons government; J. Robertson, “The Distant War: Australia and Imperial Defence, 1919- 41,” in Australia Two Centuries of War and Peace, eds. M.McKernan and M. Browne (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1988), 225; vide Chapter 7. 558 Fitzhardinge, 618-9. The interview appeared in the New York American, 3 September 1933. Hughes was also sceptical and cautious about Singapore; Twomey, “Munich,” 18-19. 559 D. Dow, New York trade commissioner, to External Affairs, 5 September 1933, sending text of Hughes’s statement as it appeared in the US press, A981 JAP 1010 PART 2, NAA, Canberra. Hughes was to use similar language in 1938 about New Guinea; vide Chapter 7. 560 Fitzhardinge, 619, on the DAL. On its revival, vide Chapter 7. It had itself replaced the pre-Depression Australian National Defence League, which had included Hughes and Bruce; Wilcox, 95. 561 Hudson, League, 73. Murphy, 135ff., 145, suggested that the DAL was part of an anti-Japanese program motivated by trade factors and a propaganda cover for the ‘goodwill’ mission of 1934. Chapter 2 addresses these claims. 562 Andrews, Writing, 119, quoting Crutchley on 6 September 1933, CAB 21/397, PRO, London; Holland, 174; Crutchley to Batterbee, Dominions Office, 12 December 1933, DO 35/183, PRO, London. 563 He later noted that the great body of Australian opinion saw Japan as the main threat to Australian security; I. Clunies- Ross, “Australian Representation in Japan.” Australian Quarterly, no.22 (June 1934): 63. Press opinion was divided on whether Japan should be appeased or confronted; Shepherd, 22-3, referring to Sydney Morning Herald, 21 and 23 September 1931, 28 February 1932 and Daily Telegraph (Sydney) 1 January 1933. The Fairbanks thesis provides a comprehensive survey of Australian press reaction to Japan in this period, passim. 81 little indication of any Foreign Office concern about Japan’s waxing ambitions.564 In any case, attempts by London at this time to downplay the Japanese threat carried little currency at Canberra, where it seemed real enough.565 Proof of its strength and influence is found in an examination of the rearmament program of September 1933, for the Japanese shadow over Manchuria had lengthened and was now cast across the Equator.566

VII The veteran Minister of Defence had an ambivalent view of his leader’s qualities, thinking that Lyons was too much of a consensus man.567 Like Latham, however, Pearce was an important early influence on Lyons as a senior minister and remained so until 1936, when his star began to fall following the emergence of important differences between the two over European appeasement. In the early years, however, Pearce arguably steered Lyons in the direction of rearmament as one of the duumvirate on the cabinet defence sub-committee, publicly so after May 1933.568 Two consecutive budget surpluses eased any financial reservations that the Prime Minister-Treasurer might have retained about increased defence spending:569 Lyons had been unwilling to furnish the Defence Department with additional funds in the fiscal year 1931/32, but the budgetary position had improved significantly in 1932/33, partly because of the incipient trade improvements brought about by the Ottawa agreements of August 1932.570 The decision to spend the accumulating budget surpluses on defence had been taken by May 1933 and it appeared that Pearce’s fierce lobbying had played a part in the relevant cabinet deliberations571 ─ Lyons, as Treasurer, obviously needed to endorse such measures, but he was yet to indicate his own attitude to rearmament on a significant scale. New defence allocations were accordingly announced by the minister, on 25 September 1933, at the sympathetic Sydney business forum, the ‘Millions Club’

564 Noted by Murphy, 145, quoting the placid Simon memorandum, 27 May 1933, CP290/14/1, NAA, Canberra. 565 Chamberlain was prominent in efforts to downgrade eastern defence priorities; Andrews, “Broken Promise…”: 106-9; ibid., “The Great Temptation…”: 353; ibid., Writing, 145. 566 Ross, Armed and Ready, 111, believes that the Manchurian factor was an important element in Pearce’s pre-budget departmental lobbying in 1933. 567 Pearce thought him too prone to following outside advice, although he acknowledged his leadership qualities; Cumpston, Bruce, 119; P. Heydon, Quiet Decision (Melbourne: MUP, 1965), 119; Andrews, Isolationism, 44; Enid Lyons interview with A. Clarke, Tape 2. 568 Latham was the other half; vide above. There was no contradiction between rearmament and Pearce’s expressed desire to avoid a repetition of 1914-18; New Cabinet Meets at Canberra, newsreel, 6 January 1932, Episode Title No.29652, ScreenSound, Canberra. Pearce, Argus, 2 May 1933, 7, a; Murphy, 138. 569 Ross, Armed and Ready, 110. 570 On Ottawa and the benefits gained for Australian trade, vide Earle Page, Truant, 223; Harris, 91; O’Brien, 575, 577; K. Tsokhas, “Protection, Imperial Preference and Australian Conservative Politics 1923-39.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol.20, no.1 (January 1992): 79, cites trading figures in defence of Ottawa. By 1936 Australian exports to Britain had reached their 1929 level, following a halving during the Depression years. By 1934, British non- Empire imports were only 65% of the 1932 figure, ibid: 76. 571 Ross, Armed and Ready, 111. 82 (rather than in the more hostile parliament)572 ─ statements by Lyons himself on defence were still rare in this early period, although they became more common in the following years. This first rearmament program included the immediate additional spending of the £1.4 million, foreshadowed in May,573 along with the intention to earmark the bulk of future surpluses through an extraordinary trust account. It was anticipated that by 1933/34 some £4 million of accumulated surpluses would be so allocated (two-thirds of the total of £6.1 million).574 It was also envisaged that additional expenditure (on top of the annual maintenance costs of the services) would reach some £7.3 million by 1936/37.575 No further programs were mooted, for Lyons as Treasurer was not yet ready to stretch the economic orthodoxies of balancing budgets and avoiding deficit spending (as Hughes advocated) ─ the Defence Department proper, for example, was restricted to its annual maintenance vote of £5.3 million. The new direction was, however, an indication that he was prepared to take orthodox financing to the brink in the interests of security.576 It was a risky fiscal strategy (at a time of economic stringency and enormous debt) to allocate to the States only one third of a £6 million surplus and to risk inflation by refusing to use available funds to redeem Treasury bills.577 The program also brought some political risks, as many on both sides remained doubtful of the necessity for such expenditure at all, surprising those who had not expected Lyons to make armaments a priority.578 It is difficult to imagine Lyons having accepted such a priority without the stimulus of ‘possible [Japanese] aggression’, as he described it to Forbes (the Labor Prime Minister of New Zealand).579 Regardless, the government (if not the opposition) had now reluctantly accepted the view of the ancients that ‘the desire for quiet is not effective as a safeguard unless accompanied by equipment for war.’580 Pearce’s Sydney speech did not contain any explicitly anti-Japanese remarks, for reasons of diplomatic sensitivity, but the minister admitted that the policy was aimed at protecting the country from ‘aggression’.581 He referred to ‘direct aggression’, as well as to ‘the greater and

572 G. Pearce, Statement of the Government’s Policy Regarding the Defence of Australia (Melbourne: Government Printer, 1933), 25 September 1933, B1535 749/1/20, NAA, Melbourne. This club has been described as a centre of concern about ‘the rising tide of colour’; D. Walker, Anxious Nation, 174. The Lyons government made it a habit to use extra-parliamentary forums to make such announcements, given the lengthy recesses of the period (for example from 8 December 1933 until 28 June 1934); vide passim and Robertson, Scullin, 428. 573 Argus, 2 May 1933, 7, a; Murphy, 138; Anon., “Australia and Japan.” Round Table, vol.24, no.93 (December 1933): 94. 574 Ross, Armed and Ready, 111. This represented an increase of one-third; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 349. 575 This sum was almost equal to the total maintenance costs of the armed services for a period of 18 months. 576 Ross, Armed and Ready, 112. Not until August 1937 did he accept the necessity of deficit spending for defence purposes, vide Chapter 5, although Hughes called for deficit spending in September 1933; Manly speech on behalf of the Defence of Australia League, 28 September 1933, Hughes Papers, MS1538/32/1/1, NLA, Canberra. 577 Ross, Armed and Ready, 112; public debt still exceeded ₤1.2 billion; Anon., “Australia and Japan.”: 93. 578 Earle Page, Truant, 257. Labor criticisms of Lyons’s rearmament are discussed passim. Hasluck, Government, 41. 579 Lyons to Forbes, 3 October 1933, seeking co-operation, N22/4/12, NZ Archives, Wellington in Andrews, “The Great Temptation…”: 357; Andrews, Writing, 113. On NZ foreign policy in the 1930s; D. McCraw, “The Zenith of Realism in New Zealand’s Foreign Policy.” Australian Journal of Politics and History vol.48, no.3 (September 2002): 353-68. 580 Dio Cassius, Fragments, Book II (Boston: Loeb, 1970) on the 7th century BC Roman king Ancus Marcius, an early proponent of disarmament, who also recanted. Labor had not done so; Brennan told Geneva in September 1930: ‘We reject the theory that preparedness for war is the best guarantee of peace.’; Robertson, Scullin, 270. 581 This matches Holsti, 133, and his ‘instrumental model’ where guarded official language indicates an unstated belief, with language chosen for its impact on the communication target - in this case Pearce’s reference would have been understood as meaning Japanese aggression. 83 more probable aggression’ of an attack on trading routes.582 It was acknowledged that the disruption of these routes would leave Australia with little option other than to sue for peace.583 Conservative thinkers such as Casey and Pearce had long-standing concerns about such vulnerability,584 and the speech’s references implied a threat from the Japanese Imperial Navy operating in the Indian Ocean.585 Appropriately, the RAN was to receive the bulk of the new funds, to modernise its Leander-class cruisers and to create an Australian flotilla (four cruisers, five destroyers) in accordance with the ‘Blue Water’ concept of forward naval deployment that foresaw a ‘dovetail’ with imperial forces;586 a long-standing Pearce vision and one that Lyons shared in time, along with the common Australian reservation about imperial command that existed from 1902.587 This development was in accord with the considerable growth, recently interrupted, of the RAN cruiser flotilla in the Bruce years.588 It was also in accord with the ‘light raids’ scenario, that required the expulsion of an enemy cruiser force closer to the coastline.589 Such naval priority was to become part of a wider debate about ‘invasion’ scenarios that continued up to the October 1937 election and beyond.590 The Army was allotted only the relatively minor role of attending to its coastal defences and anti-aircraft capability, as required under a ‘light raids’ startegy. This naval priority was not necessarily evidence of a blind commitment to the Singapore strategy.591 It was arguably the opposite: an indication of Canberra’s lack of confidence in the Admiralty, and a reaction to London’s insouciance through the development of the RAN flotilla. Lyons already had ample evidence, through Latham and Bruce, that the Singapore base was still largely a blueprint.592 It has been suggested that those most wary about these Singapore schemes were ‘socialists, pacifists and Australians’593 ─ it was a profile that strongly matched the incumbent of the Lodge. There was much to be wary about. Casey had already (in 1931) drawn attention to the imperial aspect of the defence debate, concluding that Australia could ‘find security in the years to come only within the British Empire’.594 There certainly seemed little

582 Pearce, Statement, 25 September 1933, B1535 749/1/20. 583 ‘Observer’, “Australian Defence Policy.” Australian Quarterly, no.26 (June 1935): 69. 584 Casey, Australia’s Place, 14, (from 1931). Accordingly, he welcomed the prospect of a base at Singapore. Twomey, “Small Power Security…”: 77, on Pearce’s concerns in the 1920s. By 1935, Lyons shared them, vide Chapter 4. 585 On any Italian threat in the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean, vide Chapter 3. 586 Pearce championed the concept of the RAN contributing to an imperial naval force even after his retirement in 1937; Hamill, 238; vide later chapters. There seemed no immediate opportunity to integrate this flotilla into any Singapore force, but ultimately it would be vulnerable without assistance from the Royal Navy or from the US Pacific fleet. 587 Lyons was conscious of the need to retain Australian supervision of these vessels, even in an imperial force, vide Chapter 5. Mansergh, Experience, 145-7, relates the calls for unified command by Selborne, First Sea Lord, in 1902, noting that this was contrary to the local naval needs of the dominions. 588 Twomey, “Small Power Security…”: 84, on the RAN boasting 28 vessels, including two new cruisers. 589 vide above, Ross, Armed and Ready, 110. 590 For example, ‘Observer’, “Australian Defence Policy.”: 73, concluded that the major danger was the possibility of invasion and that land and air forces ought to be given priority. This became a common Labor view; vide Chapter 5. 591 Hamill, 238. 592 Andrews, “Broken Promise…”: 117. 593 McIntyre, 114. 594 Casey, Australia’s Place, 17. 84 alternative to the imperial connection in 1932, when Australia was in a poor state of readiness,595 but these first steps towards rearmament hinted at other longer-term possibilities of greater self-reliance (to be pursued in the undesirable event of continued British military lassitude). Accordingly, it is argued that the naval component of the rearmament program was chiefly a realistic attempt to prepare an affordable, Australian naval deterrent (irrespective of Singapore), whilst maintaining some pressure on Britain, through Australian example, to make greater future commitments in the Far East. The second, ‘imperial’ part of the equation was the more difficult, for even two years later Pearce remained sceptical of the ability of under-strength British eastern naval forces to protect trading routes.596 That the rearmament program favoured home needs over imperial ones was indicated by its attention to the newest service arm, for it included a revival of the moribund RAAF, the existence of which had been barely sustained in the 1920s.597 This revival was according to the shelved recommendations of the 1928 Salmond Report, with an initial restoration of pre- Depression squadron numbers and an anticipated gradual increase in strength over the coming four years.598 Even though Lyons had contemplated the abolition of the air arm up until May 1932, from September 1933 he was to preside over the resurrection of a service referred to by Pearce at that time as an ‘auxiliary’.599 There were early signs of reform; Pearce’s foreshadowing statement of May had devoted as much attention to the need for repairing aircraft as it had to naval requirements.600 Some contemporary observers did not overlook the importance of this air aspect, Crutchley accounting for it with the explanation that Australia was shocked by Britain’s poor ranking (as fifth) amongst the air powers.601 In due course, the RAAF was to receive a much greater proportion of funding than anticipated by anybody in 1933, when the Salmond program was accelerated after 1935. In conclusion, the nature and extent of this first rearmament program should serve as a pause to those who assert that Lyons (or Pearce) was blindly wedded to British defence strategies, in particular to Singapore. It should also serve to counter the views of those who assert that this prime minister turned his attention to defence readiness only towards the end of his period in office.602 Rearmament had commenced in September 1933, several months before the implied end of cunctation, in December. Ω

595 McCarthy, “Australia and Imperial Defence…”: 31-2. 596 Moffat to Hull, FRUS, 1935, vol.4, 363-5, 12 October 1935, following an interview with Pearce. 597 Twomey, “Small Power Security…”: 72. 598 McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 81ff, on the 1938 expansion of RAAF, but little on the background of this expansion since 1933, vide Chapter 6. On the October 1928 Salmond Report; Hasluck, Government, 31. It envisaged a nine-year development program. The Bruce-Page government had accepted the first triennial stage before 1929. 599 J. Sandes, “The Defence of Australia.” Australian Quarterly, no.20 (December 1933): 20-1, on the parlous state of the RAAF 1929-33. Pearce, Statement, 25 September 1933, B1535 749/1/20. 600 Argus, 2 May 1933, 7, a. The Argus sub-heading was “Replacing Damaged Aircraft”. 601 Holland, 174, Crutchley, UK High Commissioner, Canberra, to Batterbee, Dominions Office, 12 December 1933, DO 35/183, PRO, London. 602 Day, Curtin, 364, for such an assessment of Lyons’s defence efforts. Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, 262. 85 The Lyons government was most anxious about the international situation towards the end of 1933. Sanctions had been aborted, but so too had disarmament; the nation’s finances had been stabilised, but those precious budget surpluses allocated to armaments; the Japanese seemed determined on continental, not maritime, expansion, but Britain showed little interest in any threat from East Asia. Lyons’s first attempts to address international issues had therefore been frustrating and with his nervous temperament, he was likely to have felt this disappointment keenly. Latham, in later years, observed of Lyons in the period up to 1934: ‘He was a sensitive man, and felt his responsibilities deeply. Sometimes they almost overwhelmed him.’603 Certainly there were already calls by October 1933 for him to leave the Lodge, having achieved some of his economic goals.604 Reports of Lyons’s political demise were, however, premature for although he was well advanced in his economic management, his private and public obsession with peacemaking was yet to have much influence on policy-making.605 Eastern cunctation had reached the end of its road by the close of 1933. From Lyons’s perspective, it was unable to take him any further towards international conciliation. Its more virulent form, appeasement, offered greater promise. Accordingly, some in the Lyons government decided on a change of pace around this time and the Prime Minister, after Latham, began to contemplate the possibility of a direct appeal to the source of regional disquiet. One can speculate that such an appeal in pursuit of ‘mutual and international co-operation’ was perhaps the new ‘way to peace’ mooted by Lyons at this time and followed thereafter.606 All that was needed, he supposed (most likely with Latham’s counsel), was mutual goodwill. These reflections marked the transition of the Lyons government’s policy from one of waiting to one of negotiating ─ from cunctation to appeasement. The waiting game was replaced, in December 1933, by the ‘lure of Japan’.607

603 Sir John Latham, “Remembrance of Things Past, Mainly Political.” Meanjin Quarterly, vol.21, no.88 (1962): 79. 604 Sydney Morning Herald, 6 October 1933, quoted in Cumpston, Bruce, 106, calling for Lyons’s retirement in favour of Bruce. Bruce had discussed the possibility of his retirement even earlier; Bruce to Casey, 19 January 1933, A1421/1, NAA, Canberra. 605 Lyons to R. Watt, NSW League of Nations Union, 14 March 1932, CP30/3/25, on the need for international peace. 606 Lyons, “What Does the World Most Need Today”, Christian Science Monitor, 23 November 1933.This attitude to ‘international co-operation’ remained throughout; vide Lyons to Foreign Press Association, The Times, 8 June 1937, 13, b, and Ambassador Bingham to State Department, London, FRUS, vol.2, 11 June 1937, 142-3, both in Chapter 5. 607 S. Akimoto, The Lure of Japan (1934) is one of several titles on Japan in Lyons’s personal library at Home Hill, Personal visit, 21 December 1999. 86

Chapter 2: The Genesis of Australian Appeasement ─ The ‘Australian Eastern Mission’ of 1934 and its Aftermath

‘The conditions of the world today are very different from those which obtained even a few years ago, and profoundly different from the state of affairs before the war…International relations generally are more important than they have ever been before. It is a strange thing to reflect that no official visit has ever been paid by Australia to the countries of any of her near neighbours. It may be that the time has come when something positive should be done to cultivate friendship with our neighbours.’608 J.A. Lyons, Statement by Prime Minister, 2 December 1933.

‘Geography cannot be denied indefinitely.’609 Dr. E.H. Burgmann, Bishop of Goulburn, June 1937.

Trade and diplomacy − the conception and nature of the AEM − diplomatic goals − defence goals − composition and itinerary − the diplomatic success of the AEM − the defence warnings of the AEM − diplomacy, trade and the Japanese perspective − the British perspective − Lyons and the aftermath − the Melbourne memorandum − the Hankey mission.

The ‘Australian Eastern Mission’ (21 March-14 June 1934) travelled through East Asia from the Netherlands East Indies to Japan, the latter destination being its primary focus as the chief source of regional disquiet. It was the first act of an Australian quasi-diplomacy in the region, accurately described by its leader as the ‘first mission of a diplomatic character’, and ipso facto arguably constituted a radical and symbolic political act that consummated many developments of the 1920s.610 Although acknowledged as such by some contemporaries, this is often overlooked by those who have since primarily examined its tepid commercial goals.611 It indicated that the

608 J. Lyons, Statement by Prime Minister, 2 December 1933, A981 JAP 101 PART 2, NAA, Canberra. Also quoted selectively in E. Crutchley, UK High Commissioner, Canberra, to Dominions Office, 15 January 1934, FO18157/47, PRO, London. A similar press statement, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 December 1933, is quoted in Smith, 72. 609 E. Burgmann, “Australian in World Politics.” Australian National Review, vol.1, no.6 (June 1937): 4, on Australia and the Orient. 610 J. Latham, “The Australian Eastern Mission, 1934. Report,” Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, vol.iv (1932- 34), 6 July 1934, 439. Its radical nature is not diminished by accepting D. Walker, Anxious Nation, 220, that it must be set against the 1920s activities of the Institute of Pacific Relations. This was a private affair and had little impact on policy. 611 Millar, 81-2, lists its commercial predecessors in the 1920s. I. Nish, “Relations with Japan,” in Between Empire to Nation, eds. C. Bridge and B. Attard (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2001), 161, accepts its symbolic importance. Megaw, “Goodwill…”: 259, noted press recognition in March 1934 that the mission represented the beginnings of an Australian foreign policy, including Argus, 16 March 1934. 87 period of Australian cunctation (1932-33) was over, as was Australia’s ‘splendid isolation’.612 Although Lyons played little evident part in its conception and preparation other than as an associate of Latham, and no part in the operation of a mission entirely undertaken by the minister, the AEM was the first expression of his eastern appeasement and the first Pacific initiative taken by his government ─ Lyons’s chief role was left to its aftermath. That the AEM was directed exclusively towards the region was of immense significance and it is argued that Lyons and Latham accordingly must be included in the forefront of those ‘thirties Australian policy-makers who directed antipodean diplomatic attention towards the ‘Near North’.613 Many Australian intellectuals in the period between the wars, including Clunies-Ross and Garran, lobbied for a greater recognition of the importance of the Pacific:614 the AEM was a considerable acknowledgement of their concern, one that is becoming tardily recognised as such in the historiography.615 The mission was demonstrably not primarily intended to be a trade delegation.616 It was chiefly a ‘quasi-diplomatic’ mission (headed by an unconventional, quasi-diplomat),617 with attention devoted to defence considerations, and was the first example of what Casey had called ‘secret diplomacy’ in 1932.618 Its diplomatic goals, other than ‘goodwill’, were never stated beforehand, but the evidence suggests that they included an intention to determine the Japanese attitudes to the League and Manchuria ─ these were seemingly conceived in the hope of returning militaristic Tokyo to the internationalism of the 1920s and/or establishing her terms for a settlement of the Manchurian question.619 Its defence goals, also unstated prior to departure, arguably included matters relevant to Australian security─ a report on the state of Singapore’s development, a clarification of Japan’s behaviour in her Pacific mandates and a reassertion, for Tokyo’s benefit, of imperial defence solidarity. Latham returned home in June 1934 confident that most of these had been attained, although he was not the bearer of only good news. It was then left to Lyons to consider his recommendations and, before the end of 1934, it is argued that his new faith in a mixture of appeasement and rearmament was confirmed by two additional sources: A.C.V. Melbourne and Sir Maurice Hankey. The task now before the Prime Minister

612 Star, Melbourne, editorial, 4 December 1933. The Star, first published on 30 October 1933 and competing in the evening market with the Herald, was keen to make a splash. 613 vide Introduction; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 400-1. 614 Clunies-Ross, Australia and the Far East, 194-5, regarded the AEM as ‘perhaps the first serious cultural contact with Australia’. Garran regarded it as an unprecedented and welcome diplomatic initiative, R. Garran, “Diplomatic Relations in the Pacific,” in Australia and the Far East, ed. I. Clunies-Ross, 95. On Garran, ADB, vol.8, 622ff. 615 D. Walker, Anxious Nation, 226 and “Survivalist Anxieties”: 326. This group included Russo, Melbourne, Garran, Eggleston and Clunies-Ross. Smith, 74, acknowledges the role of the AEM in turning Australian eyes to Asia. Megaw, “Goodwill…”: 260, footnote 2, suggested that Lyons was uninterested in foreign affairs, although she conceded the importance of the mission in representing a shift in perception to the Pacific, 259. 616 Jones, 140, notes that Latham later mentioned a mixed rationale for the mission in his reports, but these same reports clearly subordinated the trade aspect, even if commercial aspects were not ignored, vide below on A. Moore. 617 Latham fits this category, as found in “Introduction,” in Between Empire and Nation, eds. C. Bridge and B. Attard, 3. 618 Bolton, “A.C.V. Melbourne,” 120. Casey, “The International Situation” (24 August 1932) in The World We Live In: A Series of Speeches on Current Events, 56. 619 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 11-12, suggested the Japanese return to internationalism as an aim of 1930s Pacific diplomacy. 88 was to press the implementation of these twin policies (conciliation and rearmament), both of which remained constant in his remaining years. I The trade imperative, through the opposition to sanctions, had been an important element in the policy of cunctation, but diplomatic and defence considerations were as important by late-1933, given the absence of any settlement in Manchuria. Existing Australian trade with Japan had nonetheless been protected and the possibility of trade expansion was addressed by the private, Gepp trade report of September 1932, the private A.C.V. Melbourne report of the same year, as well as by the official Stewart trade conference in Sydney, from February 1933.620 The unanimity of their conclusions and deliberations encouraged the Lyons cabinet to appoint eastern trade commissioners to Hong Kong and Batavia on 7 September 1933, a well- received measure of proto-diplomacy which appealed more to Lyons, as Treasurer, than to Latham at External Affairs.621 The particular interest of the former was in the vital Japanese trade and he also instructed Stewart in cabinet to collaborate with T.W. White, Minister of Customs, ‘to initiate inquiries as to whether an official could be attached to the office of the British attaché in Japan’, a step that Latham the Japanophile found more appealing.622 The Trade Commissioners Act was accordingly passed on 8 December 1933, although its provisions were slow to be implemented.623 Lyons, however, saw no need to rush into trade discussions with Tokyo when these talks could only mean Japanese pressure to balance that trade, implied in their August 1932 call for a trade treaty.624 His interest in ‘economic’ appeasement was minimal ─ in the commercial sphere it was in Australia’s interests to allow laissez-faire to prevail, given the favourable trading situation in the Far East, where Japan was now Australia’s major trading partner, and growing.625

620 On Gepp and Frank Stewart, Minister of Commerce; Smith, 70-2. Gepp bore a letter of introduction from Scullin. He had been a delegate to the 1931 Hangchow conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations; D. Walker, Anxious Nation, 222; ibid., “Survivalist Anxieties”: 326, 328. Melbourne’s 1932 report to the Senate of the University of Queensland is found in Melbourne Papers, Reel 2, University of Queensland Archives, St. Lucia. Latham appeared to have read it; Megaw, “Goodwill…”: 251; Andrews, Writing, 135. Mitchell, in Bolton, “A.C.V. Melbourne,” 117; Smith, 70-1. Melbourne chaired the Queensland committee on eastern trade established by Stewart, a personal friend. 621 Murphy, 134, on the favourable press response, e.g., Sydney Daily Telegraph, 8 September 1933. Lyons persuaded Latham of their efficacy; Latham to Lyons, 27 July 1933, Latham Papers, MS 1009/54, NLA, Canberra. Lyons had passed to him on 17 July 1933 correspondence indicating that the Canadian system of such appointments was very beneficial; ibid. 622 Lyons note to Stewart, 7 September 1933, Cabinet Papers, A6006, Roll 9, NAA, Melbourne, also quoted in Commerce Department statement to cabinet, 12 February 1935, ibid. Latham had written to Lyons suggesting such a procedure in July; Andrews, Writing, 135. 623 The positions at Batavia and Hong Kong were not filled until 12 February 1935 and that in Tokyo not until 30 May 1935; Cabinet Papers, 12 February 1935, A6006, Roll 9, NAA, Melbourne and ibid., 30 May 1935; Megaw, “Goodwill…”: 255. 624 Andrews, Writing, 135. Lyons pleaded the Ottawa factor in response, but he was to find that Japan was persistent in her demands. Latham had not suggested the negotiation of such a treaty, as Melbourne later claimed in “Australia and Japan. How the Crisis Developed”, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. That was Melbourne’s own suggestion, reiterated to Latham on 2 December 1933, ibid. 625 Australian trade with Japan reached the level of 11.2% of all exports in 1933-4, a notable recovery from the Depression slump of 5.2% in 1929-30. This market was now worth some £13.9 million p.a. to Australian exporters, surpassed only by the UK. Australian imports from Japan on the other hand constituted only 6.2% of the total in 1933- 34, worth some £3.7 million p.a. J. Crawford, “Australia as a Pacific Power,” 73 and Appendix gives detailed tables of 89 The best ways to protect and further enhance eastern trade, as well as national security, seemed to be through efforts to encourage Tokyo’s return to responsible international behaviour ─ should this prove impossible, the alternative was to g ive the tentative, armed peace in the region a firmer base. These goals could only be achieved through ‘direct’ diplomacy, given the League’s recent failure and the disappointments of cunctation. The thoughts of Lyons and the undefined circle of Canberra policy-makers were accordingly turned in late-1933 towards an ‘Australian’ solution of the Manchurian diplomatic impasse. Trade considerations were subordinated in the consequent mission to diplomatic/defence imperatives ─ ‘economic’ to ‘political’ appeasement. This primacy of diplomacy and defence over trade (repeated in 1936 and 1938) has been overlooked by most observers of the 1934 initiative and the primary nature of the Australian Eastern Mission has thus been generally misconstrued.626

II

The rearmament program of September 1933 made evident Canberra’s conclusions about the failure of cunctation to secure an eastern peace, but there had been no equivalent signal of a change in external policy perception at that time. Any such signal was likely to be contentious in the eyes of those opposed to negotiating with aggressors, implying as it would a loss of faith in the League. The Melbourne press, however, forced the hand of Lyons (a man often secretive in policy formulation despite his widespread consultative practices) when it leaked the information, on 1-2 December 1933, that the government was not simply considering the appointment of trade commissioners, but also pondering the dispatch of a diplomatic mission to Japan.627 The Prime Minister, annoyed at the premature revelation of his intentions according to Latham, was then forced to issue his own clarifying statement, for publication later on 2 December, in response to these reports and to inquiries from an uninformed London.628 In it, he firmly stated the parameters of the proposed mission. This statement has not been examined with due attention by historians. Far from being ‘somewhat confused’, it made Lyons’s attitude perfectly clear and coherently outlined a diplomatic, not commercial, mission.629 Lyons began by truthfully denying that the matter had come before cabinet, without offering any apology for the putative prime ministerial fiat, as was to become the custom in

trade statistics. Smith, 69, gives trade figures for East Asia, absorbing over 20% of Australian exports; also K. Tsokhas, Markets, Money and Empire. The Political Economy of the Australian Wool Industry (Melbourne: MUP, 1990), 68-9. 626 For instance, Megaw, “Goodwill…”: 252; G. Sawer, Australian Federal Politics and Law 1929-1949 (Melbourne: MUP, 1963), 62; Hudson, Australian Diplomacy, 22. Millar, 83, conceded joint commercial and diplomatic objectives. vide Chapters 5 and 6 on trade diversion in 1936 and Yampi in 1938. 627 The Star and the Age both presented this scoop. Andrews, Writing, 136, suggests that the Star, 1 December 1933, had reported that cabinet was considering a mission. Murphy, 98, agreed. No such account was found in my examination of that edition. The Star, 2, a, of that date did welcome business consultation prior to any trade appointment, but no mention of any mission was evident. The Age, 2 December 1933, 21, a, “Emissary to Japan”, mentioned a ‘mission’. 628 Latham’s observations to Bruce, 30 January 1934, A981 FAR 5(1), NAA, Canberra. 629 Andrews, Writing, 136. 90 later years.630 He then expressed his concern about the state of international relations in a characteristically homely way and in so doing emphasised his own prime ministerial role in policy formulation, failing to even mention the incumbent minister Latham:631

It is true…that as Prime Minister I have been considering the subject of promoting friendly relations with neighbouring countries in the East. The conditions of the world today are very different from those which obtained even a few years ago, and profoundly different from the state of affairs before the war. Trade channels have become restricted and have altered their direction. International relations generally are more important than they have ever been before. It is a strange thing to reflect that no official visit has ever been paid by Australia to the countries of any of her near neighbours. It may be that the time has come when something positive should be done to cultivate friendship with our neighbours. I have, accordingly, had in mind for some time the question of the practicability of a Minister from Australia visiting the Dutch East Indies, the Malasia [sic], Japan and China upon a mission of friendship and goodwill, as distinct from a trade mission. Matters affecting trade can be dealt with separately, and indeed are being dealt with by negotiation between the Minister of Customs (with the assistance of the Minister for Commerce) on behalf of the Commonwealth, and the Consuls representing the various countries concerned. The distinction which I suggest between a trade mission and a diplomatic mission may be compared with the difference between visiting a man in his office and visiting him in his home.632

This document was instructive, for it indicated the death of cunctation and its replacement by Australian appeasement. It also revealed a mind unschooled in diplomacy, able to reduce diplomatic intercourse to the level of ‘man-to-man’ conversations, something that came to characterise the new policy ─ Lyons later summarised his aspiration in external affairs as being ‘to understand one another’s point of view’.633 This individual-oriented thinking, characteristic of appeasement, allowed him the extensive use of the personal pronoun ‘I’ and provided some indication of the blurring in his mind between his personal attitudes and his function ‘as Prime Minister’, something that was frequently the case in the Lyons years.634 This statement is a good example of the difficulty that Lyons found in distinguishing the personal from the public for, although issued under the prime ministerial aegis, it is riddled with his personal views down to the homely analogy of its conclusion and reflects the Lyons house-style of studiously transferring the domestic to the political. It can therefore be taken as the individual’s view in both a personal and official capacity. There was no attempt to suggest collegiality through ministerial consultation and it seems that he was now confident and immodest enough in external affairs to

630 Cabinet did not consider the matter until 12 December 1933, and then as a goodwill mission, not as a trade mission, Cabinet minutes, A2694, vol.11, NAA, Canberra. 631 Perhaps Lyons already felt, as later claimed: “I get on better without him.” - his reputed view of Latham according to Enid Lyons, Carrion Crows, 70. She made similar admissions in her audio interview with A. Clarke, Tape 1. These remarks were made at a time when she admitted her concern about his reputation and need to be treated with caution, although they ought not to be discounted. 632 Lyons, Statement, n.d., but 2 December 1933, A981 JAP 101 PART 2. The statement, undated, may have been prepared on 1 December in response to press speculation, but it was intended for press circulation on 2 December, and has been dated accordingly in this thesis. 633 Lyons Speech on International Situation, 28 September 1938, Episode Title No.245919, ScreenSound, Canberra. 634 Meyers, “International paradigms…”: 56, on the individual-oriented thinking of appeasement. 91 claim prime ministerial hegemony in decision-making635 ─ in doing so Lyons was being misleading, for Latham proved the one responsible for much of the spade-work of preparation, a process in which Lyons had acted as only an associate.636 Nevertheless, this was the first instance of his foreign policy-making in which the cabinet and External Affairs were poorly informed ─ it was not to be the last. Given the folksy, domestic language, for which Lyons was either reviled or admired, the document was unlikely to have been penned by the more formal Latham, whose legalistic and linguistic exactitude always led him to refer, for example, to the ‘Netherlands East Indies’ and the ‘Malay States’, but the sentiments contained therein were not necessarily those of Lyons alone, as it suggested. The claim of sole authorship for the conception of a mission is difficult to test in the absence of any other documentation, but it seems unlikely that the imprint of Latham was far away, as the cabinet minister with the most extended interest in international relations and with a demonstrated prior interest in Japan637 ─ if so, this was one occasion when Latham’s habitual complaint as a mentor in external policy, that Lyons was happy to take advice but could not be counted upon to implement it, seemed inapplicable.638 The imprint of Casey must also be considered, with his August 1932 call for ‘secret diplomacy’ and his long-standing recognition of the dangers presented by Manchuria, although there is no direct evidence linking him with the initiative and/or this statement.639 Whatever its background and origins, the Lyons statement of 2 December 1933 has its place in Australian diplomatic history, for it was a significant public expression by an Australian policy-maker of the premise behind post-war appeasement ─ that there was a middle ground achievable through ‘human reason, confidence and fair-dealing’.640 The logic behind it seemed straightforward to a man who personally believed in consensus and to those unschooled in diplomatic subtleties, for Japan had already made plain her desire for friendship with Britain and/or any ‘friendly power’.641 The Lyons government was insistent on its priorities in the following months of preparation. Significantly, Latham was to lead the mission (as the Minister of External Affairs), and not Stewart (as the Minister of Commerce), nor White (as Minister of Trade and Customs).642

635 vide Kitson Clark, 64, Cox, 74, and Stanford, 66, on the purposes of a document. 636 For example, when he passed on correspondence from Captain Peake (RAN); Lyons to Latham, 17 July 1933, Latham Papers, MS1009/54, NLA, Canberra. Similarly, suggestions by Mrs. J. Street of Sydney, passed on to Latham; Lyons’s reply to her, 13 February 1934, CP 103/19/65, NAA, Canberra. vide below. It is argued later that Lyons’s did not dominate the portfolio until mid-1937. 637 Pearce could also fit the first part of this description, but he had no demonstrable input on this occasion. The extensive Latham Papers on the AEM, MS1009, NLA, Canberra, give no indication of the origin of the proposal although Latham received and sent much correspondence in 1932-33 on Japan. There is not currently ‘adequate evidence’ to make conclusions on the origins of the AEM; Stanford, 63ff. 638 Latham quoted in Hart, “Piper…”, 138-9. 639 Casey, “The International Situation” (24 August 1932) in The World We Live In: A Series of Speeches on Current Events, 56. ibid., “Manchuria” (13 March 1932), 13ff. 640 The ‘liberal paradigm’ described by Meyers, “International paradigms…”: 58. 641 Officer to Defence Department, 16 April 1933, B197/1877/7/59; Nish, Japanese Foreign Policy, 297-8; General Matsui, “The Question of Independence of Manchuria. Some Reflections on Fundamental Points”, Geneva 1932, A5954/69/979/1. 642 The Age was correct in its early hunch that Latham would be the ‘emissary’, 2 December 1933, 21, a. 92 Wide-ranging press speculation had occurred about Lyons himself doing so, not surprising given the personal focus of his statement, but this seemed unlikely for a serving prime minister whose focus also remained on Treasury.643 Lyons was, in any case, still a novice in such matters who, aside from the December statement, had seemed satisfied to be mentored by Latham in the portfolio ─ it was to be another year -and-a-half before he shouldered certain diplomatic functions. The cabinet first viewed the fait accompli proposal for a ‘Mission of Good Will’ on 12 December 1933 and Lyons officially informed Bruce on the following day.644 He, in turn, informed Sir John Simon, the Foreign Secretary, of a putative ‘Mission of Friendship’ on 14 December.645 Whitehall immediately accepted that the mission was chiefly diplomatic, later content to brush aside the objections of Lancashire industrialists.646 Crutchley, in Canberra, certainly had no doubts of its diplomatic intentions.647 By 9 January 1934, Lyons had already tired of speculation about the nature of the mission, now grandly titled the ‘Australian Eastern Mission’, and had asserted his authority with ministers, forbidding them to discuss the matter with the press (a muzzle that he would repeat on later occasions).648 Similarly in accord with this desire for secrecy, he wrote to newspaper editors in early-February 1934 at Latham’s request asking them not to refer to the proposal as ‘a trading mission’, presumably in an attempt to stifle any Japanese presumptions that Latham was to renegotiate trade imbalances.649 Tokyo’s view of the necessity to balance trade was, in his estimation, a dangerous one and needed to be nipped in the bud before the mission departed. Accordingly, he had cabled Bruce on 13 December 1933:

It is view Government that trade relations are becoming more and more difficult and it is important to do something to off set the idea that friendship depends on equivalence of volume of trade an idea which will be disastrous to international friendship and peace.650

This provided a perfect summary of the mission’s aspirations on trade. Lyons simply hoped to deflect the inevitable Japanese criticism of Australia’s trading posture, in the same way that Australian governments had been long side-stepping Japanese criticism of immigration policy.

643 The Times, 4 December 1933, DO 35/181/6635/1, PRO, London. The Mercury, 6, d, suggested that some members of the cabinet may ask Lyons to lead it, 4 December 1933. Latham, “Remembrance…”: 81, claimed that press support depended on either Lyons or himself leading the mission. 644 Cabinet minutes, 12 December 1933, A2694, vol.11. Lyons to Bruce, 13 December 1933, DO 35/181/1, PRO, London. 645 Bruce to Simon, via Dominions Office, 14 December 1933, DO 35/181/1, PRO, London. 646 Wiseman, Dominions Office, to Watkinson, of Lancashire Industrialists, 2 March 1934, DO 35/181/1, pointing out that the AEM was not a trading mission, in Andrews, Writing, 136, without primary reference. British industrialists dispatched their own trade delegation to Japan in September 1934; D. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 92. 647 Crutchley, Canberra, to Dominions Office, 22 March 1934, FO 371/18157/47, PRO, London, also in Murphy, 104, where he stated that the AEM was not a trading mission, a view that he had already implied in his communications of 13 December 1933, DO 35/181/1, PRO, London. Also 15 January 1934, FO 371/18157/47, and DO 35 181/6635/1/7, PRO, London, where he described ‘a new spirit of responsibility’ at Canberra about foreign affairs. 648 Lyons memorandum to ministers, 9 January 1934, CP 103/19/9, NAA, Canberra, also in Murphy, 104. 649 Murphy, 104, quoting the Age, 7 February 1934. Lyons also employed this approach also on many later occasions in order to control the course of a debate. Latham, “Remembrance…”: 80, had asked for Lyons’s intervention. Japanese imports from Australia in 1934 were worth ¥235 million; their Australian exports yielded only ¥65 million; Frei, 123. 650 Lyons to Bruce, 13 December 1933, DO 35/181/1, PRO, London. 93 This proved a lofty aspiration and Lyons would ultimately have no greater success in persuading the Japanese to modify their commercial demands than he had hitherto in persuading Britain to modify her diplomatic position. The nominated leader of the mission was quite explicit in private about the primarily diplomatic nature of the mission, rejecting the pleas of A.C.V. Melbourne in March 1934 for his inclusion and input on the grounds that: ‘This is not a trade mission-your proposals would make it such.’651 The academic had also advised of the need to place China on the itinerary, but Lyons had, in any case, already included it in his 2 December statement, for diplomatic reasons that became clear later.652 It was left to Latham himself to scuttle definitively any further public speculation on the issue of trade in the valedictory speech he gave to the League of Nations Union and the Institute for International Affairs at Newcastle on 19 March, only two days before his departure. Here, the minister paraphrased Lyons’s December statement, in homage to his leader’s common touch, likening the mission to ‘a courtesy and complimentary visit-not at their business offices, but in their homes’.653 It was intended that Tokyo be under no illusions. That the 1934 Eastern Mission was not primarily occupied with trading concerns is not to say that it sought to exclude all commercial considerations. That was impossible. This aspect of the mission (that is, the deflection of Japanese complaints), was entrusted to A.C. Moore of the Trade and Customs Department, who was kept on a very tight leash by Latham throughout. At the same time, Moore was to discern any possibilities of increased Australian penetration of eastern markets, in a manner that was to be later left later to the trade commissioners.654 Latham and Moore together were to scout the territory, an operation made clear in Latham’s subsequent official ‘Report’ and in his three confidential trade reports issued in July 1934.655 These important tasks were, nevertheless, secondary to the diplomatic thrust of a mission primarily focused on Japan, but also intended to take a wider sweep of eastern affairs.656 III

651 Latham to A.C.V. Melbourne, 8 March 1934, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2, University of Queensland Archives, St. Lucia. Murphy, 121, believes that Melbourne had cancelled his own putative commercial trip to Japan in October 1933 in anticipation of inclusion in the mission, but it was still a secret at that time. Melbourne had written to Latham on 2 December 1933, offering his unsolicited advice on the structure of the mission, including his own inclusion; Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. They maintained a strained correspondence during the period December 1933-March 1934-Melbourne to Latham, 26 February 1934, 15 March 1934; Latham in reply, 8 March 1934, 23 March 1934, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. 652 Andrews, Writing, 137 is therefore mistaken to suggest that China was only included due to British pressure, given that Lyons had not consulted Whitehall before his 2 December statement, vide below. Similarly, he is mistaken to see the inclusion of China as an ‘afterthought’; Andrews, “Australian Government and the Manchurian Crisis”, footnote 68: 316. 653 Megaw, “Goodwill…”: 252, quoting Latham on 19 March 1934; Sydney Morning Herald, 20 March 1934, 9, g. Latham repeated this view after the mission; Parliamentary Statement, CPD., vol.144, 331, 6 July 1934. 654 Andrews, Writing, 136, rightly suggests that the desire for expanded eastern trade was one motivating factor. Shepherd, 21. 655 Murphy, 103 on Moore and the trade aspect of the mission. Latham’s official comments on trade in his Report were cursory. So too were Moore’s subsequent Confidential Reports and in Latham’s view, this “memorandum” [sic] was not the main thrust of the diplomatic mission, vide discussion below on the July 1934 reports, official and confidential. 656 I am largely in agreement with I. Cumpston, History of Australian Foreign Policy 1901-1991 (Canberra: self- published, 1995), contra the prevailing view of trade dominance, who interpreted the mission as one largely of ‘good will’ and then chiefly to Japan. 94 This first Pacific initiative of the Lyons government was focused on three diplomatic goals unattained through cunctation. As only one of these goals was stated beforehand, the others can only be discerned by a close examination of the mission’s processes and through an examination of its reports, chiefly the ‘confidential’ ones reserved for the eyes of Lyons and some trusted ministers.657 The most explicit goal was the least controversial, although characteristic of appeasement: the expression of ‘friendship and goodwill’ towards regional neighbours.658 More concealed was a second one: persuading Japan not to abandon her place in the international community, that is, not to sever her connections to the mechanisms of the League. The third goal was closely related to the second and the most sensitive, being entirely predicated on the assumptions of appeasement: to discern more firsthand the Japanese (as well as the Chinese) criteria for any settlement in Manchuria. The first goal of goodwill presumed that ‘the time has come when something positive should be done to cultivate friendship with our neighbours’.659 This was the first extension to the international arena of Lyons’s rosy, consensual view of humanity and was accurately described as an ‘an optimistic gesture’ in the words of the Mercury.660 Whilst the vulnerable Dutch in the NEI were likely to be happy to listen, along with the beleaguered Chinese, Japan too had offered evidence throughout 1933 that she wanted a renewal of the old Anglo-Japanese friendship in some form.661 It seems likely that Latham was confident of a positive reception in Tokyo, although there is no direct evidence to support such a suggestion. Yet any antipodean enthusiasm for ‘goodwill’ was not shared at Whitehall, which had been given no forewarning of the initiative, contrary to Latham’s usual ministerial practice of close liaison.662 Latham himself was annoyed at this absence of advance notice, suggestive of resentment at unwarranted prime ministerial interference, but Lyons showed no regret and issued no apology663 ─ despite his frequent calls for Whitehall consultation in the coming years, he showed little inclination to practice what he preached. There was no Canberra-London consultation or liaison over the AEM, not even the provision of detail for, as so often with the initiatives of the Lyons period, there was little to give.664

657 vide below. 658 Lyons, Statement, 2 December 1933, A981 JAP 101 PART 2. 659 ibid. 660 Mercury, editorial, “Australia and the East”, 4 December 1933, 6, b-c. Most press response was favourable; Murphy, 98, quoting Canberra Times, 23 December 1933, ‘a yuletide blessing’; Age, 5 December 1933, ‘a chance to improve relations damaged by propagandists’, a probable reference to the Defence of Australia League. Murdoch’s Herald approved, so long as the AEM was not at the expense of the British connection; press summary, E. Crutchley, UK High Commissioner, Canberra, to Dominions Office, 15 January 1934, FO 371/18157/47, PRO, London. 661 vide Chapter 1. 662 For example, Latham’s setting aside of the request for recognition in Manchukuo Foreign Minister Hsich to Latham, 1 March 1934, A981 MAN 7, NAA, Canberra, on procedural grounds. The British cabinet records, November- December 1933, do not indicate any prior knowledge of the mission; CAB 23/77, PRO, London. Nor was the AEM discussed by this cabinet in 1934; CAB 23/78-90, PRO, London. 662 Foreign Office displeasure was still evident in May 1935, vide Chapter 3. 663 Latham to Bruce, 30 January 1934, A981 FAR 5(1), NAA, Canberra. 664 It is therefore incorrect to suggest that the mission was undertaken only after it had received British approval; pace Smith, 72, Murphy, 99 and Megaw, “Goodwill…”: 258, who insist on consultation with Whitehall. 95 The unexpected announcement of 2 December therefore caused some turmoil in the Foreign Office, with The Times providing more detail than Officer’s liaison office.665 Bruce too was caught unaware, a further indication of Lyons’s secrecy and lack of method.666 While some in the department were pleased that the mission was not to be a commercial enterprise, the diplomatic aspect was a concern from the beginning. Although the Foreign Secretary, Simon, indicated that he had no objections to a ‘goodwill’ mission,667 his endorsement was not shared elsewhere and the months prior to Latham’s departure (on 21 March 1934) saw some rearguard skirmishing between London and Canberra on itinerary and diplomatic procedure. Orde (head of the Far Eastern Department) voiced a series of concerns that indicated his anxiety to ensure that Latham, once in Tokyo, was placed under the wing of the British minister, Lindley.668 Although it was out of the question for London to over-rule Canberra’s diplomatic initiative, as was made clear to querulous Lancashire industrialists in March,669 Foreign Office caution seemed the order of the day, as A.C.V. Melbourne had warned it would be.670 Latham later described the attitude of British diplomats to the AEM as ‘apprehensive’, which serves as an adequate description of Whitehall’s general attitude to such dominion forays into international relations.671 While Whitehall received only sketchy information on the friendly intentions of the AEM, it received no indication at all of the other goals. The second goal (to persuade Japan to remain within the international community) had followed the stormy departure of Japanese delegates from Geneva in February 1933, thereby serving notice on the League of the statutory two-year period required before membership was abrogated.672 Therefore, at any time before February 1935, Tokyo could be readmitted without any loss of status. The Latham mission hoped to persuade her to take such a course or, at the very least, to determine her attitude to such an

665 Officer sought confirmation of ‘rumours’; Officer to External Affairs, 2 December 1933, A981 JAP 101 PART 2, NAA, Canberra, but Lyons’s statement appeared in the press before he was sent a copy; The Times, 4 December 1933, in DO 35/181/6635/1, PRO, London. External Affairs reply to Officer, n.d. but between 3-13 December 1933, containing the issued press statement. 666 External Affairs to Officer, n.d. but 3-13 December 1933, with handwritten instructions to inform Bruce. Lyons informed Bruce directly only later; Lyons to Bruce, 13 December 1933, DO 35/181/1, PRO, London. He was then told to consult the FO only on itinerary; repeated in Latham to Bruce, 2 February 1934, A981 FAR 5(1), NAA, Canberra. Bruce’s secretary, McLaren, wrote to the FO on 27 December 1933, requesting that they contact prospective eastern nations in order to arrange an itinerary; Foreign Office note, DO 35/181/1, PRO, London. 667 Bruce had informed Simon, 14 December 1933, DO 35/181/1; In reply, Simon to Bruce, 15 December 1933, ibid., where he stressed the desirability of including China, which Lyons had already stated would be included on 2 December 1933; pace Andrews, Writing, 137; Andrews, “Australian Government and the Manchurian Crisis,” footnote 68: 316; also Simon to Dominions Office, 27 December 1933, ibid. Eden expressed parliamentary approval on behalf of the UK government; A. Eden, 14 February 1934, FO 371/18157/85. Latham expressed his gratitude for the sentiments, through Bruce, on 21 February 1934, A981 FAR 6(1), NAA, Canberra. 668 McLaren, Australia House, to Orde, 16 January 1934, FO 371/18157/6, PRO, London; Orde to McLaren, n.d., FO 371/18157/6, ibid., seeking the inclusion of Bangkok. Similar Foreign Office complaints and concerns are noted in Murphy, 101; Officer to Mounsey, Foreign Office, 5 February 1934, in Lloyd Papers, MS 2887, NLA, Canberra. The Australian suggestion of accommodation with the Canadian legation was ‘not considered satisfactory’; Lindley to Foreign Office, 12 February 1934, FO 371/18157/74, PRO, London. 669 Wiseman, Dominions Office, to Watkinson, of Lancashire Industrialists, 2 March 1934, DO 35/181/1, PRO, London. The Statute of Westminster, although unratified, allowed the dominions their own foreign policy, vide Chapter 5. 670 Melbourne warned Latham against any expectation of assistance from British diplomats; Melbourne to Latham, 26 February 1934, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. 671 Latham to Officer, 18 September 1934, Latham Papers, MS1009/58, NLA, Canberra. 672 Japan formally presented the League with two-year’s notice on 27 March 1933; Frei, 136. 96 option ─ an ill-tempered Japan within the League was preferable to a rogue without. Latham told a concerned Lyons on 3 February 1934 that a ‘friendly gesture’ may induce the Japanese to resume their Geneva responsibilities, in the same way that Spain and Argentina had been recently reconciled to the League.673 The minister’s valedictory speech of 19 March accordingly sent appropriate signals and stressed an outlook that was sympathetic to the aggrieved ─ Tokyo was reminded of Latham’s belief that the League itself must be transformed: ‘It was a grave mistake to regard the Covenant…as sacred and unalterable. Ideas had changed quickly since 1920.’674 Any suggestion that Japan ought to be excluded from the mission because of her violations of League principles, put to Lyons in January by one correspondent, misunderstood his sense of goodwill and reconciliation through revision.675 The third goal of the mission was the most vital and the one that remained the most concealed until British diplomats in Tokyo confirmed any Whitehall suspicions. Lyons wished, through Latham’s direct negotiation, to establish definitively the criteria for any settlement in Manchuria ─ a goal premised on Lyons’s confidence in the new diplomacy of appeasement. Japan’s attitude was the more important, but it should not be overlooked that it was also intended from the beginning also to obtain the Chinese perspective, for unknown reason, but one may speculate that it was in order to determine any willingness to accept the loss of Manchuria, as suggested by later developments.676 While it was likely that Latham would find the Japanese open to discussion with those sympathetic to their aspirations, there was little scope for flexibility, as Tokyo had made plain its view since August 1932 that ‘only’ a Manchurian settlement would restore peace in the East 677 ─ the chief criterion for such a settlement was the de jure recognition of ‘Manchukuo’.678 Tokyo therefore was looking for diplomatic concessions, not negotiation. While Canberra was not yet in a position to offer such concessions through her own quasi- diplomacy, she was in a position to open a wider dialogue. IV Diplomacy and trade were not the only issues before the architects of the mission. Defence factors had forced themselves into Australian political prominence at the time of the first rearmament program, September 1933, and they also played their part in fixing the unstated agenda and aims of the AEM. Just as cunctation had not discounted the necessity for national security, the goodwill of appeasement was to be supplemented with caution for, as Latham put it, the mission was ‘not only concerned with international relations but also with matters of peace

673 Latham to Lyons, 3 February 1934, CP 103/19/65, NAA, Canberra. Lyons had sought Latham’s advice on the suggestion of Japanese exclusion from the League; Lyons to Latham, 18 January 1934, ibid. 674 Sydney Morning Herald, 20 March 1934, 8, e. 675 Mrs. J. Street of Sydney had written to Lyons making this suggestion, which he passed on to Latham; Lyons’s reply to her, 13 February 1934, CP 103/19/65, reproduced Latham’s views on Japan and the League. 676 Latham later thought he had detected such willingness; vide below. Lyons assumed Chinese flexibility in his 1937 Pacific Pact proposals; vide Chapter 5. 677 Foreign Minister Uchida to the Diet, 23 August 1932; Nish, Japanese Foreign Policy, 297-8;Japanese Delegation on the Draft Report of the Committee of Nineteen, enclosed in Officer to Defence Department, 16 April 1933, B197/1877/7/59, NAA, Melbourne. 678 Defence Minister Araki in Japan Times, 30 October 1933, A981 JAP 185 PART 2. 97 and war’.679 The putative threat from Japan that had stimulated rearmament was also an element in the three defence goals of the mission. Firstly, it was intended that Latham report on the state of Singapore’s development in transit; secondly, when in Japan, he was to clarify certain matters concerning the Pacific mandates whilst, thirdly, stressing that imperial defence solidarity was intact, whatever contrary impression may be drawn about diplomatic solidarity. The mission was not to be taken as a diplomatic gesture predicated on any sense of military weakness.680 The first defence goal had uncertain origins, but it may be probably deduced that the 1932 London bilateral defence talks played some part. There, Latham had learned that the British commitment to defence readiness was lukewarm and, in regard to Singapore, inadequate from Canberra’s perspective.681 These considerations had played their part in the initiation of rearmament, but unknown to Australian ministers the defensive situation had further deteriorated in the weeks before the departure of the Latham mission, when the Defence Requirements Committee at Whitehall accepted, on 28 February 1934, that Germany now be considered the ‘ultimate potential enemy’.682 For that reason, on 14 March 1934, Chamberlain argued in cabinet against any posture of aggression in the east, preferring ‘making eyes at Japan’683 ─ although such an attitude arguably made Whitehall more favourably disposed towards Canberra’s diplomatic intentions, for the DRC also considered ‘that advantage should be taken of any opportunity to improve our relations with Japan’, it also meant a disturbing re-ordering of British defence priorities contrary to Australian strategic interests.684 Although much of this Whitehall shuffling did not occur until the AEM was imminent and little (if any) detail of these deliberations was known in Canberra until late-1934,685 that Latham was delegated to visit the Singapore facilities for himself suggests some scepticism, or at least caution, on Canberra’s behalf about the British commitment. If so, this caution proved well-founded. Singapore was not the only defence consideration for the Latham mission. The minister had another more personal interest; the Japanese Pacific mandates. Latham had played a significant part in the acceptance at Versailles of the concept of ‘C-class’ mandates over the

679 Latham to A.C.V. Melbourne, 23 March 1934, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. 680 pace Andrews, Writing, 136, that the mission was motivated in part by the sense of British weakness in the Far East. He suggests that the Australian government was therefore urged to rearm, without saying by whom. 681 vide Chapter 1. 682 DRC sub-committee report, 28 February 1934 (first issued on 15 November 1933, signed by Hankey on 5 March 1934), CAB 24/247, CP 64 (34), PRO, London, 6, also in D. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 64. This had the endorsement of Fisher of Treasury and Vansittart of the Foreign Office, an inveterate anti-Teuton, vide Chapter 3. They sat on the DRC with the three service chiefs, chaired by Hankey. 683 A. Trotter, “Tentative Steps to form an Anglo-Japanese Rapprochement in 1934.” Modern Asian Studies, vol.8, no.1 (1974): 64. Also Andrews, Writing, 146. The quote is found in K. Middlemas, Diplomacy of Illusion: The British Government and Germany, 1937-39 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972), 30. 684 DRC sub-committee report, 28 February 1934, 8. Within months, Chamberlain was arguing that ‘home defence’ ought to be the priority, Andrews, Writing, 147-8ff., quoting the DRC, 20 June 1934. The DRC report of 28 February 1934 had recommended a “Five Year Deficiency Programme” of spending, 7, vide below. Chamberlain also soon believed that Singapore should be down-graded, Andrews, Writing, 147-8ff. Hankey continued to argue for a major naval base, vide below. 685 The full DRC report of 28 February 1934 was not seen by Dominion PMs until their April-May 1935 London meetings, although Hankey gave Lyons a verbal summary during his visit in October 1934, vide below. 98 former German colonies.686 Australia had received such a mandate covering German New Guinea, a territory now contiguous with the extensive Japanese mandates to the immediate north of the Equator, where Australia and Japan were ‘almost neighbours’ in the description of a visiting Japanese parliamentarian and ‘actual neighbours by contact’, as A.C.V. Melbourne more accurately described it.687 This proximity was in itself disturbing688 ─ more so were reports that the Japanese were fortifying their trust territories in violation of the mandate conditions, suspicions nourished by the exclusion of foreigners from Japanese Micronesia following the departure of Tokyo’s Geneva delegation in February 1933.689 Lyons had already expressed some concern to Latham in July 1933 about information passed to him through the RAN, which stressed the need for hydrographical surveys of these Pacific territories on the assumption that Japan was utilising them for war-like purposes.690 This is some evidence that the two were already contemplating some mission to Japan, for Latham would not normally have been exposed to such defence matters. He was, however, later entrusted (as chef de mission) with the responsibility of raising the delicate matter of Pacific fortifications directly with the appropriate Tokyo authorities ─ the second defence goal of the AEM. The matter was of great interest to Australian defence planners, especially since it involved an attempt to gauge the Japanese response to any suggestion that she ought to cede these mandates once her League resignation became effective, in March 1935. The final defence consideration for the mission was also a delicate one requiring all of Latham’s quasi-diplomatic skill ─ to impress upon the Japanese that Australia was, despite its semi-independent diplomacy, a ‘British’ country, with all that this implied in military terms. The perils of Japanese hostility towards any part of the defensive bloc that the British Empire represented were to be highlighted, although Latham proved ultimately incapable of the diplomatic subtlety required to communicate such a warning without offence. Even though the Japanese were likely to be prickly over aspects of these last two defence goals, Lyons’s conception of appeasement never confused ‘goodwill’ with compliance. Latham was not going to Tokyo simply to listen. V As chef de mission, it was largely left to Latham to choose the members of the AEM, with prime ministerial consultation. There were to be no untested, ‘private’ members and the direct political negotiation was to be carried out by Latham alone. Accordingly, Dr. Melbourne’s

686 Spartalis, 133; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 408, and Chapter 5, passim, on the mandate system, operable from 17 December 1920; Frei, 123ff., on the Japanese mandates. 687 Y. Tsurumi, “Japan Speaks to Australia”, Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.1, no.4 (October-November 1937): 10. A.C.V. Melbourne 1937 lecture, quoted by “Austra”, “March of Events”, Australian National Review, vol.1, no.5 (May 1937): 90. 688 Hank Nelson noted the threat to Australia’s trading routes from any Japanese naval forces based in these Pacific mandates; History Institute of Victoria lecture, “Defining the Nation: Australia and the Near North”, 2 August 2001. 689 Nelson, ibid. 690 A letter from Captain Peake (RAN) to Lyons, July 1933 was passed on; Lyons to Latham, 17 July 1933, MS1009/54. 99 claims to inclusion (extremely strong had the mission been commercial) were rebutted on 3 February 1934, by the minister himself.691 The cost-conscious prime minister was consulted on the decision to exclude technocrats and others with weaker claims (like the NSW MLA, Henley) and he stated the undesirability of including anyone outside of the minister and ‘necessary officials’: ‘Latham shares this view.’692 Latham’s authority, however, was underlined by his rejection of the intelligence head of the Defence Department, Hodgson, despite Lyons’s recommendation of ‘his extensive knowledge of eastern countries’ ─ this aloof minister never shared Lyons’s preference for ‘expert’ advice,693 and Hodgson was forced to wait until after Latham’s departure on 21 March for a transfer from Defence to External Affairs.694 The composed delegation was a modest affair: Latham, Longfield Lloyd of the Attorney-General’s Department (an ‘adviser’ with intelligence connections),695 Moore of Trade and Customs and three ancillary staff.696 The deficiencies of such a modest, inexpert and hastily-gathered delegation were immediately apparent, at least to the aggrieved Melbourne, who dispatched to Latham a memorandum on 26 February 1934, warning that the three months time span allotted to the mission was too brief. He also warned against the expectation of assistance from British diplomats, as well as about the exclusion of men, like himself, with knowledge of the East.697 His first two predictions were confirmed and it is likely that the mission would have been more productive had Melbourne been included, despite his covert, collaborative connections with the Japanese authorities.698 Despite this jeremiad, the moment of departure seemed propitious and Tokyo was canny enough to request directly the de jure recognition of Manchukuo on the eve (1 March 1934), as a measure of Australian intentions,699 as well as an acknowledgement of the

691 Latham to Melbourne, 3 February 1934, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. Melbourne had first written on 2 December 1933 and had subsequently personally called on Latham. 692 Thomas Henley had been recommended by the Postmaster-General; Parkhill to Lyons, 21 December 1933, CP 103/19/58, NAA, Canberra; Lyons to Parkhill, reply, ibid. His case cannot have been strengthened by the fact that he had been a prominent campaigner against the Defence of Australia League in September. 693 Lyons to Latham, 11 December 1933, A5954 1086/5, NAA, Canberra. vide ADB, vol.10, 2ff., on Latham’s intellectual confidence, bordering on arrogance. 694 Andrews, “Great Temptation…”: 358-9. It was hoped that this would bring greater inter-departmental liaison. It may be that Hodgson’s support for appeasement at this time was a factor in Lyons’s appointment of him to head the newly separated External Affairs Department in November 1935, vide Chapter 4. 695 Longfield Lloyd later became the Trade Commissioner in Tokyo on the recommendation of the now retired Latham; Cabinet Submission, 12 February 1935, A6006 Roll 9, NAA, Canberra. 696 Latham, “Report”, 6 July 1934, 440. They were accompanied by the journalists Murray and F. Cutlack; Megaw, “Goodwill…”: 253. Cutlack had earlier greeted the AEM as ‘a wise move’; E. Crutchley, UK High Commissioner, Canberra, to Dominions Office, 15 January 1934, FO 371/18157/47, PRO, London. He remained in Manchuria after the mission, from where he dispatched reports sympathetic to Japan, later collected in his book, The Manchurian Arena. An Australian View of the Far Eastern Conflict (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1934); vide below. 697 Melbourne to Latham, 26 February 1934, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. 698 Melbourne developed a close working relationship with consul Murai (and later with Wakamatsu). He revealed to them the details of his interviews and correspondence with cabinet ministers; Melbourne to Murai, 10 September 1936, on his February interview with Gullett, C443 J45, NAA, Sydney; 2 July 1936, on his correspondence with Lyons; ibid. He offered counsel on the presentation of Japan’s case to the press and to ministers, ibid.; Melbourne to Wakamatsu, 26 April 1938, C443 J45, NAA, Sydney. He wanted the Japanese to see him as their agent; Melbourne to Murai, 30 May 1935, ibid. The NSW Special Branch took an interest in this correspondence following Pearl Harbour, ibid., passim. 699 Manchukuo Foreign Minister Hsich to Latham, 1 March 1934, A981 MAN 7, NAA, Canberra; also in Andrews, “The Australian Government and the Manchurian Crisis 1931-34”: 311. 100 ‘new spirit of responsibility’ prevailing in Canberra.700 The Foreign Minister, Hirota, also stressed on 18 March his desire for ‘mutual understanding’ and ‘friendly relations’ with ‘Britain’, referring to Japan’s relations with her erstwhile ally as ‘unshaken’ five days later.701 Latham was now en route on what seemed a promising course, without Whitehall’s imprimatur but at least with its indulgent interest.702 The mission was to be Latham’s ministerial swan-song prior to his intended resignation703 ─ it left Sydney on 21 March 1934 and returned home by 14 June (having covered some 17,000 miles through the NEI, Malaya, Singapore, French Indo-China, Hong Kong, China, Japan and the Philippines). Of its eighty-five days, thirty-seven were in transit; of the remaining forty-eight working days, China (with its great distances) received the largest portion of fourteen days. Japan, however, received the most concentrated attention (and then only of twelve days), 9- 21 May. Aside from the Netherlands East Indies (eleven days), the remaining destinations, Malaya (excluding Singapore), Indo-China, Hong Kong and the Philippines received only transitory attention.704 Parliamentary critics, unaware of any goal other than ‘goodwill’, would have been justified to view the mission as more of a ‘farewell tour’ than a diplomatic mission, a fear later admitted by Latham705 ─ the appeasers would find that ‘secret diplomacy’ often exacted a political cost, as observers were critical of what they perceived as inactivity. VI Following his return, Latham was confident that the mission had been a diplomatic success, but little public indication was offered of any goal other than goodwill in his official account (‘The Australian Eastern Mission, 1934’) issued on 6 July 1934.706 The similarly sensitive diplomatic goals were referred to only in the briefest terms, confined to a short paragraph of a single Appendix.707 The defence aspects of the mission were similarly brushed over.708 As so often, the substance and real nature of the project were found elsewhere, in the concomitant, comprehensive ‘Secret Report on the International Position in the Far East’ presented to Lyons on 3 July 1934.709 This confidential assessment contained many sensitive observations on foreign relations absent, or only hinted at, in the parliamentary papers. It was candid, for Latham was on the verge of political retirement, and it detailed the Japanese responses

700 Crutchley’s description to Dominions Office, 15 January 1934, FO 371/18157/47, and DO 35 181/6635/1/7. 701 Officer note on “Japanese Foreign Policy” reporting these statements, 22 March 1934, marked ‘seen by PM 29.4.34’, A 981 JAP 185 PART 2, NAA, Canberra. 702 ibid., enclosing the Foreign Office’s recommendation that every effort should be made to improve relations with Japan in order to ‘obviate any move towards Germany’. 703 Latham presented a letter of retirement to Lyons on 5 July 1934, announced in the press the following day; Mercury, 6 July 1934, 9, b. He continued to hold his portfolios until 12 October, following the federal election of 15 September. 704 Latham, “Report”, 6 July 1934, “Route”, 440. 705 Latham, “Remembrance…”: 80, where he stated that his fear that the mission would be viewed as a ‘joyride’. 706 Latham, CPD, vol.144, 327ff., 6 July 1934; APP, vol.IV (1932-34), 6 July 1934, 437-63. 707 Latham, “Report”, 6 July 1934, Appendix A, a report from the Japan Advertiser, 16 May 1934, of the Latham- Hirota interview. 708 ibid. 709 J. Latham, “Secret Report on the International Position in the Far East prepared by the Australian Eastern Mission”, 3 July 1934, A5954/1085/9, NAA, Canberra. Murphy, 106ff., is correct to note that of Latham’s five reports, only one (the “Report”), was ever tabled in parliament. 101 to the diplomatic goals of the mission. An examination of this source indicates that the AEM attained its first and third diplomatic goals─ it spread goodwill and clarified the Japanese position on Manchuria. It failed, however, in its second goal of encouraging Japan to return to internationalism.710 Nevertheless, the ‘Secret Report’ illustrated that the first act of Australian quasi-diplomacy had been radical and fruitful. Latham’s twelve days in Japan (9-21 May 1934) were to have a serious impact on Lyons’s later foreign policy-making, just as the visit to Singapore (11-14 April) had serious ramifications for defence policy-making long after the conclusion of the mission. Latham’s work was not therefore in vain, as has often been asserted.711 Lyons had promised a mission more akin to a home visit than to a business appointment and the parliamentary ‘Report’ of 6 July accordingly gave more of an indication of a social visit than a business trip.712 Receptions and expressions of goodwill were reported from Macassar in the NEI (on 1 April) to Davao in the Philippines (on 31 May).713 Latham was well pleased with such goodwill and quoted Sir John Simon’s recent compliments in defence of the mission.714 He himself concluded:

The visit of the Mission had created a friendly interest in Australia and a friendly attitude towards Australia in all the countries which were visited. This atmosphere should greatly assist in the solution of present and future problems.715

This ‘Mission of friendship to our neighbours’ had been a success in his eyes for this goodwill alone: ‘It would be difficult to exaggerate any description of the evident pleasure with which this Mission, with objects so unusual, was received wherever it went.’716 The most telling testimony in support of this perspective came from the Japanese Foreign Minister, who told the homeward-bound Latham that the mission ‘will powerfully contribute to foster and further promote our friendship’.717 This was certainly the response hoped for in Lyons’s initial statement of 2 December 1933, which had suggested that ‘the time has come when something positive should be done to cultivate friendship with our neighbours’.718 This cultivation appeared to have paid off, although the official account gave little account of any durable achievement in this elusive area of goodwill.

710 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 11-12, on the aims of 1930s Pacific diplomacy. 711 Andrews, “Australian Government and the Manchurian Crisis”: 314-5, where he believed the efforts were ‘wasted’, a view based on a reading of the official “Report”. Andrews failed to assess the repercussions of the AEM on Lyons. 712 Lyons, Statement, 2 December 1933, A981 JAP 101 PART 2; Latham quoted in Megaw, “Goodwill…”: 252. 713 Latham, “Report”, 6 July 1934, 441, 448. The visit to the US-controlled Philippines (29-31 May 1934) was not without its significance, as part of Lyons’s cultivation of US goodwill; vide Chapter 3. 714 Latham, “Report”, 6 July 1934, 459, quoting Simon on 14 June 1934. 715 ibid. 716 Latham, “Report”, 6 July 1934, 439. 717 Latham, “Report”, 6 July 1934, 458, quoting Hirota. 718 Lyons, Statement, 2 December 1933, A981 JAP 101 PART 2. 102 Less successful had been Latham’s efforts to encourage Japan to reconsider her role in the international community, before her resignation from the League became binding, in March 1935. Both Latham and Lyons already knew through Whitehall that the Japanese were aggrieved by their treatment at the hands of the League and they also had grounds for believing that her withdrawal had been an impetuous one, given advice to this effect from the defence liaison officer, Shedden.719 A return thus seemed possible, despite a great deal of diplomatic water under the bridge in the meantime. On 12 May 1934, Latham met Hirota for an hour-and-a-half, covering a wide range of subjects pertinent to bilateral relations. The entire mission had been building up to this meeting and everything after it was an anti-climax. It constituted the ‘main communication’ between Latham and the Japanese government, as the British Counsellor at Tokyo, Dodds, put it.720 For unknown reasons Dodds was present, but presumably at Latham’s request or at least with his permission, thereby offering the appearance of ‘British’ solidarity and strengthening the mission’s otherwise minimal diplomatic clout─ judging from his subsequent dispatches, he was probably also acting as Whitehall’s invigilator. The interview exemplified, ipso facto, the direct negotiation of appeasement, but Latham found the new technique more difficult than any appeaser yet imagined─ home visits, as envisaged by Lyons in his December 1933 statement, did not make for easier business dealings.721 When Latham suggested to the Foreign Minister that Japan consider re-entering the League, he met with a polite refusal; this was impossible, said Hirota, without some ‘adjustment’ in regard to Manchukuo.722 Latham accordingly offered the concession of promising a general discussion on Manchuria in the League should Japan return (something that Canberra could not deliver alone), an offer made in a sympathetic manner and with the stated belief that Japan’s case was not as well presented as it could be.723 The offer was insufficient and, in Dodds’s description, ‘a fly to which Mr. Hirota did not rise’.724 The appeasers were learning first hand that the aggressors were not inclined to such general discussions, preferring the precise negotiation of particular grievances. The mission’s second diplomatic goal was thus immediately stalemated ─ there would be no return to the old, ‘twenties internationalism while the militarists controlled the Japanese polity, except on their terms. Accordingly, Hirota had steered the conversation towards Latham’s final diplomatic concern; the status of Manchukuo.

719 vide Chapter 1; F. Shedden to Secretary of Prime Minister’s Department, n.d., but shortly after February 1933, relaying the assessment of Sir Francis Lindley, A981 JAP 185 PART 2. 720 J. Dodds to Dominions Office, 14 May 1934, section 1, DO 35/181/6635/57, PRO, London. 721 Lyons, Statement, n.d., but 2 December 1933, A981 JAP 101 PART 2. 722 Latham, “Secret Report”, 3 July 1934, 19. 723 Dodds to Dominions Office, 14 May 1934, section 11, DO 35/181/6635/57. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 86-9, notes Latham’s sympathy for the Japanese position. Simon thought the same; Shen, 7-8. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 374-5. He made no effort to conceal his sympathies; Latham, “Secret Report”, 3 July 1934, 15-16: Andrews, “The Australian Government and the Manchurian Crisis”: 312. A.C.V. Melbourne was later conscious that Japan rarely presented its cases well; Melbourne to Wakamtsu, 26 April 1938, C443 J45, NAA, Sydney. 724 Dodds to Dominions Office, 14 May 1934, section 11, DO 35/181/6635/57, made no mention of Hirota’s comment on Manchurian ‘adjustment’, but he was soon aware of Japan’s desires. 103 This third diplomatic goal was the key to regional peace, as Latham and Lyons well knew.725 The minister had come to Tokyo chiefly to learn directly the Japanese terms for a regional settlement so as soon as Hirota mentioned his desire for ‘adjustment’, Latham immediately stressed that ‘some solution of the question would have to be found’, a good example of the keenness of amateur diplomacy that came to characterise appeasement.726 There could have been little doubt about what that ‘solution’ must be, given that Tokyo had already, on 1 March 1934, requested Canberra’s recognition of its recent acquisitions in north-east Asia;727 Hirota’s comment was direct confirmation of Tokyo’s nexus between the recognition of ‘Manchukuo’ (the ‘fetish’) and any possible return to responsible international behaviour.728 Acceptance of this nexus was an important element in Lyons’s thinking from this time onwards ─ it was one that few at Whitehall had either perceived, or were willing to admit. Latham had already determined the Chinese viewpoint earlier in May and was confident that he had detected some official signs of approval for the restoration of the Manchurian dynasty as a sign of security for China proper.729 A chaotic China, he noted, feared further Japanese aggression and therefore the possibility existed, in his view, of some in Peking accepting the incorporation of Manchuria into the Japanese sphere-of-influence, even suggesting that northern China was likely to divorce itself from the central administration in order to join up with the prodigal province.730 These views on Chinese compliance and impotence were unquestioningly accepted and championed thereafter by Lyons, against a great deal of opposition at Whitehall731 ─ the argument that it was possible to gain Chinese acceptance of the loss of Manchuria became one of the pillars of his Pacific Pact in 1937, an indication of the lingering influence of Latham. Latham’s conclusions on Manchuria were clear: ‘It appears to me that the policy of non- recognition of Manchukuo is going to meet increasingly greater difficulties as time passes.’732 Stating his certainty that a weak China could not dislodge a strong Japan (which would ‘never agree’ to a surrender of the new acquisition), he outlined to Lyons the possibility of a solution:

Accordingly it appears to me that consideration should be given to the possibility of discovering some formula which would enable both Japan and the League to “save face” and get rid of what threatens to be a permanent source of poison in the relations between Japan and other countries.733

725 Latham to A.C.V. Melbourne, 23 March 1934, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. 726 Dodds to Dominions Office, 14 May 1934, section 11, DO 35/181/6635/57; repeated in Dodds to Simon, 16 May 1934, FO 371/18157/200, PRO, London. 727 Andrews, “Australian Government and the Manchurian Crisis”: 311. 728 Lindley, Tokyo, to Simon, 21 February 1933, A981 JAP 181 PART 2; vide Chapter 1. 729 Latham, “Secret Report”, 3 July 1934, section 4. Japan had installed the puppet Pu Yi as Emperor of Manchukuo in March 1932. Latham thought the Chinese ill-organised, fractious and chaotic, having spent fourteen days in Shanghai, Nanking, Tientsin, Peking and Canton; Latham, “Secret Report”, 3 July 1934, section 4, China. 730 ibid. Andrews, Writing, 143, suggests that Latham was unduly dismissive of Chinese objections to the loss of Manchuria. 730 Latham, “Secret Report”, 3 July 1934, 19. 731 Although Simon was eventually of the same view by January 1935; G. Kennedy, “1935…”, 199. 732 Latham, “Secret Report”, 3 July 1934, 19. 733 ibid., Japan, 20. 104

When Latham had told Hirota on 12 May of the need for ‘some formula’ to deal with the impasse, the Foreign Minister, a more experienced diplomat, had said only ‘I agree’, adding ‘Yes’ to Latham’s subsequent promise to ‘try to invent formulas and [I] will write to Sir [John] Simon’.734 Despite Japanese taciturnity, Latham had attained his goal of determining the criteria for a settlement (although his own controversial suggestion was kept secret from Australian parliamentary and public opinion in 1934). Lyons thus learned, through the direct negotiation of appeasement, that nothing less than the de jure recognition of Manchukuo could secure peace in the East and a Japanese return to the League.735 It was chiefly left to the Prime Minister, rather than Latham’s successor at External Affairs (Pearce), to turn this suggestion into practical policy through the second diplomatic initiative of the period, the Pacific Pact of 1937. He did so in the face of Foreign Office scepticism and amusement, for Dodds made it clear as early as May 1934 that HMG would offer Canberra no assistance for ‘inventing formulas’.736 Diplomatic success at least eased the less palatable trade aspect of the mission, although Latham’s official account was optimistic that here too he had succeeded. The substance of the trade aspect was also kept confidential, appearing only in three brief, joint ‘Confidential Reports’ (referred to by Latham as a single ‘memorandum’), written by Moore and presented to Lyons on 30 July 1934. They were, like their secret diplomatic counterpart of 3 July, never made public.737 The official ‘Report’ contained little commercial substance other than optimistic observations on the possibility of increased trade with the East ─ overall, the commercial content was slightly less than one-third of the whole.738 Latham reiterated in his preface that the mission had rejected the notion from the outset that trade, however important, was ‘the only motive of mankind’ and parliamentarians had been reminded in the ministerial statement of 6 July that the late mission had never acted a trading delegation.739 Accordingly, the appendices of the ‘Report’ (reproducing the speeches and press reports relevant to the Japanese leg of the mission), contained Latham’s ‘All Japan’ radio broadcast of 15 May 1934, where he had stated: ‘The Australian Eastern Mission does not come to Japan in order to buy and sell goods. This is not a trade delegation; it is a complimentary call for the purpose of demonstrating our goodwill and friendship.’740 He now assured the parliament that no ‘arrangements’ of a commercial nature and no ‘undertakings’ had been entered into ─ Moore had merely received ‘a large amount of information’ that was to be

734 J. Dodds to Simon, 16 May 1934, FO 371/18157/167, PRO, London. His report was based on his conversations with Latham and his observations at the interview; also in Megaw, “Goodwill…”: 255-6. 735 Crutchley to Harding on Latham, Under-Secretary, Dominions Office, 10 July 1934, DO 35/18171, PRO, London. 736 Dodds to Simon, 16 May 1934, DO 35/18171; also the attached note by Randall of the Foreign Office, 17 May 1934, which suggested the impossibility of such a task. 737 J. Latham, “Confidential Report on Trade between Australia and Japan”, n.d. but 30 July 1934; A981 FAR 5(13), NAA, Canberra; “Confidential Report on Australian Wool in the East”, 30 July 1934, A981, FAR 5(16), ibid., “Report on Trade Commissioners”, 30 July 1934, A981 FAR 5(13). 738 Some 8 of the 27 pages of the official report dealt with commercial aspects, not all related to Australian trade. The remaining two-thirds dealt with ‘goodwill’. Murphy, 110, is therefore incorrect to claim that the bulk of it was on trade. 739 Latham, “Report”, 6 July 1934, 439; Latham, CPD, vol.144, 331, 6 July 1934. 740 Latham, “Report”, 6 July 1934, Appendix B, “ ‘All Japan’ Broadcast by Mr. Latham on 15th May, 1934.” 105 passed on to Australian businessmen.741 The minister was adamant that Japan had been candidly informed of Australian views on the present trading imbalance and that she had accepted with good grace there could be no increased access to local markets until some mutually acceptable trade agreement was reached.742 His official conclusions were therefore that the mission had left the Japanese without any illusions over trade, a view also communicated by his ‘Secret Report’.743 This proved as unduly optimistic as many of his diplomatic conclusions.744 VII Whatever the diplomatic success of the mission, its defence findings underlined the need for caution, even if the news was not all bad. Australian suspicions about Singapore were confirmed, but verbal assurances were gained from Tokyo concerning the Pacific mandates. Latham was also able to make his point about any mooted ‘southward’ strategy, at a cost, for this amateur diplomat proved unable to address such matters with the required delicacy, likely negating some ‘goodwill’ through his brusqueness. The first of the mission’s defence aims was dealt with before Latham reached Japan, yet it was as relevant to Tokyo as to Canberra. Following his London talks over Singapore in 1932, Latham wished to determine at first hand the naval base’s state of readiness. He spent the greater part of two days (12-13 April 1934) doing so.745 Only the select readers of the ‘Secret Report’ were told of the disorder he encountered there and of the appalling state of the base, which Latham described as ‘chaotic and without concentration’.746 The CID policy reversal of June 1932 had resulted in the resumption of construction after April 1933 according to a ‘truncated’ version of the 1920s ‘Red Scheme’, but Latham saw little to show for recent expenditure.747 Thirty years later, he still recalled his shock of April 1934:

I saw the Singapore Base in course of construction and I didn’t think much of it. I wrote a critical report which was sent to the Admiralty. The reply was a polite snub.748

The mission had thus succeeded in establishing the state of naval readiness, but at the cost of deepening the anxiety of Canberra policy-makers. Following Latham’s retirement in July-August 1934, it was to be left to Lyons and other ministers, to pursue the matter directly in London, along with the mooted ‘formula’.749

741 Latham, “Report”, 6 July 1934, 440. 742 Ibid., 458. 743 Latham, “Secret Report”, 3 July 1934, 28. 744 The British were sceptical; Dodds to Dominions Office, 14 May 1934, section 8, DO 35/181/6635/57. vide Chapters 3 and 5 on trade. 745 The visit to ‘Malaya’, 11-14 April, included only Singapore and Johore; Latham, “Report”, 6 July 1934, 445. Much of the defence aspect was concealed, as the official account concentrated on the many social gatherings; ibid., 445. 746 Latham, “Secret Report”, 3 July 1934, section 2. 747 Murfett, “Keystone…”, 161. 748 Latham, “Remembrances…”: 81. 749 Latham presented a letter of retirement to Lyons on 5 July 1934, announced in the press the following day, Mercury, 6 July 1934, 9, b. He continued to hold his portfolios until 12 October. A federal election was held on 15 September. 106 The AEM had intended, as another defence goal, to address the defence aspects of the Japanese C-class mandates in the Pacific. This included the question of the continuation of these processes should the League resignation proceed, as well as the clarification of rumours that certain islands were being fortified in contravention of mandatory conditions.750 As Japanese Micronesia was a neighbour of Australia’s own vulnerable New Guinea mandate, these issues were of considerable defence significance to both Japan and Australia.751 Some alarmists warned that any future Japanese administration of these territories unsupervised by the League presented an even greater danger to Australian security than the status quo752 ─ Latham gave no indication that he shared such a view and in fact kept separate the question of League membership from the question of mandates. Once it became apparent in the 12 May Hirota interview that Japan was unlikely to follow such a path, the minister speedily reiterated a point made in Newcastle on 19 March, that the continuation of the mandates did not necessarily depend on Japan’s League status,753 noting (‘as a lawyer’) that her eligibility to exercise such obligations was a separate issue.754 The new, direct negotiation thus offered a concession before Hirota had even opened his mouth on mandates ─ an example of the desire of the appeasers to accommodate the aggressors without any prompting. It was also an indication of amateur diplomacy that Latham failed to take the opportunity to construct a nexus between League status and mandatory obligations. Although it was not within Australia’s power alone to enforce the consequences of such a nexus should Japan refuse to surrender her occupancy, its establishment might have forced some concessions from Tokyo, or at least put her on notice. Such a stance, however, would have been contrary to the spirit of a appeasement and not necessarily in Australian interests for, as a holder of mandates herself, Canberra was no champion of the principle of excessive League supervision. The only condition mentioned by Latham was the tepid one of urging Japan to provide the League Council with an ‘annual report’ on mandate administration ─ a far from intimidating prospect.755 Any discussion of mandates involved the issue of their demilitarized status, that is, of rumoured Japanese fortification. Continued mandate demilitarization was in the Australian national interest and Latham in 1919 had soothed Hughes’s concerns about possible Japanese forward bases with assurances of this status.756 Yet, it was acknowledged before Latham’s departure that Tokyo, conscious of the rearmament program of September 1933, was likely to suggest ‘tu quoque’.757 Accordingly, the Attorney-General (not the defence minister), denied reports, on 19 March 1934, that there were plans for the special expenditure of £7 million on

750 Such rumours were never stilled; Anonymous, “The Pacific Regional Pact.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.1, no.2 (June 1937): 4, continued to report them in 1937. 751 Tsurumi, “Japan Speaks to Australia”: 10, indicated Japanese consciousness of this, vide Chapter 1. 752 Marks, 145. 753 Latham, “Secret Report”, 3 July 1934, 20. Latham speech, Sydney Morning Herald, 20 March 1934, 9, g 754 Dodds to Dominions Office, 14 May 1934, section 12, DO 35/181/6635/57. 755 Dodds to Dominions Office, 14 May 1934, section 12, DO 35/181/6635/57. The Japanese Foreign Ministry later agreed to do so; Latham, “Secret Report”, 3 July 1934, 21. 756 Twomey, “Versailles…”, 60. Hughes had wanted Australian control of the former German Pacific islands. 757 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 48, on universal mandate demilitarization suiting Australia. 107 coastal defences.758 This denial was repeated in the later official ‘Report’, in one of its few references to defence matters.759 In Tokyo, however, Latham had been more interested in ascertaining the military condition of the Japanese mandates than in denying Australian rearmament and he again showed his diplomatic inexperience by making a concession at the beginning of this conversation with Hirota ─ stating his ‘personal’ belief that the reports of Japanese fortifications in Micronesia were false.760 This was one ‘fly’ to which the Foreign Minister did respond, telling Latham what he wanted and expected to hear:

Mr. Hirota said that Japan was not fortifying the islands, did not intend to fortify them, and recognised that she was bound by specific obligations not to fortify them.761

This assurance appeared to satisfy Latham and he urged Hirota to make ‘an authoritative public announcement’ to that effect.762 Latham then sealed the issue with a unilateral Australian offer to raise no objections to the fortification of Japanese territories proper, including Formosa, as long as Japan raised no objection to the naval fortification of Singapore. This was the sort of tit-for-tat, man-to-man, direct negotiation that was to characterise Australian appeasement from this time onwards. The offer brought no response from a taciturn Hirota, for the only quid pro quo that currently interested Tokyo was one that involved Manchuria.763 Not surprisingly, this unilateral offer was not mentioned in the July ‘Secret Report’. Even though Japan had merely been asked by the appeasers to improve the standard of her Geneva accounting, the visitor had at least gained verbal assurances on Pacific fortification. The credibility of such assurances was not an issue addressed by the mission, although in later months Canberra received an intelligence report that the mandated islands were not being fortified.764 Lyons unquestioningly accepted the veracity of such reports thereafter, unconscious that the Japanese navy was already preparing its base at Truk (some 3,000 miles east of Singapore) in direct contradiction of Hirota’s assurances.765 Such plausibility did not, however, impede the progress of Australian rearmament, particularly from 1935, when Tokyo formally denounced the Washington provisions that forbade such fortifications.766

758 Latham Newcastle speech, Sydney Morning Herald, 20 March 1934, 9, g. 759 Latham, “Report”, 6 July 1934, 458; Sydney Morning Herald, 20 March 1934, 9, g. Latham also denied to Hirota that Australia was increasing her fleet; Latham, “Report”, 6 July 1934, 460. 760 Dodds to Dominions Office, 14 May 1934, section 12, DO 35/181/6635/57. 761 Latham, “Secret Report”, 3 July 1934, 21. 762 ibid. Dodds called it a ‘binding pronouncement’; Dodds to Dominions Office, 14 May 1934, section 12, DO 35/181/6635/57. 763 Dodds, to Dominions Office, 14 May 1934, section 14, DO 35/181/6635/57. 764 Longfield Lloyd, Commonwealth Investigations Branch to Latham, 6 December 1934, Latham Papers, MS1009/61, NLA, Canberra, largely basing his assessment on an article in the Christian Science Monitor, 22 May 1934. 765 Lyons repeated Lloyd’s views, above, in London in 1935, vide Chapter 3. On Truk; Nelson, “Defining the Nation: Australia and the Near North”, 2 August 2001. 766 Andrews, Writing, 136, suggests that one motive for the AEM was the hope that future armament expenditure may be rendered unnecessary. Twomey, “Small Power Security…”: 77; Mansergh, Survey, 157, on the provisions and their 1935 denunciation. 108 Latham might have been compliant on mandates, but he was more forthright on the question of Empire solidarity, reminding the Japanese that Australia was part of a defensive bloc of ‘British’ nations. This was the third defence goal of the mission ─ to leave Japan in no doubt that Australia was, despite this act of semi-independent diplomacy, firmly behind the shield of Empire. It was also the first major example of Australian appeasement’s diplomatic flexibility, yet defensive rigidity. Latham’s ‘All Japan’ radio broadcast of 15 May 1934 unambiguously stressed Australia’s dominion status and her loyalty ‘to the people of our own race’, to whom she owed her ‘first duty’.767 The readers of the official ‘Report’ were reminded that he had been careful to stress the connection between Australia’s interests and those of the Empire as a whole.768 The presence of Dodds at the Hirota interview had sent a similar message, as had Latham’s dinner speech on the preceding evening, 11 May.769 It was against this background of ‘British’ diplomatic and putative military strength that Latham was at his most blunt, when he sought to address the matter of any threat from Japan. Australian policy-makers had long been anxious about the possibility of Japanese aggression being directed southwards. Latham therefore briefly set aside goodwill on 12 May to raise with Hirota the issue of ‘the menace of Japan’.770 In his secret account, he suggested that Hirota had first raised the issue, which seems unlikely, as Japan had little to gain from such a conversation.771 The interchange that followed further indicated both Latham’s lack of diplomatic skill through his ‘utmost candour’, as well as the depth of Australian anxiety.772 He warned Hirota that any southern strike by Japanese naval forces would be vulnerable and only present a temptation to Russia, whom the Japanese apparently feared, as well as provoking the US.773 In a further gauche reference, he expressed his confidence that the US would not allow an attack on any ‘white Power’ and that Japan would therefore be ‘unwise’ to make war on the British Empire.774 He concluded that any Japanese force landing on Australian soil ‘would then find that she had in her hands a very lively nest of hornets’.775 It was an extraordinary series of statements for a putative emissary of goodwill to make to the Japanese Foreign Minister. At the same time, Latham was keen to correct the Asian view that Australia was a land of ‘vast, undeveloped potentialities’.776 The ‘Secret Report’ noted that the world ought to be told of ‘the uncultivated nature of the land beyond the eastern ranges’ (in accordance with the changing perspectives of the

767 Latham, “Report”, 6 July 1934, 462. 768 ibid., 458. 769 Dodds to Dominions Office, 14 May 1934, section 4, DO 35/181/6635/57. 770 ibid., section 10. 771 Latham, “Secret Report”, Japan, 20. The Dodds account has Latham first raising Australian fear of Japan; Dodds to Dominions Office, 14 May 1934, section 10, DO 35/181/6635/57. 772 Dodds to Dominions Office, 14 May 1934, section 10, DO 35/181/6635/57. Frei, 126, refers to Latham’s ‘unsophisticated frankness’ overstepping ‘the marks of diplomatic wisdom’. 773 Latham, “Secret Report”, 3 July 1934, 23-4. 774 The undiplomatic nature of this comment was noted by N. Meaney, Towards a New Vision: Japan and Australia through 100 Years (Sydney: Kangaroo Press, 1999), 76. 775 Latham, “Secret Report”, 3 July 1934, 25. 776 ibid. Clunies-Ross suggested this very course in June 1934, “Australian Representation…”: 65. 109 decade).777 He would later ask Lyons, on 6 August 1934, to permit the Japanese consul- general to make an outback journey in order to dispel any ‘false notions’.778 The minister later shamefacedly excused himself to Dodds as ‘a barbarian from the south’ who could thus be franker with Tokyo than could the British.779 Dodds detected no apparent resentment from Hirota at such frankness,780 but the Foreign Minister was certainly at pains to deny the existence of any ‘menace’ and to stress Japan’s regret at the passing of her friendly links with the Empire.781 Latham’s conclusion from this frank exchange was that Japanese ambitions were ‘at present’ confined to the ‘mainland of Asia’, welcome news for Australian appeasers.782 He thought he had succeeded in making his point, forcefully if bluntly ─ this was the first time that an Australian had directly addressed the ‘north/south’ debate in a Japanese environment and signalled compliance with the former option, but resistance to the latter. The final defence goal of the mission appeared to have been attained, in that ‘British’ solidarity was stressed and the military dangers for Japan of a confrontation with the Empire were frankly stated. Latham’s strategic conclusion proved a durable one, for Lyons thereafter advocated the view that if Japan was permitted to continue her preoccupation with the northern, ‘continental’ approach she would be unlikely to pursue any southern, ‘maritime’ option. VIII From the Japanese perspective, the AEM had been a mixed bag. Latham’s acknowledgements and concessions were something, but Tokyo’s immediate bilateral concerns, about the lack of diplomatic representation and the trade imbalance, went unheeded.783 Latham recommended against the granting of Hirota’s request for diplomatic links, trusting in the ability and prestige of British diplomats to represent the Commonwealth, provided that the process was supplemented with Australian trade commissioners.784 He repeated this view on 30 July, observing that such commissioners could place the ‘Australian point of view’ before governments and people.785 This was a type of de facto diplomatic representation, the commissioners fulfilling

777 Latham, “Secret Report”, 3 July 1934, 25-6. His thinking reflected what Hasluck, Government, 6, called the change from the 1920s view of vast potentialities’ to the 1930s ‘myth of open spaces’. Clunies-Ross, “Australian Representation…”: 63-4, warned in June 1934 of the dangers to Australia of the perception in Asia that the continent was capable of sustaining a population of 100 million or more. He believed that Australia was terra incognita to the Japanese; Clunies-Ross, Australia and the Far East, 195. The entire curious episode may have its origins in the July 1933 call by the Rev. Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury, for permitted Japanese occupation the Northern Territory; “Anon.”, “Australia and Japan”: 97, a view then denounced by Bruce and Lyons; D. Walker, Anxious Nation, 126. 778 Nothing came of this suggestion; Latham to Lyons, 6 August 1934, A11934/8638, NAA, Canberra. Lyons reply, 27 August 1934, ibid. 779 Dodds to Dominions Office, 14 May 1934, section 15, DO 35/181/6635/57. 780 ibid., section 3. 781 ibid., section 10. 782 Latham, “Secret Report”, 3 July 1934, 25. 783 Tokyo expected an immediate diplomatic appointment after the AEM; Andrews, Writing, 142, notes that the Japanese Foreign Ministry budgeted in 1934 for a Japanese trade commission in Canberra, according to Canadian diplomatic sources in Tokyo. 784 Latham, “Secret Report”, 3 July 1934, 28-9, also Dodds to Dominions Office, 14 May 1934, section 5ff., DO 35/181/6635/57. Casey too thought that British diplomatic prestige was still of great use to Australia; Casey, Australia’s Place, 17. The Japanese desire for diplomatic links had also been voiced in the welcome speech of Baron Sakatani of the Australia-Japan Society on 14 May 1934, A981 FAR 5 PART 9, NAA, Canberra. 785 Latham “Report on Trade Commissioners”, 30 July 1934. 110 a role that British diplomats were unable or unwilling to perform.786 Trade commissioners were not therefore to be viewed purely as trade officials, but as proto-diplomats; hence the appointment of the AEM delegate and ‘gentleman’, Lloyd, to Tokyo in May 1935, a man entirely without commercial experience, but with a considerable background in external, defence and intelligence affairs.787 Even so, the government’s view still seemed to be ‘the less diplomacy a country has the better are the chances of happiness’, as Latham put it in parliament on 6 July 1934.788 There was no intention of establishing a formal Australian diplomatic service in 1934789 ─ such a procedure was not yet considered in the national interest, neither by the minister who had considered the matter since the ‘twenties, nor by the government’s most vocal member on such matters, Casey.790 Lyons was guided by this informed counsel and would utilise the quasi- diplomatic representation of commissioners and consuls until a change of mind in early-1939.791 Japanese appeals on trade imbalance during the AEM had also fallen on deaf ears, unsurprising given Lyons’s December statement that there was no room for negotiations of this kind. Nevertheless, Hirota had raised the issue of ‘the promotion of exports to Australia’, but gained no concession other than a promise to hold conversations with the relevant Japanese officials regarding a proposed trade agreement.792 The ‘Secret Report’ gave the matter only a cursory reference ─ detail on trade was delayed until the three confidential, brief and subsidiary reports of 30 July 1934; the chief ‘Report’ of 6 July was not to be confused with these commercial memoranda. The first, a ‘Confidential Report on Trade between Australia and Japan’, consisted of a brief ‘memorandum’ by Moore on his meeting (15 May 1934) with Kurusu, the Director of the Foreign Ministry’s Commercial Bureau.793 As anticipated, the director had

786 Clunies-Ross, “Australian Representation…”: 66, had stressed in the meantime that British representation of Australian interests was inadequate. He repeated similar views in 1935, Australia and the Far East, 194-5. A.C.V. Melbourne was soon to make the same point to Lyons; vide below. 787 Prior to this appointment, there was considerable confusion over whether such men were purely commercial representatives, or were expected to serve a wider purpose; vide the correspondence of Dow, the trade representative in New York, David Dow Papers, passim, University of Melbourne Archives. On Lloyd; DAFP, vol.1, 587, Appendix V. He was appointed on 30 May 1935, Cabinet Submission, 30 May 1935, A6006, Roll 9, NAA, Canberra. The appointment indicated the priority of defence/foreign policy considerations over commercial ones and was seen by some as an intelligence operation; Smith’s Weekly in Meaney, Towards a New Vision, 76. D. Walker, Anxious Nation, 207, suggests that Lloyd, unlike another applicant A.C.V. Melbourne, was considered a ‘gentleman’. Melbourne was bitterly disappointed, as he had lobbied Earle Page in person; Melbourne to Earle Page, 9 November 1934, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2 and again on 18 and 22 January 1935; Melbourne to J. Murphy, Department of Commerce, 18 January 1935, A6901 410/7/1, NAA, Canberra. 788 Latham, CPD, vol.144, 337, quoted in Fairbanks, 49. 789 Latham had made this clear beforehand; Latham to Bruce, 30 January 1934, A981 FAR 5(1), NAA, Canberra. 790 Latham, Australia and the British Commonwealth (1928 Macrossan Lectures), 56-7, thought that diplomatic representation was not a threat to British diplomatic unity, but was, as yet, unnecessary. Casey, “The Need for a United British Foreign Policy,” (17 October 1932) in The World We Live In: A Series of Speeches on Current Events, 71ff., was persuaded of the merits of representation in other dominions, but not in foreign countries. 791 Lyons told Jay Moffat, the US consul, to act as a de facto ambassador; Moffat Diary, 2 October 1935, NLA, Canberra; vide Chapters 3 and 4. Latham would himself become the first Australian minister in Tokyo from August 1940-November 1941; ADB, vol.10, 5, announced by Menzies on 18 August 1940; P. Torney-Parlicki, “Selling Goodwill: Peter Russo and the Promotion of Australia-Japan Relations, 1935-1941.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.47, no. 3 (September 2001): 358. Melbourne too had been recommended for the position by Russo, a fellow-academic; ibid.: 359. Menzies, however, had a low opinion of Melbourne; vide Chapter 7. Latham had a similarly low opinion of Russo, as too ‘Australian’; D. Walker, Anxious Nation, 221. 792 Dodds to Dominions Office, 14 May 1934, section 8ff., DO 35/181/6635/57. 793 Latham had instructed Moore on what to say; Latham to Lyons, 31 July 1934, A981 AUS 32, NAA, Canberra. 111 repeated a litany of complaints about Australian trade policy, including delay in negotiating a trade treaty and the unfavourable trade balace.794 Moore promised no redress, but Latham, in his report of 30 July, urged the ‘immediate attention’ of the Australian government to such matters and the preparation of some strategy to cope with the pressing likelihood of hostile Japanese trade moves.795 Lyons ignored these recommendations (at his later peril), focusing instead on diplomatic and defence concerns, but the Japanese indicated their seriousness by soon dispatching trade officials and by issuing a list of tariff demands.796 Canberra avoided negotiation throughout the following year, but it was not until February 1936 that she launched a pre-emptive strike against Japanese imports.797 Until then, the Australian silence on the Japanese trade imbalance was deafening. Despite these disappointments over diplomacy and trade, Tokyo had gained some potential benefits from the mission and for that reason the Sydney consulate was told that the results ‘were good beyond expectations’.798 Latham the appeaser had extended a number of concessions ─ the Manchurian question was to be addressed in a sympathetic manner; the continued Japanese occupation of the province was conceded beyond question, as was the right to retain (unfortified) mandates, whatever her League status, which now appeared an irrelevance. Although there had been no concrete agreements (for none had been expected), the Prime Minister and his government had set a precedent for extending to an aggressor the possibility of a reward for their efforts, provided they accepted some probation. This first act of Australian quasi- diplomacy, with its stirrings of an Australian foreign policy, was therefore also one of the first acts of ‘British’ appeasement (despite Whitehall’s lack of involvement) ─ eighteen months before the Hoare-Laval episode and three years before the concept received a wider acceptance at the 1937 Imperial Conference. Accordingly, the view that appeasement was never applied in Asia is arguably a mistaken one ─ Latham was unable to offer the ‘free hand’ that the implementation of appeasement would demand, but he promised to do what he could with Whitehall.799 From this point onwards, Lyons’s foreign policy-making was associated with the concept of ‘direct negotiation’. Two years of cunctation had produced little, but the single interview of 12 May 1934 appeared to have achieved a great deal, at least from the appeasers’ perspective. IX Despite the fact that Latham had been at pains throughout the mission to insist on ‘British’ diplomatic unity, cracks in that surface began to appear even before his return home. The official ‘Report’ quoted Simon’s compliments and was effusive in its thanks to British

794 ibid. 795 Latham, “Confidential Report on Trade”, n.d. but 30 July 1934. 796 Described in Megaw, “Goodwill…”: 257ff. 797 vide Chapter 5 on trade diversion. 798 The assessment of the chief Foreign Ministry intelligence officer, Amau, to the Japanese consul in Sydney; Kuramatsu Murai, 23 May 1935, C443 J146, NAA, Sydney. 799 Newman, 217-8, that ‘appeasement’ was never fully implemented by the giving of a ‘free hand’ to Japan in northern China; Louis, British Strategy, 11, 238. Dodds to Simon, 16 May 1934, FO 371/18157/167, on Latham’s promise. 112 diplomats but Latham had not been so certain of British sanction at the time. Immediately following his departure from Japan, he had cabled Officer requesting that a parliamentary question be asked at Westminster whose answer included a favourable reference to the AEM.800 This, he said, would do much to counter the Japanese view that the mission indicated a measure of disagreement with British policy.801 Dodds had been pleased with Latham’s ‘loyal’ attitude during the mission, although apparently apprehensive at first,802 but the Foreign Office preserved its initial caution about the whole process and could muster only amused cynicism for the Manchurian ‘formula’.803 High Commissioner Crutchley, in Canberra, reinforced this attitude with his observations following dinner with Latham in July, observing that Australian ‘diplomacy’ was inexperienced and naïve. He speculated accordingly on the validity of Latham’s recent conclusions:

I could not help wondering when he spoke of the ingenuousness of the Japanese whether he had a little wool pulled over his eyes. He is not a man of the world exactly and I should not be surprised if some of his judgements were a little biased by the enthusiasm of his reception.804

The mission’s reports were passed on to London, but failed to elicit much response. Their influence on British policy was minimal, as Lyons was to find in 1935,805 and the Foreign Office generally preferred to maintain the old cunctation in the Far East.806 One British politician in particular showed a willingness to pursue reconciliation with Japan, approaching Simon on 1 September 1934 with a memorandum, ‘Relations with Japan’, that paralleled many of Latham’s suggestions, although there is no direct evidence that he had read the forwarded reports.807 The Foreign Office obstructed such proposals in the following months, eventually sabotaging Chamberlain’s proposal of a ‘pact’, similar in its way to Latham’s ‘formula’ and to Lyons’s own later concept of 1937.808 In Australia, Latham waited in vain for any Whitehall response to his own labours ─ by October 1934 Crutchley reported that the retired minister w as accordingly

800 Latham, “Report”, 6 July 1934, 459. 801 Latham to Officer, 24 May 1934, FO 371/18157/186, PRO, London. The question was duly asked of Sir John Simon on 13 June 1934 by Miss Horsburgh. 802 Dodds to Simon, 18 June 1934, FO 371/18157/207A, PRO, London; Latham to Officer, 18 September 1934, Latham Papers, MS1009/58. 803 The FO had shown some support; Officer note on “Japanese Foreign Policy”, 22 March 1934, A 981 JAP 185 PART 2. Dodds to Simon, 16 May 1934, and FO note by Randall, 17 May 1934, FO 371/18157/200. 804 Crutchley, UK High Commissioner, Canberra, to E. Harding, Under-Secretary, Dominions Office, 10 July 1934, DO 35/181/1, PRO, London. The British embassy’s commercial counsellor in Tokyo, Sansom, thought the same about the ‘amateur’ group of British industrialists who also visited Japan in 1934; G. Kennedy, “1935…”, 199-200. 805 On the British reaction; vide Andrews, Writing, 143-4 and Chapter 3. 806 Charles Orde, Far Eastern Department, Foreign Office, minute, 16 September 1933, FO 37117081/F5709, PRO, London, provides a good example of cunctation; also W. Louis, “The Road to Singapore…”, 357. 807 On Chamberlain, Simon and Japan in 1934-35 vide Trotter, “Tentative…”: 72ff.; D. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 91; Andrews, Writing, 151; I. Macleod, Neville Chamberlain (London: Frederick Muller Ltd., 1961), 178; G. Kennedy, “1935…”, 194-5, 199. 808 Chamberlain’s proposal had lapsed in cabinet by 19 March 1935, CAB 23/78, PRO, London. It lingered for some time after, Trotter, “Tentative…”: 59ff., Andrews, Writing, 146ff. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 352ff.; G. Kennedy, “1935…”, 196; P. Bell, Chamberlain, Germany and Japan (London: Macmillan, 1996), 69ff., 134, 162-3, gives a good account of the indifference in the cabinet to it. 113 disappointed.809 Before the end of the year Latham’s tongue had been loosened and he expressed some bitterness about Britain’s insincere attitude towards the eastern powers, offering some cynical advice to his ministerial successor, Pearce; Britain’s ‘flowing language’ and statements, he observed, ‘remind me of the noble candidate who states that he will not be deterred from pursuing at all costs the interests of the people’.810 The AEM might have wished to stress British diplomatic unity to its Japanese observers, but some in Canberra (and London) later drew other conclusions, along the lines of Dr. Melbourne’s earlier warnings of likely diplomatic disagreements.811 The mission, whatever its intentions, had broadened the gap between the perceptions of Canberra and London. X In the cabinet papers after 3 July 1934 there is no record of any discussion of the AEM reports. Lyons rarely welcomed such discussions in this forum and this was no exception. The press showed a greater interest, particularly the Sydney Morning Herald, which printed a series of articles sympathetic to Japan by Cutlack, one of the journalists who had accompanied the mission.812 External relations, however, assumed their characteristically low profile in the campaign leading to the UAP electoral victory of 15 September 1934 and Pearce, the new Minister of External Affairs after the cabinet reshuffle of 12 October 1934, showed little interest in Latham’s diplomatic findings (although the defence aspects troubled him). The Prime Minister remained mindful of the mission’s full impact and of the need to turn its recommendations into policy and, judging from his actions and opinions after July 1934, Lyons had studied Latham’s reports in some detail. He referred to the mission in October 1935 as having produced ‘satisfactory’ results for Australia:813 in his view it had at least demonstrated the efficacy of man- to-man dialogue, one of the bases of his appeasement. Such exchanges, he said, were worthwhile ‘if they enable the people of other countries to know something more about our country and make them a little more friendly’.814 Both Latham’s diplomatic and defence observations found their mark and most of them were repeated and acted upon by Lyons over the coming two years. After the AEM, Lyons held the following as articles of faith ─ that Japan would not return to the League and the old internationalism of the 1920s; that the League mechanism was in need of adjustment in favour of the aggrieved; that Manchuria remained the chief obstacle in the return of

809 Crutchley to Dominions Office, 19 October 1934, in Andrews Writing, 143-4, where he referred to the lack of response as a ‘discourtesy’, 810 Latham to Pearce, 19 December 1934, quoted in Tarling, 15-6; Andrews, Writing, 172. Pearce agreed in his reply of 21 December 1934; Andrews, Writing, 172. 811 Melbourne to Latham, 26 February 1934, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. 812 Megaw, “Goodwill…”: 253ff., on the favourable press response to the AEM. Cutlack’s collected articles, The Manchurian Arena, gave no indication that he had read Latham’s report, although 76ff., indicated similar conclusions. There is some evidence that the Japanese used Cutlack as a cat’s paw, vide the assessment of Amau, Chief Intelligence Officer of the Foreign Ministry, who believed his recognition of the Japanese position on Manchuria had been ‘deepened’; Amau to Murai, 23 May 1935, C443 J146. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 373, on Cutlack. 813 Sydney Morning Herald, 14 October 1935, 10, g, “Enthusiastic Reception,” reporting Lyons’s address to a UAP gathering at Wollongong; vide Chapter 4. 814 ibid., 11, e. 114 Japan to some form of responsible international behaviour; that continued Japanese occupation was beyond question; that a long-term solution may be acceptable to some in China; that there was a ‘north-south’ debate within Japan, with the inference that Australia ought to encourage the ‘northwards’ option. Above all, Lyons accepted that some ‘formula’ must be found to address the Manchurian impasse. All of these conclusions were a measure of Latham’s influence on the thinking of his prime minister, 1933-34. The AEM either planted these views in Lyons’s mind, or confirmed existing perceptions.

XI Lyons’s policy-making in the immediate aftermath of the eastern mission was also influenced by two very different men: Dr. A.C.V. Melbourne and Sir Maurice Hankey. It had long been Lyons’s custom to listen to ‘expert’, academic voices (a political practice considered unusual in this period).815 In his role as a mediating chairman, it was his responsibility to collect information from eclectic sources, including those outside the public service (to the chagrin, for example, of the Development Branch of the Prime Minister’s Department).816 Lyons employed the same practice in external affairs, where it was natural that he should seek such voices, this being the policy area in which he felt himself on the shakiest ground (at least in the years up to 1935-36).817 The miniscule Department of External Affairs itself was rarely consulted, at least in the period before its administrative separation in November 1935.818 Dr. Melbourne’s unsolicited voice, on the other hand, was an important stimulus from October 1934 and his views reinforced most of Latham’s conclusions, thus likely strengthening Lyons’s own evolving assessments and offering them some academic respectability. If he was being derivative this did not concern Lyons, who had no difficulty in confessing that he was implementing the ideas of others ─ he never claimed to be an original thinker. Lyons had once been too occupied with economic matters to listen to Melbourne, but this was no longer the case by late 1934819 ─ the change of attitude was for unknown reasons, but it could be that he recalled, via Latham, the regret expressed by Baron Sakatani (on 14 May 1934)

815 For example, his continuing association with Professor Giblin; Robson, History, vol.2, 394, outlines it from 1909 onwards. On their working partnership vide also ADB, vol.8, 646ff., vol.10, 185. As late as 1938 Lyons utilised Giblin’s economic knowledge, despite the professor’s withering views on appeasement; Hasluck, Government, 63. 816 On self-perception as a negotiating chairman; Lasswell, 26. The Development Branch was annoyed by the association with Giblin. It was not moved from Melbourne to Canberra until 1935 and was aggrieved at its exclusion from policy formulation; “History of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet”, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Annual Report 1978-9, Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, vol.11, no.196 (1979), 34. 817 Hart made a number of observations on this Lyons trait in “J. A. Lyons”, 220; also in “J. A. Lyons, Tasmanian Labour Leader,”: 33; “ Piper…”, 138-9. 818 vide Chapter 4. 819 Lyons to Melbourne, 15 August 1932, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2, University of Queensland Archives, St. Lucia. 115 about the academic’s exclusion from the mission.820 In fact Tokyo’s connection with Dr. Melbourne was more intimate and more subversive than Lyons was ever to discover.821 A Melbourne-Lyons correspondence began in October 1934 and continued until March 1939. It was initiated by the former for, with his extensive knowledge of Japan and numerous contacts in officialdom, Melbourne rightly saw himself as being a point of contact between Japanese officials and Australian policy-makers.822 His views on an ‘Australian’ foreign policy and on Japanese- Australian relations were not to bear full fruit with Lyons until the close of 1938, but they arguably had some bearing on his eastern policy-making in earlier years. At a time when the AEM was being conceived, Melbourne had set out some of his ideas on ‘Australia and Japan’ in a series of press articles in August 1933. These articles were premised on two fundamentals, which the AEM was later to test in its own way, even if Latham declined to take Melbourne with him.823 The first was that Australia ought to develop her ‘own’ foreign policy;824 the second was that Japanese aspirations in Manchuria were legitimate on economic grounds alone, geopolitics aside.825 Latham had at the very least been aware of the academic’s line of thought before his mission.826 These concepts and others were more fully set out in Melbourne’s first piece of direct prime ministerial correspondence, on 30 October 1934, in which he enclosed his memorandum ‘A Foreign Policy for Australia’.827 Of the twenty points adumbrated in the memorandum, seven were directly relevant to Japan (most of the remainder were applicable)─ of those seven, most were clearly espoused by Lyons from this time onwards, either through coincidence of thought or as an example of Melbourne’s influence.828 After October 1934, it may be assumed that there was a symmetry between the views of Lyons and Melbourne, a symmetry that at least made the former responsive to the latter’s suggestions on the following matters ─ that Japan was a ready and expanding market for Australian produce; that Japan was pre-occupied in Manchukuo, but must be watched;829 that the failure of her northern, ‘continental’ strategy could lead to a renewed

820 Latham, “Report”, 6 July 1934, Appendix B, “Speech by Baron Sakatani, President of the Australia-Japan Society, at a reception given to the Mission on 14th May, 1934.” 821 vide above and Chapter 5. 822 Melbourne even came to regret Federation, as a process that had ensured the sway of southern based ‘pro-British’ and ‘anti-Asian’ politicians; A. C. V. Melbourne to Longfield Lloyd, 11 January 1937, in Melbourne Papers, Reel 2, University of Queensland Archives, St. Lucia. 823 A.C.V. Melbourne, six articles, “Australia and Japan”, Brisbane Daily Mail, 14-19 August 1933; also published in Dinning H. and J. Holmes, eds., Australian Foreign Policy 1934 (Melbourne: MUP, 1935). vide above on Melbourne’s exclusion from the AEM. 824 In accordance with Melbourne’s ‘robust Australian nationalism’; Bolton, “A.C.V. Melbourne,” 113; also D. Walker, Anxious Nation, 206. 825 Melbourne, “Australia and Japan”. 826 Latham to A.C.V. Melbourne, 8 March 1934, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. 827 A.C.V. Melbourne to Lyons, 30 October 1934, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2 and A.C.V. Melbourne, “A Foreign Policy for Australia”, 2, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2, University of Queensland Archives, St. Lucia. He also sent the memorandum to Pearce and Latham. 828 Lyons ignored the suggestion of a ‘more flexible’ commercial agreement with Japan and refused to countenance any dilution of the White Australia Policy, both recommended by Melbourne; ibid. 829 ibid., 3, 8, where he argued that the Japanese commitment to ‘continental’ expansion meant that there would be no ‘immediate’ threat to Australia. Similar conclusions were found in Latham, “Secret Report”, 3 July 1934, 24-5; Cutlack, 76ff. 116 interest in the southern, ‘maritime’ alternative;830 that dialogue must be maintained with all Pacific powers, but especially with the US;831 that Australian interests demanded a policy ‘different’ from Whitehall’s (at least in the Pacific);832 that Australia must make commercial cum diplomatic appointments in the region.833 These suggestions dove-tailed with Latham’s findings, but were more strident in their warnings about the ‘southwards’ strategy and more insistent on the need for fuller diplomatic representation. Where they conflicted, Latham’s legacy predominated over Melbourne’s counsel, until late-1938 when Lyons’s sense of emergency overcame any hesitancy. The influence of the original Melbourne memorandum of October 1934 is difficult to gauge, but it seemed to have played a part in the accumulation of his thinking about regional problems.834 XII At the same time that Melbourne was warning against any assumption that Japan would never pursue the ‘maritime’ option, Lyons became conscious of a diluted British commitment to eastern defence through the ‘private’ visit, at the invitation of the Australian cabinet, of Sir Maurice Hankey (the secretary of the CID).835 Even in the time between his invitation (February 1934) and his arrival (in October), Whitehall had down-graded the Far East in its strategic thinking ─ the conclusions of the Ministerial Committee on Disarmament (20 June 1934) and the presentation of Chamberlain’s eastern memorandum to Simon on 1 September 1934, culminated in the deceleration of naval expenditure by the Chancellor from £76 million to £50 million over a five-year period.836 Singapore was to be demoted to a base for ‘light naval craft’ only and the Admiralty had already decided in May 1934 not to send battle-cruisers even when the base was completed, which it was to be ‘if only out of good faith to the Dominions’, as Chamberlain put

830 A.C.V. Melbourne to Lyons, 30 October 1934, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2; Lyons himself gave voice to these fears in London in May 1935 in some detail, vide Chapter 3, indicating that he had not totally accepted Latham’s assurances that the Japanese understood the perils of a southward push. 831 A.C.V. Melbourne, “A Foreign Policy for Australia”, 3, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2, 10. vide Chapter 3 on Lyons and the US visit of July 1935. In his open attitude towards the US, Lyons was at odds with Pearce, who did little in his first interview with Moffat on 3 October 1935 other than to list reasons for US-Australian animosity, Moffat Diary, 3 October 1935. The grievances are listed in Millar, 113. 832 A.C.V. Melbourne, “A Foreign Policy for Australia”, 3, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. Lyons had already come to that conclusion by dispatching the AEM, Lyons, Statement, 2 December 1933, A981 JAP 101 PART 2. 833 Cabinet again considered Melbourne himself for a trade position, Cabinet Submission, 12 February 1935, A6006 Roll 9, NAA, Canberra; also Latham to Melbourne, 27 July 1935, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. vide Chapter 7, where Melbourne’s late-1938 intervention was decisive in the establishment of full diplomatic representation. Melbourne was most distrustful of British diplomacy, A.C.V. Melbourne, “A Foreign Policy for Australia”, 2, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. Melbourne presented these views to a sceptical audience, including Malcolm MacDonald, at the Queensland conference of the Australian Institute of International Affairs at Southport, in October 1934, Bolton, “A.C.V. Melbourne,” 121-2. 834 There is no record of a written reply from Lyons, but the collection of their correspondence is incomplete. The first certain reply is Lyons to Melbourne, 15 January 1936, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2, University of Queensland Archives, St. Lucia. The two met in Brisbane on 5 August 1936, at Lyons’s request, vide Chapter 5. Latham replied expressing his gratitude; Latham to Melbourne, 27 July 1935, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2, University of Queensland Archives, St. Lucia. 835 Hankey was a friend of R.G. Casey and of Bruce; P. Edwards, “The Rise and Fall…”, 53. 836 Chamberlain’s figure, quoted in his diary, 6 June 1934, K. Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain (London: Macmillan, 1946), 258. D.C. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 92-9, called Chamberlain and his cabinet supporters ‘a Japanese lobby’. The most recent discussion of these British defence debates and particularly of the role of Chamberlain is found in K. Neilson, “The Defence Requirements Sub-Committee, British Strategic Foreign Policy, Neville Chamberlain and the Path to Appeasement.” English Historical Review, vol.118, no.477 (June 2003): 660ff. 117 it.837 Hankey was a long-standing advocate of the completion of Singapore and with his dominion perspectives, knew that Australia and New Zealand in particular were likely to be very concerned about these ‘heretical doctrines’.838 There was likely to be, he warned, ‘flutter in many dovecotes’ and even an end to ‘our Empire’.839 The Hankey mission (October-November 1934), has been variously seen as an attempt to assuage dominion concern or to conceal Britain’s strategic directions ─ an exercise either in ‘public relations’, or in duplicity.840 A discussion of its nature is beyond the scope of this thesis, but it is best understood as a part of the ongoing battle between the various schools in Whitehall (the ‘European menace’ group versus the ‘big navy’ adherents).841 It was also an attempt by the sympathetic Hankey to soothe dominion concerns, but not through duplicity, for he was instructed (on 31 July 1934) to be candid about the course of recent British strategic thinking.842 He was to be heard, but also to listen and thus to gather dominion material in support of his ‘big navy’ school.843 Hankey did not leave empty-handed, but clutching written assurances from Baldwin that the first phase of Singapore’s construction was to be completed by 1938 (in line with a DRC recommendation of 28 February 1934).844 Hankey’s first Australian appointment, at Perth on 2 October 1934, was with the Defence Minister, Pearce (soon to succeed Latham at External Affairs).845 The minister was candid, telling him that ‘Mr. Lyons is not very conversant with external affairs’ and urging frankness, as this is

837 Chamberlain in the Disarmament Conference committee, 24 July 1934; Neidpath, 131. vide also Murfett, “Keystone…”, 162, on Chamberlain and Singapore. On British strategy at this time, vide Andrews, “The Broken Promise…”: 106ff. A short-term cut in RN allocation, from £27.1 million to £13 million had already been foreshadowed in April 1933, ibid. On Singapore, Andrews, Writing, 147-8. On battle cruisers; Thorne, 394, quoting Lord Chatfield, Admiralty, to Fisher, Treasury, 11 May 1934. 838 Neilson, 660, on Hankey in 1933.McIntyre, 119. Ramsay MacDonald too was concerned and had earlier asked for cabinet opinion on the question: “Can we secure Dominions’ co-operation? If so, how?”, 25 March 1934, CAB 24/248, CP 70 (34) re CAB 23/79, PRO, London. 839 Trotter, “Tentative…”: 70 quoting Hankey on 3 August 1934, CAB 21/398; Hankey quoted on 20 June 1934 in Hamill, 242-3. Trotter, ibid., 69ff., gives a good summary of the battles between Chamberlain and Hankey. 840 A. Trotter, “The Dominions and Imperial Defence: Hankey’s Tour in 1934.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol.2 (1974): 329, preferred ‘public relations’. Andrews, “The Broken Promise…”: 111, and “Civil-Military Relations in the Twentieth Century,” in Australia Two Centuries of War and Peace, eds. M. McKernan and M. Browne, 378, preferred duplicity. Ovendale, Appeasement, 23, and Holland, 180, preferred an attempt to explain British rearmament, although such intention to rearm came only after the Defence White Paper of March 1935, A.J.P. Taylor, English History (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965), 376, 412. 841 Trotter, “The Dominions and Imperial Defence…”: 319-20. For a detailed account of Hankey in Australia; Roskill, 127ff. Neilson, 672, on the ongoing struggle within the Defence Requirements sub-committee. 842 Hankey to cabinet, 16 January 1935, CAB 23/81/10, PRO, London, on his instructions, issued on 31 July 1934, to report to the Dominion prime ministers on the Defence Requirements Committee inquiry of February 1934. 843 Trotter gives a good account of the background of these debates in Britain, “The Dominions and Imperial Defence…”: 322ff. On Hankey as a listener; Roskill, 128. D. Watt, “Paradox”: 276, suggested that Hankey was intending both to soothe Australian fears of Japan and to soothe home concern about dominion participation in war. 844 Hankey to Lord President, Baldwin, 30 July 1934, CAB 63/66, PRO, London. Baldwin aide-memoire to Hankey, 31 July 1934, ibid. The DRC sub-committee report, 28 February 1934, CAB 24/247, CP 64 (34), 18, (vide above) had recommended a five-year program of Singapore expenditure of £4,435,000. The Baldwin document is mentioned in Trotter, “The Dominions and Imperial Defence…”: 323; McCarthy, Australia and Imperial Defence, 56; Andrews, Writing, 158. Hankey remained in touch with Baldwin throughout, e.g. Hankey, aboard RMV Winchester Castle, to Baldwin, 23 August 1934, CAB 63/66, PRO, London. On their connections; Middlemas, 68. 845 Shedden was acting as Hankey’s secretary, at his request; Defence Department minute, 18 September 1934, MP 124/6 404/201/191, NAA, Melbourne. For an insight into Shedden and Hankey; Hasluck, Chance, 52-3. 118 what Lyons wanted.846 On 17 October Hankey reached Melbourne, where he was received by Latham, now retired and Lyons joined them for dinner that night. Their conversations remained unrecorded, but Hankey was later to have no illusion about what he called the Australian ‘wind up’ about Japan, so it remains likely that the AEM and defence matters were to the fore.847 The Prime Minister met Hankey again in Canberra on 25 October for more formal talks,848 where Lyons pressed his view that matters of national security required consensus, urging him also to brief Scullin, the opposition leader, in the interests ‘of continuity’, as well as Earle Page, the leader of the minor coalition party.849 Lyons was to pursue such defence consensus with varying degrees of success until his death, for he wished such matters to be above party politics.850 Again, the conversations were unrecorded, but Hankey later revealed that he had made his ‘verbal report’ on the ‘general results of the Inquiry into Defence Requirements’ (which downgraded eastern defence priorities) as he had been instructed to do by the British cabinet, providing the Australian prime minister his first direct confirmation of the tenuousness of Singapore in British strategic thinking.851 Any pain caused by this revelation could have been soothed by the parallel promises of Baldwin’s soothing aide-memoire, with its assurances of continued Singapore expenditure over a five-year period, promising completion by 1938.852 Lyons was said to have reacted to the verbal report of Britain’s new Europe-oriented defence priorities with ‘understanding’ and ‘acquiescence’,853 but not perhaps without providing some indication to his guest that his government did not have all its eggs in the Singapore basket, for a puzzled Hankey later stated in January 1935 that Australians were confident of US support against Japan (an observation reminiscent of Latham’s comments to Hirota in May)854 ─ the origins of Hankey’s conviction are unknown, but the impressions offered to him by Australian ministers, Lyons included, seem likely. The Singapore scepticism of Lyons and many of his leading ministers may certainly be dated from this period, when Hankey’s revelations reinforced the concerns about Singapore recently voiced by Latham’s report, let alone by his London

846 Hankey Diary, 2 October 1934, CAB 63/66, PRO, London. Pearce had played no discernible part in the Australian Eastern Mission, although his counsel was likely. 847 Hankey quoted in Trotter, “The Dominions and Imperial Defence…”: 325. 848 Hankey found Lyons to be frank and decent; Martin, Menzies, 127, quoting Hankey to Baldwin, 28 November 1934. 849 Hankey Diary, 25 October 1934, CAB 63/66. He met Scullin on 26 October, ibid., but told Baldwin that he had given him only a ‘diluted’ statement; Hankey to Baldwin, 26 October 1934, CAB 63/70, PRO, London, also quoted in McCarthy, Australia and Imperial Defence, 56. Andrews, Writing, 65, sees Hankey’s recommendation for Labor defence co-operation as ‘idealistic’, without acknowledging Lyons’s desire for consensus as the source. 850 Lyons’s belief in the necessity of consensus increased with the severity of every crisis, for example, “Commonwealth Parliamentary Year 1936, Review by Prime Minister”, in the series Record of the Lyons Government, A601/165/1/1, NAA, Canberra, where Lyons referred to his government having dealt with defence, ‘keeping it all the time above party politics’; also, Cabinet Submissions, 21 October 1938, A6006, Reel 11; CPD, vol.157, 1103ff., 2 November 1938; Lyons broadcast text, 4 December 1938, A5954/69/1949/4, NAA, Canberra, 5. 851 Cabinet instructions to Hankey on 31 July 1934, mentioned in Hankey to cabinet, 16 January 1935, CAB 23/81/10, PRO, London, 10. vide above on the February 1934 DRC recommendations. 852 Baldwin aide-memoire to Hankey, 31 July 1934, CAB 63/66, where he guaranteed the DRC’s five-year program of Singapore expenditure of £4,435,000; vide above. 853 Hankey to cabinet, 16 January 1935, CAB 23/81/10. 854 Hankey’s comments on Australian confidence in the US; Thorne, 398ff., quoting Hankey to Ramsay MacDonald, 2 January 1935; Latham, “Secret Report”, 3 July 1934, 23-4. Hankey himself believed that there was no alternative for Australia than reliance on British sea power; Robertson, “The Distant War…”, 224. 119 observations from 1932. An Australian sense of imperial ‘overstretch’ may also be dated from the same time, that is, the suspicion that Britain was an imperial power in decline, with consequent ramifications for local defence policy.855 Hankey left the capital after further meetings with Parkhill, the new Defence Minister, and the service chiefs. Some of what they told him was reflected in his ‘Report on Certain Aspects of Australian Defence’ (dated 15 November 1934), presented first to Parkhill and then to Chief of the Imperial General Staff in the following January.856 This document should not be seen as a British blueprint, slavishly followed by the Lyons government thereafter. It was the reverse: a qualified endorsement of Australia’s own initiatives, plus imperial addenda, where Hankey added administrative suggestions (that were accepted), including one for the establishment of a Council of Defence, as well as further proposals for imperial co-operation (that were mostly ignored).857 Although the report endorsed the already adopted strategic view that Australia needed to prepare for ‘light raids’ not ‘invasion’,858 Hankey did advocate that the Army be prepared to mount an overseas expeditionary force, thus providing some salve to the ‘invasionists’ such as the then-Colonel Lavarack (soon to be promoted as the Army Chief of the General Staff).859 This was a recommendation unwelcome to Lyons, who was consistently opposed to such forces and it was accordingly ignored (to Lavarack’s chagrin), as was the related suggestion of an Australian garrison in Singapore.860 Similarly, Hankey lauded the September 1933 revival of the Salmond plan for the RAAF, but recommended the dispatch overseas of one squadron.861 Lyons also chose to ignore this imperial addendum. The core of the Hankey report was its assessment of the Singapore strategy. Its author recognised the legitimacy of Australian anxiety, but was forceful in his view that any naval threat could be countered by the certain arrival of a British fleet (of unspecified size) at Singapore in due time. Hankey could see no alternative for Australia other than reliance on imperial ‘Sea Power’ and he believed that he had impressed upon the Lyons government the necessity for some imperial naval co-operation (in accordance with the ‘Blue Water’ concept of forward naval

855 Murfett, “Keystone…”, 149; Meyers, “International paradigms…”: 46ff., on imperial ‘overextension as a characteristic of geopolitical decline. 856 Hankey to CIGS, 31 January 1935, CAB 21/386, PRO, London. The report had been presented to Parkhill on 14 November 1934. 857 The Council of Defence consisted of Lyons, Pearce, Parkhill and the service chiefs. It first met on 19 June 1935; Horner, Defence Supremo, 47, not on 9 April 1935; pace, Andrews, Writing, 172-3. 858 He advocated that the Army be readied to repel ‘raids’ and was critical of its preparation for ‘invasion’; May, 208. 859 McCarthy, Australia and Imperial Defence, 57-8. The Army was unimpressed; vide the detailed reaction to the Hankey report in Andrews, Writing, 173ff., where Lavarack and Major-General Bruche were vituperative; also May, 208-9. On Lavarack, vide Hasluck, Government, 47. 860 Even the Army was opposed to any immediate suggestion that Australia provide a Singapore garrison; Lavarack to Parkhill, 10 February 1935, B1535 749/1/29, NAA, Melbourne. Archie Cameron, MHR had made such a suggestion on 7 February 1935, Cameron to Parkhill, ibid. The issue was canvassed as late as 1938; J. Mant, “An Australian Battalion for Singapore.” Australian Quarterly, vol.10, no.2 (June 1938): 73-6. 861 Hamill, 257; Roskill, 130; May, 208. 120 defence).862 Hankey was not being duplicitous, for he remained sincerely convinced that even if the ‘European menace’ school was triumphant (which it appeared to be at this time), it was still possible for a relieving fleet to reach the East in time from Mediterranean bases.863 Despite his reported ‘understanding’ of this and similar points made by Hankey,864 Lyons remained committed to the Australian defensive self-reliance displayed in the first rearmament program of September 1933. He was not opposed to forward naval defence per se, the ‘Blue Water’ concept, but continued to be anxious about the quantitative level of British commitment to Singapore. It remained a pre-condition of any Australian forward commitment that Britain put forward her own resources ─ an empty Singapore was as useless as an incomplete one, whatever the ‘good faith’ involved.865 If one aim of the Hankey mission had been to soothe Lyons, then it only partly succeeded; if another was to ensure future imperial defence integration, then it failed. Hankey was later misguided to see the Parkhill statement of December 1935 as heralding the implementation of a defence policy he had recommended.866 From Lyons’s perspective, the Hankey mission had confirmed the soundness of the existing defence strategy and the wisdom of its attention to home requirements, first implemented over a year before the sympathetic visitor set foot on Australian soil. Ω Lyons had achieved a great deal during 1934 as Treasurer. Following his return to office on 15 September, despite the loss of seven seats, he was privately satisfied that ‘the Government’s policy for the rehabilitation of Australia on lines of sound and honest finance’ was reaping its rewards.867 Concentrating on the domestic economy, he told the Australian people in a radio broadcast on the last day of the year that they had succeeded in the struggle against adversity ‘by their determination to face facts, by their refusal to take the easy road, by their sacrifices’.868 Although the speaker referred only to domestic issues, he had employed the same qualities in his foreign and defence policy-making of that year ─ the first Pacific initiative of his government had been an attempt ‘to face facts’; the termination of cunctation alongside increased defence spending had indicated a ‘refusal to take the easy road’ and a willingness to make ‘sacrifices’.

862 Hankey to CIGS, 31 January 1935; Trotter, “Dominions and Imperial Defence…”: 325. In his argument, he employed the 1932 CID paper ‘The Defence of Australia’, where naval assistance was promised. On this paper, prepared after Latham’s London testimony at Lyons’s instruction, vide, Roskill, 129. 863 Hankey to Dill, 30 October 1934, CAB 63/70 quoted in Hamill, 255. Andrews, Writing, 164ff., suggested that Hankey proved himself to be an outright liar in offering assurances that he knew could not be kept; E. Andrews, The Department of Defence: The Australian Centenary History of Defence, vol. 5 (Melbourne: OUP, 2001), 82. 864 Hankey to cabinet, 16 January 1935, CAB 23/81/10. 865 Chamberlain, 24 July 1934, quoted in Neidpath, 131; vide above. 866 Archdale Parkhill, ‘Statement of the Government’s Policy regarding the Defence of Australia’, 2 December 1935, in McCarthy, Australia and Imperial Defence, 129; Sydney Morning Herald, 3 December 1935, 8, f. vide Chapter 4. 867 Lyons to editor of Melbourne Herald, 2 October 1934, Murdoch Papers, MS 2823/1/4, NLA, Canberra, thanking him for his support in the recent poll. 868 Lyons, New Year Broadcast, 31 December 1934, Mister Prime Minister, ABC video, 1966. 121 It was chiefly the year of the genesis of Australian (eastern) appeasement ─ Latham and Lyons had presided over the emergence of a new pattern that would dominate Australian foreign policy-making for the remaining years of peace. To Latham, the Australian Eastern Mission had been ‘an experiment, but I think the experiment succeeded’.869 He was pleased with what he had seen in Japan and had turned a deaf ear to warnings received there about duplicity (from Essington Lewis of BHP).870 From Lyons’s perspective, the birth of the ‘new democratic diplomacy’ was propitious.871 The putative diplomatic successes of the mission encouraged him to take a rosy view of the efficacy of appeasement and to use its mechanisms for other purposes in the coming years. Latham had provided the intellectual stimulus and framework of the new model ─ it was now left to Lyons to ‘take the ideas and transform them into something bigger and more comprehensive’, in a new year that brought only further discord in international relations and that on a wider scale.872

869 Latham to Officer, 18 September 1934, Latham Papers, MS1009/58. 870 G. Blainey, The Steel Master: A Life of Essington Lewis (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1971), 122-3; Lewis warned Latham at Kobe on 9 May 1934 of the accelerated manufacture of armaments in Japan. Latham insouciantly suggested that he pass his warnings on to another BHP chairman and, through him, to the government. Latham, “Report”, 6 July 1934, 452, mentioned only the warmth of the mayoral reception at Kobe. 871 A. Pratt, “The Diplomacy of Democracy”: 29ff. 872 Hart, “Piper...”, 138-9, quoting correspondence with Lyons, 1932-33, referring to his consensual practices; vide Chapter 1. 122

Chapter 3: The ‘Amateur Diplomat’, February−September 1935

‘caelum non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt.’ Horace, Epistulae, I, xi, 8.873

‘I have gone through stirring times, full of worries and anxieties, but I found it fascinating all the same and as time goes on and it all becomes a part of history, it will be something to have played a part in such a critical period.’874 J.A. Lyons, New York City, 7 July 1935.

Preparations for the London summit − Lyons and the ‘pact’ − further London meetings − the war graves − Rome − Washington − sentimental reflections − the Debuchi mission.

In her 1965 memoirs, Enid Lyons referred to her late husband as the ‘Amateur Diplomat’ and implied vigorous acts of diplomacy on their two official trips overseas, the first of which was from February to August 1935.875 Whatever its motivation, it is argued that her boast was not without some foundation, as Lyons appeared eager to take up the diplomatic opportunities offered to him by the meetings of dominion prime ministers in London, 30 April-23 May 1935.876 At this summit, he gave the first indications that he desired the transition from cunctation to appeasement in London’s European policy (a process already completed in his own regional outlook) and first aired his proposal for a ‘pact’, which he later periodically touted in London, Washington and Canberra. He was arguably stimulated, as ever, by his perceived role as a peacemaker, a role that took him and his personal diplomacy to Rome and Washington (June-July 1935). Here, Lyons’s faith in the new diplomacy was reinforced ─ in the Italian capital, he experienced one of the interviews with a dictator that became de rigueur amongst appeasers. In Washington he gained assurances on the defence of Australia and the encouragement for his home-grown diplomacy that had been lacking in London.

The months immediately following his return home in August, however, were not without their difficulties. The Debuchi ‘mission of friendship’ of August-September (in exchange for Latham’s ‘goodwill’), proved chiefly querulous and insistent, but Lyons was now able to speak openly and within Japanese hearing about the aims of what he called an ‘Australian foreign policy’.877 This reference was apt, for the period February-September 1935 marked the turning-

873 ‘Those who sail across the sea change the sky above them, but not their disposition.’ 874 J.A. Lyons interview, America: A Catholic Review of the Week, 27 July 1935: 397-9. 875 Enid Lyons, So We, Chapter 35. In her memoirs and interviews, she often confused the two overseas trips, 1935 and 1937. On the term used to disparage appeasement; Webster: 152; Rose, 7, on the Cliveden Set as ‘amateur diplomats’. 876 The minutes of these meetings, 30 April, 7, 9 and 23 May, are found in Transcripts of Dominion PMs meetings 1935, A981 IMP 35, NAA, Canberra and CAB 32/125, PRO, London. 877 Lyons speech at Canberra, 4 September 1935, Hodgson Papers, MS 1516, NLA, Canberra. 123 point after which international affairs assumed a greater proportion of Lyons’s attention than did the domestic economy: it was suitably symbolic (although coincidental) that he surrendered the Treasury to Casey on 3 October 1935, the date from which Abyssinia considered herself at war with Italy.878

I

Lyons’s first overseas trip, in 1935, was undertaken amidst further suggestions of his impending resignation and the possibility therefore existed that this would be both his first and last such journey as prime minister.879 It was to be a modest affair, for the Commonwealth government’s 1934 request, through Pearce via Hankey, for an Imperial Conference (chiefly on defence) in the following year, was denied.880 London preferred a symbolic meeting of dominion leaders (referred to here as the London summit) for the Silver Jubilee of King George─ V defence, foreign affairs and economic relations were not to be given any special attention at such a forum.881 Nevertheless these meetings offered Lyons an opportunity to raise two issues of fundamental importance to him as prime minister and to his government: foreign relations (especially in the Far East) and defence.882 The first included a proposal that was eventually to become something of a personal project for Lyons and he ensured that his voice was heard on the matter, despite an initial diffidence. This summit gave London the first direct indications that Canberra was seeking more open and effective consultation in British policy-making than had prevailed in the period 1932-34. There was to be no doubt that Australia possessed a ‘clear and independent view’ of what imperial policy should be: the Australian Eastern Mission had been only the first sign of a more muscular Australian outlook on the world.883 The problem, as Whitehall’s attitude to the Latham reports had shown, was persuading London to listen and to initiate the move towards appeasement in Europe.

Accompanying the first couple aboard the Otranto, which sailed from Melbourne on 19 February 1935, were the minister without portfolio, Gullett, and the Attorney-General,

878 Italy commenced hostilities on 2 October 1935. Before appointing Casey as Treasurer, Lyons asked him whether he was ‘Right or Left’, an example of his antipathy to rigid conservativism; Hart, “Piper…”, 114-5. 879 There was speculation during the September 1934 election campaign that Lyons was to retire after a victory. Some accordingly saw this 1935 trip as a swan-song; F. Howard, Kent Hughes: A Biography (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1972), 68. In his New York interview, America: A Review of the Week, vol.53, no. 16 (27 July 1935): 397-9, Lyons used the past tense to describe his career, a guide to his thinking and an example of ‘spontaneity’; Holsti, 134. 880 Hankey Diary, 2 October 1934, CAB 63/66. There was no such conference until 1937, vide Chapter 5. 881 D. Watt suggested that these meetings are best seen as an unofficial conference on defence matters, Personalities and Policies, 148. vide Holland, 150 on the British reluctance to discuss economic matters in the period immediately after Ottawa. Even the King himself was opposed to an Imperial Conference in 1935, Wigram, Buckingham Palace, to Barlow, Prime Minister’s office, 20 April 1934, PREM 1/144, PRO, London. Not until the 1937 Imperial Conference was discussion centred around matters of foreign affairs and defence. 882 Trade matters, chiefly the revision of the 1932 Ottawa Agreement, were dealt with at separate, lower-level meetings. A very detailed account of the horse-trading in London in the aftermath of the Ottawa agreement is found in B. Attard, “The Limits of Influence: The Political Economy of Australian Commercial Policy after the Ottawa Conference.” Australian Historical Studies, vol.29, no.111 (October 1998): 335ff. Bruce wanted Lyons to accept voluntary restrictions on access to the British market, but he was most keen to keep British market open at all costs. 883 A general Australian tendency noted by Attard, “Australia as a Dependent Dominion”: 14. 124 Menzies.884 Significantly, neither the new Minister of Defence, Parkhill, nor the new Minister of External Affairs, Pearce, were aboard.885 Lyons had excluded Pearce on 5 January, to his annoyance,886 in what could be interpreted as an attempt to preside over any negotiations without undue ministerial interference.887 Not only was Lyons keen to be an ‘amateur diplomat’, but he was also increasingly keen to oversee external affairs as if he were joint minister (and then the senior one), even if that excluded some colleagues and restricted the flow of information to others. The traditional prime ministerial hegemony in external affairs was further stirring and this summit, where Lyons presided over such matters in Pearce’s absence, played a part in its gradual emergence.888 The agenda of 1935 included addressing British relations with certain European powers and Japan, as well as stimulating some British rearmament, a need made explicit by Hankey’s recent revelations. These quests were to take Lyons to the Italian Foreign Ministry and to the White House, as well as to Downing Street.

Bruce, candidly conscious of Lyons’s inexperience in diplomacy, did what External Affairs had not done through his own ‘small foreign office’, providing the Prime Minister en route on 7 March 1935 with shipboard reading matter, intended as ‘necessary background for discussions on the Continent’889 ─ a ‘Report on Foreign Affairs’, which chiefly addressed the three powers emerging as troublesome: Italy, Germany and Japan.890 The assessment was generally optimistic about Italy, stressing her stability and desire for friendship with Britain.891 Assessments of the other two were grimmer: German expansion, it warned, had been ‘checked’, although ‘not postponed’,892 and the issue of Manchukuo was still seen as a serious obstruction, despite Japan’s desire for ‘some sort of an agreement’.893 Lyons had already made his own assessment on the eastern situation under the influence of the Latham Mission; he was now to make assessments on Italy and Germany during and after the month-long voyage to Naples, where the Otranto docked on 20 March 1935.

884 Menzies, Latham’s successor in Kooyong, believed that he had entered federal politics in September 1934 under a promise and he was seen as the heir apparent; R. Menzies, Afternoon Light: Some Memories of Men and Events (Melbourne: Cassell, 1967), 124 on his recruitment by Lyons in 1934; also Hudson, Casey, 121. Martin, Menzies, 116 and 139-40 on the succession issue in 1936. 885 Smith’s Weekly, 23 February 1935, thought that Pearce was pleased with this exclusion and ridiculed Lyons’s pretensions in external affairs. He was portrayed as a baby-sitter: ‘After all, that seems to be his mission in life.’ 886 Lyons to Pearce, 5 January 1935, Pearce Papers, MS 1927/ 213/5, NLA, Canberra, also quoted in Murphy, 156, where he mistakenly believes that Pearce was still Defence Minister. 887 Parkhill did play an important part in the more complex 1937 Imperial Conference, which Pearce did not attend; vide Chapter 5. Casey did not attend the 1935 summit, but played a significant part in 1937. 888 Lyons insisted that the Prime Minister’s Department not pass copies of cables from Bruce or the Dominions Office to other ministers without his authority; Lyons to Prime Minister’s Department, 12 January 1935, CP 103/19/8, NAA, Canberra. On prime ministerial dominance; P. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 109-114, 189-90; “Introduction,” in Between Empire and Nation, eds. C. Bridge and B. Attard, 3-4; Thompson, 16-17; Meaney, Search, 92, 191; M. Grattan (ed. and intro.), Australian Prime Ministers, 16; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 23-4. 889 ibid., 28, on Bruce’s London ‘foreign office’ of Officer, McDougall and Stirling. 890 Bruce memorandum (prepared by Officer at his direction) to Lyons, “Report on Foreign Affairs”, 7 March 1935, A463 1957/1060, NAA, Canberra. Also as Officer to Secretary, External Affairs, 7 March 1935, A981 EXTE 192 PART 6, NAA, Canberra. 891 ibid., points 5, 14, 15. 892 ibid., points 25, 28. 893 ibid., points 55, 57. 125 Despite these attentions to continental matters, Japan retained its priority in Lyons’s thinking, as he contemplated a response to Latham’s call for a Manchurian ‘formula’. Contrary to the optimism of these 1934 conclusions, the Bruce/Officer memorandum of 7 March 1935 was keen to ensure that he did not arrive in London under any illusions about eastern policy, warning that Tokyo, whatever her sentiments, had not given any practical indication of a preparedness to improve Anglo-Japanese relations.894 These views were reinforced by a subsequent document, on 9 March, where Officer noted that British policy could not go as far as had been suggested in Australia, that is, to placate Japan by recognising Manchukuo─ to do so would only offend China, the US and ‘good’ members of the League, whilst convincing Japan that the UK could be bullied.895 The views of these Bruce/Officer memoranda were in direct contradiction of those absorbed and accepted in the Lodge following the 1934 eastern mission and constituted a strong correction of incipient eastern appeasement. The origins of these sentiments are unknown, although the first was stated as Bruce’s own assessment via Officer; neither claimed to be an attempt to communicate Whitehall’s opinions to Lyons en route, but that is what they effectively did. That function was in any case served by a Foreign Office memorandum of 16 March 1935, where the dominion prime ministers were advised of Britain’s rejection of any notion of supporting Japanese ambitions in Manchukuo ‘in their full scope’.896 This note at least was clearly a British attempt to pre-empt the issue at the forthcoming summit and to nip in the bud any attempt to put forward proposals of revision. Once in London, Lyons set aside these assessments on Japan (and the thrust of them on Germany); whether out of determination or diplomatic inexperience, he intended to air the ideas acquired in 1934 and to persuade London of their worth.

Lyons and his associates had ample time in London before the summit to consider ways to pursue any revision of British eastern policy. Menzies attended a House of Commons luncheon on 1 April 1935 at which he was seated next to the Chancellor, Chamberlain. Chamberlain was the only British minister consistently in favour of the appeasement of Japan from 1934, a diplomatic stance that resonated with Lyons despite its ramifications for British defence spending in the East.897 Here, the Chancellor offered Menzies the benefit of his analysis on Germany and Japan. They were motivated, he opined, by ‘inferiority complexes’ and the best method of dealing with them was by means of concessions. In the case of Japan, which sought and preferred British friendship, the recognition of Manchukuo and a ‘mutual pact’ of protection would be a sufficient guarantee of renewed friendship.898 This might have been news to Menzies, but it was a

894 ibid., point 57. 895 Officer memorandum to Secretary, External Affairs, 9 March 1935, A981 EXTE 192 PART 6, NAA, Canberra, intended also as background material for the summit. 896 Foreign Office Memorandum prepared for Commonwealth Prime Ministers, 16 March 1935, A981 IMP 135, NAA Canberra and CAB 32/125/22, PRO, London. Relations with China and the US were given as the reason. 897 vide Chapter 2. 898 Robert Menzies, Travel Diary A, 1 April 1935, Menzies Papers, MS 4936/13/397, NLA, Canberra; Martin, Menzies, 154. 126 coincidental echo of some of the ideas Lyons had already gathered through Latham and was forging to his own purposes ─ the ‘Secret Report’ had suggested, for example, that the Japanese possessed an ‘almost pathetic desire for explicit recognition’ as a great power.899 Chamberlain appeared to have arrived at the same conclusion by other paths. Lyons’s desire for eastern détente was motivated in large measure by his fear of Japan; Chamberlain’s was largely motivated, in this period, by his desires to concentrate on Germany and to slice defence spending.900 It is uncertain whether Lyons was present at that luncheon but, if not, there was ample opportunity before the first meeting of prime ministers, on 30 April, for him to have acquainted himself with Chamberlain’s views, either directly or through Menzies; he had earlier seemed keen to establish some link with his fellow finance minister.901 Whether by coincidence or design, the line on Japan that they both followed at the 1935 summit proved identical─ assuming that Lyons was aware of Chamberlain’s views, his own assessments can only have been reinforced by the agreement of a senior Whitehall minister, however isolated those views were within the British cabinet. Their behaviour at the London summit offered little impression of collusion, but there was, at the very least, a remarkable coincidence of opinion that would endure until Lyons’s death. II Lyons attended the first summit meeting, on 30 April 1935, but did not speak, the chief topics of discussion being Germany and rearmament, as they were a week later at the second meeting, on 7 May.902 He was even absent from this gathering (although Bruce attended), where Chamberlain took the opportunity to repeat the views on Japan that he had made to Menzies on 1 April.903 It was his long-standing view, he said, that as it was not possible for Britain to combat Germany and Japan simultaneously, it was sensible to court the friendship of the latter, being a nation already disposed towards such amity.904 The matter was allowed to lapse, with Menzies suggesting ‘in the absence of the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth’ that any further discussion of eastern matters be postponed until later meetings, confessing Australasian interest in the matter of the Singapore defences.905 This request was unsurprising, given the Australian

899 Latham, “Secret Report”, Japan, 16. 900 vide Chapters 1 and 2 on Chamberlain, disarmament and eastern conciliation. Andrews, “Broken Promise…”: 105-7, gives a summary of the British cabinet battles over these issues, 1933-35. Chamberlain in 1935 was far from the later champion of rearmament; pace D. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 165. 901 Lyons had sent an unsolicited Christmas card to the Chancellor at the end of 1933. The two had not met. Chamberlain was forced to offer hasty apologies for his inability to reciprocate; Chamberlain to Lyons, CP 103/19/55, 19 December 1933, NAA, Canberra. The Lyons library included a copy of Charles Petrie’s “The Chamberlain Tradition”, which one reviewer thought presented an excessively enthusiastic view of this dynasty; Anon., “Men and Debates of the Hour.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.2, no.3 (August-September 1938): 21, Home Hill, Personal visit, 21 December 1999. 902 Bruce had already suggested that the withdrawal of Germany from the process had seriously damaged the prospects of disarmament; “Report on Foreign Affairs”, 7 March 1935, A463 1957/1060, point 5. Transcripts of Dominion PMs meetings, first meeting, 30 April 1935, A981 IMP 135, NAA, Canberra; also CAB 32/125, PRO, London. 903 Menzies incorrectly recorded Lyons as present; Menzies Diary A, 7 May 1935, MS 4936/13/397. 904 Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, second meeting, 7 May 1935, A981 IMP 135, NAA, Canberra. Chamberlain had indications as recently as March that Hirota was interested in a ‘consultative pact’; Trotter, “Tentative…”: 81 quoting FO 371/18732 A2968/4. 905 Transcripts of Dominion PMs meetings, second meeting, 7 May 1935, A981 IMP 135, NAA, Canberra; also CAB 32/125, PRO, London. Selections also found in part in N. Meaney, ed., Australia and the World. A Documentary History 127 prime minister’s interest in eastern policy and the sympathy that he would be likely to show for such a proposal. Equally unsurprising was the implication that the Chamberlain suggestion would have ramifications for British strategy that warranted further discussion.906 Lyons and Chamberlain did meet at an evening reception in the Palace of Westminster on the same day.907 There is no record of their conversation, but given that the postponement of discussion on Chamberlain’s proposal was only hours old and Lyons’s acknowledged interest in such matters, it would be surprising if the topic had not been raised, although the lack of any direct evidence must leave in abeyance any suggestion that they did─ if the two had discussed eastern affairs, the Latham ‘formula’ would finally have met Chamberlain’s nascent ‘pact’ proposal of 1934. Nevertheless, the third summit meeting on 9 May revealed at least a coincidence of Lyons’s and Chamberlain’s views on Japan. Here, Lyons finally took the opportunity to raise certain suggestions on the Far East and he began by insisting on more information from Britain on her intentions towards Japan, expressing concern over the long-term future of Anglo-Japanese relations, where Manchuria had become the fly in the ointment.908 He also took the opportunity to defend the Australian Eastern Mission against aspersions cast at the previous meeting in his absence by the Dominions Secretary, J. Thomas, insisting it had been a successful act of friendship.909 Lyons continued by offering Simon the opportunity to clarify the ‘ultimate intentions’ of HMG towards Japan, and when the Foreign Secretary was not forthcoming, proffered his own suggestions, which had their murky origins in Latham’s reports, more recently reinforced by Melbourne’s October 1934 memorandum ─ the March counsel of Bruce, Officer and the Foreign Office had been set aside.910 The future of the region worried him and the Australian prime minister had been thinking about a solution, implying that the Japanese ought to be permitted to expand in ‘their’ region:

Were the Japanese to be allowed to expand in their own area - and in Manchukuo it must be recognised that they had produced order out of chaos - and if not, was there not a fear that the Japanese would turn to the Southern Pacific? The question of the recognition of Manchukuo was relevant. Would it not be possible to follow a rather different line from that adopted previously, to negotiate some sort of pact of security for all the nations bordering on the Pacific Ocean? It was not the present, but the future, which he felt was a matter of concern. The recognition of Manchukuo would go a long way to remove any feeling of antagonism on the part of the Japanese,

from the 1870’s to the 1970’s (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1985). vide also Menzies Diary A, 7 May 1935, MS 4936/13/397. 906 pace Andrews, Writing, 181-2, that Lyons and Menzies failed to see the defence ramifications of Chamberlain’s statement. 907 Neville Chamberlain, Pocket Diary, 7 May 1935, Chamberlain Papers, NC 2/29/1-37, University of Birmingham Archives. 908 Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, third meeting, 9 May 1935, A981 IMP 135, NAA, Canberra. 909 Thomas had complained that the Japanese attitude on trade had hardened since the mission; Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, second meeting, 7 May 1935, CAB 32/125. 910 ibid. vide Chapter 2 on the Latham reports and the Melbourne memorandum. 128 and, as things stood, he could not help feeling that there was a danger that friendliness might give way to hostility because of some action that someone else might take in that area.911

In November 1933, Lyons the economic manager had suggested calm nerves until ‘order is evolved out of the present chaos.’912 Lyons the appeaser now clearly believed that Tokyo had, at least, imposed ‘order’ in north-east Asia and ought to be rewarded accordingly with a ‘pact’ and/or de jure recognition of its conquests, a view at loggerheads with that of the Foreign Office, but one endorsed by the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo.913 Lyons must have thought that here he was on strong ground when asserting that Japan would be moved by the granting of such recognition, for the Latham mission had established where Tokyo stood and thought it had detected amity. Lyons had himself seen in recent weeks a statement by Hirota that expressed a desire for the restoration of the old Anglo-Japanese friendship.914 This plea of 9 May was thus his considered prime ministerial response to Latham’s call for a ‘formula’ (albeit built on the framework of his personal values and without much detail), intended to restore Anglo-Japanese harmony and to bolster Australian security.915 The entire statement was characteristic of appeasement in its appeal for the recognition of a new territorial reality on the grounds of Realpolitik over morality, in its confidence about negotiation and in its appeal to sensible self-interest. Lyons, as prime minister, was speaking for himself and for a circle of ministers inclined to eastern appeasement (including the now-departed Latham, Menzies, Pearce and Casey), but the statement also contained very personal elements that were the Lyons trademark, such as the anxious desire for friendship through a search for consensus. Lyons’s first plea for appeasement in an imperial forum was immediately brushed aside without any detailed scrutiny by parties unreceptive to proposals emanating from the imperial fringe.916 Neither British nor other dominion ministers were interested in such a radical proposal; some were dismissive, others more sharply critical. The Canadian prime minister, Bennett, whose own dominion would be duly asked to join such a pact, gave the initial response, suggesting that the question of Manchukuo was a League matter.917 It clearly was not, since Japan was no longer an active member and given Geneva’s singular failure to resolve the issue. The response of

911 Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, third meeting, 9 May 1935, A981 IMP 135. 912 Lyons article, “What Does the World Most Need Today.” Christian Science Monitor, 23 November 1933. Lyons also used the term ‘order’ in October 1929, when referring to the economic task of the new Scullin government, quoted in Lloyd, “Rise and Fall…”, 138, taken from a letter by the Nationalist politician, E. Ogden to Latham, 27 October 1929. He therefore fits comfortably into Lasswell’s category of a ‘restorer of order’, 22. 913 Foreign Office Memorandum prepared for Commonwealth Prime Ministers, 16 March 1935, A981 IMP 135 and CAB 32/125/22. On Tokyo’s view; Lindley to Simon, 21 February 1933, quoting speech of Japanese Foreign Minister, A981 JAP 181 PART 2, vide Chapter 1. 914 Officer to External Affairs, 22 March 1934, A981 JAP 185 PART 2, NAA, Canberra, with a quote from the Japanese Foreign Minister; marked ‘seen by PM’. 915 Lyons’s vagueness often frustrated his colleagues, as with Latham in March 1931 and the ‘Seven Points’; Hart, “Labour Minister…”, 47. 916 Lyons was not ‘emotionally blinded’ in London, as suggested in Andrews, “Broken Promise…”: 113, but Britain, as he also noted, ibid., was not ready to consult. 917 Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, third meeting, 9 May 1935, A981 IMP 135. 129 Thomas was equally blunt─ he doubted that the Japanese were even concerned about Manchurian recognition, a view that Lyons (and Bruce) knew was mistaken. The Dominions Secretary also more acutely disputed whether such recognition would, in any case, influence Tokyo’s behaviour ─ it remained an article of faith to Lyons that recognition would lead to Japan’s rehabilitation.918 The Foreign Secretary, himself hot and cold on Chamberlain’s ‘pact’, replied with a mixture of contempt and didacticism, even though he privately believed that Manchuria would never return to Chinese rule.919 He reminded Lyons that Britain, as a world- power, wanted to be friendly with Japan, but that she had to consider China, Russia and the US, as well as dominion considerations in the Pacific. This implied that Australia was incapable of taking a perspective wider than her own narrow interests (an arguably accurate assessment of Lyons’s world-view and regional focus).920 Simon also doubted whether the recognition of Manchukuo could have any bearing on future developments, brusquely dismissing the issue as ‘irrelevant’ and refusing to pursue it any further. Finally, Ramsay MacDonald, the retiring premier with whom Lyons’s relations had been cordial, soothingly noted that Britain wanted to maintain friendly relations with Japan, without seeking to address the issues raised by his Australian counterpart.921 Chamberlain remained silent, despite the fact that these proposals were entirely in accord with his own, and within months he sought to pursue the issue through his own version of secret diplomacy.922 Lyons’s more general call for a clarification of British eastern policy had been discarded in the general assault on his pact proposal. The whole seemed to illustrate the wisdom of Melbourne’s 1934 injunction that Australia’s position demanded a foreign policy ‘different from, although not necessarily incompatible with, the policies of other members of the British Commonwealth’.923 Lyons had now received the lesson that Whitehall did not think so and was displeased at the prospect of an antipodean attempt to intervene in eastern affairs. No more was heard of the pact at the 1935 summit, but when the Prime Minister packed his trunks for the US in July, he carried the proposal with him across the Atlantic, where a little amateur diplomacy saw it resurrected. It was to be two years before this proposed pact was aired in public for the first time, also in London, during which time Lyons had both allowed the proposal to lapse and then participated in its revival ─ on this second occasion, he cannily gave Whitehall no forewarning.924

918 Enid Lyons likened Thomas to a ‘thundering elephant’; Enid Lyons Diary, 23 May 1935, MS 4853/30. 919 On Simon’s changing response to Chamberlain’s pact; Trotter, “Tentative…”: 72ff.; D. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 91; Andrews, Writing, 151; Macleod, 178; G. Kennedy, “1935…”, 194-5. ibid., 199, on Simon’s belief on 21 January 1935 that the Chinese had accepted Manchuria’s loss, FO 800/290, PRO, London. 920 The Foreign Office had expressed its desire for good relations with both China and Japan; G. Kennedy, “1935…”, 207, FO memorandum, “The Situation in the Far East”, 25 March 1935, CAB 53/24/COS-368, PRO, London. 921 Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, third meeting, 9 May 1935, A981 IMP 135. 922 He pursued the possibility of a Chinese recognition of Manchukuo through the economic envoy Leith-Ross, in the East from August 1935; W. Louis, “The Road to Singapore…”, 366. Also D. Dilks, “Introduction” to A. Cadogan, The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan 1938-45 (London: Cassell, 1971), 10-11. Leith-Ross’s appointment was announced by the FO in The Times, 10 June 1935, 10, e, Current Notes on International Affairs (March 1936). 923 Melbourne, A Foreign Policy for Australia, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2, point 6. 924 vide Chapter 5 on the 1937 Imperial Conference and the background of the Pacific Pact proposal. 130 The vague suggestion of 9 May 1935 was to evolve into the obsession of the second Pacific initiative of May 1937. In the interim, Lyons showed little sign of any sense that an opportunity for détente had been lost at the London summit. It remains uncertain whether Tokyo’s response to such proposals would have been warmer in 1935 than they were to be two years later, but by then much of the momentum of Anglo-Japanese friendship had been lost. III The Australian premier was given a fortnight to lick his wounds before the fourth and final London meeting, on 23 May 1935 He did most of the talking at this meeting, where only Simon and Forbes, the normally laconic premier of New Zealand, also spoke and then briefly. Lyons took this final opportunity to counter-balance the hostility towards the pact proposal displayed at the previous meeting and to address other eastern issues. He reminded the meeting, after Latham, that the Japanese had denied their fortification of the mandated Marshall Islands, something that Lyons apparently accepted at face value and a claim that strengthened his earlier view that Tokyo was committed to a ‘continental’ policy.925 This assurance of peaceful intentions, however, contained no concomitant suggestion of defence laxity, for Lyons then turned the direction of discussion towards the related matter of eastern defence readiness.

Menzies had sought a delay of defence discussions on 7 May, admitting the anxiety of the present government that stretched back to the June 1932 London defence talks.926 It was then left to Lyons to pick up these concerns on 23 May, inviting General Sir Archibald Montgomery- Massingberd, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, to report on the state of the Singapore defences.927 The details of this CIGS report were unrecorded, but Lyons seemed as displeased as Latham had been on his Singapore tour, for he turned the discussion towards rearmament, stating his government’s view that Britain had gone too far towards disarmament. Australia, he boasted, had accepted the need for greater defence spending, despite her economic difficulties and Britain should do the same ─ he soon repeated these views in a public speech, as the pupil instructed the master.928 The response of his listeners at this summit meeting was muted, for the British cabinet was engaged in its own internal struggles over such issues.929 Lyons’s call was not in any case a new one and likely to have been influenced by the similar views expressed by Bruce to Whitehall since late-1933.930 While he admitted his satisfaction that Britain was striving for ‘peace’, the parallel appeal for greater defence expenditure was further evidence that Lyons saw peace (that

925 Hirota via Latham, “Secret Report”, Japan, 21. 926 Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, second meeting, 7 May 1935, A981 IMP 135. McCarthy, “Australia and Imperial Defence…”: 28, is incorrect to suggest that the UAP ignored suggestions that Australia was to be left alone in the East. 927 Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, fourth meeting, 23 May 1935, A981 IMP 135, NAA, Canberra. 928 Lyons speech to British bankers, Savoy Hotel, London, 29 May 1935, The Times, “The Recovery of Australia”, 30 May 1935, 18, e. Australia, he said, was able to pay for her new defence commitments in full. 929 Chamberlain was still concerned about the potential costs of rearmament, preferring the option of ‘mutual guarantees’; Feiling, 252, quoting Chamberlain’s diary, 25 March 1935. 930 Bruce in CID, 9 November 1933, CAB 2/6, quoted in Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 329ff. 131 is, appeasement) and rearmament as two sides of the same coin.931 The defence White Paper of 4 March 1935 had marked the turning of the tide of British disarmament, but from the Australian perspective, the mother-country was still well behind Canberra in adjusting herself to new circumstances.932 The meeting of 23 May was candid and Lyons sought to draw together a number of threads. He complained that the UK government had not always handled things in Europe and in imperial affairs ‘as well as they ought’, citing the example of the South African war, that distant source of his early political education.933 However, despite these concerns, he conceded his trust in London’s generally sound judgement (an unusual concession given the demolition of his recent proposal), concluding with a condition: ‘Go forward on the lines you have adopted and you can depend on us in Australia.’934 This qualified concession was, from the perspective of Australian security, a sound one.935 Whatever differences had arisen at the summit, Lyons knew that British arms were still the major external factor in the defence of Australia against any aggressor and that foreign policy disputes must not be allowed to qualify hard-headed defence policy.936 There seemed no immediate defence alternative to self-reliance in tandem with lobbying of Whitehall, at least until the amateur diplomat was able to gauge the attitude of the US directly.937

Lyons did not leave London before he had the opportunity to make some brief observations on the two European powers, Germany and Italy, identified by Bruce as troublesome.938 The February 1934 DRC report had identified Germany as the ‘most likely enemy’ and even if this stimulated the prospects of British détente with Japan (if Chamberlain’s thinking was pursued), such a recommendation presented a potential threat to Australian security.939 The worst of both worlds for Australia would be a British defence focus on Europe, without any serious attempt at conciliation in Asia. For that reason, Lyons consistently sought to down-play the German threat and to stress that from Japan, at the same time as urging eastern détente on Whitehall. He never accepted Officer’s recent, Eurocentric suggestion that Germany remained the ‘most important question’ for the summit to consider.940 Some Canberra policy- makers (like Casey, Page and eventually Menzies) shared his belief in a minimal threat from

931 Although desirous of peace and ready to make concessions, he simultaneously advocated the highest affordable levels of defence spending, vide Introduction and Chapter 1 on the first rearmament program. 932 Taylor, English History, 376; C. Mowat, Britain Between the Wars (London: Methuen, 1961), 625. British rearmament proper can not be traced back to 1934, pace Ovendale, Appeasement, 23. 933 Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, fourth meeting, 23 May 1935, A981 IMP 135. The intellectual roots of appeasement are found in the opposition of radicals and Irish nationalists to this war; Nash: 42-9; Pakenham, 465. 934 Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, fourth meeting, 23 May 1935, A981 IMP 135. 935 Lyons further qualified it, June-September 1935, stating that Australian commitment depended on a policy designed to preserve ‘peace’; vide Chapter 4. 936 He had not yet determined the US attitude to Pacific defence. F. Alexander, “Australia and the United States” in Towards a Foreign Policy: 1914-1941, ed. W. Hudson (Melbourne: Cassell, 1967), 92, gives a summary of the predicament facing Australian governments given declining British power. 937 vide below. 938 Bruce, “Report on Foreign Affairs”, 7 March 1935, A463 1957/1060, passim. 939 D. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 64. vide Chapter 2 on the February 1934 DRC report. 940 Officer’s background notes, 3 May 1935, sent to Secretary, External Affairs, 9 May 1935, A981 EXTE 192 PART 6, NAA, Canberra. On Officer being considered too ‘British’; vide Chapter 5. 132 Germany; others (like Pearce, Hughes, Shedden, eventually Hodgson, and sometimes Bruce) saw Berlin as as much of a threat as Tokyo ─ the gap between these two groups would broaden as Germany’s strength grew, alongside a waxing belief in the inevitability of war amongst the latter.941 Lyons, like Latham and Casey, had not been among those alarmed in 1933 by the ‘aggressive nationalism’ of Nazism.942 Judging from Enid Lyons’s assessment, her husband even found certain aspects of Hitler’s domestic administration impressive, although the warmth he felt for Mussolini was entirely lacking.943 The only aspect of the new Germany that in any way disturbed Lyons in the period before the Rhineland crisis, March 1936, was the issue of the return former German colonies, and this appeared to have caused only a ripple, despite Officer’s specific warning and Australian press speculation before the summit944 ─ he later gave indications of greater flexibility on this question than was ever offered by die-hard opponents such as Pearce, in 1936, and Hughes, who later saw himself as the champion of unqualified retention and whose campaigning on the matter persuaded Lyons to bow to cabinet consensus on the issue of mandates.945 Given this combination of factors, it was unsurprising that Lyons unstintingly supported the suggestions of the South African premier, Hertzog, throughout the summit that the new Germany was responding only to the injustices of Versailles and did not present any threat to the Empire.946 Feelings of Versailles ‘guilt’ were certainly not peculiar to Lyons amongst Australian policy-makers, pre-dating Nazism and being widespread amongst politicians and analysts, but his extreme, almost unquestioning sympathy for Germany represented the minority view amongst the divided inner circle of appeasers, as suggested above.947 When he voiced them at the London

941 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 245ff., notes this division of opinion. 942 Officer, External Affairs, 12 January 1931, quoted in Twomey, “Munich,” 10, and noted in late-1932 by P. Hasluck, Mucking About. An Autobiography (Perth: UofWA Press, 1994), 213. Officer, “Germany” memorandum, 19 September 1933, A 981 GER 34 PART 5, NAA, Canberra; also in Twomey, ibid., 17.Lyons and Latham refused to participate in the anti-Nazi protests of April-May 1933; Latham to Sydney Lord Mayor on behalf of Lyons, 20 April 1933, A981 GER 43 PART 2, NAA, Canberra; Latham to D. Watkins MHR, 5 May 1933, ibid.; Lyons to Butler, SA Premier, 22 May 1933, ibid. Casey had shown pre-Nazi understanding of Germany’s grievances; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 235-6, quoting radio broadcast of 16 November 1931. He was relaxed and optimistic about the new dictatorship; R. Casey, “At Home and Abroad,” (21 April 1933) in The World We Live In: A Series of Speeches on Current Events, 113. 943 Enid Lyons, So We, 270, and in audio interview with Mel Pratt, Tape 1, March 1972. 944 Duffy to Secretary, External Affairs, 13 October 1932, A 981 GER 22 PART 2, NAA, Canberra, contained notice of German claims. Also ibid., PART 1, PART 3, dating back to September 1924. Officer, “Report on Foreign Affairs”, 7 March 1935, A463 1957/1060, point 24. Age, 2 February 1935, A981 EUR 6 PART 2, NAA, Canberra. 945 Pearce first indicated opposition to the return of New Guinea in a memo to Latham on 14 September 1933, A981 GER 22 PART 2. Hitler denied a desire for return in August 1934; Griffiths, 253, but the British were sceptical; J. Thomas, Dominions Office, to Lyons, 27 August 1934, A981 EXH 24, NAA, Canberra, on the Cologne Colonial Exhibition. 946 Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, first meeting, 30 April 1935, A981 IMP 135; Ovendale, “Britain, the Dominions and the Coming of the Second World War, 1933,” 324; Holland, 180. Most Afrikaners, with their own memories of British conquest, were especially sympathetic to Germany; Lentin, 81. Smuts was also accordingly a leading appeaser, ibid., 75, and a prominent advocate of the rehabilitation of Germany; D. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 96ff., on his November 1934 speech to the RIIA. Berlin noted Hertzog’s friendly attitude, but was alienated by his hard-line attitude to South-West Africa; Dieckhoff memorandum, German Foreign Office, 25 April 1935, DGFP, vol.4, Series C, 82-3. 947 On guilt about the perceived harshness of Versailles; Lentin, 74. Even lapsed appeasers with reservations about Nazism, like Lothian, still believed in the justice of Germany’s lament about Versailles; Rose, 139, 195. The alleged harshness of the 1919 settlements has been questioned by MacMillan, passim. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 255, 259 and 411, on sympathetic Australian perceptions of Germany’s grievances, 1930-32 and later, including those of Casey, Eggleston, Giblin and C.E.W. Bean, the official war historian. Similarly, Mansergh, Survey, 418-21. 133 summit he was therefore speaking only for that minority, or on his own behalf. The depth of his agreement with Hertzog was indicated by the fact that he recalled such statements with clarity and sympathy even two years later.948 Lyons was certainly prominent in his support for the South African’s perspective on 23 May 1935, stating that he did not believe Germany to be ‘as belligerently inclined as she was sometimes regarded’.949 It was not a view shared by Menzies, as yet, with his conclusion that Hertzog (and by implication Lyons) was ‘inclined to impute to Germany a peace-loving spirit which I should imagine she does not possess’, perhaps influenced by the Foreign Office civil servant Vansittart, whom he had met on 20 May.950 The Lyons attitude, however, was taken as the voice of the Australian delegation, an example of the failure of the Bruce memorandum of 7 March, if it is accepted that this ‘Report’ was attempting to sway Lyons in a particular direction prior to the summit.951 Alongside discussions about Berlin, the summit had also brought Rome under its scrutiny. Here Lyons was more attentive to Bruce’s preliminary informative counsel. Italy and the Mediterranean were important elements of Lyons’s strategic perceptions, for the security of Indian Ocean-Suez-Mediterranean trade routes (the ‘artery of communication’) had long been considered imperative in Canberra, most recently in Pearce’s defence Statement of 1933.952 Although he was always keen to downgrade any perceived European threats, the Italian question was more problematic for Lyons and his ilk than the German one because of the maritime factor. This was particularly so in 1935, when Abyssinia became a focus of attention─ Bruce had presciently suggested that Abyssinia should be discussed, following an armed clash in the previous December, although still confident of Anglo-Italian friendship.953 Lyons saw no reason to disagree and Menzies accordingly raised the issue at the third meeting on 9 May, immediately following the onslaught on Lyons’s pact proposal, but was informed by Simon that Italy had already been warned of the repercussions of any aggressive behaviour.954 No warning had in fact been delivered, despite this claim and the pleas of the ambassador at Rome, Drummond, until an interview between Mussolini and the latter on 21 May.955 The dominion prime ministers were

948 Lyons at Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 34, tenth meeting of principal delegates, 1 June 1937. 949 Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, fourth meeting, 23 May 1935, A981 IMP 135. Hitler had made a notable ‘peace’ speech to the Reichstag on 21 May, which might have been in Lyons’s mind; transcript sent to Pearce by the German consul-general Dr. Asmis, 11 June 1935, A981 EUR 6 PART 3, NAA, Canberra. 950 He was unimpressed by Hertzog’s arguments or appearance; Menzies Travel Diary B, 30 April 1935, Menzies Papers, MS 4936/13/397, NLA, Canberra; Martin, Menzies, 154. Menzies was not yet the German appeaser that he had become by July 1938; vide Chapter 6. On Vansittart and the Germans; D. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 85; M. Gilbert, “Appeasement in Action”: 1572; Rose 138-9. 951 Bruce memorandum, “Report on Foreign Affairs”, 7 March 1935, A463 1957/1060. 952 Pearce, Statement, 25 September 1933, B1535 749/1/20. The quote is Bruce in 1923, a view similar to that of Hughes from 1921; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 50-1. 953 Bruce memorandum, “Report on Foreign Affairs”, 7 March 1935, A463 1957/1060, points 14,15. 954 Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, third meeting, 9 May 1935, A981 IMP 135. Chamberlain, not yet a ‘European’ appeaser had wanted such a warning given in March; Chamberlain at ministerial meeting, 8 March 1935, Journals NC2/23A, Chamberlain Papers, NC 2/20-4, University of Birmingham Archives, 180-1. 955 Drummond had wanted Mussolini to receive such a warning during the April meetings at Stresa, but had been opposed by Vansittart of the Foreign Office; D. Rotunda, “The Rome Embassy of Sir Eric Drummond, 16th Earl of Perth, 1933- 1939” (Ph.D., University of London, 1972), 219, 224, 248-9. 134 accordingly informed as much on 23 May.956 In response, Lyons expressed his displeasure at the development of the situation in East Africa, but his trust in British management of the affair so far, although that trust was subject to some strain in only a few weeks, when Lyons was himself in Rome.957 Despite these concluding courtesies, the London summit had achieved little for either Australian diplomacy, such as it was, or defence readiness, other than to make Canberra’s viewpoint on eastern, and potentially European, appeasement and rearmament very clear. Lyons had accordingly publicly called for greater policy consultation at the time of his departure from the UK, but optimistically concluded: ‘The personal contacts I have made will be most valuable in the future.’958 This was more likely a reference to Chamberlain, his fellow-appeaser, than to Baldwin the cunctator, with whom he had spent a difficult last day.959 Despite these disappointments, Lyons’s stature in London had ‘famously’ impressed the normally inscrutable Menzies, as well as his old Tasmanian rival, Ogilvie, although not the more impenetrable Bruce, whose low expectations of ‘long rambling and confused discussions’ had been confirmed.960 Lyons left London a more confident man than the one who had arrived, despite the battering of his pact proposal, and any cultural identification that he had felt in mixing with the great and good of the Empire had not removed his consciousness of the political and economic differences that existed between his dominion and London.961 IV Joseph and Enid Lyons left London for Brussels on 17 June 1935.962 Normally the end of these summits meant the end of any serious business and the prospect of a leisurely voyage to Fremantle. This was not so in June 1935. It was to be another two months before Lyons reached home and in that time he sought to play the amateur diplomat in a manner denied to him at Whitehall. The Rhineland had been his first intended destination, set for 17 June 1935.963 Hitler, however, was unable to see him at such short notice and therefore the German leg of the tour was

956 Transcripts of Dominion PMs meetings, fourth meeting, 23 May 1935, A981 IMP 135. 957 ibid. 958 Lyons statement on leaving London, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 June 1935, 13, b. 959 Sydney Morning Herald , 18 June 1935, 11, a. Baldwin formed his government on 7 June 1934. On his disinclination for personal diplomacy and his xenophobia; Griffiths, 118-9; on his cunctation; Rock, 1-2. Enid Lyons especially disliked the snobbery of Mrs. Baldwin; Enid Lyons Diary, 17 May 1935, MS 4853/30; Enid Lyons audio interview with Mel Pratt, Tape 2, March 1972. 960 Menzies was especially pleased with Lyons’s speech-making, concluding: ‘He is doing famously and I may be well content to be in the background while he does as well as he is doing now.’; Menzies Travel Diary A, 26 March 1935, Menzies Papers, MS 4936/13/397 (not 396, as in Martin); Martin, Menzies, 159; White, Love Story, 170. The Tasmanian Labor premier, Ogilvie, often a bitter critic, admitted on 28 May 1935 that Lyons was the most outstanding of the dominion speakers; Ogilvie to D’Alton, 28 May 1935, A.G. 1548/371935, Archives Office of Tasmania, Hobart, a letter brought to my attention by Michael Roe. On Bruce and his expectations of the summit; Bruce to Casey, 12 April 1935, A1421/2/13, NAA, Canberra. Andrews, Writing, 192, acknowledged that Lyons had been the most effective member of the Australian delegation in London, ‘…a fact that says much’. 961 As suggested by Tsokhas, “Tradition, Fantasy and Britishness…”: 16ff., where he refers to Lyons’s first London speech and the similar conclusions of J. Thomas, who was present. 962 Sydney Morning Herald, 19 June 1935, 13, b. 963 Unheaded itinerary list, n.d., CP 30/3/71, NAA, Canberra. Page, now Deputy Prime Minister, and Pearce had urged a Lyons-Hitler meeting, Page to Lyons, 15 June 1935, A981 GER 43 PART 2, NAA, Canberra. 135 cancelled, to Lyons’s lingering regret.964 Enid Lyons recalled their disappointment some time later: ‘It was actually arranged. I remember we felt it was a little bit of an affront.’965 The timing of such a meeting between Lyons the appeaser and Hitler would have been appropriate, given the incipient détente signalled by the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement in Berlin on 18 June 1935.966 Although unable to meet the German leader, the ‘Tame Tasmanian’ was able to proceed on an important personal journey, when he visited Australian war graves in Belgium and northern France, 19-21 June 1935.967 Australian politicians were expected to make such pilgrimages to the altars of the Great War, but this visit was far from an empty ritual for the gentle Lyons.968 It became a deeply moving experience which he later claimed as confirmation of two guiding resolutions ─ that everything must be done to avoid a repetition of this slaughter and that Australian armed strength/diplomacy could play their part in such peacemaking.969 As a Labor man, he had long held reservations about any Australian participation in European adventures.970 This visit (and its fellow of 1937) reinforced those old opinions for, despite Labor allegations to the contrary from 1937, Lyons refused to commit Australian forces to overseas service of the type recently suggested by Hankey in October 1934.971 Although all of the Australian war-dead had been volunteers, the visit also played its part in reinvigorating Lyons’s old antipathy to conscription, against which he took up cudgels in later years.972 This outlook was not ‘peace at any price’,973 but it was one of playing a part in imperial security, short of an overseas commitment. The sight of the first Belgian war graves on 19 June 1935 was a shock, even if anticipated by a visit to Waterloo the day before. Enid Lyons noted: ‘All of us deeply moved. I could not

964 Lyons to Page, 17 June 1935, A981 GER 43 PART 2, NAA, Canberra. J. McCarthy, “Australia and the German Consuls-General 1923-39.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.27, no.3 (1981): 350ff., is in error in assuming that this trip proceeded and in his description of it. 965 Enid Lyons audio interview with Mel Pratt, Tape 1, March 1972. She believed that these arrangements were made at the time of the Coronation, that is 1937, but given that the absence of any supporting documentation, it is assumed that she confused their two overseas journeys. Germany was not listed in the 1937 itineraries. 966 Kershaw, Hitler, vol.1, 558; Rock, 37 on the Agreement and its naval ratios as signifying the demise of Versailles. This agreement was later sold to the dominions as an opportunity for the Royal Navy to concentrate on eastern waters; First Sea Lord Hoare to Imperial Conference delegates, 26 May 1937, in Neidpath, 129-30. 967 Their itinerary was far more extensive than any ritual visit would allow and included other Empire sites as well; Passchendaele, Ypres, Menin, Armentieres, Fromelles, Arras, Amiens, Pozieres and Villers-Bretonneux; Enid Lyons Diary, itinerary, 19 June 1935, MS 4853/30. 968 Scullin had most recently made such a tour, in December 1930, Robertson, Scullin, 288-9. Bruce was less sentimental on his visit to the graves of British and Commonwealth prisoners in Berlin, 26-7 February 1933, but no less determined to avoid a repetition of war; Bruce to Lyons, 7 March 1933, A981 GER 43 PART 2, NAA, Canberra. 969 The private footage of this visit, 19-21 June 1935, filmed by private secretary Martin Threlfall, shows a pensive and moved prime minister; “P.M. and Mrs. Lyons World Trip”, Episode Title No. 053967, ScreenSound, Canberra. 970 vide Chapter 1. 971 vide Chapters 2 and 5. 972 This was particularly so after his second visit in June 1937, vide Chapter 5 and Chapter 7 on conscription. 973 As suggested by Andrews, Isolationism, 44, describing Lyons’s policy after these visits. Enid Lyons, always more pacifistic than her husband, came close to such a sentiment in 1940, when she admitted that she had always harboured the view that ‘if there was ever a war again I should have a haunting doubt that perhaps this terrible step was not justified to right a wrong however great.’; Enid Lyons, handwritten note for radio broadcast, n.d. but c.1940, Enid Lyons Papers, MS 4852/8, NLA, Canberra. 136 control my tears.’974 She was not alone and noted that ‘even’ the men had been reduced to weeping.975 The press described both husband and wife as being ‘overcome with emotion’ as they walked through the cemeteries.976 The private film footage taken by Lyons’s private secretary, Threlfall (never shown publicly), confirmed this and revealed the poignancy of those three days, 19-21 June, through panning shots of field after field containing many Australian gravestones and through views of wreath-laying at individual graves. The Prime Minister appeared pensive and profoundly moved, pointing out the details of the inscriptions of ‘the youth of the world’.977 He drew his personal conclusions, telling the press: ‘I think that the statesmen of the world should be brought here regularly to ensure that this great tragedy is never repeated.’978 This, he said, would do more than ‘any other means to prevent war’.979 These sentiments were repeated at home in the following October:

No man or woman can go there and meditate upon the awful results of war without being deeply moved or make up his or her mind that so far as it may be in their power they should strive to the best of their ability to prevent that awful thing ever coming back to the world again.980

This was Lyons the individual speaking from the heart, conscious that as prime minister he was in a position to put such sentiments into policy. Enid Lyons recalled the horror of this visit for the rest of her life. On Anzac Day 1936, she evoked the gravestones at Villers-Bretonneux and admitted that ‘all the tragedy and folly that is war rise up again to choke me with fierce emotion’.981

For two days our emotions had been stirred as never before, so that when we came to Villers- Bretonneux, where so many of our countrymen had fallen, there was no member of the party who was not showing signs of mental and physical strain.982

She had sensed the ghosts of the fallen at Menin Gate,983 and the whole had ‘shattered my complacency forever’,984 steeling her determination to prevent any repetition of war ‘in the next

974 Enid Lyons Diary, 19 June 1935, MS 4853/30. 975 Argus, 16 August 1935, 4, reporting Enid Lyons address to National Council of Women at Melbourne. Similar scenes followed in 1937, vide Chapter 5. 976 Sydney Morning Herald, 21 June 1935, 11, c, describing them at Passchendaele. ADB, vol.10, 188, briefly mentions their grief. 977 “Prime Minister and Mrs. Lyons World Trip”, Episode Title No. 053967. 978 Sydney Morning Herald, 21 June 1935, 11, c. 979 The Times, 22 June 1935, also referred to in Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, 262. 980 Lyons speech at Wollongong, 12 October 1935, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 October 1935, 11, e. 981 Enid Lyons, “Our Soldiers’ Graves Today”, April 1936, Enid Lyons Papers, MS 4852/25, NLA, Canberra. 982 ibid. 983 Enid Lyons, handwritten note for radio broadcast, n.d. but c.1940, Enid Lyons Papers, MS 4852/8, NLA, Canberra. Prime Minister John Howard exhibited his grief at the same site in 2002, Australian, “Foreign fields unearth new Prime Minister”, 12 July 2002, 11, a-e. 984 Enid Lyons, My Life, 34. 137 few or next twenty years’.985 Like her husband, she seemed to have little faith that the League was capable of preventing any recurrence.986

As a dominion prime minister, it was in Lyons’s power to make some attempt at the role of appeasing peacemaker. Perhaps for that reason there was no talk for the remainder of 1935 of premature retirement. The journalist Trevor Smith, to whom Lyons had confided his occasional desires to withdraw from political life, suggested in Lyons’s obituary that the war graves visit stimulated him to soldier on: ‘He was appalled that the nations had not learned from 1914-18. He was essentially a man of peace.’987 Rather than retire, Lyons now seemed more concerned to divert challengers, seeking information in October of Bruce’s intentions through Casey, an intimate of the former premier.988 Lyons now had a reason to stay in office even though the great economic task he had set himself in 1931 was coming to an end. The white crosses of Flanders (and the twentieth anniversary of Gallipoli) had not elicited any grand statements on imperial or military glory, only the determination to do his part in preventing any occasion for the excavation of new burial sites.989 Enid Lyons later wrote that Chamberlain’s appeasement had been motivated by ‘so vivid a picture of the horrors that must come in a new war that he was resolved to spare the world that horror if possible’.990 As so often, she was drawing attention to her husband’s qualities when supposedly referring to others.991

V

Rome was to be the first venue of Lyons’s 1935 personal diplomacy and his first extra- imperial opportunity to act as a peacemaker. The return home through Italy was not, as most seemed to believe in Australia, mere tourism. On arrival at Naples in March, Enid Lyons had expressed in her travel diary an infatuation with the new Italy, a country whose culture and history had long interested both husband and wife.992 Both Lyons and Menzies were invited at that time to meet the ‘head of Government’ himself in Rome in several days, but they were

985 Enid Lyons address to National Council of Women, 15 August 1935, Argus, 16 August 1935, 4. Earlier that day, she had recited the substance of the address in a national radio broadcast. 986 She expressed her ‘anger’ that no method had yet been found to prevent the return of war; Enid Lyons, “Our Soldiers’ Graves Today”, April 1936, MS 4852/25, 19. The League had failed its second major test by April 1936, vide Chapter 4. 987 The Times, Lyons obituary, 8 April 1939, 14, b-d. 988 Lyons asked Casey to determine Bruce’s intentions in October 1935; C. Edwards, Bruce of Melbourne, Man of Two Worlds (London: Heinemann, 1965), 241ff.; Hudson, Casey, 95-6. vide Cumpston, Bruce, 108, on Bruce’s unfavourable view of Lyons. Bruce did not champion Menzies at Lyons’s expense, pace White, Joseph Lyons, 157, where she cites a speech in London by Bruce, referring to Menzies as the ‘next’ prime minister. Lyons was present at that dinner, given by British bankers, The Times, 30 May 1935, 18, e. 989 At the Belfast Cenotaph on 25 April 1935 for the Gallipoli anniversary, Lyons did speak of Empire loyalty, but only in the context of the need to preserve peace; Irish Times, 26 April 1935, 8, a. vide also his similar sesqui-centenary speech at Sydney, 26 January 1938, Chapter 6. 990 Enid Lyons, So We, 269. 991 vide below her praise of Roosevelt. 992 Enid Lyons Diary, 20 March 1935, MS 4853/30. These travel diaries were chiefly intended for the Lyons children. The Prime Minister was referred therein as ‘Daddie’ and Lyons himself wrote a number of the entries, 30 March-4 April, during his wife’s illnesses. They are valuable indicators of the thinking of the couple, although inferior to their more comprehensive 1937 counterparts. vide Raspin, 91, and Kitson Clark, 66, on motives for diary writing. The Lyons library at Home Hill contains many books on Italian culture, history and politics; Personal visit, 21 December 1999. 138 unable to accept the offer owing to their London appointments.993 Menzies was ‘desolated’, but ‘we hope to come later’.994 In Rome on 22 March, the Australians continued to be flattered by the attentions of their Italian hosts, although Mussolini was apparently absent from the capital.995 Enid Lyons had earlier expressed reservations about the Fascist attitude to women in politics, but the charm of Italy appeared to have mollified these concerns in March 1935.996 In due course, this benign view was extended into attitudes towards Italian foreign policy, perhaps in the way that Latham’s obvious enchantment with Japan had arguably contributed to his 1934 attitudes.

The Italian Foreign Minister, Ciano, had extended the offer in March to return and disembark from Naples en route to New York, on board the Italian state liner, Rex, as guests of the Italian government.997 At that time, a US trip had seemed uncertain, but Lyons had resolved by June to make that journey and now accepted this unusual invitation to proceed through an Italian port.998 Later, Enid Lyons claimed that the gesture was seen in Britain as a ‘seal’ for the growing fissures appearing in the ‘frail dome’ of European peace.999 There is no evidence of any British knowledge of the invitation, let alone the approval she claimed, but her comment revealed a political motive in the mind of Lyons.1000 Given the poor state of Anglo-Italian relations, a gauche acceptance of Italian hospitality was more likely to have been frowned upon by Whitehall for, while Italy was far from alienated from her erstwhile Entente colleagues, tensions were growing over the military build-up in East Africa. Eden (as Minister without Portfolio responsible for League affairs) visited Rome, 24-5 June 1935, in order to reinforce Whitehall’s earlier warnings and to offer some concessions, but the two Eden-Mussolini interviews were a political failure and cemented the Anglo-Italian diplomatic impasse.1001 On 27 June, the amateur diplomat arrived back in Rome, via Venice and Florence, full of the desire to cultivate international friendship and to establish personal links, according to the modus operandi of the appeaser.

993 Enid Lyons Diary, 20 March 1935, MS 4853/30; So We, 220; Langmore, Prime Ministers’ Wives, 96. 994 Robert Menzies, Travel Diary A, MS 4936/13/397. Martin, Menzies, 147. 995 Enid.Lyons, So We, 220; Langmore, Prime Ministers’ Wives, 96. Mussolini nevertheless sent orchids to the station for Mrs. Lyons, who was ‘especially thrilled’. 996 Sells, 118, quoting Enid Lyons’s address to the Victorian Women’s Citizens’ Movement, 18 February 1935, Argus, 19 February 1935. She continued to advocate female participation in the political process in August 1935, vide below. In later years she returned to this theme, “The Role of Women in a Post-War World”, ABC radio broadcast, 19 September 1943, Enid Lyons Papers, MS4852/8, NLA, Canberra; also in Sells, 123. For a critique of the Enid Lyons’s view of gender binary opposites; Hooton, 117, 123. 997 Enid Lyons, So We, 240. 998 Enid Lyons Diary, 4 June 1935, MS 4853/30. 999 Enid Lyons, So We, 240. 1000 Transcripts of Dominion PMs meetings, 30 April-23 May 1935, A981 IMP 135. 1001 A. Eden, The Eden Memoirs, Facing the Dictators, vol.1 (London: Cassell, 1962-5), 221-6; A. Peters, Anthony Eden at the Foreign Office 1931-1938 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), 122; R. Lamb, Mussolini and the British (London: John Murray, 1997), 124-5; D. Thorpe, Eden. The Life and Times of Anthony Eden, First Earl of Avon, 1897-1977 (London: Chatto and Windus, 2003), 158. Eden was to offer cession of some Abyssinian territory; N. Medlicott, “The Hoare-Laval Pact Reconsidered,” in Retreat from Power: Studies in British Foreign Policy of the twentieth century, ed. D. Dilks (London: Macmillan, 1981), 126. External Affairs received a report on the Eden visit from Stirling, 27 June 1935, A981 EUR 6 PART 3, NAA, Canberra, but it received nothing on Lyons’s activities in Rome. The Eden-Mussolini interviews set the anti-fascist tone that Eden henceforth followed, seeing Mussolini as a ‘gangster’; Lamb, ibid., 124-5; Thorpe, 102. 139 The more the prime minister and his wife saw of Fascist Italy the more they liked it, including the Party’s propaganda college, which tutored a number of eager young Australians1002 ─ although there was never any suggestion that fascism was applicable to Australian conditions.1003 On the day of their return to Rome, they saw Pope Pius XI, to whom Lyons presented a well-received (Bruce) memorandum on ‘Agriculture and Health’.1004 Lyons also appeared to have his own agenda─ the same evening ‘J. called on Mussolini’ at the Italian Foreign Ministry.1005 Whereas there were suggestions in 1937 that Lyons had sought a second such interview at British behest, there were no such claims about this first one for, given the recent warnings to Rome from Drummond and Eden, any British complicity in the meeting seems unlikely.1006 The recent London summit had indicated that Whitehall did not encourage dominion initiatives in foreign affairs and certainly not unilateral amateur diplomacy, however benign its intentions. The details of the 27 June Lyons-Mussolini exchanges were unrecorded and only indirect evidence provides some indication of their agenda. The correspondent of the Age believed that the two leaders had discussed economic advancement in their respective countries;1007 with other Australian visitors (such as Archbishop Duhig and Scullin), Mussolini usually raised the issue of Italian immigrant welfare, in his role as the protector of Italians across the seas.1008 Given the recent London discussions on Abyssinia and the Eden impasse, it is not unreasonable to speculate that bilateral relations were also part of the informal agenda, although there is no direct evidence to suggest that they were ─ if so, any timely repetition by Mussolini of the peace sentiments recently espoused in speeches on 14 and 25 May would have contributed to the consistently rosy view of the prospects of Anglo-Italian accord that Lyons certainly espoused from this time onwards.1009

1002 Enid Lyons Diary, 28 June 1935, MS 4853/30; Age, 29 June 1935, “Mr. Lyons in Rome”, 21, c. 1003 Griffiths, 14, gives the views of Austen Chamberlain and Churchill that the ideology was not suitable for British conditions. The Australian press agreed, vide the survey in R. Pesman Cooper, “ ‘We Want a Mussolini’: Views of Fascist Italy in Australia.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.39, no.3 (1993): 351. Here, Lyons was at odds with Young Nationalists such as Kent Hughes; Whitington, House, 71. W. Kent Hughes,“The Old Machine and the New Age.” Australian Quarterly, no.22 (June 1934): 48, was a strong advocate of the ‘corporate’ state. 1004 On Bruce and this initiative; Cumpston, Bruce, 145-6; Hudson, Australia and the League, 176-8. The memorandum was presented to Cabinet by Lyons on 21 February 1936, A461 1347/1/1, NAA, Canberra. It aimed to address world hunger and was considered by some as more successful than Lyons’s own diplomatic proposals; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 417. The Vatican’s response was to refer to its ‘aptness’ and to Lyons’s ‘wisdom’; Cardinal Pacelli to British legation, Vatican, 10 September 1935, Joseph Lyons Papers, MS 4851/2/12, NLA, Canberra. On the papal interview; R. Pesman Cooper, “Australian Tourists in Fascist Italy.” Journal of Australian Studies, vol.27 (1990): 22. 1005 Enid Lyons, Diary, 27 June 1935, MS 4853/30. Enid Lyons attempted in her memoirs to overlook this interview by claiming that Mussolini was absent from Rome in late-June 1935; Enid Lyons, So We, 241, yet she recalled details such as the Roman weather. This amnesia was in contrast to her detailed recall of the April 1937 interview; vide Chapter 5. 1006 vide Chapter 5 on the second interview of April 1937 and any British involvement. 1007 Age, 29 June 1935, “Mr. Lyons in Rome”, 21, c. 1008 J. Duhig, Crowded Years (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1947), 173ff., for his account of his interview in 1927 or 1928; also in T. Boland, James Duhig (St.Lucia: UofQ Press, 1986), 221-2; Pesman Cooper “Australian Tourists”: 22, 27. Scullin was in Rome in December 1930; Robertson, Scullin, 288-9. 1009 External Affairs memorandum enclosing a translation of the 14 May speech to the Italian senate, 24 May 1935, Earle Page Papers, MS 1633/625/26-7, NLA, Canberra; Documents on International Affairs, vol.2, 1935, Part 1, xiv, Extract from a Speech by Signor Mussolini, 25 May 1935. On 21 May 1935, Mussolini complained to Drummond that Britain was putting the League before Italy’s friendship; Rotunda, 248-9. 140 Even if the interview was purely a personal and prime ministerial courtesy call intended to cultivate friendship and personal links, then its results were still pleasing for Lyons, as he found in Mussolini ‘instead of an aggressive, domineering dictator, a genial, vigorous man’.1010 On his return home, he candidly described his overall impressions:

During my call on Mussolini I was amazed by his extraordinary driving force and by his thoroughness and grasp of detail. The whole of the twenty minutes talk I had with him was in English and he did not make one mistake. He spoke deliberately but powerfully with a faultless choice of words. The influence of such a man on the destinies of Europe is immense.1011

The final sentence gave some indication of Lyons’s personal motivation for the meeting, implying the importance of the individual in peacemaking. This benign impression of leader and system was the one that Lyons took to the United States in July, where the press reported his homage to the Italian leader as a man who ‘has done immense good’.1012 The 27 June interview therefore displayed the ‘near-ritualistic’ character of the many others between appeasers and dictators, following which the guests were convinced of the feasibility of conciliation and convinced of the worth of personal links.1013 Lyons’s lasting impression was the sympathetic one of an understandably aggrieved Italy, peaceful but determined, and the interview seemed to have greatly influenced his attitude to events in the Mediterranean and in East Africa over the coming years; neither the Italian use of outlawed methods of warfare in Abyssinia nor the presence of ‘volunteers’ in Spain dislodged it.1014 In the months after the Lyons-Mussolini meeting, with discussions of sanctions and war, the Australian prime minister certainly exhibited a reluctance to take any overtly anti-Italian stance. The attitudes of incipient appeasement reflected in the interview could, however, only be brought to fruition by British diplomatic processes─ Lyons could not himself implement European appeasement in any fashion other than in such clumsy attempts at ‘amateur diplomacy’, unlike in East Asia, where the precedent now existed for some Australian diplomatic activity. But British diplomacy was not yet ready for a European model of appeasement.

1010 Lyons’s description; Age, 29 June 1935, 21, c. 1011 J.A. Lyons, press conference, 13 August 1935, the first following his arrival in Canberra after the Mariposa voyage, San Francisco, via LA, to Sydney, when he was asked for his impressions of the world leaders he had met; Adelaide Advertiser, 14 August 1935; Melbourne Sun News-Pictorial, 14 August 1935, Joseph Lyons Papers, MS 4851/4, NLA, Canberra. vide Holsti, 134, on the unrehearsed ‘spontaneity’ of press conferences. 1012 Time, 8 July 1935, 19. The Catholic Advocate published similar praises by other Australian tourists in September 1935; Pesman Cooper, “Australian Tourists”: 24. 1013 Rock, 64, and Griffiths, 214ff., 271, 273-4, discussed Hitler’s interviews with Tom Jones MP, Lord Lothian and the Duke of Windsor, all of whom were convinced that he was a man of peace. On Lord Lothian; M. Gilbert, “Appeasement in Action”: 1571, 1573. Halifax visited Hitler in November 1937 and was also impressed; Roberts, Holy Fox, 67ff., on the ‘high-water mark’ of his appeasement. In Enid Lyons’s case, this admiration survived 1945. She referred to Mussolini’s ‘fantastic achievements’ as late as the 1970s; Enid Lyons audio interview with Mel Pratt, Tape 1, March 1972. 1014 Mansergh, Experience, 160, notes Lyons’s Catholicism as a factor in his desire for good Anglo-Italian relations. 141 VI When leaving Australia in February 1935, Lyons had not intended to visit the United States, where Australia had no diplomatic links.1015 Canberra did have a trade commissioner in New York City, Dow,1016 but even this appointment came under duress in the period of economic stringency after January 1932.1017 Despite such purse-tightening and the lack of formal links, the Prime Minister had a strong interest in US-Australian relations and followed a number of his predecessors, chiefly Hughes, in seeking a ‘consultative relationship’ with Washington.1018 He did not nurse any political grievances against Americans, like Pearce, hold any social prejudice towards them, like Menzies, and did not share the general sense of anti-Americanism found amongst most Australian conservatives in this period.1019 As Treasurer, he knew that the US would be the chief engine of economic recovery,1020 saying as much in September 1932 in an ABC broadcast in which he referred to America as predominantly possessing the power ‘to dispel the spirit of despair and doubt and gloom that threaten the world and lead the people in the way of hope’.1021 What applied in economics was also valid in external affairs and even in defence ─ Latham had been conscious of American power and the Melbourne memorandum of October 1934 had stressed the importance and desirability of Australian relations with the ‘greatest Pacific power’.1022

There was no recorded US response to the Latham mission, but Roosevelt was unlikely to have been pleased, judging from his displeasure at Chamberlain’s similar suggestions of eastern détente later in 1934.1023 Norman Davis, FDR’s roving ambassador, described these suggestions as ‘short-sighted’,1024 being concerned about the existence of a group in the British cabinet ‘that

1015 Scullin had intended to visit the US in late 1930, but was forced to return home by the political emergency; Robertson, Scullin, 289. Canada had such links, since 1920, and the Irish Free State since 1924; Holland, 74. Bruce had opposed diplomatic links in the ‘twenties; Hudson, Casey, 71; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 175, quoting Bruce to Casey, 20 March 1928, A1420/5, NAA, Canberra. 1016 David Dow, a journalist, was a member of the Melbourne Savage Club, which had close links to Lyons; David Dow Papers, Personal Correspondence, USA, 1924-38, A-B, University of Melbourne Archives. He became acquainted with Kingsley Henderson, an early Lyons sponsor and a onetime close personal friend of Lyons; Henderson to Dow, n.d. but 1932, David Dow Papers, Personal H-L U40/8. Lyons asked Bruce to assess Dow’s effectiveness in December 1932, but he survived in the position until March 1938. 1017 The Dow Papers contain much lobbying correspondence with and from Dow attempting to save or extend his position, for example, McLaren, Secretary Prime Ministers Department to Dow, 13 February 1932, 11 March 1933, David Dow Papers, Correspondence M. After various extensions, he survived in the position until 31 March 1938. 1018 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 48, 172, on Hughes’s efforts in the 1920s, both in and out of office, to develop links with the US. 1019 On Pearce’s grievances, vide below and Twomey, ibid., 172; Moffat Diary 3 October 1935. On Menzies’s attitudes; Martin, Menzies, 166-7. A. Wildavsky and D. Carboch, Studies in Australian Politics (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1958), passim, on conservative anti-Americanism. 1020 Lyons was consistent in his view that only a full restoration of world trade could restore prosperity; The Times, 28 May 1935, 13, d. 1021 J.A. Lyons, ABC broadcast, 1 September 1932, CP103/19/16, NAA, Canberra. The broadcast was in observance of George Washington’s bi-centenary and Lyons substantially rewrote the text offered to him by the ABC’s Herbert Brooks to include the above passage. 1022 vide Chapter 2; A.C.V. Melbourne, “A Foreign Policy for Australia”, 3, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2, 10. 1023 Roosevelt even threatened to contact the dominions in an effort to sabotage Chamberlain’s proposals; Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs, vol.2, FDR to Norman Davis, 9 November 1934, 263; also in R. Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy 1932-1945 (New York: OUP, 1979), 89. This threat does not suggest much knowledge of the Australian attitude to eastern détente. 1024 Memorandum of Conversation in Prime Ministers Office, London, FRUS, 1934, vol.1, 368-74. 23 November 1934. 142 favoured conciliating Japan’ and unaware that such views were held in Canberra at the highest level.1025 For his part, Lyons showed no knowledge of the president’s antipathy to Chamberlain’s proposals prior to raising ones that were very similar, although he was familiar with Latham’s conclusions that the Japanese believed Washington favourable to China and ‘little acquainted with the realities of international relations’.1026 He was also familiar with the Bruce suggestion of 7 March 1935 that Washington was prepared to join a ‘consultative pact for the maintenance of peace’, an assessment based on recent indications of some US flexibility.1027 Unknown to the Australian prime minister, Roosevelt had in fact already identified the Pacific as an area of ‘direct’ US interest in talks with Stimson in 1934, but had simultaneously stressed his desire to take a strong line against Japan.1028 Yet, if Canberra and Washington were at odds on these mixed diplomatic signals, as they were on trade, some defence co-operation nevertheless remained possible, given their perception of the same potential enemy in the Pacific.1029

Despite these pressing bilateral issues, Lyons still had no intention by 22 May of going to the US personally.1030 Dow’s pleas from New York to reconsider went unheeded,1031 until at some time between 24 May and 4 June 1935, he changed his─ mind his homesick wife exasperatingly noted in her diary: ‘Going now through America and so delaying longer.’1032 The reasons for the change are unknown, but given that the airing of the pact proposal proved to be Lyons’s priority in Washington, it is likely that this factor was a consideration in his reconsideration. If Tokyo’s fear, via Latham, of US bias towards China turned out to be accurate, then a prime ministerial visit would at least provide an opportunity to acquaint the US with another Pacific perspective. The difficulties facing any proposals for US participation in eastern détente were certainly profound, as Hughes had found in his post-war, prime ministerial efforts to encourage closer links with Washington.1033 Lyons needed firstly to overcome an isolationist reluctance to engage in Pacific affairs at all, at a time when the US was giving indications of

1025 Norman Davis, Chairman of American Naval Delegation, London, reply to Roosevelt, London, 27 November 1934, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs, vol.2, 90ff. 1026 Latham, “Secret Report”, Japan, 23. 1027 The New York Times, 22 February 1934, had carried a report of US preparedness to recognize Manchukuo, immediately denied by the State Department, but brought to Simon’s attention by the British ambassador at Washington, Lindsay, 23 February 1934, A981 MAN 7, NAA, Canberra. Bruce memorandum, 7 March 1935, A463 1957/1060, point 65, after a statement by Norman Davis at the Disarmament Conference in 1932. 1028 G. Kennedy, Anglo-American Strategic Relations and the Far East 1933-1939. Imperial Crossroads (London: Frank Cass, 2002), 151, FDR at lunch with Stimson, former Secretary of State, 17 May 1934. 1029 ibid., 5, on the common threat and the possibility of US-British cooperation. The US rejected an Australian request for more balanced trade in January 1935; Esthus, 14-5. Gullett, the minister responsible for trade negotiations, sought the type of trade equalisation that the Japanese sought from Canberra; vide Chapter 5. Lyons raised suggestions of a trade agreement in Washington; Cordell Hull-Lyons meeting, FRUS, 1935, vol.2, 14, 9 July 1935. 1030 Menzies was to go in his stead; Lyons to Dow, 22 May 1935, Dow Papers, Official Correspondence (1), USA 1924- 38. Parkhill, however, had advised Dow on 15 April that Lyons was coming, 15 April 1935, Dow Papers, Personal correspondence. K. Henderson believed the same, 16 April 1935, ibid., Personal Correspondence, H-L. 1031 Dow to Lyons, 23 May 1935, Dow Papers, Official Correspondence (1), USA 1924-38. Lyons repeated his refusal, 24 May 1935, ibid., Personal Correspondence, H-L. 1032 Enid Lyons Diary, 4 June 1935, MS 4853/30. Dow was advised of the change on the same day; McKenna, Private Secretary, to Dow, 4 June 1935, Dow Papers, U40/8, Official Correspondence (1) USA 1924-38. 1033 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 48, 172. 143 regional abdication through her intention to withdraw from the Philippines.1034 The ‘Stimson doctrine’ had also indicated the difficulties inherent in any attempt to persuade the Americans to abandon (in Justice Latham’s words) their ‘useless’ inability to recognise ‘a state of facts’, that is to offer de jure recognition to Manchukuo.1035 With no Japanese intention of returning to the League, the pact proposal seemed the best option for regional peace to Lyons’s mind and to have any prospect of success it must include the two great Pacific powers outside the Geneva system; Japan and the US.1036

By engaging in personal diplomacy in Washington, 8-9 July 1935, Lyons was arguably taking a radical step; some of the private suggestions made during his meetings with FDR would mark a potential diversion of Australian attention away from London and towards Washington. After a lightning visit to New York City, Lyons reached the US capital on 8 July 1935.1037 Here, the ‘Tame Tasmanian’, as Time magazine referred to him on account of his alleged success as an Irish conciliator,1038 spent the night of 8-9 July as a guest at the White House.1039 Lyons had high expectations of the US president, towards whom he was already sympathetically inclined.1040 An account of the discussions between the two leaders is largely dependent on the accounts provided by Lyons and his wife, for the Prime Minister failed to inform External Affairs─ although this one-sidedness gives grounds for caution, other sources broadly confirm their topics of conversation and the later recall of Enid Lyons is confirmed by contemporary sources (with a few exceptions).1041 Lyons apparently went straight to business on the night of 8 July, when the two leaders withdrew to the presidential study and remained talking until the small hours in an atmosphere of intense friendship.1042 Talks continued the following day over lunch, until the guest left for the State Department and an appointment with the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull. Lyons later vividly recalled the presidential conversations to Jay Moffat, the newly-appointed US consul-general in Sydney, at their first meeting in Canberra on 2 October 1935, stating that he had

1034 The US had indicated in 1934 a ten-year withdrawal from the Philippines under the Tydings-McDuffie Act, which caused bitterness and anxiety in Australia, as noted by Moffat; Esthus, 10-11; Twomey, ibid., 48. 1035 Latham to Earle Page, July 1935, enclosing his pamphlet “Some Recent International Problems”, an address to the Australian and New Zealand Society for International Law, 6-7, on the Stimson doctrine of ‘non-recognition’. 1036 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 416, US rejection of the League had dampened Australian enthusiasm for Geneva. 1037 New York Times, 9 July 1935, 1, a, describes the reception in NYC given by Mayor La Guardia. 1038 At the Belfast reception for Lyons on 24 April 1935, he had brought together Protestant businessmen and leading Catholic citizens; Irish Times, 25 April 1935, 8, e; Enid Lyons, So We, 233-4. The Times, Obituary, 8 April 1939, 14, b-d, suggested that Lyons had been fêted in Belfast, which was unusual for a Catholic. 1039 Time, 8 July 1935, “Premier of the Commonwealth of Australia. Up From Down Under, he topped the Irish Question”, cover and 17-19. Time and the US press in general were chiefly interested in his economic profile, ibid., “National Affairs”, 17; New York Times, 9 July 1935, 13, c. 1040 The Lyons ABC broadcast of 1 September 1932, CP103/19/16, made during the presidential campaign and anticipating US economic expansion, could be taken as an endorsement of FDR’s policies. 1041 DAFP, vol.1, 29, 22 May 1937, notes the absence of any departmental record of the Lyons-Roosevelt meetings, without commenting on the evidence this provides of Lyons ‘personal’ style of external affairs management. A file, “J.A. Lyons”, exists in the Roosevelt Papers (New York), but I have been unable to access it. 1042 Enid Lyons, handwritten notes for a radio broadcast, n.d. but late 1939. In her memoirs, So We, 243, she stated that the conversation lasted until 2am. 144 put two proposals to the president ─ the possibility of a US recognition of Manchukuo and of participation in some sort of pact:

As a matter of fact I took up with your President my idea of a Pacific Pact, as the most probable guarantee of peace, and then added “I suppose, however, that you could not see your way to signing an agreement with Japan while she was continuing to violate her Treaties in Manchukuo?”1043

The candour of his question, which acknowledged Japanese illegality, and its lack of diplomatic veneer were typical of the quasi-personal, homely, Lyons approach to foreign affairs. The claim to authorship, in ‘my idea’, was also significant ─ the absence of any reference to Chamberlain or Latham provided evidence of Lyons’s desire to claim credit for himself, something that would be much evident when the proposal reached its climax two years later. He did not provide Roosevelt any other details of the proposal, for there were few to give. It would be many months, even years, before Moffat’s description of it as ‘nebulous’ could be questioned.1044 Although the proposal had grown from the recent roots of the Manchurian question and the Latham mission, it represented a revival of sorts of the Deakinite concept of a Pacific ‘Monroe doctrine’.1045 Lyons knew by October 1935 that the State Department (like External Affairs) was wary of his related proposal of de jure recognition, observing: ‘I know how you all feel about Manchukuo and the impossibility of recognising its present [sic] status quo.’1046 For that reason, he claimed to recall, with a precision unimpaired by the passing of three months, the presidential reply to his July question. It was a reply that Lyons believed generally favoured his ideas, despite some negativity: ‘That’s going too far; there is a lot we might be able to overlook if we could really help achieve lasting peace. That must always be the first consideration.’1047 Roosevelt had left the door ajar. There was one striking difference between this 1935 account of the White House conversations and Lyons’s later recall, in London on 22 May 1937. Here, he informed Imperial Conference delegates of the president’s initial reaction to his pact proposal, again interpreting it as favourable:

He had mentioned the suggestion to the President of the United States, who might perhaps have been expected to react somewhat unfavourably. In point of fact, however, Mr. Roosevelt had stated that the preservation of peace was the first and most important consideration, and that he

1043 J. P. Moffat, Diary, 2 October 1935, NLA, Canberra. Extracts, including this entry have been published in N. Hooker (ed.), The Moffat Papers: Selections from the Diplomatic Journals of Jay Pierrepont Moffat, 1919-43 (Cambridge, Mass.: HUP, 1956); excerpts also in Meaney, Australia and the World, 396-7. 1044 Moffat Diary, 2 October 1935. 1045 C. Bridge, “Relations with the United States,” 179, although Lyons never mentioned Deakin’s precedent. vide Chapter 5 on the full evolution and fate of the pact proposal. 1046 Lyons to Moffat, Moffat, Diary, 2 October 1935, recalling Roosevelt. 1047 ibid. 145 would be quite ready to enter into an agreement with Japan or with any other country to secure this end.1048

Moffat was told that FDR viewed the offer of an agreement with Japan as ‘going too far’; the delegates were told that he ‘would be quite ready’ to do so. Either Lyons’s memory was faulty, or he was seeking by deception to encourage the acceptance of his proposal in 1937. Nevertheless he was consistent in his view that FDR had favourably received his suggestions. Whatever the motives for sweetening the process in 1937, according to the more candid 1935 admission to Moffat, Roosevelt had been vague and had made no real commitment to a pact, whilst appearing to reject outright the immediate possibility of recognising Manchukuo. Yet, from Lyons’s perspective, the president had still been more receptive than British politicians. London had immediately dismissed Lyons’s suggestions as irrelevant on 9 May; Washington had talked optimistically and suggested that there was ‘a lot we might be able to overlook if we could really help achieve lasting peace’ two months later.1049 Roosevelt could have killed Lyons’s pact proposal in July 1935 ─ for whatever reason, he declined to do so and threw a sinking proposition the life-line it needed, providing Lyons with the ammunition to continue his program of peace and conciliation. An examination of the US records indicates, however, that the president did not seek to pursue his guest’s diplomatic proposals, thus throwing into question Lyons’s confidence.1050 Yet when Lyons left Washington on 9 July for Montreal he was more determined than ever to pursue the ideas in the interests of ‘the preservation of peace’, as he claimed Roosevelt had put it, for he had convinced himself that his program had an element of US endorsement.1051 Lyons’s diplomatic idée fixe was not the only issue under examination in Washington. He also perceived that there was a strong desire for improved relations with Canberra and for full diplomatic representation. Time reported that the Australian prime minister had considered the second matter whilst crossing the Atlantic,1052 something he had seemed to confirm in a New York interview, promising to ‘look over the situation in Washington and take up the matter with my Cabinet’.1053 Once in Washington, however, Lyons persisted in his reluctance to exchange ministers with full diplomatic status and later stated to Moffat his unwillingness to do so ‘financially or politically’.1054 Roosevelt suggested a compromise ─ that Australia appoint a trade

1048 Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 29, fourth meeting of principal delegates, 22 May 1937. 1049 Lyons to Moffat, Moffat, Diary, 2 October 1935. 1050 R. Megaw, “Undiplomatic Channels: Australian Representation in the United States 1918-39.” Historical Studies, vol.15 (1973): 623. There is no mention of the Roosevelt-Lyons discussions in the FRUS, 1935, volumes. 1051 Lyons on FDR, DAFP, vol.1, 29, 22 May 1937. 1052 Time, 8 July 1935, 19. 1053 J.A. Lyons interview, America: A Catholic Review of the Week, 27 July 1935: 399. 1054 Lyons to Roosevelt, 31 August 1935, discussed in Megaw, “Undiplomatic…”: 623, quoting material in the FDR Papers, File 48-D, New York. Lyons told Moffat that he still felt unable to extend diplomatic links to Tokyo; Moffat Diary, 2 October 1935. Moffat informed State on 12 October 1935 that Australia was still reluctant to establish full relations with Japan due, in part, to an ‘inferiority complex’ in foreign affairs, FRUS, 1935, vol.3, 364, point 6. He was mistaken to confuse Australia’s reluctance for such links with a reluctance to negotiate with Japan in any form. 146 commissioner, who would then ‘be accorded recognition similar to that granted to Ministers of other countries’: a de facto ambassador.1055 This compromise appealed to Lyons, who in turn privately told Moffat, as US consul, to act as de facto ambassador, whatever the attitude of the State Department.1056 This arrangement was made without any cabinet consultation and contrary to the ministerial opposition of ‘our Tory’, Pearce.1057 As well as demonstrating Lyons’s style of management, this compromise represented a victory for ‘personal diplomacy’, opening diplomatic channels at minimal expense and without offending Britain or Japan. From September 1935 until his return to Washington after 31 March 1937, the US consul acted as the chief conduit of communication between the two Pacific nations, bypassing Whitehall.1058 If Australian foreign policy in this period was often simply what the prime minister told the UK High Commissioner (as Edwards suggested it was), then from September 1935 it also constituted what was told to the US consul-general,1059 for Lyons was extraordinarily candid and garrulous in Moffat’s company, leaving cabinet meetings to talk to him and occasionally giving him an insight into their discussions.1060 Although Lyons made it clear elsewhere in late 1935 that direct links with the US were still ‘out of the question’,1061 he had promised Moffat on 5 October that he would work in cabinet for fuller relations when a ‘good opportunity’ arose.1062 He repeated this commitment on 6 February 1936,1063 but by the following month Lyons was still unable to convince his ministers (notably Pearce and Menzies), to his ‘disappointment’─ an indication that the authority of this prime minister was still far from dominant in cabinet.1064 It was not until July 1936 that Pearce had revised his opposition and, in the following May, Keith Officer was appointed as Australian ‘counsellor’ in the British Embassy at Washington, in

1055 Lyons to Moffat, Moffat Diary, 2 October 1935. The offer was formally extended in August 1935; Megaw, “Undiplomatic…”: 623. 1056 Moffat Diary, 2 October 1935. The two had met in New York City on 8 July, New York Times, 9 July 1935, 1, a, and Moffat accompanied Lyons to Washington; Lyons itinerary, Dow Papers, U40/8, Official Correspondence (1), USA 1924-38, University of Melbourne Archives. Moffat’s appointment indicated FDR’s seriousness, for he had close links with Davis; D. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 83-99, gives some indication of the collaboration at State between the rising Moffat and Davis. On Moffat’s patrician background and the high expectations for him; P. Edwards introduction, Australia Through American Eyes (St. Lucia: UofQ Press, 1979), 3-4. 1057 Moffat Diary, 5 October 1935. Ambrose Pratt told Dow that cabinet had not considered the matter; Pratt to Dow, 10 October 1935, Dow Papers, U40/7, Unidentified Correspondence, USA 1924-38, University of Melbourne Archives. The cabinet papers support this contention. vide Chapter 7 for an examination of Pearce’s later claims to have initiated diplomatic relations with Washington. P. Edwards, Australia Through American Eyes, 6, notes Pearce’s opposition, without mentioning the attitude of Lyons. 1058 Esthus, 17, disputed by Megaw, “Undiplomatic…”: 624. Esthus, ibid., 30-1, noted that Moffat continued to take an interest in Australian affairs at State after March 1937. He was replaced at Sydney by the less influential Albert Doyle. Whitehall then regained its former predominance as Keith Officer, Australian Counsellor at the British Embassy in Washington from May 1937, insisted on sending his dispatches through Whitehall. 1059 P. Edwards, “Australia’s Foreign Policy…”: 336. 1060 Moffat Diary, 2 and 5 October 1935, 6 February 1936 1061 Lyons to Leo Buring, then reported to Moffat by the latter, Moffat Diary, 22-3 October 1935. 1062 Moffat Diary, 5 October 1935. 1063 Lyons again told Moffat that the idea appealed to him ‘on broader grounds than shillings and pence’ and that Pearce was still opposed, Moffat Diary, 6 February 1936. Moffat again pressed the matter in April, Moffat to Hull, FRUS, 1936, vol.1, 745-6, 6 April 1936; Moffat to Hull, 20 April 1936, P. Edwards, Australia Through American Eyes, 35. 1064 Kingsley Henderson to David Dow, 9 March 1936, Dow Papers, Personal, H-L, University of Melbourne Archives. For once Lyons was in accord with External Affairs, which recommended such relations on 19 November 1935; Cabinet Papers, CRS A6006, Roll 9. 147 another makeshift arrangement.1065 Full diplomatic relations came only in 1939, with the third Pacific initiative of the period, when after four years of compromise and makeshift arrangements, Lyons finally exercised his prime ministerial initiative after lobbying from a number of disparate sources.1066 Lyons’s agenda in Washington had necessarily included matters of defence as well as matters of eastern appeasement.1067 The Australian prime minister arrived in Washington with expectations of US military support against any future Japanese aggression, however unrealistic, but it was an attitude amongst Australian policy-makers that Hankey had noted with some puzzlement, in January 1935.1068 Both Roosevelt and Secretary of State Hull, in talks on 9 July 1935, were keen to cultivate Lyons’s friendship and perceived that one way to do this was to give him the assurances he sought about Pacific security.1069 British statesmen had failed to respond to Australian anxiety about a Japanese thrust southwards ─ Roosevelt proved a more responsive listener on this, as well as on the pact. According to Enid Lyons, the president admitted that Americans were ‘very touchy about our Pacific coast’ and was prepared to offer Lyons informal commitments about the defence of Australia.1070 He assured his guest that no Pacific power could afford to have Australia in hostile hands and that America would always come to her aid; Australia, he promised, would not thus be isolated even if Britain were wholly occupied in a European war.1071 The whole was music to Lyons’s ears, fresh from disarmed and strategically overstretched London and perhaps the assurances were the more plausible in his estimation because they were accompanied by the assertion that the US would ‘never again’ be drawn into a ‘European war’ (although Enid Lyons’s recall differed here).1072 Lyons was impressed enough to recall them with confidence to the Canadian prime minister, Mackenzie King, two years later.1073 The Lyons accounts (husband and wife) of these defence assurances are plausible, despite some inconsistencies, and are confirmed elsewhere ─ Roosevelt confided to Bruce in May 1939 that he had put the question of Australian security to his cabinet some years earlier, without arousing much enthusiasm, but he agreed with Bruce’s suggestion that any Japanese move southwards would be of concern, offering similar informal security guarantees to those in operation as regard to

1065 Pearce Cabinet Submission, 8 July 1936, CP4/2/4, Agenda no.18/2, NAA, Canberra. On Officer’s appointment to Washington, vide also Chapter 5. The Foreign Office ‘approved’; Cabinet Minutes, 21 October 1936, CAB 23/95, PRO, London. 1066 vide Chapter 7. 1067 McCarthy, “Singapore and Australian Defence…”: 176, mistakenly places these defence talks in 1937. 1068 Hankey’s comments on Australian confidence in the US; Thorne, 398ff., quoting Hankey to Ramsay MacDonald, 2 January 1935. 1069 Esthus, 16-17, gives a good summary of the US view of the visit and the desire to impress Lyons owing to concern about some ministerial attitudes in Canberra; Cordell Hull-Lyons meeting, FRUS, 1935, vol.2, 14, 9 July 1935. 1070 Enid Lyons, So We, 241, 244. 1071 Enid Lyons, So We, 241ff. 1072 Lyons to Moffat, Moffat, Diary, 2 October 1935. Enid Lyons, thirty years later, had a different memory. She recalled that Roosevelt had believed the United States would ‘inevitably’ be drawn into a European war, which would occur in ‘the near future’; Enid Lyons, So We, 241, 244. 1073 Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 29, fourth meeting of principal delegates, 22 May 1937. King confirmed that FDR had said much the same to him; also A5954/1047/7, NAA, Canberra. 148 Canada.1074 This response was something that Bruce himself had not expected, but which Lyons had mentioned as a ‘possibility’ in November 1938, only to be told by the high commissioner then that such presumptions were ‘unwise’.1075 Admittedly, the defence assurances of July 1935 were far from a guarantee and not to be compared to the imperial link, but they represented something of an insurance policy that enhanced Australian security and the US Navy, at least, took certain related obligations for granted by mid-1939.1076 Roosevelt’s sincerity in 1935 was another matter.1077 Like the tepid assurances of London, however, putative US assurances were not seen as a substitute for the developing Australian defence deterrence: there was to be no ‘waiting for FDR’ any more than any unqualified faith in the Singapore strategy.1078 Nevertheless, some possibility now existed that the arsenal of the American eagle might supplement that of the British lion in an echo of Deakin’s time, even if the chief result of these 1935 talks was psychological rather than material. It is debatable whether Lyons’s personal diplomacy in Washington could be said to have contained the seeds of the ANZUS alliance of later years, as some have suggested, but he was at least the first Australian leader to seek, and be given, some sort of US commitment to Australian defence and had shown a desire to nurture the relationship between the two nations in a manner that was still unusual at Canberra.1079 Enid Lyons later referred to the discussions with FDR as having been for her husband, ‘the most heartening and stimulating discussion of the tour abroad’, a description coloured perhaps by their personal respect and liking for the president1080 ─ in her memoirs and elsewhere, Dame Enid later praised Roosevelt’s qualities in a way that reflected favourably on her husband (as she did with those of Chamberlain).1081 It might have been the case in 1935 that Lyons was confusing personal charm with political consensus when he referred to the visit as having established ‘the most intimate link’ yet between Australia and the US.1082 At his Foggy Bottom interview, the Prime Minister had insisted on the natural friendship and mutual interests of all English-speaking peoples, something that

1074 Bruce record of US conversations: The President USA, 4 May 1939, M104/7/4, NAA, Canberra; Bruce to Menzies, DAFP, vol.2, 82 and Attachment I, 8 May 1939; also Note of Conversation with Mr. Norman Davis, 3 May 1939. Tarling, 15, was thus unreasonable to doubt Bruce’s view that the US was more likely to fight in the East than in Europe. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 397-8. 1075 Bruce record of telephone conversation with Lyons, 24 November 1938, M104/6/1, NAA, Canberra. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 285, 397-8. 1076 vide Chapter 7, where US obligations in Hawaii and even Singapore were made by Admiral Leahy, USN operations, to Commander Hampton, RN, in secret Washington talks, June 1939; G. Kennedy, Anglo-American Strategic Relations, 39-40; P. Haggie, Britannia at Bay: The Defence of the British Empire against Japan, 1931-1941 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 143-4. 1077 Roberts, Eminent Churchillians, 23, on FDR’s double-dealing; Eden’s later scepticism about FDR’s sincerity seemed well founded; Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 29, fourth meeting of principal delegates, 22 May 1937. 1078 Tarling, ibid., used this term to describe the British view that the white dominions were secure, as the US would not allow them to be overtaken by Japan. 1079 As recognised by J. Starke, The ANZUS Treaty Alliance (Melbourne: MUP, 1965), 4. Similar assurances were given to Menzies by FDR at Washington in May 1941; Martin, Menzies, 361. 1080 Enid Lyons, So We, 244. They both publicly expressed their admiration for FDR; Sun News-Pictorial, 14 August 1935, Joseph Lyons Papers, MS 4851/4, NLA, Canberra; Sun (Sydney), 17 March 1938, Enid Lyons Papers, MS 4852/5, NLA, Canberra. 1081 Enid Lyons, audio interview with Mel Pratt, March 1972, Tape 1, where she noted the similarities between her husband and FDR by commenting on the pain of political transmogrification, political magnetism and the qualities of Mrs. Roosevelt; Enid Lyons, handwritten notes for a radio broadcast, n.d. but late 1939, Enid Lyons Papers, MS 4852/8, NLA, Canberra. Similar sentiments are found in So We, 242. 1082 Dow to Cecilia Schwind, Time magazine, 11 July 1935, giving Lyons’s view of the press coverage, Dow Papers, U40/8, Correspondence S, University of Melbourne Archives. 149 became a common theme in his public statements from this time onwards, particularly in his later pact negotiations, which partly aimed to bring the three leading Anglophone nations into accord.1083 Casey, in July 1937, expressed both his and Lyons’s personal and political outlook when he referred to Anglophone unity and the immense ‘store of moral force’ that he believed the US possessed.1084 The July 1935 talks were, in Lyons’s recall, a triumph of US-Australian friendship even, more grandly, of ‘US-British friendship’.1085 He never saw the enhancement of US-Australian relations as being at the expense of the Anglo-Australian connection, although he knew that some in both Britain and Australia feared so and had denied at his Washington press conference of 9 July 1935 any discussion of ‘Pacific political problems’ with Hull, stating that he would accept any offer of a US goodwill mission to Australia, provided that he was not seen to have initiated it.1086 Lyons did not give his reasons for this stance, but he was presumably keen to downplay any diversion of attention towards Washington for domestic political reasons, as many Australian conservatives nursed suspicions of US intentions.1087 Accordingly, the official government account of his 1935 trip, issued in December, did not even mention the prime ministerial detour to the US in its report of the ‘Overseas Delegation’.1088 This was not the last time that Lyons’s ‘personal diplomacy’ would go unacknowledged in the official record of Australia’s external relations. VII As stimulating as the period March-July 1935 had been, the first couple (aboard the Mariposa, en route San Francisco-Sydney after 23 July 1935), were pleased at the prospect of returning home. Their homesickness was manifest, especially as they had been separated from their children for those months.1089 Whatever else the journey achieved, it had reinforced their commitment to ‘peace’ and to the instruments of diplomacy and military readiness intended to maintain it. It had also reinforced their intense Australian patriotism. They were not reluctant to share these personal values with the public on their return, although much of the nature of Lyons’s personal diplomacy remained concealed.

In a series of addresses in Melbourne and in a national broadcast soon after their return, Enid Lyons began a personal ‘peace offensive’ by calling on the women of Australia to put ‘peace in the ballot box’ and to support peace-loving candidates.1090 Women were urged to be active politically in the interests of peace, if necessary through their own candidature.1091 Her

1083 Lyons-Hull interview, FRUS, 1935, vol.3, 14, 9 July 1935. 1084 Casey, “Australia in World Affairs”: 7. 1085 Lyons speech at Wollongong, 12 October 1935, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 October 1935, 11, e. Electioneering in the same city two years later, Lyons referred to the visit as having demonstrated ‘US-British friendship’, undated press report, c.October 1937, M2270/1/10, NAA, Canberra. 1086 New York Times, 10 July 1935, 13, e-f. The US press had suggested a goodwill mission led by Senator McAdoo. Lyons was delighted, but declined unless the offer was seen to come from official US circles. 1087 Wildavsky and Carboch, passim. 1088 Record of the Lyons Government, “The Year 1935, work of the Commonwealth Government. Its major Activities. Overseas Delegation”, A601/165/1/1, NAA, Canberra. Lyons’s ‘personal diplomacy’ was not strictly part of the delegation and so the account also made no mention of Italy. 1089 Lyons said: ‘We are anxious to get home to see our kiddies.’; Time, 29 July 1935, 17. 150 wistful attitude suggested that if people were friendly, then the nations could not go to war.1092 Journeying in Europe had also convinced her, at least for the immediate aftermath, that the old sentiments of national hostility were now replaced by ‘the absolute universal friendliness of the whole of mankind’.1093 Therefore, amidst gloom and fear, she offered wistful optimism, as the appeasers were to do for another four years. Lyons and his wife discovered that their personal outlook on peace, when translated into policy-making, was politically palatable in that period, until the strains of late-1938 and early-1939.

Absence had made the patriotic heart grow fonder. Enid Lyons made her feelings quite explicit in Melbourne on 15 August: ‘Very truly I do feel that I belong to Australia, that we all belong to Australia.’1094 Earlier that day she had glowingly referred to Australia as ‘the best country in the world’,1095 sentiments repeated to a larger, cinematic audience in September 1935, after the first couple had returned to the Lodge. Both the Prime Minister and his wife appeared in front of their residence; with Mrs. Lyons asserting that she was now ‘positively sure’ that Australia was ‘the best country in the world’. In the same newsreel, her husband placed their views in a larger perspective, noting that he believed that Australia was fortunate to belong to that ‘great aggregation of peoples known as the British Commonwealth of Nations’,1096 which his wife had already referred to as ‘the greatest force for peace in the world’.1097 The final scene of the Threlfall home movie of their recent world trip panned over the eleven Lyons children gambolling on the lawn at Home Hill on the ‘wonderful day’ (as Enid Lyons called it) of the parental return. 1098 It was a pleasing atmosphere of family warmth, security and domestic peace that Lyons hoped appeasement could extend internationally, thus forging a period of international harmony that preserved peace and Australian security.1099 Lyons had recently been lauded in foreign capitals as an unparalleled economic manager,1100 but perhaps he was conscious that all of this would count for nothing if his peacemaking was not as successful as his economic management.

1090 Enid Lyons broadcast, 15 August 1935, reported in Sun News-Pictorial, Melbourne; Courier Mail (Brisbane), 16 August 1935; Age, 16 August 1935, Joseph Lyons Papers, MS 4851/4, NLA, Canberra. 1091 ibid., reported in Age, 16 August 1935. 1092 Argus, 16 August 1935, 4. She repeated these sentiments after her 1937 trip, vide Chapter 5, although by 1938 she no longer believed that wishing was enough, vide Chapter 7. 1093 Enid Lyons address to Australian Women’s National League, 15 August 1935, Age, 16 August 1935; Argus, 16 August 1935, 4. Within a month of this, the Reichstag enacted the Nuremberg Laws; Kershaw, Hitler, vol.1, 568ff. 1094 Enid Lyons address to National Council of Women, 15 August 1935, Argus, 16 August 1935, 4. 1095 Argus, 16 August 1935, 4; Age, 16 August 1935. 1096 “Prime Minister Lyons Back From Tour”, September 1935, Episode Title No. 137992, ScreenSound, Canberra. Lyons significantly began to prefer this nomenclature to the alternative ‘British Empire’; vide Chapter 5. 1097 Age, 16 August 1935. 1098 Threlfall film, “Prime Minister and Mrs. Lyons World Trip”, Episode Title No.053967; Enid Lyons reception, Argus, 16 August 1935, 4. 1099 As in 1931, Lyons found it difficult to divorce concerns about his family’s welfare from the larger political picture; vide Chapter 1 and White, Joseph Lyons, 121ff. 1100 The Times, 11 June 1935, 9, d; Time, 8 July 1935, 18; FRUS, 1935, vol.2, 14, 9 July 1935. Enid Lyons, My Life, 28, later boasted of the esteem in which her husband was held in this regard; Lyons himself stressed this achievement; Irish Times, 24 April 1935, 7, c; The Times, 30 May 1935, 18, e, 11 June 1935, 9, d. 151 VIII Within days of his return, in mid-August, it was necessary for Lyons to refocus on his own region, when the post-AEM détente with Japan received its first test. In the year after that Australian initiative, it was the turn of the Japanese to bring ‘goodwill’ to Canberra. Latham had sought to avoid trade discussions, but found the Japanese insistent; Lyons’s ministers found that insistence maintained into 1935, through the ‘Pacific Economic Inspection Party’ of April- May1101 ─ led by the Tokyo editor Dr. Abe, it chiefly consisted of three trade negotiators, who lobbied for greater access to Australian markets.1102 After unsurprisingly failing to make any impression on Australia’s racial or trade barriers, the Party arranged for the visit later in the year of a higher-level delegation under Katsuji Debuchi, ex-diplomat and former vice-minister in the Japanese Foreign Office.1103 This further oriental interest in the southern dominion was noted in Whitehall, just as the Latham mission had been, and was seen as unwelcome. The Dominions Secretary, Thomas, had already complained of the perils of independent dominion diplomacy, alleging in London on 7 May that the Japanese stance on trade had only hardened since the Latham mission.1104 Crutchley, from the Canberra high commission, similarly suggested in August that many Australians now regretted the deluge of Japanese ‘goodwill’ and that the mood of the cabinet on diplomacy was ‘timeo Danaos et dona ferentes’.1105 This might have been the case in regard to trade matters, but it excluded diplomatic concerns, at least for the Prime Minister, who wished to receive Debuchi on his own terms of ‘political’ appeasement. For Lyons, the Debuchi mission was a pleasing act of détente which represented the first opportunity to raise directly the evolving pact proposal with a high-ranking Japanese official. There were obstacles to doing so and Justice Latham, now an advocate of a trade-treaty, wrote directly to Lyons on 23 August 1935 to warn him that he would no longer be able to side-step the trade issue1106 ─ the former minister clearly felt that this was what Lyons had been doing, for no progress had been made in the economic appeasement of Japan since his return from Tokyo.1107 Lyons would never accept advice advocating trade equalisation with Japan, but Latham was invited to the Debuchi receptions in Canberra and Melbourne, where he joined in discussions.1108

1101 Crutchley report, 7 May 1935, DO 35/181/2, PRO, London. Both prime minister and trade minister were overseas. 1102 Megaw, “Goodwill…”: 257. The trade negotiators were attached to the Melbourne consulate in December 1934. A party of journalists accompanied Abe, as did the visit of two Japanese cruisers; Murphy, 154-5. 1103 Debuchi had been ambassador in Berlin and Peking, 1907-20, vice-foreign minister, 1924-28, and ambassador in Washington,1928-32; Torney-Parlicki: 354. 1104 Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, second meeting, 7 May 1935, A981 IMP 135. 1105 Crutchley to Harding, 13 August 1935, DO 35/155/4, PRO, London and Megaw, “Goodwill…”: 257. He also made some observations on the fear of Japanese military strength, vide Chapter 4. 1106 Latham, from his Melbourne chambers, to Lyons, 23 August 1935, A981 JAP 59, NAA, Canberra. Latham to Lyons, 24 August 1935, A981 TRADE 68/11, NAA, Canberra, also in Murphy, 161. 1107 Latham, “Confidential Report on Trade between Australia and Japan”, 30 July 1934, A981 FAR 5(13), had urged ‘immediate attention’ to trade matters; vide Chapter 2. Melbourne’s suggestions for greater commercial flexibility had also been ignored; Melbourne, A Foreign Policy for Australia, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2, point 115. 1108 Debuchi arrangements, Canberra, 4 September 1935, A981 JAP 72 and 6 September 1935, A981 JAP 71, NAA, Canberra. vide Chapter 2 and below for Lyons’s views on trade equalisation. 152 Lyons had first learned of the proposed mission in London in April 1935, when the Japanese transmitted a request via the Dominions Office.1109 His reply was welcoming; although he stressed that the visit would be better timed to take place after his return to Australia.1110 The ‘Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary’ accordingly docked at Brisbane on 14 August 1935, accompanied by Peter Russo, a Tokyo-based, Australian academic who (like his friend Dr. Melbourne) had intimate connections to Japanese officialdom.1111 There, Debuchi received a message of ‘hearty welcome’ from the Prime Minister and in return set out the broad aims of his mission. They were ones of co-operation and peace calculated to appeal to Lyons, intended to convey ‘genuine friendship and sincere goodwill from the people of Japan’.1112 Japan, ‘the vanguard of Oriental culture’ in the north, and Australia, ‘the harbinger of western civilization’ in the south, he said, could work together to create a new ‘Pacific era’.1113 Significantly, Debuchi excluded any reference to Britain or the Empire.1114 These comments implied the existence of two ‘spheres-of-influence’ in the western Pacific, divided by the Equator, something in accord with the thinking of the Lyons government, assuming that the Japanese restricted their ‘new order’ to the northern sector. Debuchi’s (and Lyons’s) sentiments resonated in Latham’s address to the Japan-Australia Society shortly thereafter, where he too envisioned a Japanese-Australian partnership in the ‘destiny of the Pacific’, free of the interference of Geneva (or London).1115 Debuchi had not arrived, however, merely to exchange pleasantries, for he also immediately aired the contentious issue of trade. Japan-Australia trade was, he stated on 14 August, complementary, not competitive, querulously drawing attention to its one-sidedness. It was a repetition of the views expressed to Latham by Baron Sakatani in Tokyo in May 1934.1116 Tokyo was extending its own hand of friendship, but its concept of co-operation clearly entailed economic partnership as well as political alignment. After reaching Sydney by rail on 15 August, Debuchi departed immediately for New Zealand, to the chagrin of External Affairs,1117 but this at least allowed the peripatetic prime minister some breathing space before he received the ambassador in Canberra, on 4 September.1118 Lyons appeared to have reflected in the meantime on Debuchi’s recent trade comments of 14 August and was to the point in his reception speech at Parliament House on that

1109 Japanese aide-memoire to Thomas, Dominions Secretary, n.d, but early April 1935, A981 JAP 59, NAA, Canberra. Thomas to Lyons, 17 April 1935, DO 35/181/1, PRO, London. 1110 Lyons to Thomas, 1 May 1935, DO 35/181/1. 1111 The Sydney consul, Murai, had cabled Russo in Tokyo in August 1935 and asked him to accompany Debuchi, whose official speeches he had written; Torney-Parlicki: 352-4. 1112 Debuchi, Age, 15 August 1935, 10; Torney-Parlicki: 354. 1113 Hankinson, UK High Commission, to Under-Secretary, Dominion Office, 19 October 1935, DO 35/181/2, PRO, London, summarising Debuchi’s themes after 14 August. Murphy, 147, quotes Debuchi in the Canberra Times, 5 September 1933, to this effect. He maintained similar sentiments throughout; Sydney Morning Herald, 12-13 September 1933, ibid. 1114 Murphy, 151, noted this, assuming that Debuchi was seeking to remind Australia of her separate, Pacific identity. 1115 Latham speech, September 1935, quoted in Nish, “Relations with Japan,” 163. 1116 Latham, “Report”, 6 July 1935, Speech by Baron Sakatani, Appendix B. vide Chapter 2. 1117 External Affairs memo, n.d. but August 1935, A981 JAP 58, NAA, Canberra. 1118 External Affairs memo, n.d. but mid-August 1935, A981 JAP 72, NAA, Canberra. 153 day, regrettably conscious that there could now no further side-stepping the issue (as Latham had warned him). Lyons, speaking formally as prime minister, insisted that the current trade relationship was ‘healthy’ and based on ‘reciprocal needs’, repeating his sentiments of December 1933 that a good trading relationship did not mean the equalisation of volumes, a concept he described as ‘disastrous to international friendship and peace’.1119 That was the end of the matter as far as he was concerned and having disposed of the issue for the moment, the Prime Minister described the Latham mission of 1934 as having produced much good, including a long-standing friendship between the two Pacific countries. Finally, he made clear his vision of future relations, choosing his words carefully to make it appear that he had listened to Japanese trade grievances, but that he was not about to offer any redress. Lyons stated the aim of what he now significantly called ‘Australian foreign policy’ as ‘international co-operation leading to political and economic stability’, that is, appeasement─ an appeasement that was clearly intended to be chiefly ‘political’ not ‘economic’, in accordance with the views on trade equalisation that he had just outlined.1120 This political vision, which dove-tailed entirely with Lyons’s personal faith in consensus, contained contradictions that Lyons never admitted, but which Latham had partly perceived in July 1934 ─ ‘econ omic stability’ was unlikely without a serious attempt to address trading grievances and ‘political’ stability was unlikely without its economic counterpart.1121 If, as Moffat suggested, the epitome of Australian policy was to avoid ‘political or commercial’ offence to Japan,1122 then that policy was lop-sided, for Lyons had shown as prime minister that he was prepared to address the former concern, but not the latter. Japan’s grievances, however, could not be dismissed as summarily as he had attempted to do on this September afternoon. Within eight months of these comments the trade dispute edged from push-to-shove at the behest of others in the cabinet who were unwilling to allow the matter to drift any further and an unwilling Lyons would find that simply drawing a line in the sand was insufficient.1123 Debuchi had in any case refused to take the hint and, at his insistence, the subsequent ministerial talks, 4-5 September, included trade matters.1124 The ambassador made soothing noises at many Australian concerns (including Japanese immigration, invasion threats, mandate fortification and the future of the Philippines),1125 but he offered no concession on trade, insisting that ‘preference should be given

1119 Lyons speech, Canberra, 4 September 1935, Hodgson Papers, MS 1516, NLA, Canberra. Lyons to Bruce, 13 December 1933, DO 35/181/1, PRO, London. 1120 Lyons speech, Canberra, 4 September 1935, Hodgson Papers, MS 1516. 1121 vide Lasswell, 91, on the inner contradictions faced by power-brokers and their attempts to overcome them. 1122 Moffat to Hull, FRUS, 1935, vol.3, 364, point 9, 12 October 1935. 1123 vide Chapter 5 on 1936 trade diversion. 1124 Debuchi to Crutchley; Crutchley to Dominions Office, 30 September 1935, DO 35/181/6635A/13, PRO, London, reporting his conversation with the departing ambassador, c.20 September. Debuchi outlined the same conversational topics to a British diplomat, Wilson, on 16 December 1935, DO 35/181/2, PRO, London. 1125 Moffat reported, without confirmation, that Debuchi had inquired about a recent note from Japan seeking revision of the White Australia Policy; Moffat to Hull, FRUS, 1935, vol.3, 364-5, point 7, 12 October 1935. The Japanese had made demands for tariff and immigration reform to Abbot, the Comptroller-General of Customs, late in 1934 and Lyons wrote to Bruce seeking his advice; Lyons to Bruce, 10 December 1934, A981 TRADE 68/1, quoted in Murphy, 165. 154 to them against those, like America, who take practically nothing of Australia’s goods’.1126 Tokyo was pursuing a dead-end in a manner that offended their host─ he later resentfully told Moffat that he felt Debuchi was attempting to ‘force concessions’.1127 Lyons made it clear shortly thereafter, in private, that if forced to choose between Tokyo or Washington, he was naturally oriented towards the latter with its ‘similarity of traditions and culture’.1128 Tokyo’s trade demands were beyond Lyons’s pale and if trade was not negotiable in his view, this was not so in other aspects of bilateral relations. The newly-arrived Moffat was gravely mistaken to think that Australia was prepared to negotiate with Japan economically, but not politically; it was the reverse.1129 Political negotiations were not to be conducted through any formal mechanisms as understood by a career-diplomat like Moffat, however, but through the direct negotiation that characterised appeasement. It was this aspect of the Debuchi mission that Lyons particularly welcomed. Debuchi offered ‘co-operation’ on and after 14 August; Lyons, in return on 4 September, proffered his pact proposal, the instrument he was forging as ‘one of the greatest contributions that could be made to world peace’.1130 Whereas the proposal had received a mixed response elsewhere, it was now positively received by Debuchi.1131 Perhaps because of this Lyons confessed that he liked the envoy ‘immensely’ (trade offensiveness aside), feeling that he was ‘a man with whom it was possible to talk freely’.1132 Lyons was typical of the appeasers in his belief that feelings of personal rapport were conducive to political negotiation; he had implied as much after the Mussolini interview in June and he now again allowed private feelings to influence his political judgement. Other than the pact proposal, details of the Lyons-Debuchi talks of 4 September 1935 are unknown. It would seem unlikely, however, that the recognition of Manchukuo was not mentioned, given that the two issues went hand-in-glove in Lyons’s thinking, convinced as he was that only the pact would signal that ‘the present [sic] status quo in the Pacific represented a fair balance of strength which could well be perpetuated’.1133 In talks with Pearce and Hughes at the same time, covering the disparate topics later relayed by Debuchi to British diplomats, the envoy heard similar sentiments of good intention from the two ministers who especially shared Lyons’s angst about an aggressive Japan and thus his desire for eastern appeasement, if not his desire to see a broader application of conciliation1134 ─ Hughes’s inclusion in such talks, despite

1126 Crutchley to DO, 30 September 1935, DO 35/181/6635A/13. Lyons reported the substance of the talks to cabinet on 5 September 1935, but the minutes contain few details, A2694, vol.14, Part 2, NAA, Canberra. 1127 Moffat to Hull, FRUS, 1935, vol.3, 364, point 4, 12 October 1935. 1128 The businessman Leo Buring told Moffat that Lyons had confessed a preference to orient matters towards the US, rather than towards Japan; Moffat Diary, 22-3 October 1935. 1129 Moffat’s conclusions were based on the Australian aversion to diplomatic links with Tokyo; Moffat to Hull, FRUS, 1935, vol.3, 364, point 6, 12 October 1935. 1130 Moffat, after Lyons, ibid., point 5. 1131 Lyons on Debuchi (at their 4-5 September meeting) to Moffat, Moffat Diary, 2 October 1935. Hart is incorrect to place this response in May 1935; “J.A. Lyons”, 271. 1132 Lyons to Moffat, Moffat Diary, 2 October 1935. 1133 Moffat, after Lyons, to Hull, FRUS, 1935, vol.3, 364, point 5, 12 October 1935. 1134 vide above; Crutchley to DO, 30 September 1935, DO 35/181/6635A/13; Debuchi to Wilson, on 16 December 1935, DO 35/181/2. Pearce ceased to be in favour of the appeasement of Japan after March 1936; vide Chapter 4. 155 his relatively modest ministerial rank, gave some indication of his standing with Lyons as a former prime minister keenly interested in international relations. Whatever was or was not said about Manchukuo by Lyons or his ministers, Tokyo thereafter assumed that Canberra had given her a carte blanche for her new order in north-east Asia.1135 Pearce certainly implied to Moffat that Australia had intended Japan to assume her sympathy. In a candid and querulous interview on 3 October 1935, the minister admitted that Australia rejoiced at the Japanese commitment in Manchuria for reasons of national security, ‘irrespective of the moral aspect’.1136 There was, he stated, ‘no alternative’ for Australia other than to cultivate Japanese friendship, while (he implied) the US continued her neutrality.1137 Moffat’s conclusions were likely to have been the impression left upon Debuchi: ‘Thus I have yet to meet an Australian who opposed Japan’s Manchurian policy or desired to see Japan out of Manchuria.’1138 No such person moved in the circle of appeasers determining policy in Canberra. The Debuchi goodwill mission departed from Sydney on 20 September amidst further professions of friendship. Lyons saw it as another chapter in the story of improved relations begun with the Latham mission, describing it to Hirota as ‘an outstanding event’ and expressing his habitual confidence that appeasement and its ‘personal contacts’ could only cement ‘bonds of friendship’.1139 The two missions were specifically linked in the cursory, prime ministerial parliamentary statement of 23 September 1935.1140 These diplomatic exchanges offered hope of improved relations, but Lyons’s habitual anxiety about Japanese intentions were not significantly ameliorated by the mission, as he made clear to Moffat on 2 October, where he drew a parallel between Australia’s potential position and that of isolated Abyssinia.1141 Moffat recalled the prime minister’s view as acknowledging that the country was ‘menaced by Japan, and for practical purposes defenceless’ ─ an admission that came within weeks of extensive professions of amity.1142 Consequently, there was no shrinking from further defensive measures in the last month of the year.1143 In the meantime, Lyons continued to be sanguine in public, stating on 12

1135 D. Sissons, “Manchester vs. Japan: the Imperial Background of the Australian Trade Diversion Dispute with Japan, 1936.” Australian Outlook, vol.30, no.3 (December 1976): 482, quoting Japanese Foreign Ministry files.L.3.3.0.14 on ministerial talks, 4-5 September 1935; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 372. pace Murphy, 152-3, that Debuchi did not press the issue of recognition. 1136 Pearce-Moffat interview, Moffat Diary, 3 October 1935. Moffat recalled Pearce’s anti-US grievances to Cyril Wynne at the State Department on 25 January 1936; P. Edwards, Australia Through American Eyes, 29-30. 1137 Pearce-Moffat interview, Moffat Diary, 3 October 1935. Moffat grudgingly recognized the ‘logic’ of the Australian position; Moffat to Hull, FRUS, 1935, vol.3, 364, point 3, 12 October 1935. Pearce was less resigned to eastern appeasement after March 1936, vide Chapter 4. 1138 Moffat to Hull, FRUS, 1935, vol.3, 364, point 5, 12 October 1935. 1139 Lyons to Foreign Minister Hirota, 21 September 1935, A981 JAP 72, NAA, Canberra. 1140 Lyons, CPD, vol.147, 30, 23 September 1935. He gave little detail of the talks, as was his custom. 1141 Lyons to Moffat, Moffat Diary, 2 October 1935. vide Chapter 4 for the full exchange. 1142 Moffat to Cyril Wynne, 25 January 1936; P. Edwards, Australia Through American Eyes, 30. Moffat had noted similar conclusion after his interview with Pearce on 3 October 1935, also quoting Lyons and Menzies; Moffat to Hull, FRUS, 1935, vol.3, 364, points 1, 3, 12 October 1935. 1143 vide Chapter 4. 156 October 1935 that both the Inspection Party and the Debuchi mission had indicated ‘friendly relations’, whilst privately expressing significant caution.1144 Debuchi, for his part, referred to his ‘happy memories’ and to the ‘sympathetic understanding’ he had gained of Australian goodwill.1145 Yet Lyons’s rejection of the Japanese appeals on trade rankled, as the ambassador made clear to British diplomats in Canberra and Tokyo in and after September.1146 From Japan’s perspective, the two missions of 1935 had achieved little of immediate consequence. An Australian endorsement of the Manchurian status quo was something, even if only implied, but it was far from the de jure recognition that Canberra itself could not give, in the absence of direct diplomatic relations. What Canberra could give ─ trade concessions ─ she refused to do. Nevertheless, the pact proposal, revealed here to Tokyo for the first time, was promising and in line with an earlier Japanese suggestion first made at the Banff conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations in August 1933, where a semi-official proposal for ‘A Security Pact for the Pacific Area’ was presented to delegates (including prominent members of the AIIA, Scott and Eggleston), but had failed to make much progress.1147 Tokyo at least now knew that Latham’s promised ‘formula’ had now evolved into Lyons’s proposal. In the turbulent months that followed, however, Lyons allowed European affairs to absorb much of his attention, allowing the pact proposal to lose momentum. This proved a costly error that undermined much that his personal diplomacy had achieved. Ω The months of foreign travel, February-August 1935, had been strenuous for both Joseph and Enid Lyons. The husband stood up well physically to the strain and the Argus noted that he looked fit and healthy.1148 His wife was not as physically robust and soon after their return, she temporarily retired from public life, in November 1935.1149 The Prime Minister had gained in confidence from his journeying and through dealing first-hand with leaders at the centre of world events,1150 but this introduction to international diplomacy had not taught him anything new ─ rather, it had confirmed the world-view that he held in February 1935. Lyons was perhaps more cautious about British defence assurances by August 1935, certainly more sanguine about an American liaison and consistent in his determination to work for some political accommodation with Japan, but the man who returned to Home Hill in August was essentially of the same frame

1144 Lyons Wollongong speech, 12 October 1935, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 October 1935, 11, e. 1145 Debuchi to Pearce, 21 September 1935, A981 JAP 66, NAA, Canberra. 1146 Debuchi to Crutchley, Crutchley to Dominions Office, 30 September 1935, DO 35/181/6635A/13, reporting his conversation with the ambassador, c.20 September. Debuchi to Sir Leslie Wilson, 16 December 1935, DO 35/181/2. 1147 Document XI, “A Security Pact for the Pacific Area”, 14 August 1933, in B. Lasker and W. Holland, eds., Problems of the Pacific, Proceedings of the Fifth Conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations, Banff, Canada, 14-26 August 1933 (London: OUP, 1934), 441-50; also in Murphy, 254-6; D. Campbell, “A Foreign Policy for Australia,” in Australia’s Foreign Policy, ed. W. Duncan (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1938), 194. D. Walker, Anxious Nation, 220ff., on the IPR and its conferences. 1148 Argus, 25 August 1935, 9, h. The same issue pictured a hale Prime Minister lunching with the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce. 1149 White, Joseph Lyons, 159-61. 1150 As suggested by Tsokhas, “Tradition, Fantasy and Britishness…”: 19, 27. 157 of mind as the one who had left that sanctuary six months before. The pursuit of peace remained his particular obsession. He soon felt that he had done ‘a pretty good job’,1151 and was confident of the future, suggesting in October 1935 that Australians need not worry unduly, provided ‘they kept to the track they followed’.1152 That track in external affairs was political appeasement and he continued to follow it, even if it soon proved necessary to deviate temporarily against his own inclinations, before returning to the same course with renewed passion in the course of 1936.

1151 Martin, Menzies, 189, quoting Lyons to Menzies, 26 April 1936, where the Attorney-General was promised the succession. Lyons was again musing about retirement. 1152 Lyons speech at Wollongong, 12 October 1935, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 October 1935, 10, g. 158 Chapter 4: The Shadow of War, September 1935−June 1936

‘But for the fact that we have this shadow of war over us, I think that the outlook for the world is becoming brighter. We hope that the war clouds will soon be dispersed and that the world will be given an opportunity to recover from the awful effects of the other war.’1153 J.A. Lyons, 12 October 1935, at Wollongong.

‘It may cost millions and you will pay those millions cheerfully. First things first, and nothing comes before defence.’1154 J.A. Lyons, 24 March 1936, Adelaide, on modernising Australia’s defences.

Qualified assurances − the question of sanctions − war in Abyssinia − the rebirth of External Affairs − the end of sanctions and Abyssinia − the Rhineland − the second rearmament program.

Between September 1935 and June 1936─ a period of great internatio nal turmoil ─ the shadow of war fell over East Africa and Europe. The various responses of Lyons to this turmoil (as exemplified in the contrasting quotations above) provide great insight into the dual nature of his world-view: on the one hand optimistic about conciliation (through appeasement), but on the other prepared for the worst (through rearmament). Lyons had returned from overseas in August 1935 prepared to offer Britain qualified assurances in troubled times, according to his prescription of a peace policy. Within two months, however, the Abyssinian crisis threatened a regional war, forcing Lyons’s reluctant agreement to Australian support for the blunt instrument of sanctions (something he had personally long opposed), a defeat for his concept of universal appeasement in cabinet and an example of acquiescence to Whitehall policy ─ even if it was of brief duration and the last example of such in the Lyons years, rather than part of any pattern of unthinking co- operation.1155 Regardless of this retrograde step in the march towards a semi-independent foreign policy, he was able to ensure that Australia was the last dominion onto the sanctions band-wagon, and the first off it. This was not before the crisis signalled administrative changes in Canberra that indicated a higher profile for the Department of External Affairs.

Such changes were timely, for the second crisis of the period (in the Rhineland from March 1936), tested these new administrative mechanisms and offered Lyons a platform to counsel further the extension of appeasement from Asia to Europe, where ‘inconsequent, inconsistent and often dangerously feeble’ cunctation (as Ambrose Pratt and other appeasers similarly described it) continued to predominate in British policy, although showing signs of passing.1156 He was not able to do so without causing strain within his cabinet, where some ministers were not as keen to see such an extension. Given the intense risk of war evident in this period, Lyons even offered to supplement his noticeable desire for consultation in imperial

1153 Lyons Wollongong speech, 12 October 1935, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 October 1935, 11, e. 1154 Lyons speech, 24 March 1936, Commonwealth Club, Adelaide, Age, 25 March 1936, “Defence Needs, Prime Minister Outspoken”, 12, f. 1155 Andrews, “Patterns…”, 98 quotes this as an example of a ‘pattern’ of co-operation, following Whitehall decisions. 1156 Ambrose Pratt, Lyons associate and intimate, “The Diplomacy of Democracy.”: 30. 159 foreign policy-making (especially evident from May to June 1935) with some ad hoc participation, through an extraordinary, almost personal offer. The Rhineland therefore marked a definitive step towards those goals of ‘wider appeasement’ and greater policy consultation, as well as serving as a ‘dress-rehearsal’ for subsequent European crises, however unreceptive Whitehall could be to such dominion pressure.

Finally, the period provided the stimulus for an accelerated, second rearmament program, supplementing that of September 1933, for both the crises of this period had the potential to distract Britain from the strategic role that Lyons wished her to play in East Asia, as well as drawing Australia into some unwelcome imperial war effort. The Lyons government arguably still hoped to maintain a defence strategy that gave Australia the best of both worlds: offering priority to home needs, alongside a qualified commitment to imperial ones.

I

The undeclared beginning of hostilities in Abyssinia, on 2 October 1935, forced an unwilling Lyons to review the pro-Italian inclinations that he had displayed since the June interview with Mussolini.1157 Instead, he felt compelled to support the course of action (sanctions), that Whitehall chose to follow during the following six months of Anglo-Italian confrontation, in the first instance of acquiescence that the Lyons government had shown since the period in which it had accepted British eastern cunctation without much question, 1932-33. Acquiescence had certainly not been Lyons’s intention earlier in 1935 for, despite his private valedictory statements of support for British policy on 23 May, he had not offered Whitehall a carte blanche like some provincial overwhelmed and ‘emotionally blinded’ by the attention and flattery of ‘The Treatment’, as it came to be called.1158 His assurances at the recent London summit had been conditional and were offered only following a querulous interchange about the inadequacies of imperial policy. Lyons further qualified them publicly on leaving London in June, stating that the Australian commitment was based on the proviso that British policy be directed towards the preservation of ‘peace’ at the same time as calling for greater consultation in policy-making:

I came away [from the London meetings] with a definite conviction that I could trust the British government to do everything possible to preserve peace, and I gave the assurance that, as long as this attitude continued, Australia would stand behind the homeland. That is the only thing that Australia is committed to.1159

1157 Hostilities commenced when Italian aircraft bombed Adowa on that day. 1158 Lyons, Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, fourth meeting, 23 May 1935, A981 IMP 135: ‘Go forward on the lines you have adopted and you can depend on us...” (my italics); vide Chapter 3. On Lyons as ‘emotionally blinded’ in London; Andrews, “Broken Promise…”: 113. On ‘The Treatment’; K. Perkins, Menzies: Last of the Queen’s Men (Adelaide: Rigby, 1968), 48. 1159 Lyons press statement, of uncertain date, in Moffat Diary, 30 September 1935, quoting the complaints of Raymond Watt, General Secretary of the NSW League of Nations Union, that the statement represented a blow to the notion of 160

This statement was a good example of Lyons’s habit of attempting to conciliate all parties and of his political shrewdness, as well as illustrating his over-lapping of the personal and political through the use of the personal pronoun in what purports to be a ‘government’ statement ─ the reader was left with the impression that Lyons was referring to his pledge as a private individual, reminded only at the end that he was speaking nominally as prime minister on behalf of ‘Australia’. It could be read by the imperialist as an uncompromising commitment to united imperial policy, or it could be taken as a statement containing distinct qualifications (‘…as long as...’) in the same way that he had qualified himself privately, when similarly offering conditional support in May.1160 If the latter interpretation is followed, then the implication was that Australia’s commitment was within strict ‘peace’ parameters. This was the way it was taken in some political circles, where the statement was considered ‘inept diplomacy’ and a qualification of Canberra’s commitment to ‘collective action’.1161 If so, the amateur diplomat only compounded his sins on his return to Australia in mid-August. In Melbourne on 25 August 1935, the Prime Minister similarly publicly pledged Australian support ‘to the hilt’, but again only for ‘British efforts to maintain the peace’.1162 This statement was taken by The Times as a pledge of imperial loyalty (‘Australia’s Pledge’), but the better-placed Argus was more aware of its nuances, headlining it as ‘Support for Peace’.1163 Lyons was certainly not reluctant to use his contacts in order to make his point and his point alone, for on 31 August he cabled Keith Murdoch to urge restraint in publishing statements purportedly from government sources, ‘in the interests of peace’.1164 This was one of the first occasions when Lyons sought to be the sole government voice in external policy, a trend that was to sharpen in following years. The Argus had also noted his refusal to offer support for the assurances of New Zealand’s prime minister, Forbes, that his dominion would ‘automatically participate’ if Great Britain went to war with Italy.1165 Rather, he assured the parliament on 27 September 1935 that he was individually convinced of Britain’s commitment to peace and consequently, speaking on behalf of his government:

collective security. The statement had been made ‘when leaving London’. His simultaneous call for greater consultation appeared in Sydney Morning Herald, 19 June 1935, 13, b. 1160 Lyons, Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, fourth meeting, 23 May 1935, A981 IMP 135, vide above. 1161 Moffat Diary, 30 September 1935, quoting Raymond Watt; vide above. 1162 The Times, “Australia’s Pledge”, 26 August 1935, 10, b. 1163 Argus, 25 August 1935, 9, h. The Argus was consistent in its support of Lyons and closely reflected his thinking on many issues, perhaps through his close links with Kingsley Henderson, a director; ADB, vol.9, 257-8. G. Carter, The British Commonwealth and International Security: The Role of the Dominions, 1919-1939 (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1947), 191, lists the statement amongst promises of imperial loyalty. 1164 Lyons to Murdoch, 31 August 1935, Murdoch Papers, MS 2823/1/4, NLA, Canberra. vide Chapter 1 on Lyons and Murdoch. Lyons often appealed for press restraint in the national interest, as at the time of the AEM, vide Chapter 2. He would frequently do so in the future, for example, Lyons to Murdoch on Germany, 14 March 1938. vide Chapter 6. 1165 Argus, 25 August 1935, 9, h. 161 I gave the assurance that so long as that attitude towards peace continued, the Government and the people of Australia would stand firmly behind it. I assure honorable members that this is the only assurance that I gave.1166

The Prime Minister had therefore once privately and thrice publicly offered support to Britain, May-September 1935, but only on the condition that she was pursuing a peace policy. This implied threat of a divergence from imperial policy─ whether a bluff or not, for it was never tested ─ became a standard weapon in his diplomatic arsenal from this time onwards. Although it had little impact in 1935-36, it would prove efficacious in later years. II Lyons’s earnest wish for an imperial peace policy was jeopardised immediately by events in East Africa. On his arrival at Melbourne, 15 August 1935, the Argus described his generally rosy statements under the banner of ‘Mr. Lyons Looks to the Future’1167 ─ what that immediate future could be was implied on the same page, when the current Paris talks on Abyssinia were highlighted as a ‘Plan to Avoid War’.1168 This threat of a regional war across the Suez- Mediterranean trading routes, along which traversed ninety-five per cent of Australian exports, was to derail Lyons’s desire for universal appeasement for the next eight months.1169 The benign attitude towards Italy and its leader that Lyons had developed in the course of his recent journeying was at odds with the harder attitude of Whitehall, but the views of London prevailed over the last months of 1935, as Australia fell into line over sanctions. Even though such acquiescence proved as short-lived as the causal Abyssinian crisis itself, the episode had longer- term consequences, leaving Lyons with further cause to doubt the effectiveness of the League, as well as strengthening his reservations about aspects of British policy. Although there had been no major discussion at the London summit about the impending crisis in East Africa, there were signals of a hardening attitude in some Whitehall quarters and the signs of an impending military conflict were manifest.1170 Simon had misleadingly claimed, on 9 May 1935, that a diplomatic ‘warning’ had been given to Italy, but the delegates were not informed that a circle of British ministers had already discussed the issue of armed resistance in the previous March, based on the assumption that a failure over East Africa would constitute the end of the League.1171 That circle included Eden, the civil servant Vansittart, and Chamberlain

1166 J.A. Lyons, CPD, vol.147, 295, 27 September 1935. 1167 Argus, 16 August 1935, 9, h. 1168 ibid, 9, d-e. 1169 On these routes; Pearce, Statement, 25 September 1933, B1535 749/1/20, , reinforced by Earle Page, CPD, vol.147, 548-53, 9 October 1935. 1170 Leonard Woolf, “Meditation on Abyssinia” (January 1936), in Political Quarterly in the thirties, ed. W. Robson (London: Allen Lane, 1971), 162, traced them back to July 1934. The Bruce memorandum of 7 March 1935 had foreseen strife; vide Chapter 3. 1171 Simon, Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, third meeting, 9 May 1935, A981 IMP 135; vide Chapter 3. Chamberlain journals, 8 March 1935, Chamberlain Papers, Journals 1933-6, NC2/23A, University of Birmingham Archives. 162 (not yet a ‘European’ appeaser), who believed that sanctions must be ‘tried out’.1172 Had Lyons been aware of this trend of British opinion towards an economic, even armed, confrontation with Italy, it seems unlikely that he would have so readily issued his endorsement of British policy on 23 May 1935 ‘on the lines you have adopted’, for that trend was not in line with his thinking. Additionally, once sanctions became the catch-cry in British-dominion discussions about Abyssinia from about the time of his return home, Lyons’s opposition could only have been anticipated, to judge from the hostility that his government had displayed to suggestions of their imposition against Japan in 1932-33. Bruce, in London, himself opposed to their use against Italy, warned in late-August that sanctions were ‘impracticable’ and unlikely to be effective owing to their inevitable lack of universality.1173 Lyons needed little persuasion and accepted Bruce’s counsel without question, repeating these views to high commissioner Crutchley shortly thereafter and making a national broadcast on 28 August 1935, in which he expressed even-handed sentiments that could not have been welcome to the Whitehall sanctionists.1174 These expressions were also contrary to an External Affairs cabinet submission, issued on the following day, in which sanctions were urged on the government.1175 At a consultative meeting of high commissioners in London around 2 September, Australia (through Bruce) was the only dominion to speak against the adoption of sanctions, although he promised co-operation according to League principles ‘to ensure the unity and safety of the Empire’ ─ his voice would be increasingly heard in such consultative processes in the coming crises.1176 Sanctions were thus viewed by both Bruce and Lyons with antipathy and the Prime Minister specifically denied any commitment to them in the parliament on 27 September.1177 This remained his government’s view until after the commencement of hostilities in October ─ imperial co-operation, but short of sanctions. Moffat astutely summarised the policy of the Lyons government as being one of emphasising ‘Imperial unity’ whilst using his influence to prevent the necessity of choosing between ‘unpopular sanctions’ or an ‘independent

1172 Feiling, 268, quoting Chamberlain’s attitude in August-September 1935. A. Goldman, “Sir Robert Vansittart’s Search for Italian co-operation against Hitler, 1933-36.” Journal of Contemporary History, vol.9, no.3 (July 1974): 114, 126-7. The League was still giving indications of a combination of sanctions and conciliation; Medlicott, 130. 1173 Bruce to Cabinet, 22 August 1935, Cabinet Papers, CRS A6006, Roll 9, following a meeting with other high commissioners on 21 August 1935; Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 314, quoting A981 Abyssinia 24/1, NAA, Canberra. Ovendale, “Britain, the Dominions and the Coming of the Second World War, 1933-9,” 325. 1174 Attard, ibid.; Crutchley, UK High Commission, Canberra, to Dominions Office, 12 September 1935, DO 114/67/16/34, quoting Lyons’s telegram of 2 September 1935. Cumpston, Bruce, 16-18. 1175 Cabinet submission, 29 August 1935, Cabinet Papers, Roll 9. The Department argued that a failure to adopt these measures would jeopardize thirteen years of ‘collective security’. 1176 Ovendale, “Britain, the Dominions and the Coming of the Second World War, 1933-9,” 326, quoting correspondence with the Foreign Office, 2 September 1935, DO 114/16 6109A/314, PRO, London. Gathering the high commissioners was the only consultative process that Whitehall seemed prepared to employ, despite Canadian protests; D. Carlton, “The Dominions and British Policy in the Abyssinian Crisis.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, no.1 (1972): 61. Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 305, on the machinery of consultation in the 1930s; similarly Mansergh, Survey, 433-4. Canada soon expressed ‘cautious reserve’ about sanctions; ibid., Experience, 272-3. 1177 Lyons, CPD, vol.147, 295, 27 September 1935. 163 course’.1178 It was a delicate matter of balance that Lyons was only able to maintain until the first shots were fired in East Africa. By mid-September, Canberra’s even-handedness was seen by Geneva as a thinly disguised jettisoning of ‘collective security’. Cockram, a Dominions Office official attached to the League, was taken aback by Bruce’s suggestions in Geneva of a brief Assembly debate, the expulsion of Abyssinia and the granting of an Italian mandate.1179 Bruce even spoke against an Eden-sponsored motion for international intervention by a Committee of Five on 17 September, for he had his own alternative:

He said that the Commonwealth Government were most reluctant to contemplate resort to sanctions, and almost any alternative would be preferable… It might even be preferable to state openly that the existing machinery had failed, and let the League go.1180

The attitude to sanctions was nothing new, but the suggestion of League expendability was, particularly from a Council member.1181 The high commissioner was careful to suggest that these views were those of the ‘Commonwealth Government’ and even though there is no record of the cabinet endorsing any process that would ‘let the League go’, Bruce was communicating the thinking of some in the government, presumably including its leader─ Crutchley had already warned that Canberra’s attitude to the League was indifferent and bordering on the hostile.1182 It was not possible for Lyons to be so candid about the League in public as Bruce was in private, but before the end of September he presented a parliamentary statement on the entire, evolving Abyssinian affair. It was an early indication of style without much substance that would be duplicated in his later parliamentary statements on international crises, intended as they were to be statements of government policy─ copiou s, but containing much marginally relevant background information and vague on policy detail.1183 Listeners were often no better informed of the government’s stance at the end than they had been at the beginning, for Lyons rarely revealed any details of private negotiations in such statements. This did not mean that no policy had been formulated or no action taken, as was often presumed. When the Prime Minister rose to his feet

1178 Moffat Diary, 12 September 1935. 1179 Cockram to Wiseman, Dominions Office, 11 September 1935, DO 35/186, quoted from the League debate of 9 September, in Holland, 183; Cumpston, Bruce, 125. Eden and Hoare too were shocked by this attitude, which was also that of te Water, the South African representative. Australia had grave reserves about Abyssinia’s membership in 1925; Hudson, League, 76. 1180 Bruce at Heads of Delegation Meeting, Geneva, 17 September 1935, PREM 1/197/53, PRO, London; also quoted in Hudson, Australia and the League, 82. 1181 Bruce nonetheless remained an adherent of the League long after Lyons; ADB, vol.7, 458. 1182 Crutchley to E.J. Harding, Dominions Office Under-Secretary, 13 August 1935, DO 35/155/4, PRO, London. He suggested that the Australian attitude was that the £67,000 spent on the League would be better spent on defence. 1183 Andrews, Isolationism, 129, noted these traits. Lyons was often criticised for his technique, particularly for preferring to outline the historical context of a dispute rather than to illuminate the action to be taken; Ferguson, Fry, Holmes and Smith, “Australian Foreign Policy-Formation and Expression of Australian Opinion”: 5ff., noted the prevalence of this practice, vide Introduction. 164 on 23 September he seemed determined to avoid offence to Rome, reminding his listeners that neither Italy nor Abyssinia had violated the Covenant and that consequently:

While fully recognising the gravity of the present situation, the Government holds very strongly that it ought not, either by word or by action, to embarrass those who are earnestly striving to effect a peaceful settlement.1184

This was an even-handedness that favoured the aggressor, despite Lyons’s simultaneous assurance (in the style of Bruce around 2 September) that the government maintained its faith in the principles of ‘collective security embodied in the League of Nations’1185 ─ it had not seemed that way to Eden on 17 September. Following a second parliamentary statement on 27 September, the matter seemed settled from Lyons’s perspective.1186 Australia had made its point on sanctions and related matters to Whitehall, but could now do no more than wait, as Smith’s Weekly had once suggested.1187 Lyons (and Bruce) could urge Britain to take the path of Anglo-Italian conciliation, but the initiative remained with Whitehall.

III

As the likelihood of an Abyssinian war increased from September 1935, Lyons was forced to consider the defence repercussions of any confrontation. The qualified assurances of recent months, in which he had continually referred to a peace policy, were not intended to indicate that he was prepared to risk Australian security through neutrality, despite his (Catholic) preference for Italian civilization over Abyssinian independence.1188 Lyons might have been prepared to threaten policy divergence through diplomatic brinkmanship, but he was unprepared to extend such threats into the defence arena, admitting as much to Moffat on 2 October 1935, when hostilities were imminent. While he confessed that he did not know the plans of the British government, the reality of national security was that Australia must now support British policy.1189 The reasoning was clear: ‘My government will follow the British [lead]: I can never forget that some day Australia may find herself in Abyssinia’s present plight.’1190 The ‘plight’

1184 Lyons Statement on Abyssinia, CPD, vol.147, 30-5, 23 September 1935. The statement had been approved, but not amended, by cabinet on 20 September 1935, Cabinet Minutes, A2694, vol.14, Part 2. Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 315. 1185 Lyons, CPD, vol.147, 30-5, 23 September 1935. 1186 Lyons, CPD, vol.147, 295, 27 September 1935. 1187 Smith’s Weekly, 16 May 1935, 12, on Lyons: ‘He Sits and Thinks, and Often Just Sits.’ 1188 Argus, 25 August 1935, 9, h, vide above. A sense of defence vulnerability was common in the Catholic press at the time and led many Catholics to set aside (temporarily), their sympathy for Italy; P. Kneipp, “Australian Catholics and the Abyssinian War.” Journal of Religious History, vol.10 (1979): 422ff., quoting the Catholic Press, 26 September 1935 and Catholic Fireside, 2 November 1935; Millar, 128. This press had also been opposed to sanctions. Archbishop Duhig, of Brisbane, was not among this group, resolutely maintaining his defence of Italy; Sydney Morning Herald, 7 October 1935, 7, d; Boland, 251; Duhig, 173ff. For a broad, critical discussion of Catholic views on Abyssinia; Andrews, Isolationism, 30. On British Catholic views; Griffiths, 18ff. 1189 Moffat Diary, 2 October 1935. Hodgson of External Affairs had warned him earlier in the day of cabinet division. 1190 Lyons to Moffat, Moffat Diary, 2 October 1935. In recalling the quote, on 12 October, Moffat added the word ‘lead’, vide below. Hughes similarly warned an isolationist Curtin in 1938 that Australia could one day ‘cry aloud to the world for help’; Twomey, “Munich,” 31. 165 referred to was the fate of a small, friendless country at the mercy of an aggressive major power, a scenario that continued to trouble him.1191 His attitude was also premised on the assumption that the US would not assist the Empire in the event of a ‘European’ war, as Roosevelt had told him in July.1192 Moffat noted these doubts and explained Lyons’s attitude to the State Department on 12 October.1193 Owing to a ‘fear of Japan’, he said, Australia follows Britain, even when that is ‘against her immediate interests’ such as on this occasion.1194 UK High Commissioner Crutchley had come to a similar conclusion from unknown sources, but he doubted that the cabinet had any collective opinion on such matters, which suggests that the source of his deduction was an individual one.1195 The Australian leader was indeed prepared to support London without qualification by early October, but only now that regional war was close to reality and not out of any animus against Rome, a point he was keen to stress in a subsequent press release that claimed to speak on behalf of the government as a whole.1196 When Italian aircraft bombed Adowa on 2 October, however, they had inadvertently threatened Australian security by their ability to draw imperial resources away from East Asia─ Italy was the ‘gnat’ capable of snapping an already taut ‘cable of Imperial Defence’, as Lord Chatfield put it.1197

Only after the actual commencement of hostilities (on 3 October 1935) did Lyons reluctantly set aside his earlier reservations about the League and sanctions in favour of a temporary acquiescence, largely out of a belief that Australian and British policy must be co- ordinated for the duration of a regional war. He made little effort to conceal his personal displeasure at the turn of events in his first post-invasion comment on 4 October, expressing great disappointment that the League and Britain had failed to settle the dispute peacefully.1198 His new prime ministerial priority and that of his government was containment: ‘All our efforts will be directed towards confining the trouble within the narrowest limits, simultaneously giving the League the fullest support to effect a peaceful settlement.’1199 Lyons was now paying the penalty for concealing his appeasement behind a ‘bland’ public policy of loyalty to the Empire and the League.1200

1191 vide Chapter 5, where Lyons later referred to the unenviable fate of ‘small States existing on the sufferance of powerful neighbours’; Lyons statement, CPD, vol.154, 22-31, 24 August 1937. 1192 vide Chapter 3. 1193 Moffat to Secretary of State, 12 October 1935, FRUS, 1935, vol.3, 363-5, noting that Lyons was better informed about US neutrality legislation than was Hodgson. 1194 ibid., Moffat repeated Lyons’s comments of 2 October in this dispatch. He also mentioned Menzies’s comment in parliament: ‘If we do not support Britain, why should she support us?’ 1195 Crutchley to Harding, 13 August 1935, on the ongoing fear and suspicion of Japan, although he doubted that the cabinet had any collective opinion. 1196 Lyons press release, 12 December 1935, A2908 J18 PART 1, NAA, Canberra; vide below. 1197 McIntyre, 123. Within weeks the DRC at Whitehall warned that it was now necessary to concentrate the fleet in the Mediterranean; P. Bell, Chamberlain, Germany and Japan, 1933-4 (London: Macmillan, 1996), 161; Defence Requirements Committee, 21 November 1935. 1198 Carter, 203-4. 1199 ibid., quoting The Times, 5 October 1935. It was left to Earle Page to make the expected statements of imperial loyalty; Earle Page, CPD, vol.147, 548-53, 9 October 1935. 1200 As suggested by Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 309. 166 Soon, on 12 October, Lyons offered his personal perspectives on recent developments in two very similar public speeches at Wollongong, one addressed to the party faithful. He was now studiously optimistic,1201 expressing confidence that the war would not be a long one and his hope that the conflict could be prevented from spreading to the Pacific.1202 There was no criticism of the aggressor. This optimism allowed Lyons (before his UAP audience) to absolve Britain from the culpability that he had implied on 4 October, referring to ‘Britain’s work for world peace’ and implying that any subsequent co-operation would be according to the qualified assurances he had uttered over recent months.1203 Taking the opportunity to review recent developments in Australian policy, Lyons affirmed his personal faith in the ‘track’ of conciliation:

The result of the Australian mission overseas [1935] was satisfactory to Australia. So long as they kept to the track they had followed there would be no need to worry about the future.1204

His travels, he insisted, had shown him that the world wanted peace in order to recover from the wounds of war, an impression that apparently had its origins in his recent visits to the European war-graves, which he emotionally recalled as a universal, anti-war lesson1205 ─ it was typical of Lyons to take personal experience and to transform it into a political lesson that he thought universally applicable. The way to banish war in his view was through further ‘international government exchanges and visits’, which he defended as worthwhile, ‘if they enable people of other countries to know something more about our country and make them a little more friendly’.1206 This, Lyons concluded, was especially applicable in the Pacific, for ‘the Pacific countries must be friendly’ as the future development of the world would occur in this region─ he then listed the achievements in Pacific conciliation that had occurred under his stewardship in 1935; the meeting with Roosevelt and its improvement of US-Australian relations, the Abe and Debuchi missions.1207 Both of these speeches were good examples of Lyons’s world-view at a time when his appeasement seemed under assault─ opti mistic; desirous of continued peacemaking; regionally-oriented; intensely personal in their analysis of world events and in the solutions offered.1208 Despite the shadow of war over Africa and whatever defence implications

1201 He claimed that there had never been a ‘happier Government’ than the present one; Lyons speech to UAP at Wollongong, 12 October 1935, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 October 1935, 10, g. 1202 Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, 271; Lyons Wollongong speech, 12 October 1935, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 October 1935, 11, e. 1203 Lyons Wollongong speech to UAP, 12 October 1935, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 October 1935, 10, g. 1204 ibid. 1205 Lyons Wollongong speech, 12 October 1935, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 October 1935, 11, e. 1206 ibid. 1207 ibid. 1208 Lyons now certainly matched Twomey’s category, “Australia and the Search…”, 400-1, of Australian policy- makers conscious that Australia was part of the Pacific community. 167 this would bring, there could not in his mind be any reversal of conciliation, for he remained confident that ‘the war cloud will soon be dispersed’: ‘The clouds would pass away─ even the clouds of war. A brighter day would dawn.’1209 These conclusions at least now allowed Lyons to swallow the bitter pill of sanctions, unmentioned in the speeches, in the belief that they would be only a temporary expedient, unlikely to impede conciliation for any lengthy period.

It remains unclear whether the optimism and analyses of the Wollongong speeches were shared by Lyons’s colleagues, but cabinet considered British proposals on the imposition of sanctions on 16 October and accepted them before the end of the month.1210 Bruce, in London, had reached a similar melancholy conclusion that boats had been burned and that there was now ‘no alternative’ to sanctions.1211 On 25 October, Lyons thus initialled the recommendations of External Affairs, which he had rejected on 29 August.1212 Only war had brought about this U-turn ─ Lyons and Hodgson at that department could now agree that ‘small countries’ must support sanctions for their own security.1213 Nevertheless, Lyons avoided the details, delegating their implementation to the more enthusiastic ministers, notably Pearce, Menzies and Page.1214 Nor did Lyons, an able parliamentary performer, have the inclination to defend the new sanctions policy in that forum,1215 for his own pre-October views had been closer to those of Curtin than to those of his cabinet.1216 There were at least two consolations for the economic manager; firstly, Lyons told Moffat that he was ‘reasonably satisfied’ that Britain would not press for ‘extreme’ sanctions, such as closing the Suez Canal (as advocated by the NZ high commissioner in London, Parr);1217 secondly, any damage to Australian trade would be minimal, as exports to Italy were valued below £1 million p.a.1218

1209 Lyons Wollongong speech, 12 October 1935, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 October 1935, 11, e. Lyons Wollongong speech to UAP, 12 October 1935, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 October 1935, 10, g. 1210 Cabinet minutes, 16 October 1935, A 2694, volume 14(3), NAA, Canberra. Commonwealth government to Dominions Office, 16 October 1935, DO 114/67/16/35, PRO, London; ibid., 25 October, DO 114/67/17/38. Cabinet approved a sanctions bill on 30 October 1935; Cabinet Minutes, A2694, vol.14 (3). 1211 Bruce record of conversation with Eden, 17 October 1935, M104/3, NAA, Canberra. 1212 Cabinet Papers, 25 October 1935, CRS A6006, Roll 9, NAA, Melbourne. 1213 Moffat Diary, 5 February 1936, following a dinner with Hodgson, now the permanent head of a revived department, vide below. 1214 Pearce supervised the details; Commonwealth government to Dominions Office, 16 October 1935, DO 114/67/16/35, PRO, London; ibid., 25 October, DO 114/67/17/38. Pearce led the discussions on the Sanctions Bill in cabinet; Cabinet Minutes, A2694, vol.14 (3), 30 October 1935. Menzies defended sanctions vigorously during October, CPD, vol.147, 1207-13, and guided the Sanctions Bill through parliament as Attorney-General; “The League and Sanctions.” Round Table, vol.26, no.102 (March 1936): 394ff. 1215 Menzies regarded Lyons as ‘the best Parliamentarian of my time’; George Adlingon Syme Oration, Melbourne, 28 May 1963. The defence of sanctions was left to Page on 9 October 1935, CPD, vol.147, 548-53. 1216 Day, Curtin, 344-5. On the Labor attitude, particularly Curtin; E. Andrews, “Australian Labour and Foreign Policy 1935-39: The Retreat from Isolationism.” Labour History, no.9 (November 1965): 26; also Hasluck, Government, 81. 1217 Moffat Diary, 2 October 1935; also in Andrews, Isolationism, 45. On Parr’s advocacy of 26 September 1935; Carlton, “The Dominions and British Policy…”: 62. 1218 Australian exports to Italy, 1934-5, constituted only £991,483. Her imports constituted only £567,864, Commonwealth government to Secretary-General, League of Nations, Geneva, 13 July 1936, DO 114/67/18/40, PRO, London. 168

IV

One of the first political casualties of the Abyssinian war was Hughes, forced to resign in November out of a prime ministerial sense of cabinet solidarity (despite Lyons’s high personal regard for him)1219 and owing to his criticism of the government’s sanctions policy in his Australia and War Today.1220 He was, however, soon returned to the ministry (in February 1936) with Lyons’s direct indulgence,1221 but too late to play any part in a significant departmental reshuffle that was probably also a consequence of the conflict in East Africa─ the separation of the Department of External Affairs from its subordination to the prime minister’s own department, on 19 November 1935. External Affairs had led an uncertain existence since its re- establishment by Hughes in 1921.1222 What little autonomy the department enjoyed was stamped on by Scullin, when the position of ‘director of External Affairs’ was abolished and administrative control of a new ‘External Office’ placed in the hands of the assistant secretary of his own department, J.H. Starling.1223 Although Lyons had broken the ministerial nexus between the two departments in January 1932, his surrender of Treasury to Casey (3 October 1935) left the way open for him to formalise his cultivation of foreign affairs, but he declined to do so as and the portfolio was retained by the veteran Pearce.1224 External Affairs was instead made into an entirely separate department of state, on 19 November 1935, a status it had not hitherto enjoyed, some acknowledgement of the increasing amount of attention external relations had demanded of the Lyons government since December 1933.1225

Coming amidst the Abyssinian crisis, this departmental rebirth was an indication of a belief amongst some in the Lyons government that Australia needed to take a more definite part

1219 On Hughes-Lyons co-operation in the period 1932-35, vide earlier chapters; Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, 200. Hughes had been returned to cabinet on 12 October 1934, as Minister of Health and Repatriation. Lyons confirmed his personal regard in parliament on 6 November 1935, CPD, vol.147, 1307. He told Whiskard, UK High Commissioner, however, that he was uncertain whether Hughes was a greater menace in or out of cabinet; Whiskard to Inskip, 28 April 1939, DO121/46, PRO, London, incorrectly quoted in McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 84. 1220 In his book; W. Hughes, Australia and War Today: The Price of Peace (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1935), 95; Hasluck, Government, 44-5, provides a summary of Hughes’s theses. Pearce recalled him quietly working on the manuscript in October 1935 while the cabinet discussed sanctions; G. Pearce, Carpenter to Cabinet. Thirty-Seven Years of Parliament (London: Hutchinson, 1951), 193-4. Fitzhardinge, 633ff. 1221 vide below. 1222 DAFP, vol.1, 545, Appendix 2, “The Organisation of Australia’s External Relations”. Hughes had abolished the department in 1916, I. Cumpston, History of Australian Foreign Policy 1901-1991 (Canberra: 1995), 3. Andrews, Writing, 24-5, gives a review of the history of the department. 1223 Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Annual Report 1978-9, “History of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.” Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, vol.11, no.196 (1979). Canberra: Australian Government Printing Service, 34. Normally, the permanent head of the Prime Minister’s department was also secretary of External Affairs; Andrews, Writing, 24-5. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 28, documents Scullin’s reforms of 1930 and the formation of an External Office within the Prime Minister’s department. 1224 Casey and the Prime Minister were close, the former being used as an intermediary with Hodgson in 1935, vide below. On Casey-Lyons; Enid Lyons, Carrion Crows, 124ff. 1225 P. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 108, and “Australian Foreign Policy in the 1930s…”: 338-9; A. Watt, “The Australian Diplomatic Service 1935-1965” in Australia in World Affairs 1961-65, eds. G. Greenwood and N. Harper (Melbourne: F.W. Cheshire, 1968), 137ff., give details of the reorganisation. 169 in world affairs.1226 Even though the 1935 crisis probably provided the ‘impetus’ for such a separation, reform had been considered earlier.1227 The careful selection of Hodgson, as the new permanent head suggests that Lyons hoped for a better co-ordination of the views of prime minister and department, for the pre-October sanctions episode had indicated a disturbing dissonance.1228 Hodgson had been appointed as assistant secretary in charge of the external affairs section of the Prime Minister’s Department in 1934,1229 but he only became a permanent head after Lyons had reason to believe, through Casey, that he was sympathetic to a policy of conciliation ─ Hodgson had assured Casey on 23 J anuary 1935: ‘I am not one of those who believe that the process of readjustment now taking place can only result in war, as we so often hear and read.’1230 The accelerated selection of Hodgson as secretary in November 1935 may not have been as ‘accidental’ as some in the department believed it was.1231 He certainly enjoyed prime ministerial ‘direct access’ thereafter and never openly questioned appeasement in Lyons’s presence.1232

Just as Lyons’s failure to take the portfolio himself in 1932 had not been a reflection of any lack of interest in foreign affairs,1233 the administrative separation of 1935 was not an indication that he was now prepared to abdicate the management of external relations. Lyons’s behaviour after November 1935 revealed his intention to maintain a supervisory role as if joint minister, his practice since the 1934 retirement of Latham. He was not yet the de facto minister that he became from mid-1937, but he was increasingly a ‘quasi-presidential’ primus inter pares.1234 It was probably not accidental, for example, that the Prime Minister’s Department retained the responsibility for Australian representation abroad, an area of particular interest to Lyons, but not to Pearce at this time.1235 Nor was there any indication that Lyons intended to alter the present condition that allowed him to pursue his personal diplomacy without the interference

1226 Cabinet Papers, 19 November 1935, CRS A6006, Roll 9. 1227 There had been discussion under Latham of a separate department, but on the Abyssinian ‘impetus’; Andrews, Isolationism, 25. Murray: 49, saw it as ‘Lyons’s response to the world tension’. 1228 Lyons had hoped to include Hodgson in the AEM; Lyons to Latham, 11 December 1933, A5954 1086/5. Hodgson had connections with Blamey of the Defence of Australia League. Blamey had acted as a strong referee for Hodgson in 1932, when he applied for the position of liaison officer at Whitehall; ADB, vol.9, 321ff. 1229 His title before November 1935 reflected the confusion over the autonomy or otherwise of external affairs - Hodgson was officially the Assistant Secretary in the Department of External Affairs, but usually referred to as the Assistant Secretary (External Affairs) in the Prime Minister’s Department; DAFP, vol.1, 545, Appendix 2, “The Organisation of Australia’s External Relations”; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 28. 1230 Hodgson to Casey, 23 January 1935, A981 EUR 6 PART 2, NAA, Canberra. He also stated his belief that everything must be done to avoid ‘risking the hazards of war’. 1231 A. Watt, “The Australian Diplomatic Service 1935-1965”, 137. Twomey, “Munich,” 23-4, quoted in G. Woodard, "The Diplomacy of Appeasement", Quadrant, vol.23, nos.1-2 (January-February 1999): 49, was right to put Hodgson in the same appeasing class as Lyons and Casey at this time, although this was changing as early as 1936, when Hodgson was less enthusiastic; Hodgson to Moffat, Moffat Diary, 5 February 1936. 1232 A. Watt, “The Australian Diplomatic Service”, ibid. 1233 As suggested in Andrews, “Patterns…”, 96; Andrews, Writing, 31; Hasluck, Diplomatic Witness, 13; White, Joseph Lyons, 167; Megaw, “Goodwill…”: 260; G. Henderson, 56. 1234 P. Edwards, “The Rise and Fall…”, 52, on prime ministers and the quest for this status. 1235 Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, “History of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet”, 34. vide Chapter 3 for Pearce’s opposition to diplomatic representation in Washington. 170 of either minister or department.1236 Pearce, the ‘Tory patriot’ as Lyons had derogatively called him,1237 had been excluded from the 1935 London delegation (as he was to be from the 1937 Imperial Conference) and gave no indication of any knowledge of his prime minister’s diplomatic activity then or at any other time.1238 External policy was still to be constructed around the principle of universal appeasement, although Pearce soon gave evidence of opposition to the broad extent of that policy, if not of its essential principles.

The continuing weakness and ‘nebulous position’ of External Affairs ensured the continued shift towards prime ministerial hegemony that increasingly suited Lyons (as it had many incumbents) and had long suited Whitehall.1239 Some contemporaries also recognised that the ‘infant Foreign Office’,1240 with its miniscule staff and lack of clout in the departmental hierarchy, was some years away from having an influence on policy equal to its supply of knowledge.1241 Whatever were the intentions of the rebirth of External Affairs, the department remained unable to guide, even co-ordinate, external policy after November 1935.1242 Its subordinate role in policy formulation was also little altered. If the rebirth of the department was an attempt to formalise the often haphazard methods that applied in such formulation, then it failed ─ the November 1935 administrative reform offered an opportunity to arrange some formal structure of policy development both within the department and within the broader ministry (perhaps based on the Whitehall model of a permanent cabinet sub-committee), but Lyons chose not to pursue such an option. New department or not, policy formulation generally remained ad hoc, uncoordinated, occasionally little more than the result of Lyons’s personal sentiments and of his system of unstructured, collegial counsel.1243 Hodgson made little attempt to disrupt these procedures and was criticised from within, by a group of young Turks less inclined to appeasement, for being inactive in policy formulation and failing to make his own decisions─

1236 On Pearce as a desultory minister; Moffat Diary, 4 October 1935; P. Edwards, Australia Through American Eyes, 24, 27; Schuurman to Moffat, Moffat Diary, 24 August 1936, pace P. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 104. Hodgson complained that Pearce would disappear to WA for weeks at a time; P. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 99. The bureaucrats respected Pearce; Hasluck, Chance, 25, endorsing Heydon’s account of Pearce as an efficient minister and quoting Frank Strahan, Lyons’s private secretary. Similar sentiments are found in Hasluck, Light, 43 and Heydon, passim. 1237 Moffat Diary, 24-5 October 1935. Moffat thought Pearce too inclined to follow the British line. 1238 Lyons to Pearce, 5 January 1935, Pearce Papers, MS 1927/ 213/5; also Murphy, 156. On the seeming ignorance of External Affairs about the Lyons-FDR meeting, vide Chapter 3. 1239 Weller, First, 184-5, suggests that Whitehall encouraged dominion prime ministers to dominate external policy by the frequent use of circular cables sent directly to them, rather than to external affairs offices. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 23-4. P. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 109ff., noted the hegemonic effect on the prime minister of departmental weakness; similarly in “The Rise and Fall…”, 48. The quote is found in Andrews, “The Great Temptation.”: 359. Also “Introduction,” in Between Empire and Nation, eds. C. Bridge and B. Attard, 3-4; Thompson, 16-17; Meaney, Search, 92, 191. 1240 Anon., “Our Infant ‘Foreign Office’.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.1, no.1 (April 1937): 6. 1241 The new department boasted only some 10 officers and 4 typists in Canberra, with only 3 overseas postings (2 in London and 1 in Geneva); DAFP, vol.1, 546, Appendix 2, “The Organisation of Australia’s External Relations”; similarly in H. Wolfsohn, “The Evolution of Australia in World Affairs”, in Towards a Foreign Policy: 1914-1941, ed. W. Hudson (Melbourne: Cassell, 1967), 38; Andrews, Isolationism, 25; P. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 104. The Foreign Office consisted of 173 executives alone in these years; Roberts, Holy Fox, 86. It was many years before External Affairs assumed an influence equal to that of the Defence Department; A. Watt, Australian Diplomat (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1972), 22. 1242 According to P. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 107ff. 1243 vide Introduction for a discussion of policy formulation in this period. 171 External Affairs, it was said, had become a post office.1244 The departmental head ultimately remained, as his colleague Alan Watt suggested, ‘an army man at heart who was never quite at home in the world of diplomacy’.1245 This was so even in Lyons’s world of appeasement and its informal, personal diplomacy.

V

The sanctions agreed to by the Australian cabinet during October 1935 proved to have a foundation of sand. London itself was already having doubts by December and the Foreign Secretary, Hoare, informed the British cabinet (on 2 December 1935) of certain ‘peace proposals’, about which ‘some’ dominion high commissioners had already been ‘sounded informally’.1246 So it was that soon after Lyons had accepted sanctions (against his own inclinations), Whitehall was toying with the sort of direct negotiation and concessions (appeasement) that he preferred and had applied in his own region since 1933-34. Unsurprisingly, when the high commissioners were officially informed by the Foreign Secretary of the Hoare- Laval proposals on Abyssinia and of the cabinet’s decision to proceed with them (on 10 December), Bruce offered his endorsement.1247 Lyons was still left in the invidious position of being publicly committed to a policy that Whitehall seemed on the verge of modifying, if not abandoning.1248

The Australian cabinet dispersed on 12 December before it had given a curious Crutchley any indication of its attitude to the Hoare-Laval proposals,1249 but Lyons issued a press release on the same day, in which their (and his own) attitude to recent developments was made clear.1250 Here, he attempted to balance the sanctions to which he was now frustratingly committed with the undermining proceeding apace in Whitehall. This undermining was a process of appeasement of which he approved, but Lyons could not publicly disavow sanctions, given that they were the

1244 P. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 107. A good account of the disorderly, Hodgson-led department is provided in Hasluck, Diplomatic Witness, 3ff. 1245 A. Watt, “The Australian Diplomatic Service 1935-1965”, 137. 1246 Cabinet minutes, 2 December 1935, CAB 23/82, PRO, London, also quoted in Carlton, “The Dominions and British Policy…”: 63. The Hoare-Laval plan for peace and territorial division in Abyssinia had been discussed in Paris on 7 December 1935 and was later seen as a betrayal of sanctions and of the League; Taylor, English History, 284-5; Shen, 76ff.; Rose, 148. It failed to obtain British cabinet approval on 18 December 1935. Hoare had once been a sanctionist; H. Pelling, Winston Churchill (London: Book Club Associates, 1974), 374; Carlton, “The Dominions and British Policy…”: 60. 1247 Bruce, 10 December 1935; Carlton, “The Dominions and British Policy…”: 63-4. The other dominions, especially NZ and South Africa, were opposed, for their own reasons – for that reason, Mansergh, Survey, 427, suggested they were a threat to Commonwealth unity. The hostility of the Australian press to Hoare-Laval did not support Bruce’s optimistic contention at this meeting that Australian public opinion would be receptive; Crutchley to DO, 16 December 1935, DO 114/67/152/86, PRO, London. Farrell, 271-2, on British cabinet solidarity before the proposals were leaked. 1248 Medlicott, 123, on the impossibility of a British government abandoning collective security to give Mussolini the free hand he sought. 1249 Crutchley to DO, 16 December 1935, DO 114/67/152/86. Similarly in Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 312. 1250 Lyons press release through the Commonwealth Publicity Officer, 12 December 1935, A2908 J18 PART 1. Throughout he used the plural pronoun ‘we’ to stress collegiality, although the views were also his own; vide Introduction on Lyons’s working methods. 172 issue over which Hughes had so recently been cast into the wilderness ─ he did, however, signal the approval and relief of prime minister and cabinet (‘we’) at their side-lining in favour of the alternative, appeasing (Hoare-Laval) process. The 12 December press release lauded the League’s earlier efforts to maintain the peace and to contain the spread of the war, which Lyons now disingenuously suggested had been the objective of sanctions all along, when he had in fact seen them as an act of war.1251 He was already contemplating the repairs that would be necessary to Anglo-Italian friendship, specifically denying any animus towards Italy and expressing confidence that a process of reconciliation would start following ‘friendly and satisfactory conversations’ between Mussolini and the British ambassador, Drummond (both of whom Lyons had met in 1935).1252 The signal to Italy was clear: disregard any view of sanctions as bellicose and engage in amicable discussions in the spirit of Hoare-Laval. Canberra’s tenuous attempts to reconcile sanctions and détente were, however, torpedoed by the collapse of these proposals before the end of December and the elevation of Eden to the Foreign Office, although not before Lyons had made clear his own and his government’s preference for direct negotiation at the first expedient opportunity.

Hoare undermined sanctions in December 1935, but it was Hitler who brought them crashing down. Events on the Rhine after 7 March 1936 made it imperative, at least from the perspective of the Australian appeasers, that the pantomime be brought to an end, lest Italy be further alienated from her Locarno associates. Earle Page made this point of view explicit in London on 2 April 1936.1253 When the British, themselves conscious of this danger, touted the lifting of sanctions at a high commissioners’ meeting on 7 April, only Bruce was in favour.1254 In a letter to Lyons some weeks later, Bruce reported that even the League Assembly had accepted on 18 April that sanctions had failed.1255 The Prime Minister needed little convincing: since Hitler’s ‘Saturday-surprise’ of 7 March 1936, his fear of war had sharpened and there was now no place for instruments viewed as explicit acts of belligerence (despite Lyons’s spurious analysis of them as instruments of peace on 12 December last).1256 It was left to one of the trio of ministers who had so favoured sanctions in October to admit their failure now: Pearce first did so in the Senate on 24 April 1936.1257 Australia, he said, despite this failure had done its bit, exports to Italy having been wiped out in the six months from late 1935.1258 Whatever consolation this was

1251 ibid. On Lyons’s connection of sanctions and war; Crutchley, UK High Commission, Canberra, to Dominions Office, 12 September 1935, DO 114/67/16/34, quoting Lyons’s telegram of 2 September 1935. 1252 Lyons press release, 12 December 1935, A2908 J18 PART 1. 1253 Holland, 188, quoting Page at a high commissioners’ meeting, 2 April 1936. 1254 High Commissioners’ meeting, 7 April 1936, DO 114/67/6, PRO, London and Carlton, “The Dominions and British Policy…”: 67. Bruce repeated his support for termination on 8 April; ibid.: 68. 1255 Bruce to Lyons, 22 April 1936, A981 ABYS 43, NAA, Canberra. 1256 vide below on the Rhineland crisis. 1257 Pearce statement on international affairs, CPD, vol.150, 900ff., 24 April 1936. Page and Menzies were in London. 1258 Current Notes, vol.1, no.2 (1936): 23, trade table, showing the value of such trade having been reduced from just under £72,000 to £1,184. The wool trade with Italy had fallen from 219,000 bales in 1932-33 to 15,700 in 1935-36; Department of Trade assessment, CP 4/2/33, NAA, Canberra. 173 to the sanctionists, the fall of Addis Ababa on 2 May 1936 put the future of this instrument beyond doubt, except to a few of the more dogged, like Menzies.1259

The experiment that Lyons (and Bruce) had so opposed was effectively over: the task now was to end it formally, with as little loss of face as possible. Lyons remained evasive in parliament about this task on 5 May,1260 to the amusement of Smith’s Weekly, which suggested that the Prime Minister was uninformed about the lobbying of his own ministers in London.1261 It seems more likely that he was unwilling to abandon sanctions in public until the ambiguous attitudes of Whitehall became clearer.1262 Three days later, Bruce did what he could to push Whitehall towards a public admission that sanctions were now ‘hopeless’,1263 a view now shared by Lyons himself, and although the Prime Minister denied in parliament on 12 May that the policy had been a ‘complete failure’, he was clearly reluctant to accept criticism for the abandonment of a policy about which he had been ‘tepid’ in the first place.1264 Within a short time, however, he seemed to tire of waiting for a lead from Whitehall and Pearce signalled that the government was considering the unilateral lifting of sanctions on 14 May 1936, a notably radical proposal per se.1265 The cabinet accepted this premise on 23 May, concluding that ‘no good purpose’ was now served by their continuation1266 ─ Bruce, active in consultative high commissioners’ meetings, was accordingly instructed to communicate this viewpoint to Whitehall, almost a month before the British cabinet came to the same conclusion.1267

Reports of this Australian unilateralism on sanctions circulated in the French press in the first week of June.1268 They were likely to have resonated with Chamberlain, who himself suggested, on 10 June, that continued sanctions would constitute a ‘midsummer of madness’,1269

1259 High Commissioners’ meeting, 7 April 1936, DO 114/67/6, PRO, London. Martin, Menzies, 180, incorrectly suggests that Menzies changed his view following the fall, but on 6 May he was still in favour of sanctions for the duration: High Commissioners’ meetings, DO 114/67/7, PRO, London. He did not relent until 8 June, DO 114/67/10. 1260 Lyons in reply to a question from Baker, CPD, vol.150, 1200, 5 May 1936. Pesman-Cooper, “We Want a Mussolini”: 357, summarises Lyons’s attitude to the Abyssinian crisis and correctly sees his reluctant acceptance of sanctions as falling away after the fall of Addis Ababa. 1261 Smith’s Weekly, 16 May 1936, “Out in the Cold”, depicted Lyons shivering outside a ministerial meeting and saying: “It’s so difficult to know what’s going on.” 1262 Baldwin was sending mixed signals, telling the Commons on 6 May 1936 that future consideration of Abyssinia was in the hands of the League Council, Parliamentary Debates, vol.311, col.1679, also in Cumpston, Bruce, 128. 1263 Bruce at a meeting of Eden and the high commissioners, London, 8 May 1936, quoted in Hudson, Australia and the League, 84-5, and in Carlton, “The Dominions and British Policy…”: 68. Page informed Lyons of Bruce’s advocacy on 8 May, with Lyons then suggesting a speedy end to sanctions; Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 316. 1264 Lyons in answer to a question from F. Forde, CPD, vol.150, 1521, 12 May 1936. Mansergh, Survey, 156. On 12 December 1935 he could only praise their ‘moral’ effect; Lyons press release, 12 December 1935, A2908 J18 PART 1. 1265 Carter, 239. 1266 Cabinet Minutes, 23 May 1936, A2694, vol.15, NAA, Canberra. 1267 The British cabinet only agreed to an announcement on the end of sanctions on 17 June 1936; Lamb, Mussolini and the British, 168. Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 310-11, on the meetings occurring at this time between the high commissioners and British ministers, which did not commit the dominions to any course. 1268 Carter, 239, quoting Le Temps, 7 June 1936, and also The Times, 17 June 1936. 1269 Chamberlain in a speech to the 1900 Club, 10 June 1936; C. Seton -Watson, “The Anglo-Italian Gentleman’s Agreement of January 1937 and its Aftermath,” in Fascist Challenge, ed. L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen, 280, note 6; also in Holland, 188. On the same day, Chamberlain told Grandi, the Italian ambassador that sanctions were ‘dead’; Lamb, Mussolini and the British, 168. 174 for the Chancellor appeared privately assured that Italy was now ‘satisfied’.1270 The British cabinet, including Eden, finally agreed on 17 June to their eventual termination,1271 despite the opposition of New Zealand and South Africa.1272 Before this decision was communicated to the dominions,1273 however, Lyons had made his own pronouncement on 18 June 1936 (AEST), perhaps aware through External Affairs or via Bruce that British opinion was now ready for the termination of sanctions and conscious of Chamberlain’s recent speech.1274 This statement, intended for public circulation, appeared in the British and Australian press before any official announcement from Whitehall1275 ─ at the very least it showed how keen Lyons himself was to announce the death of sanctions. Australia had been the most reluctant of the dominions to accept sanctions in September-October 19351276 ─ it was now the first to advocate their termination, as the Prime Minister felt free to expound the views he had long held, but had recently subdued in the interests of imperial and cabinet unity.

The Lyons cablegram to Bruce, dated 18 June, was initialled by Hodgson, but not expressive of his views, for as recently as February the new departmental head had assessed the Hoare-Laval proposals with bitterness1277 ─ Hodgson was in the process of re-evaluating appeasement (although still far from being the anti-appeaser that he later became), at a time when Lyons was entertaining its further extension. This cable indicated Lyons’s state of mind in the aftermath of the League’s second major failure─ even though its context and the surrounding sources indicate that it very much expressed his own views, both as individual and as prime minister, it was issued under the epithet of the ‘Commonwealth Government’. The reasons for this are unclear, but doing so conveyed the impression of collegial support for its controversial content, whatever were the responses of the cabinet.1278 Here, he attributed the failure of sanctions to the non-universality of the League, though Australia had ‘fully carried out its obligations’, and could see only a single consolation in the whole episode, noting that the ‘application of [the] principle of collective action for restraint of an aggressor’ demonstrated ‘a

1270 Lamb, Mussolini and the British, 165; Seton -Watson, 269. Chamberlain made a handwritten note, in his private notebook, at this time, of an interview between Ward Price and Mussolini, where the Duce said as much; Neville Chamberlain Papers, NC 2/25, University of Birmingham Archives. 1271 Lamb, Mussolini and the British, 168. Eden had indicated in parliament on 18 June that sanctions had failed in his view; Parliamentary Debates, 18 June 1936, vol.313, col.1197ff. 1272 Holland, 189; Carlton, “The Dominions and British Policy…”: 69-70. NZ was entirely pro-League; South Africa was more concerned about aggression in its own region. 1273 The dominions were not officially informed of the British cabinet decision of 17 June until the nineteenth; UK Government to all Dominions, 19 June 1936, DO 114/67/156, PRO, London. 1274 Current Notes, 2 June 1936, vol.1, no.6: 132-3, summarised British opinion that Mussolini’s overtures ought not to be rejected and that the Italians wanted sanctions lifted. Menzies was now also in the anti-sanctions fold; High Commissioners’ meeting, 8 June 1936, DO 114/67/10, PRO, London. 1275 The Times published extracts on 19 June 1936, Hankinson to DO, 19 June 1936, DO 114/67/163. 1276 Bruce at Heads of Delegation Meeting, Geneva, 17 September 1935, PREM 1/197/53, vide above. 1277 He told Moffat that Abyssinia would end in either a victory for the League or for Fascism; Hodgson to Moffat, Moffat Diary, 5 February 1936. 1278 In accordance with Lyons’s working methods; vide Introduction. There are no details of the cabinet’s view of the matter. 175 great moral advance’.1279 This barely disguised his original lack of enthusiasm and Lyons was ominous and more practical in his conclusion: ‘However we [sic] have now to face future.’1280 The role of Geneva in that future was minimal according to the analysis that followed, for this vision entailed the removal of economic blockades in favour of ‘a general all-round settlement in interests of peace’ ─ ‘the continuation of sanctions not only precludes collaboration of Italy in this settlement but increases prevailing tension and anxieties particularly in Europe’.1281 Whitehall was finally soothed by assurances that Australia would not act unilaterally ‘to withdraw sanctions’, despite suggestions to that effect in May, but the sentiments of this cable were text-book appeasement (and very much matched the Lyons individual world-view) in their advocacy of restraint in order to create an atmosphere conducive to negotiation.1282 This merely constituted a return to pre-League practices in the eyes of the critics of appeasement, but to Lyons it was a reasonable response to the new, quasi post-League conditions in which the grievances of the unsatisfied must be addressed without the coercion of the Covenant, ‘in the light of the experiences of the last six months and in the interests of future world peace’.1283 The cable thus clearly foresaw the possibility of Whitehall applying appeasement in Europe in some form, after the disposal of sanctions and according to the aborted precedent of Hoare-Laval.1284

Australia was the only dominion to espouse the view in mid-June that sanctions ought to be withdrawn,1285 but Whitehall was now of the same mind, telling them so on 19 June.1286 When no Whitehall action towards withdrawal followed in subsequent weeks, Lyons abandoned his promise not to act unilaterally,1287 with London and Geneva being warned (on 13 July 1936) that Canberra had decided on just such a course.1288 This was not policy divergence, but it was an example of Canberra’s impatience. It was not, however, until 11 September 1936 that Pearce was able to announce that sanctions had been lifted in accordance with a League committee resolution of 15 July, without mentioning the indelicate cable of 13 July.1289 Never again would Lyons himself entertain the use of sanctions, in any form, against any aggressor, for any reason─ a

1279 Text of a prime ministerial statement, Lyons to Bruce, 18 June 1936, A2908 118 PART 2, NAA, Canberra; noted in Mansergh, Survey, 156. The statement was circulated in Current Notes, vol.1, no.11 (September 1936). The comment on morality repeated the sentiments of the press release, 12 December 1935, A2908 J18 PART 1. 1280 Lyons to Bruce, 18 June 1936, A2908 118 PART 2. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 308, 411, on Lyons’s lack of enthusiasm about sanctions. 1281 Lyons to Bruce, 18 June 1936, A2908 118 PART 2. 1282 ibid. Carter, 239; Cabinet Minutes, 23 May 1936, A2694, vol.15, on May suggestions of unilateralism. 1283 Woolf: 170, on the old, pre-League system of negotiation, backed by war. Lyons to Bruce, 18 June 1936, A2908 118 PART 2. 1284 Whiskard of the UK High Commission cannot have been thinking of this cable when he suggested that there was a general relief in Australia at the failure of Hoare-Laval; Whiskard to M. MacDonald, 18 June 1936, Malcolm MacDonald Papers, 7/6/74-80, Durham University, quoted in Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 312. 1285 Malcolm MacDonald report, 19 June 1936, FO 954/6A, PRO, London. MacDonald, the Dominions Secretary since November, had been informed of Lyons’s views by Bruce on 18 June. 1286 UK Government to all Dominions, 19 June 1936, DO 114/67/156, PRO, London, conceding that sanctions had ‘failed to achieve their object’. 1287 Lyons to Bruce, 18 June 1936, A2908 118 PART 2. 1288 UK High Commission, Crutchley, Canberra, to Dominions Office, 13 July 1936, DO 114/67/18/39, PRO, London. Geneva was informed on the same day; Commonwealth Government to League Secretary-General, Geneva, 13 July 1936, DO 114/67/18/40, PRO, London. 1289 Pearce, CPD, vol.151, 54, 11 September 1936. 176 reconfirmation of the views he had held before Abyssinia, the origins of which may be traced back to Latham.1290 In November 1935, Hughes had warned that sanctions were ‘either an empty gesture or war’;1291 Lyons appeared to share such views from at least 1936 onwards. They were not shared by many in cabinet and certainly not by Pearce and his department, who contemplated their future application, even the option of military provisions, setting the stage for later cabinet disputes over the extent and nature of appeasement.1292

The failure of the sanctions experiment reflected poorly on Geneva ─ if Abyssinia was a ‘test case’ for the League (as many had stated it would be),1293 then that institution had failed, or so Lyons now believed. Bruce might still have been convinced that collective security was basically sound, but in need of set conditions (such as League universality and a general rearmament to enforce collective action), but Lyons’s response was less subtle.1294 He admitted in cabinet his plain belief in the League’s ‘doubtful effectiveness’, although remained inhibited about repeating these sentiments publicly, where he still occasionally claimed adherence to Geneva’s principles without defining what he meant in practical terms.1295 Lyons preferred recourse to generalities in the immediate aftermath of the Abyssinian fiasco, suggesting on 18 June 1936 that an opportunity now existed for building ‘a structure for the future security of mankind’, although it was to be another year before he gave any public indication of the sort of extra-League ‘structure’ he had in mind.1296 How much, if at all, the Australian actions of April-July 1936 had influenced Whitehall’s attitudes during the Abyssinian dispute is difficult to gauge─ certainly Bruce had been a major player in the exchanges and consultative processes during the period and possibly his and Lyons’s clearly stated preferences were of some use to the conciliators and anti-sanctionists at Whitehall.1297 There is, however, no direct evidence to suggest any decisive dominion influence at Whitehall during the whole episode, 1935-36, and for that reason any suggestions of immediate, if not of cumulative, impact must be discounted.1298 What is beyond dispute is that dominion opinion was sought by Whitehall during the crisis and consultative mechanisms were

1290 vide below on this opposition, Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918-45 (London: HMSO, 1949), series C, vol.5, 100, 11 March 1936 and Chapter 5ff. 1291 Hughes, Australia and War Today, 95. Lyons owned a copy; Home Hill, Personal visit, 21 December 1999. 1292 Both minister and department were disinclined to rule out their future use, including the option of military provisions; Pearce parliamentary statement, 8 September 1936, Current Notes, vol.1 (Sept 1936), 283. External Affairs cabinet memorandum, 11 September 1936, reissued unchanged as a Memorandum prepared for Delegation to Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 5, point 4. 1293 Woolf: 164, 166, attributing such a view to Baldwin, Simon and Eden. 1294 Bruce’s views according to Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 312, 315. 1295 Lyons, Cabinet Papers, 10 July 1936, CRS A6006 Roll 10, NAA, Melbourne. Only three months earlier he had accepted the vice-presidency of the NSW League of Nations Union, Lyons to Watt, 17 April 1936, CP 30/3/56, NAA, Canberra. Lyons could be said to share the ‘political inhibition’ about public criticism of the League found in many British politicians; R. Parker, “The Failure of Collective Security in British Appeasement,” in Fascist Challenge, ed. L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen, 27. Medlicott, 129, on the vagueness of many British politicians over the meaning of their commitment to the League. 1296 Lyons to Bruce, 18 June 1936, A2908 118 PART 2. 1297 Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 317-21, 340, on Bruce and his influence during this period. 1298 ibid., 317-21, on the difficulty of gauging influence, which need not be immediate or decisive. Carlton, “The Dominions and British Policy…”: 75, was insistent on the lack of decisive, dominion impact during this crisis. 177 activated, especially via the high commissioners, even if the process lies open to accusations of deceit1299 ─ for its part, every effort was made by a dominion such as Australia to seek information and to offer its appeasing counsel. When that counsel seemed to have little effect, Lyons showed signs of his impatience in what would become the pattern of the following years, until Chamberlain’s premiership offered the prospect of a new deal.

VI The separation of External Affairs as an instrument of sharper focus on international affairs was timely given events that followed in central Europe within months, with the German remilitarization of the Rhineland, 7 March 1936, in breach of sections 42-43 of the Versailles Treaty of 1919 and in defiance of the Locarno Pact of October 1925.1300 Versailles was already undergoing some formal reappraisal, notably through the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, but this was the first blow to Locarno.1301 This was an additional complication for the Lyons government, on top of Manchuria, trade disputes and Abyssinian sanctions.

A ‘case-study approach’ (after Hill) of the Rhineland crisis reveals a number of fundamental aspects of Australian appeasement and its most senior practitioner, particularly his attempt to encourage similar practices in Europe.1302 Australian appeasement, in March 1936, was far more evolved than its British counterpart, having been endorsed to some degree or another at the highest ministerial levels, and Australian policy accordingly sought to be more accommodating to the new German aspirations than Whitehall was yet prepared to be. Lyons proved to be the most accommodating of the circle of Australian appeasers and his actions during this period offered an indication of his likely response to any future European crisis. The Rhineland episode also provided insights into the relationship between Lyons and his colleagues ─ firstly, it demonstrated some tension and differences between prime minister and quasi- plenipotentiary high commissioner, Bruce, as Lyons began to exercise his prime ministerial initiative; secondly, it demonstrated differences within the Australian cabinet over the extent and nature of appeasement. In the latter instance, it became evident that a gulf existed between Lyons and certain other ministers, like Pearce, who remained resistant to the ‘revision’ of the 1919 treaties. The joint management of external affairs that had been in place since the departure of Latham could not survive the differences between a prime ministerial, extreme appeaser, who sought to extend the methods of conciliation, and a minister who was increasingly convinced that the distressed pleas of the aggressors were bogus.

1299 Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 305, 310-11, on consultation; Carlton, ibid.: 59-60, on British politeness and flattery, pace Mansergh’s changing perception of some dominion influence. 1300 D. Irving, The War Path, Hitler’s Germany 1933-39 (London: Macmillan, 1978), 151. DGFP, series C, vol.5, 1-6, reproduces the relevant sections of the treaties breached by the Rhineland incursion. 1301 Rock, 37; Kershaw, Hitler, vol.1, 558 on the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of June 1935; vide Chapter 3. The fact that Italy, ostracised and under sanctions, was a signatory to Locarno complicated things. 1302 Hill, 5, on the ‘case-study approach’ of examining certain episodes in relative isolation. 178 Federal parliamentarians were gathering in Canberra for a new session at the time of the outbreak of the crisis.1303 The first reaction at Canberra came at the first opportunity, on 8 March, from the rehabilitated minister, Hughes, who indicated his vexation at renewed aggression, describing the reoccupation as an act of ‘defiance’ and a step towards the ‘removal’ of both Versailles and Locarno.1304 Lyons maintained his silence when the parliament resumed on 10 March 1936; neither he in the House, nor Pearce in the Senate, referred to the new crisis on the first day of the sitting.1305 Although there was no official comment until the first ministerial statement of 12 March, it would be an error to assume (as some critics were to do) that the Australian government and its leader were content to ride the crisis out. The following days demonstrated that while Lyons maintained a public veneer of silence, non-commitment and evasion, he privately engaged in lobbying British ministers, directly and via Bruce, in order to influence imperial policy away from confrontation and towards appeasement. This lobbying was predicated on secrecy and confidentiality, hence the ignorance of the parliament. In London, in April-May 1935, Lyons had accepted the Hertzog perspective of a rightly- aggrieved Germany seeking only to reclaim her equality and made clear his belief that she did not present any threat to the general peace.1306 These were not views that were shared by other Australians at the same summit ─ Bruce’s reservations about German behaviour extended back to the incipient disruption of the League in March 1933 and Menzies was sceptical that his prime minister understood Germany’s intentions in April 1935.1307 Whatever were Lyons’s motives for so readily accepting the South African perspective in mid-1935, he was not inclined to alter those views after 7 March 1936. Lyons had long preferred the former of the options presented to him by Keith Officer at the time of the London summit: either work for co-operation with Germany or adopt the French line and co-operate with that power against Berlin.1308 After thirty-six hours of delay, unexplained and quite extraordinary in the circumstances but perhaps in order to gain some indication of British intentions, Lyons and his circle appeared ready to make this preference evident at Whitehall, for Baldwin seemed content to maintain passive cunctation.1309 Accordingly, Lyons cabled Bruce on 10 March insisting that the German point of view be heard and addressed,1310 having become aware of the German proposals for a settlement when Bruce

1303 This was scheduled for Tuesday, 10 March 1936, the recess having lasted since 6 December 1935. 1304 Sydney Morning Herald, 9 March 1936, 10, d; Twomey, “Munich,” 19. vide below on Hughes’s ministerial rehabilitation by Lyons in February 1936. 1305 Age, 11 March 1936, 12, col.a, reporting parliament on 10 March 1936. Statements on external matters were restricted to expressions of commiseration on the January demise of the late sovereign, George V. 1306 Transcript of Dominion Prime Ministers meetings, 23 May 1935, fourth meeting, vide Chapter 3. 1307 vide Chapter 1 on Bruce and Chapter 3 on Menzies. 1308 Keith Officer to Secretary, External Affairs, 3 May 1935, A981 EXTE 192 PART 6, NAA, Canberra. 1309 Britain gave no indication of immediate action; R. Miller, “Britain and the Rhineland Crisis, 7 March 1936: Retreat from Responsibility or Accepting the Inevitable?” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.33, no.1 (1987): 65ff. Rock, 39ff., refers to Baldwin’s tepid reaction as ‘passive appeasement’. The appeaser Conwell-Evans, a British academic in Germany, instrumental in arranging Lloyd George’s September 1936 visit to Hitler, later believed that Baldwin’s ‘hesitancy’ and ‘nerveless-ness’ allowed an opportunity for reconciliation to pass in 1936; Lentin, 105. 1310 Lyons to Bruce, 7pm, 10 March 1936, CP 290/5/2/8, NAA, Canberra; also in A2908 G14, NAA, Canberra and A981 EUR 4 PART 1, NAA, Canberra. 179 had cabled their memorandum on 8 March.1311 It detailed Hitler’s offer of non-aggression pacts to France and Belgium, extended in his speech of 7 March, where he had also held out the possibility of a return to the League.1312 To a man of Lyons’s consensual cast of mind, these offers of twenty-five year non-aggression pacts and a recognition of France’s western frontiers apparently seemed reasonable or, at the very least, a sound basis for negotiation. He had already shown himself inclined to the concept of such pacts and consistently adhered to what he called ‘the value of getting to learn something of the other fellow’.1313 Bruce had not been his only source for the German point of view─ Lyons had also learned of the memorandum through the German acting consul, Dr. Hellenthal, who had contacted him directly on 10 March ‘at the instance of his government’ and requested that Berlin’s case be put directly to Bruce, qua President of the League Council.1314 The consul had initially approached the appropriate minister, Pearce, but had met with a polite refusal to do so.1315 Bruce was thus being misled on 10 March when Lyons informed him that the ‘Commonwealth Government’ was ‘inclined to agree’ that Berlin’s attitude ought to be communicated to him in that capacity, for Pearce did not relent until the following day, agreeing only after ‘due consideration’1316 ─ this provides a good example of Lyons’s willingness to conceal cabinet dissension behind the veil of a collegial epithet. Collegial or not, the prime minister himself had carefully overseen the drafting of this cable,1317 in which a sense of urgency was indicated by the request to Bruce for an ‘immediate’ cable or telephone reply. This was an early example of Lyons’s desire to use the telephone as an instrument of direct communication, favoured for its immediacy and clarity, a practice that has its problems for the historian.1318 Bruce was disturbed by the breach of diplomatic procedure that any submission of German proposals to him (qua League president) via Canberra would represent. He gave Lyons the immediate reply that he had sought within hours, marking the cable ‘urgent’, and stated the inappropriateness of Canberra’s suggestion. If the Germans desired to communicate with him in his League capacity, he insisted, they must do so through the Secretary-General of the League in Geneva. The Germans could, Bruce continued, communicate their views through Canberra, but only if they wished to reach him in his capacity as Australia’s representative on the League

1311 Bruce to Lyons, 8 March 1936, CP 290/5/2; A981 EUR 4, PART 1, NAA, Canberra. Officer had also sent details, Officer to External Affairs, 7 March 1936, ibid. The memorandum was presented to Whitehall on 7 March 1936, PREM 1/174/61, PRO, London. 1312 That enticing offer was calculated to appeal to the peace lobby; Griffiths, 200. 1313 Age, 3 October 1938, 12, c, quoting Lyons’s conclusions on the utility of conciliation at the time of the Czech crisis, vide Chapters 6 and 7. 1314 Bruce to Lyons, 10 March 1936, CP 290/5/2/8. 1315 Hellenthal’s account of his discussions on 10-11 March 1936 is found in Hellenthal, Sydney, to Foreign Ministry, Berlin, DGFP, series C, vol.5, 100, 11 March 1936. 1316 Pearce informed Hellenthal on 11 March that his memorandum had been forwarded to Bruce; Pearce to Hellenthal, A981 EUR 4 PART 1, NAA, Canberra. Pearce also told him that sanctions were ‘generally dismissed as out of the question’; Hellenthal to Foreign Ministry, Berlin, DGFP, series C, vol.5, 100, 11 March 1936. 1317 Handwritten drafts (not in Lyons’s or Pearce’s hand) were signed and initialled by Lyons; A2908 G14. 1318 He used it to telling effect during the Czech crisis of 1938; vide Chapter 6. Cox, 82; Aitkin, 83-4, notes the problem of undocumented telephone calls. 180 Council.1319 In a time of emergency, these were fine diplomatic distinctions that had either not occurred to Lyons (if perhaps to Pearce), or had been discarded ─ whatever the reasoning, it was clear that Lyons and Bruce were at odds from the beginning of this crisis. The High Commissioner had in fact already given the Dominions Secretary an indication, by 9 March, that he personally supported the harder line against Germany being proposed by Eden.1320 The ‘amateur diplomat’, however, was more concerned to ensure that Bruce was informed fully of that German point of view, whatever the diplomatic procedures. Accordingly, on 11 March, Lyons communicated the Hellenthal memorandum in full, prefacing it as the ‘German point of view submitted through Consul-General to Commonwealth Government as Member of Council’, a formula that strictly satisfied Bruce’s procedural criteria.1321 Pearce had prepared a draft that included an acknowledgement of Bruce’s point, informing the high commissioner that Hellenthal had been told to go through Geneva─ this paragraph was deleted from the final cable, giving Lyons his own little victory.1322 Given that Bruce was already familiar with the contents of the German memorandum through his London sources and that Lyons knew as much, the entire episode seems curious,1323 but is useful as evidence of dissension between Lyons and Bruce on the one hand and between Lyons and Pearce on the other. There is no direct evidence to suggest any motive by Lyons other than an attempt to exercise some prime ministerial authority, but it is interesting to speculate that his insistence was based on another inclination to agree ─ within days he was showing signs of caution about French policy that matched the conclusions of the memorandum, where Berlin directed culpability at Paris.1324 Lyons, like many other appeasers, in particular the South Africans, would cast Paris (not Berlin) in the role of the villain later in this crisis and in the others to come.1325 It was France who required constraint in his view, a France whom Lyons would later privately describe as ‘rotten to the core’ and entirely undependable during a crisis.1326 The concluding line of the Lyons-Bruce cable of 11 March (although the syntax of Berlin) served as a summary of Lyons’s own attitude towards Germany from May 1935

1319 Bruce to Lyons, 1.15pm (GMT), 10 March 1936, received 11 March 1936, CP 290/5; also in A2908 G14, NAA, Canberra. Bruce ensured that the Foreign Office was informed of his stance, ibid., including a handwritten note indicating a copy had been passed to Sargent of the Foreign Office on 10 March 1936. 1320 Malcolm MacDonald, Dominions Secretary, told Eden in Paris on 9 March 1936 that all the dominion high commissioners were in favour of Eden’s hard-line parliamentary statement of that day, despite being without the instructions of their governments; DBFP, 2nd series, vol.16, 54. Eden, Parliamentary Debates, 9 March 1936, vol.309, cols.1808-13, had promised military resistance, if necessary. 1321 Lyons to Bruce, 11 March 1936, CP 290/5/2, NAA, Canberra. 1322 Draft cable, March 1936, A981 EUR 4 PART 1, NAA, Canberra. Pearce’s deleted paragraph read: ‘Have informed Consul-General, if German Government desires to make representations to you in capacity as President should be made in manner suggested your cablegram.’ 1323 Bruce to Lyons, 8 March 1936, CP 290/5/2, communicating the German memorandum. 1324 The Germans objected to the recent Franco-Soviet Pact, to Czech defence treaties and to the role of the International Court of Justice; Lyons to Bruce, 11 March 1936, CP 290/5/2. 1325 Lentin, 76-7, on the dim view of the French at Versailles held by many British and imperial proto-appeasers such as Smuts. Hertzog had aired such views at the London summit; Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, first meeting, 30 April 1935, A981 IMP 135, vide Chapter 3. Lyons blamed the French in August-September 1938 for encouraging the Czechs; vide Chapter 6. 1326 Enid Lyons, audio interview with Mel Pratt, March 1972, Tape 1, 79. Lyons later recalled the 1923 ‘disastrous French adventure’ in the Ruhr as an example of the need to restrain Paris; DAFP, vol.1, 28, 22 May 1937. 181 until early-1939: ‘Finally German proposals clearly indicate her aim is to preserve peace.’1327 This was to be the constant refrain of this extreme appeaser, if not that of many other ministers at Canberra. By 12 March 1936, the third parliamentary day of the crisis, it was becoming increasingly necessary for the government to respond publicly. The subsequent ministerial statements revealed important differences between Lyons and his external affairs minister over the application of appeasement to central Europe, divisions that widened over the coming months. In the Senate, Pearce satisfied himself with a factual recital of the positions of both sides, noting Australia’s (non-signatory) disinterest in the Locarno breaches.1328 The following day, however, he was more expansive and broadened the debate to include suggestions of fraudulence in the colonial claims of Germany and her new-found friends. The particular issue at stake for many Australian politicians and defence thinkers (such as Pearce and Hughes) was the undesirability of the return of mandated New Guinea.1329 On the other hand, Lyons had already given indications of an appeasing flexibility on this point, for when External Affairs had mooted a statement against the return of the former German colonies in February 1936, he had insisted (against the advice of Hodgson, Pearce and subsequently Bruce) that it be set aside ‘in the light of the present international situation’.1330 It seems inconceivable that he would have now felt that the period after 7 March was any more suitable; accordingly, the timing of the Pearce statement was likely to have been unwelcome to the prime minister. Pearce’s parliamentary attack of 13 March on Germany proved not only a savage, comprehensive denunciation of her colonial claims, but of European appeasement in general and even of the regional variety of conciliation that Lyons had practiced since the Latham period.1331 Pearce broadened his scope from one relevant to the Rhineland crisis of the last week to include Italy and Japan in his sights ─ in so doing he was indirectly attacking the undiluted appeasers within the cabinet, like Lyons and Casey, through the use of carefully crafted language.1332 Pearce was perceptive enough to see that the successful aggression of the one in Manchuria had arguably led to the subsequent boldness of the others, something Lyons never acknowledged.1333 In comprehensively demolishing the assertions of Berlin, Rome and Tokyo that they were righteously-aggrieved ‘have-nots’ in need of Lebensraum, Pearce was attacking the foundations

1327 Lyons to Bruce, 11 March 1936, CP 290/5/2, paraphrasing the Hellenthal memorandum. 1328 Pearce, CPD, vol.149, 59ff., 12 March 1936. 1329 The Australian Section of the Imperial General Staff had written to Latham on 14 September 1933, when Pearce was Defence Minister, outlining its objections to such a return; A981 GER 22 PART 2, NAA, Canberra. vide Chapter 7 for a fuller account of the colonial issue. 1330 External Affairs had prepared the statement, endorsed by Hodgson and Pearce, by 26 February 1936, A981 GER 22 PART 2, NAA, Canberra. Lyons insisted that they first seek the endorsement of the Foreign Office. Instead they sought and gained the approval of Bruce on 2 March 1936, A2908/G14, NAA, Canberra. 1331 Pearce, CPD, vol.149, 119-23, 13 March 1936. 1332 Pearce noted that Japan had not taken up Manchuria as an outlet for her surplus population, contrary to her demands for Lebensraum; CPD, vol.149, 120, 13 March 1936. vide Holsti, 133, on the language of a document. 1333 Pearce was not alone in drawing such a connection. Woolf: 166ff., noted that Manchuria had been the first test of collective security, one that Britain had failed. 182 of appeasement, premised on just such assumptions, as well as on the belief that Versailles was unjust, something the minister also now radically questioned.1334 Present trends (appeasement), he concluded, would lead to ‘the enthronement of might over right and the substitution of the rule of the jungle for the rule of law’.1335 Following the events of 7 March, the minister now seemed opposed to it in any form, including the eastern variety that he had recently endorsed in Moffat’s presence.1336 The whole represented a significant denunciation of what Lyons had proudly called ‘Australian foreign policy’ in September 1935 and illustrated that the days of any joint Pearce-Lyons custodianship of external affairs were numbered.1337 The prime ministerial statements of 12-13 March 1936 conveyed a noticeably less belligerent impression. He carefully reinforced Pearce’s suggestions of Australian disinterest in Locarno, stressing in his press comments that the dominions had never accepted the provisions of that 1925 pact on the inviolability of western European borders,1338 thus distancing himself from any military obligations at the outset ─ this despite the fact that the dominions had always been specifically excluded from any of the military commitments of Locarno.1339 The implication was clear: Australia did not feel herself automatically bound to support any military response over the Rhineland.1340 This was a candid, public indication of his restlessness (and one noted at Whitehall), for Lyons apparently believed that there was still the potential for a major war, ignorant that the British cabinet had already resolved (on 8 March) to discourage military action by the French.1341 Having warned against a military line-in-the-sand, Lyons then declined to endorse Pearce’s colonial excoriation of 13 March, remaining ambiguously silent on the issue of colonial return and declining to assess the validity of the claims of the aggrieved. Silence is not always a guide to opinion, but in this instance, Lyons preferred to maintain the lid on such an issue, as he had advocated in February, especially as he lacked either the authority or will to counter Pearce’s detailed assessment. With the crisis almost a week old and the Locarno powers in discussions, the next step came from Pretoria, when the South African premier, Hertzog, took the lead in gauging dominion opinion. South African appeasers, especially those of Afrikaner stock, needed to show less sensitivity about ‘imperial’ sentiment at home (or abroad) than did their Australian counterparts

1334 Pearce, CPD, vol.149, 119-23, 13 March 1936. He noted that Japan had not taken up Manchuria as an outlet for her surplus population; ibid., 120, and referred to the ‘alleged injustice’ suffered by Germany at Versailles. 1335 Pearce, CPD, vol.149, 119-23, 13 March 1936. 1336 Moffat thought the appeasement of Japan a universal desire amongst Australian politicians; Moffat to Hull, FRUS, 1935, 12 October 1935, vol.3, 363-5, point 9; Moffat Diary, 3 October 1935 interview with Pearce. vide Chapter 3. 1337 Lyons speech at Debuchi reception, Canberra, 4 September 1935, Hodgson Papers, MS 1516. 1338 Lyons, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 March 1936, 10, f. Dominion hostility to Locarno was long-standing; Rock, 48. 1339 The dominions were so excluded under the ninth article of Locarno; R. Meyers, “British Imperial Interests and Appeasement,” in Fascist Challenge, 39. Many British appeasers, such as the Cliveden Set, had concerns about Locarno and the difficulties this would cause with the dominions; Rose 129ff. 1340 Although there was never much doubt about Australian solidarity in the event of war against Germany; Mansergh, Experience, 276; vide also below. 1341 DBFP, 2nd series, vol.16, 48, 8 March 1936; MacDonald, Cabinet Minutes, 16 March 1936, CAB 23/83, PRO, London, where he recalled long-standing dominion opposition to the military provisions of Locarno. 183 and the first, of two, candid cables arrived in Whitehall on 12 March.1342 The Union Government’s initial response to the German memorandum was striking ─ Britain was urged to accept a new settlement to replace the entire, moribund Versailles system.1343 This was considerably stronger than anything that had emerged from Canberra and in direct contrast to the sentiments about the ‘alleged injustice’ of Versailles that Pearce was nursing for the morrow,1344 but it was the corollary of appeasement and in line with Lyons’s (and Casey’s) thinking in 1935, when he had supported sentiments of Versailles guilt emanating from the same source.1345 A second South African cable, on 14 March, was even blunter, condemning the French for their refusal to accept Germany’s profession of non-belligerence.1346 There consequently could be, it warned, no justification for war in defence of the Versailles system and should hostilities commence, Pretoria would be ‘bound to withhold any support’.1347 This was considerably stronger than Lyons’s stated reservations about the military provisions of Locarno, but a natural extension of that sentiment and of the exclusions granted to the dominions in 1925. The cable concluded with an exhortation for Britain to find a ‘pacific solution of the problem’ in line with Germany’s professed desire for peace.1348 Whilst Hertzog’s views differed from those of Lyons (and Casey) only in degree rather than in their essential nature, the Australian prime minister would prove hesitant to endorse Pretoria’s minatory language, given the signs of cabinet division that emerged on 13 March. To Berlin’s glee, the South African cables of 12-14 March 1936 had shattered any appearance of imperial diplomatic unity, for they found support in some dominions, resistance in others.1349 It was now for the other dominions either to support Pretoria’s warning or to line up for a looming war in defence of Locarno. Aware of this challenge, the Union Government had dispatched copies to the other dominions directly by 16 March, in order to put the options before them without any British intercession.1350 Lyons gave the New Zealand prime minister, Savage

1342 On Wednesday, 11 March 1936, R. Dunbar, of the Foreign Office Intelligence Section, received indirect notice, through the SA High Commissioner, te Water, that the Union Government was composing a cable, which would advise HMG ‘to make a courageous stand’; DBFP, 11 March 1936, 2nd series, vol.16, 77, FO note to Dominions Office. 1343 Union Government to Dominions Office, 12 March 1936, PREM 1/174/55, PRO, London. These cables are also discussed in Ovendale, “Britain, the Dominions and the Coming of the Second World War, 1933-9,” 327. 1344 Pearce, CPD, vol.149, 119-23, 13 March 1936. 1345 Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, first meeting, 30 April 1935, A981 IMP 135; vide Chapter 3 and Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 255, 259, 411, on Australian Versailles guilt. Casey referred to the ‘shackles’ of Versailles, looking forward to their removal, in correspondence with Hankey on 30 March 1936; Hudson, Casey, 110. Rock, 42-3, 86; Lentin, 74, on British appeasers’ assessment of Versailles. 1346 Pretoria’s suspicion of France was strong and persistent, Cabinet Minutes, 11 May 1938, CAB 23/93, PRO, London. This was reminiscent of Lyons, Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, fourth meeting, 23 May 1935, A981 IMP 135. 1347 Union Government to Dominions Office, 14 March 1936, PREM 1/174/47, PRO, London; also discussed in Lyons to Savage (NZ PM), 17 March 1936, CP 290/5 item 2, NAA, Canberra. This was a rejection of Eden’s assurances of military aid to a violated France or Belgium; Eden, Parliamentary Debates, 9 March 1936, vol.309, cols.1808-13. 1348 A conclusion signalled in advance to Wiseman, Foreign Office, by te Water on 11 March 1936, DBFP, 2nd series, vol.16, 77. 1349 Wiehl, Cape Town, to Foreign Ministry, Berlin, DGFP, series C, vol.5, 167, 16 March 1936. New Zealand was opposed, vide below, but Canada was generally responsive; V. Massey, What’s Past is Prologue, The memoirs of the Right Honourable Vincent Massey,C.H. (London: Macmillan, 1963), 230ff. 1350 The DO sent them to the dominions on 15 March 1936; A981 EUR 4 PART 1, NAA, Canberra; SA cables to other dominions referred to in Lyons-Savage cables, 16-17 March 1936, CP290/5/2, NAA, Canberra, vide below. This 184 (ever mindful of Britain’s ‘treaty obligations’),1351 the impression on 17 March that Australia was not in agreement with the South African stance.1352 His earlier response to Whitehall on 16 March, however, had suggested otherwise, indicating that he was in fact individually inclined to heed South Africa’s warnings by repeating the substance of their recent cables. The challenge in formulating an Australian response to Pretoria’s viewpoint was to find collegial expressions that were somewhat less candid than those of the blunt South Africans and thus less offensive to Britain (as well as New Zealand), but which equally communicated Lyons’s reluctance to support what he saw as Locarno brinkmanship. This process would also require some appearance of having balanced off the two extremes in cabinet ─ with Lyons at one pole and Pearce at the other. On 16 March 1936, Bruce received the considered response of the ‘Commonwealth Government’ ─ despite the epithet, the cable primarily reflected the views of those within the government who favoured the appeasing of Germany─ ‘we’, especially Lyons and Casey ─ rather than of those of ministers like Pearce and Hughes, in favour of resisting German demands. There was little indication that Hughes’s denunciations of 8 March or Pearce’s more recent parliamentary analysis had influenced Lyons’s thinking, for the cable broadly endorsed what had then been called ‘blackmail’, ‘international anarchy’ and ‘the rule of the jungle’.1353 The thrust of the cable supported the South African position in every respect, despite Lyons’s contrary assurances to Savage on the following day, except for the preface, on which there appeared to have been collegial agreement amongst a circle of ministers. The whole cabinet was shown the document only after its composition, a common practice in the Lyons years.1354 Despite the drafting of several hands, including that of Pearce,1355 the main body of the cable is as good an example of Lyons’s advocacy of European appeasement as may be found and therefore its five principal sections warrant detailed examination.1356 The preface of the 16 March ‘secret’ cable announced that Australia interpreted the ‘comprehensive’ British reports on the crisis differently from the South Africans and therefore: ‘We cannot agree with severe indictment’ of British policy as being too close to that of France.1357 Although Lyons was certainly amongst those appeasers wary of a bellicose France,

diplomatic initiative was also noted by the Germans; Wiehl, Cape Town, to Foreign Ministry, DGFP, series C, vol.5, 395-6, 6 April 1936. Wiehl was informed of the South African insistence that the other dominions see these cables directly by Bodenstein, SA secretary of state, ibid. The Dominions Office had passed copies to the dominions in any case on 14 March 1936; Dominions Office circular telegram, received 15 March 1936, A981 EUR 4 PART 1, NAA, Canberra. 1351 Savage to Lyons, 16 March 1936, CP 290/5/2, NAA, Canberra, informing Australia of its response. 1352 Lyons returned the courtesy of the Savage cable on the following day, 17 March, informing Savage that the Commonwealth Government was not in agreement with the South African view; Lyons to Savage, 17 March 1936, CP 290/5/2, NAA, Canberra; also A981 EUR 4 PART 1. 1353 Pearce, CPD, vol.149, 123, 13 March 1936. 1354 Cabinet Minutes, 17 March 1936, A2694, vol.15(2), NAA, Canberra. 1355 There are handwritten drafts of parts of the cable, some initialled ‘GFP’, in A981 EUR 4 PART 1, NAA, Canberra. 1356 Lyons to Bruce, 16 March 1936, A981 EUR 4 Part 1/12, NAA Canberra. The cable is reproduced in Appendix I. 1357 Whitehall was becoming less pro-French than anyone in Canberra knew; discussions between Chamberlain and M. Flandin, French Foreign Minister, had taken place in London on 15 March, only reported to the British Cabinet itself on 16 March 1936; Chamberlain-Flandin Conversations, DBFP, 2nd series, vol.6, 115, 16 March 1936. A new British position was emerging from these talks, less supportive of the French desire to coerce Germany. 185 the language of the document suggests collegial agreement on this preliminary point that Pretoria had failed to establish undue British support for France’s hard-line. The body of the cable, however, was certainly less critical of Pretoria’s ‘indictment’, for the substance of Hertzog’s views reappeared in the first section, where it was stated that ‘war would find little support in Australia and would never lead to a lasting solution’.1358 This was certainly less blunt than the South African threat of neutrality and there was no suggestion that Australia would exclude itself from a war against Germany, but the implication it conveyed was of the same character as that of Pretoria (and of Lyons’s press statement of 12-13 March): Britain should not consider fighting over the Rhineland and should not assume automatic dominion participation if she chose to do so.1359 As so often with Lyons, distasteful news was followed by a qualified assurance. In the second section, the cable asserted wholehearted concurrence ‘in United Kingdom attitude and endeavour to find a formula as to present status of Rhineland’, but only on the assumption that London’s efforts were directed at gaining a settlement that was described as ‘acceptable to Germany without undue loss of prestige and pending the negotiations for a general settlement with German proposals as basis of discussion’.1360 These were the proposals that Lyons had insisted be re-communicated to Bruce on 10-11 March, against Pearce’s initial opposition, and their restatement now seemed a natural corollary of that earlier insistence. Given his indictment of 13 March and its low estimation of Berlin, it is difficult to see Pearce as the source of such a proviso. The diplomatic approach now suggested was more akin to the outlook of Lyons than to that of Pearce, bearing a similarity to that already adopted in East Asia, where Latham had very early sought to protect Japanese prestige and to negotiate on Tokyo’s specific terms.1361 This cable could only now encourage any British resolve to pursue a like course in Europe. The 16 March cable also contained further advice to Whitehall in its final sections. Once again, consideration of the Pretoria cables was apparent when it recalled earlier French intransigence in its third section. Denying any suggestion of British policy as too pro-French was one thing, but French policy itself was not to be overlooked and this section referred to their position in the recent Locarno-League meetings as ‘too rigid’.1362 Such attitudes would endanger, it continued, the prospect of agreement at ‘private conversations’, the personal diplomacy in which Lyons was always prepared to place great faith, although apparently unaware of the recent

1358 Lyons to Bruce, 16 March 1936, A981 EUR 4 Part 1/12, in Appendix I of this thesis (as the cable has not been published). 1359 South African cable, 14 March 1936, PREM 1/174/47; Lyons, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 March 1936, 10, f. It was perhaps at this time that Lyons informed Moffat that the Rhineland was the ‘furthest frontier’ that Australian public opinion would allow Great Britain, as quoted by Andrews, “The Australian Government and Appeasement,” in Towards a Foreign Policy, ed. W. Hudson, 77. Andrews placed the quote in 1938, but Moffat had returned to Washington in March 1937. It was, however, always assumed that Australia would be as one with Britain in any war with Germany; Mansergh, Experience, 276. 1360 Lyons to Bruce, 16 March 1936, A981 EUR 4 Part 1/12; Appendix I. 1361 Latham, “Secret Report”, 3 July 1934, 20, vide Chapter 2. 1362 Lyons to Bruce, 16 March 1936, A981 EUR 4 Part 1/12; vide Appendix I. 186 Chamberlain-Flandin conversations.1363 The alternative offered in this cable to Gallic intransigence was a direct approach to Hitler, made with sensitivity and avoiding any language which ‘could be construed as an ultimatum’:1364 the diplomacy of appeasement. In pursuit of these goals, the authors were prepared to give Hitler his impending propaganda triumph,1365 for it was suggested in the fourth part of the cable ‘that any proposal [for negotiation] should have the appearance of being based upon Hitler’s proposals rather than upon Germany’s breach of the Locarno Pact’.1366 This canny suggestion may not have constituted outright sympathy for the German position, but it certainly constituted an extreme desire to be seen as sympathetic, an impression that Lyons had conveyed since May 1935 and, more recently, since the Hellenthal conversations of 10 March 1936 ─ in common with other extreme appeasers (and pace Pearce), he had amply shown that he thought Berlin’s explanations reasonable and justified by a rightful umbrage at the conditions of Versailles. Lyons and the other authors of this cable failed, unlike Eden, to give any indication of a moral distinction between a breach of Versailles and a breach of Locarno.1367 As an experienced negotiator and conciliator, Lyons especially realised the value of putting forward a position that appeared, out of a sense of consensus, to be based on the proposals of the other party and it may be presumed that he was either the author of this clause or was closely associated with its construction. The search for consensus had been his hallmark in domestic politics and was now further extended to international affairs. Although the British chose not to accept such counsel in March 1936, Lyons maintained his faith in this negotiating technique and arguably chose to invoke it again, during the Czech crisis of September 1938.1368 This extraordinary cable concluded with an axiomatic observation in its fifth section, noting that Hitler’s publicly stated position might not necessarily represent his ‘minimum desiderata’.1369 In order to establish the extent of other, private desiderata, it accordingly closed with the suggestion of ‘private British mediation’, similar to the earlier reference to ‘private conversations’.1370 This sentiment emanated from the Lyons-Casey fold, with their faith in secret, personal diplomacy, and clearly indicated that Lyons had transformed his onetime support for British cunctation in central Europe into a belief that it was time for the direct negotiation of appeasement.1371 It was a suitable conclusion to an extraordinary cable that had begun by condemning the South African offensive, but ended by supporting Pretoria’s counsel that now

1363 DBFP, 2nd series, vol.6, 115, 16 March 1936. 1364 Lyons to Bruce, 16 March 1936, A981 EUR 4 Part 1/12; vide Appendix I. 1365 Hitler had made the matter the subject of a plebiscite; ibid. 1366 ibid. 1367 Eden had drawn such a distinction in his Cabinet memorandum of 8 March; DBFP, 2nd series, vol.16, 48, noting that Germany had entered into Locarno without the compulsion of Versailles. 1368 vide Chapter 6. 1369 Lyons to Bruce, 16 March 1936, A981 EUR 4 Part 1/12; vide Appendix I. 1370 ibid. 1371 vide earlier chapters on the Casey/Lyons view of the new diplomacy. 187 was the time to abandon the Versailles system. Pretoria had accompanied her counsel with threats; Canberra preferred helpful suggestions, but all in the same cause. Even though the 16 March cable gave the impression of collegiality through its use of the term ‘the Commonwealth Government’, the end result was one that emphasised the views of the extreme appeasers within cabinet; Lyons and Casey. Although Pearce’s scepticism about the injustices of Versailles was marginalised, someone was able to fight a rearguard action against the concept of personal diplomacy expressed in the main body of the cable. Lyons had already shown in East Asia and Italy his belief in the amateur diplomacy of either politicians themselves or of selected ‘fix-it’ men.1372 Accordingly, he had himself written on the back of Pearce’s draft notes a suggestion for the ‘private’ mediation mooted in the cable: ‘Bruce, Suggest for considn [illegible] Menzies mht be utilized in this connectn.’1373 This suggestion, however, was crossed out by an unknown hand and did not form part of the completed 16 March cable. Instead, this Lyons suggestion was incorporated into a subsequent cable of the same date, 16 March 1936, which indicated that Lyons anticipated an ad hoc Australian role in ‘private British mediation’. There was no attempt at collegiality in this second, very personal cable, suggesting that the deletion of the proposal from the main communication of that day had not been according to Lyons’s will. He now stated: ‘I suggest for consideration that services of Menzies on arrival might be utilised by UK Government if so desired.’1374 This was a radical and revealing offer, not the least for its offer of a diplomatic novice as mediator (en route for London), rather than the experienced Bruce.1375 Lyons’s individual choice (for that was what it appeared to be) of Menzies over Bruce seems difficult to explain, but one may speculate that the recent disagreement over the Hellenthal memorandum and Bruce’s less conciliatory attitude during the crisis might have played a part in the decision, even if Lyons was unaware of the links developing between Eden and the high commissioner, which appeared to be the case1376 ─ Menzies was also now considered by some as the heir-designate and perhaps it was this consideration that influenced the choice.1377 Regardless of personnel, this was an early, possibly unprecedented, example of a dominion leader urging the ‘new diplomacy’ of dialogue on Whitehall for application in its own backyard ─ neither Lyons nor Hertzog had done so at the 1935 London summit and Pretoria’s recent communications, despite their complaints, had not suggested specific dialogue with

1372 Lyons had already used Latham and subsequently sought to employ Menzies, Bruce and Pratt in mediating roles, vide below and Chapters 6 and 7. Chamberlain similarly used Leith-Ross and Horace Wilson. 1373 Handwritten note (in Lyons’s script) attached to Pearce’s draft notes of Lyons to Bruce, 16 March 1936, A981 EUR 4 PART 1. 1374 Lyons to Bruce, 16 March 1936, CP 290/5 item 2, NAA, Canberra. vide Kitson Clark, 64, Holsti, 133, on the origins and context of a document. 1375 This was despite the differences between Lyons and Menzies over Germany at the 1935 London summit, vide Chapter 3. Menzies was some days from London, where he arrived on 20 March 1936; Martin, Menzies, 178. 1376 On Bruce’s association with Eden; Moffat Diary, 15 March 1936, where Hodgson told him that Eden talked over everything with Bruce, his ‘chief confidant’, although P. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 109ff., assumed that this was a boast; also ibid., “The Rise and Fall…”, 53. Bruce favoured a harder line on the Rhineland than Lyons; MacDonald to Eden, 9 March 1936 on the support of the dominion high commissioners for such; DBFP, 2nd series, vol.16, 54. 1377 Menzies, Afternoon Light, 124; Hudson, Casey, 121; Martin, Menzies, 116 and 139-40 on the succession. 188 Berlin.1378 This Lyons postscript also indicated that the Australian prime minister wished not only to be consulted in British policy-making, but was prepared for some ad hoc participation in the process, a trend that was persisted in following years.1379 If the temporary acquiescence evident during the Abyssinian episode was discarded by Canberra during the Rhineland crisis, Whitehall preferred not to notice, assisted in its efforts by Bruce, who failed to pass on Lyons’s offer of private Australian mediation, despite diligently communicating the first cable of 16 March1380 ─ this provided an example of the considerable degree of autonomy that Bruce enjoyed at Australia House, where he was relatively free of prime ministerial interference and from where he could communicate with Whitehall in a way obviously impossible for any Australian prime minister, even given Lyons’s increasing use of the telephone. It was not always possible for Lyons to know what nuance Bruce was seeking to give any communication from Canberra that came via his office, although he rarely showed any displeasure over Bruce’s method (the Hellenthal incident aside). Nevertheless, this was an extraordinary act of omission on the high commissioner’s behalf, but one that was not repeated, as the next time Lyons made such an offer (this time to Chamberlain in September 1938), he ensured maximum exposure through public revelation, even if Bruce himself was the nominee.1381 It is doubtful if Lyons or Menzies missed much through Bruce’s omission, however, for given Baldwin’s generally contemptuous attitude to the role of the dominions in international affairs, it must be considered unlikely that any such offer would have been acceptable to Downing Street.1382 The concept of direct negotiation through personal diplomacy was not one that was ever entertained by Baldwin, despite Lyons’s proposal and some serious domestic attempts to interest him in the process.1383 His failure to heed this advice in 1936 represented a lost opportunity in the eyes of some, but Lyons was not permanently discouraged.1384 The Rhineland episode had damaged the Lyons-Pearce working relationship probably beyond repair and starkly outlined the differences amongst ministers over the extent and nature of appeasement. In consequence, Lyons now began to move towards operating as de facto external affairs minister, although Pearce remained in office for another twenty months─ before the end

1378 vide Chapter 3. I have seen nothing in the Foreign Office files to suggest much Canadian commitment to appeasement at this time, although this obviously requires further research before drawing any conclusion. 1379 pace Hasluck, Government, 92-3, who saw this as a later trend, vide Chapter 6. pace also Meyers, “British Imperial Interests and Appeasement”, 46, that dominion influence at this time was one of support, not initiative. 1380 Bruce to Malcolm MacDonald, Dominions Secretary, 17 March 1936, PREM 1/194/45, PRO, London. Menzies remained ignorant of the offer, even after his arrival at London on 20 March; A. Stirling, Lord Bruce: the London Years (Melbourne: Hawthorn Press, 1974), 26. He dined with Bruce that evening; Martin, Menzies, 178, without apparently being told of the offer of ‘mediation’, for he made no mention of it in his diary or elsewhere. 1381 vide Chapter 6, where Lyons offered Bruce himself as a mediator in September 1938. 1382 Baldwin believed the dominions ignorant and selfish in regard to foreign affairs, suggesting that it was time for their ‘better instruction’ on Britain’s relationship with the Low Countries and on ‘the actualities of the present situation.’; Cabinet, 16 March 1936, CAB 23/83. 1383 Baldwin refused to stray from cunctation; Rock, 39ff. He declined the offer a personal meeting with Hitler, extended by Tom Jones MP, a notable appeaser; Griffiths, 214ff. Jones did help to secure a meeting between Lloyd George and Hitler in September 1936, seen by some as a substitute for a summit with Baldwin; Lentin, 92; M. Gilbert, “Appeasement in Action”: 1573. 1384 Both Churchill and Lloyd George thought that Baldwin had squandered the opportunity for some agreement with Germany; Lentin, 105. Lyons would soon be urging personal diplomacy on Chamberlain, vide Chapter 5. 189 of the year, the minister was in secret contact with the Opposition Leader, Curtin, expressing his private concern about the government’s appeasement policy.1385 Nor had the crisis enhanced the Lyons-Bruce working relationship that had operated successfully since September 1933, but the damage here was more superficial. Although it appeared to lower Bruce’s estimation of Lyons, the prime minister showed no permanent resentment and continued to utilise the high commissioner’s expertise.1386 It would be an error to underestimate the continuing importance of Australia House in the process of ‘imperial consultation’ either before or after 1936.1387 Lyons continued to seek Bruce’s advice and generally accepted it without question,1388 but in later crises he made more extensive use of the telephone, followed by reiterative cables, in order to remove any ambiguities. The telephone also allowed him direct contact with Downing Street and Whitehall ─ Lyons proved assiduous in his use of it, and although this was not necessarily intended to be at the expense of Australia House, that was often the effect. The rebirth of External Affairs had already strengthened a parallel system of communication, making London-Canberra connections four-fold (imperial conferences, high commissioners, direct to prime ministers and through the Dominions Office).1389 The crisis had shown, however, that quantity of communication did not necessarily equate with it a better level of consultation. In any case, the primary Australian cable of 16 March probably came too late to play any major part in British cabinet decision-making on that day, in part because it had not been communicated by Bruce to the Dominions Secretary in time; MacDonald’s concerns about dominion reservations were swept away by Baldwin at this meeting in the absence of specifics.1390 In future crises, Lyons would ensure through better telephone liaison, both direct and via Bruce, that the British cabinet was well-informed of his specific views, usually before the arrival of the text of any cable.

Whatever anxiety the Rhineland had caused in Canberra, its peaceful resolution was welcome, even if brought about more by cunctation than appeasement. On 19 March, the League

1385 Pearce leaked material to Curtin during mid-1936 in an endeavour to convince him of Japan's aggressive southward intentions; Day, Curtin, 350-1, 351 footnote. 1386 Bruce continued to hold a low opinion of Lyons after the Rhineland and told Casey so. He was pessimistic about Lyons’s likely performance at the forthcoming Imperial Conference, vide Cumpston, Bruce, 149, and Chapter 5. 1387 I accept the point that the role of the high commissioners in general, and that of Bruce in particular, in imperial consultation has been unduly passed over; B. Attard “The Australian High Commissioners”, Working Papers in Australian Studies, No. 68 (1991): 17. vide Chapter 6 on Bruce as Lyons’s messenger in September 1938. 1388 Cumpston, Bruce, 158, reviews the favourable reputation of Bruce in London and attributes this high esteem, in part, to the trust of Lyons. 1389 DAFP, vol.1, 546ff., Appendix 2, “The Organisation of Australia’s External Relations”. Ovendale, Appeasement, 21-2. The system had been clearly established in September 1932; ‘Memorandum of Procedure for Communication of Papers on Foreign Affairs to Dominion PMs’, AA1970/559/4, NAA, Canberra. Every Thursday morning, FO copies were sent to the DO and to high commissioners to distribute to PMs. The Canadian high commissioner, Massey, thought by 1938 that the regular DO cables direct to External Affairs in Ottawa had rendered his position redundant; Stirling, 83. 1390 Bruce to MacDonald, Dominions Secretary, 17 March 1936, PREM 1/194/45, PRO, London. It remains unclear when the cable arrived in London and whether it was in time for the British cabinet meeting of 16 March, where MacDonald had warned of dominion reservations. His case would have been strengthened had he been able to quote Lyons’s cable, or even a Bruce paraphrase of it, in the manner employed by Chamberlain in later years; Cabinet, 16 March 1936, CAB 23/83. 190 Council admonished Germany, but tentatively recognised her proposals of 7 March.1391 The details of this resolution (cabled by Bruce) must have pleased the appeasers within the government, for it accorded with many of their suggestions of 16 March.1392 Equally welcome must have been Bruce’s report that Germany had expressed ‘a desire for peace and friendship,’ as well as his judgement that the League-Locarno system was in need of ‘review’.1393 Lyons, who had distanced himself from Locarno and its military risks, needed little persuasion of the wisdom of this point.1394 Attempts made over the following months to find a lasting solution within the Locarno system failed, to the disappointment of those within the government who retained some faith in collective security, amongst whom were gathered the disparate Pearce and Casey (the latter albeit an appeaser, if not one quite as flexible as his prime minister).1395 Lyons, however, soon indicated his belief that the League needed not ‘review’, but circumvention.

VII The international turmoil from the escalation of the Abyssinian affair until the soothing of the Rhineland crisis also had its effect on Australian defence policy, accelerating the earlier indications of self-reliance and industry.1396 The period from the aftermath of the strategic discussions at the 1935 London summit to the implementation of the second rearmament program, December 1935-June 1936, was one of substantial military preparation in the face of a deteriorating international situation. Abyssinia and the Rhineland seemed to signal the prudence of the government’s earlier decision to rearm while pursuing appeasement, for there had been a two-fold threat of war in a six-month period. The three-year program (1933-36) of increased expenditure was well advanced before the Italian invasion, let alone the German incursion. The budget surpluses of 1933-35, over £4 million, had already been allocated along with additional funds for significant naval and air increases, as Pearce had promised on 25 September 1933.1397 Defence readiness was, however, far from complete and a sense of military vulnerability had nourished Lyons’s anxiety at the time of the Abyssinian invasion, as he confessed to Moffat in October 1935, and it may be assumed that a similar concern motivated, at least in part, his counsel for a peaceful settlement during the Rhineland episode.1398 The twin crises of this period accordingly stimulated an extension of rearmament, commensurate with the ability of a still-

1391 Feiling, 280. 1392 Bruce to Lyons, 19 March 1936, CP 290/5/2, NAA, Canberra. 1393 Ibid. Bruce was President of the League Council, 1394 Lyons, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 March 1936, 10, f. vide above. 1395 A good summary of the efforts expended in attempting to find a solution under Locarno is found in Current Notes, 15 April 1936, vol.1, “The Rhineland”. Pearce, CPD, vol.150, 900-01, 24 April 1936; Current Notes, vol.1, no.2 (1936). Casey, CPD, vol.149, 451, 20 March 1936; Age, 21 March 1936, 21, e. 1396 Mansergh, Experience, 273, suggested a greater dominion reliance on imperial defence (and appeasement) after Abyssinia. 1397 Ross, Armed and Ready, 111. 1398 vide above, Lyons to Moffat, Moffat Diary, 2 October 1935. 191 fragile economy to sustain it. The Prime Minister (and the Treasurer, Casey) was assisted in this task by the man who had succeeded Pearce at Victoria Barracks in October 1934, Archdale Parkhill.1399 Although the new minister had, like his predecessor, been excluded from the 1935 London summit, he increasingly gained Lyons’s confidence at a time when Pearce’s was eroding and remained in the portfolio until his removal by the electors in October 1937.1400

Lyons had not been short of advice on defence policy during this period of threatening war ─ Hughes’s most recent publication (November 1935) was sub-titled The Price of Peace and the price referred to was adequate defence readiness, a view that Lyons had already accepted, but not to Hughes’s evident satisfaction.1401 Although the first rearmament program and Lyons’s personal diplomacy, such as it was, had addressed his concerns about the Italian threat to trading routes, Hughes continued to worry about the inadequacies of militia voluntaryism and the current level of air defence.1402 Militia recruitment (18-to-40 year olds) had been voluntary since 1929 and the two men would never agree on conscription,1403 but the revived Salmond program for the RAAF was still regarded as insufficient by the former prime minister, who advocated the use of loans to fund the new service and the establishment of an Australian aircraft industry.1404 Deficit spending, even for defence, was something that Lyons, the economic manager, was still reluctant to undertake in 1935-36,1405 but cabinet soon considered the manufacturing of aircraft engines in Australia.1406 Parkhill also announced (on 2 December 1935 and on 11 May 1936) the government’s intention to establish an Australian aircraft industry and the expansion of civil aviation as an adjunct to defence.1407 Despite their many differences, Hughes and Lyons thus maintained their similarity of outlook on matters of national defence, something that became increasingly evident over the following years. The unsurpassed conscriptionist and reputed pacifist made a strange couple in this period, but Lyons showed ample evidence of his desire for Hughes’s political collaboration following the indecent haste of the his ministerial rehabilitation in February 1936, effected (through Page’s mediation)1408 out of respect for ‘his knowledge of

1399 Parkhill, described as an ‘arch-conservative’, Moffat Diary, 24-5 October 1935, had been an invaluable member of Latham’s parliamentary Nationalist Party and a probable future leader without Lyons’s meteoric rise. His parliamentary performances were noted for their aggressive partisanship; Lloyd, “Rise and Fall…”, 137; ADB, vol.11, 142-3. 1400 Parkhill, unlike Pearce, accompanied Lyons to London in 1937, where he played a considerable role at the Imperial Conference. Some thought that this role had cost him his seat, vide Chapter 5. 1401 Hughes, Australia and War Today, Chapter 13ff., and 119, where he stated that the present program was only the first step in a long and difficult process. Round Table, “The League and Sanctions”: 401, correctly noted that the work was not one on Abyssinia, but ‘a book on Australian defence policy’. 1402 ibid., 95ff., 120ff., Chapter 14 on air defence. His interest in such matters was long-standing. Hughes saw the potential of air power as early as 1921; Hasluck, Government, 10. 1403 Wilcox, 92. 1404 Hughes, Australia and War Today, 147-50. Hughes had also called for deficit defence spending in September 1933, Manly speech, 28 September 1933, Hughes Papers, MS1538/32/1/1, NLA, Canberra. 1405 Lyons changed his mind on deficit defence spending in August 1937; vide Chapter 5. 1406 Cabinet Minutes, 10 December 1935, A2694, vol.14/4, NAA, Canberra. 1407 On the 2 December 1935 statement, vide below. Parkhill, 11 May 1936, to the Constitutional Club; Hasluck, Government, 43. This was to be alongside the development of a motor industry for similar purposes; vide Chapter 5. 1408 Through his secretary, Ulrich Ellis; Earle Page, Truant Surgeon, 260; Ellis to Hart, 26 October 1964, Hart Papers, MS 9410, NLA, Canberra, where he noted that Lyons has been precious about some of Hughes’s comments hurting him personally. 192 Japan’, according to Moffat’s account.1409 This episode was as curious as the resignation itself, but both men apparently wished to renew their mutually profitable association, which continued with some turbulence until Lyons’s death in April 1939, surviving the widening gulf in their views on European appeasement.1410

It was the threat from the north that always remained paramount in any defence considerations ─ if Hughes had sounded warnings about the Mediterranean in 1935, then the analyst E. Piesse (‘Albatross’) had done the same for the Pacific in his Japan and the Defence of Australia.1411 Once a believer that Japan presented no threat to Australia, Piesse had long left behind him what he now called ‘the dead hopes of the 1920s’,1412 warning in 1935 that Australian defence planners must not assume any British or US help against an aggressive Japan, but rely on their own resources.1413 These, he suggested, ought to include a greater emphasis on more affordable land and air power, rather than on the prohibitively expensive naval arm. ‘Albatross’ was considered by some as a tool in the war between the services; Parkhill suspected that he was a mouthpiece for the Army, something supported by recent research, this service being disgruntled by the secondary role allotted to it in the government’s planning, but Piesse’s strategic thinking and its impact on public opinion were not easily dismissed.1414 None of Piesse’s views was necessarily new to the government, nor was he in turn hostile to their general conception of a ‘self-reliant defence’.1415 Lyons and other defence policy-makers had considered all of these matters since 1933 and shown some awareness of the possibility of being forced to rely on local resources alone in an emergency, if only for a temporary period, hence the emphasis on local preparation in the first rearmament program. However, he was not prepared to accept a defence analysis that steered towards isolationism, preferring to muster Australian resources primarily for home and regional defence, but within an imperial framework (and within one that potentially included the United States).1416 Given certain precautions, such as the refusal to countenance Hankey’s proposal of an expeditionary force, this made perfect strategic sense.

1409 Moffat to Cordell Hull, 11 February 1936, FRUS, 1936, vol.4, 50-2. 1410 Their exchange of correspondence at the time; Hughes to Lyons, 29 January 1936, quoted in Fitzhardinge, 638-9. Lyons to Hughes, 3 February 1936, Joseph Lyons Papers, MS 4851/B2/F12, NLA, Canberra; M2270/1/24, NAA, Canberra. Hughes to Lyons, 4 February 1936, Joseph Lyons Papers, MS 4851/B2/F12, NLA, Canberra; M2270/1/24, NAA, Canberra; Fitzhardinge, 639. 1411 On Piesse’s background; A. Watt, “The Australian Diplomatic Service…”, 135 and N. Meaney, “E. L. Piesse and the Problem of Japan,” in Between Empire and Nation: Australia’s External Relations from Federation to the Second World War, eds. C. Bridge and B. Attard, 73-92. Piesse had been a Director of Intelligence, 1916-19, and founding director of the Pacific branch of the Prime Minister’s Department, 1919-23, under Hughes; D. Walker, Anxious Nation, 174; Smith, 87; Twomey, “Small Power Security…”: 82; ibid., “Australia and the Search…”, 150. 1412 Frei, 115-6, 127. 1413 Albatross, Japan and the Defence of Australia (Melbourne: Robertson and Mullens, 1935), 25, 30, 34-6. 1414 Horner, Defence Supremo, 48, notes that Colonel Wynter, Lavarack’s Director of Military Training, had reviewed proofs of the book. ‘Albatross’ even quoted General Lavarack, Chief of the General Staff, himself, 25. Lavarack and Hodgson were both sent drafts of the work for their comments; Piesse to Keith Murdoch, Lavarack and Hodgson, August 1935, Piesse Papers, MS 882/9/1/37, NLA, Canberra. Hodgson replied, offering encouragement, on 8 August 1935, MS 882/9/1/43. 1415 Piesse, quoted in Smith, 87. Enid Lyons was adamant in her retirement that Australians were rightly insistent to want ‘to run our own show’ in defence, audio interview with Mel Pratt, March 1972, Tape 1. 1416 Hasluck, Government, 46, suggested that such analyses as those of Piesse were ‘provincial’, if not isolationist. 193 Additionally, Lyons was reluctant to accept the views of ‘Albatross’ that Japan was unlikely to be satisfied after Manchuria, even if he remained conscious of the possibility of a southward thrust, as he had shown in London in May 1935.1417 In the meantime, the diplomacy of appeasement could perhaps prevent any need to fire a shot in anger by conciliating a potential aggressor ─ this possibility was something on which Piesse and Lyons could agree.1418

Recent events in this period had shown that Australian defence thinkers needed to consider the additional complication of a simultaneous war in both the Far East and Europe. This grim possibility had in fact already been addressed by the cabinet defence sub-committee as early as September 1935, before the first of the twin crises elevated anxieties.1419 Lyons then clearly felt that it was time, as 1935 drew to a close, for a public expression of the government’s defence posture, as there had been no such statement since the commencement of the Abyssinian hostilities, in October. Parkhill accordingly offered a defence review in a speech at Mosman on 2 December 1935.1420 There were, the minister said, ‘three safeguards’ of Australian defence ─ the League and its mechanisms, imperial defence and the ‘Commonwealth’s own resources’. National security depended on ‘a blending of these three safeguards’.1421 Parkhill did not say so, but the details that he was about to provide indicated that these three elements were listed in the reverse order of priority, with similarities of emphasis to the program of September 1933 ─ it was arguably still more politically palatable to reverse that order in public rhetoric and to continue to stress both collective security and the imperial link.1422 Whatever the choice of language, the first two of these safeguards could currently be discounted, as collective security was, by general consensus, in a state of disarray and although the minister desisted from any outright denunciation of Britain’s unwillingness to rearm, he did warn: ‘History is strewn with the wreckage of great empires which, through neglecting their defences, became a temptation and an easy prey to an aggressor.’ This was timely warning to London from a rearming Canberra, for Baldwin had recently swept the polls on the promise of ‘no great armament’1423 ─ Lyons, in privately urging British rearmament in May 1935, had already indicated Canberra’s consciousness of British weakness according to Bruce’s long-standing assessment.1424 Parkhill now implied that Australia had accordingly been offered little option other to concentrate on the third, ‘innermost’ element of developing its own resources by finally announcing that the Pearce

1417 ‘Albatross’, 32-3; Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, third meeting, 9 May 1935, A981 IMP 135. 1418 Smith, 87. 1419 Cabinet defence sub-committee, 10 September 1935, Cabinet Papers, Roll 9, CRS A606, NAA, Victoria. Lyons had subsequently requested the Defence Department to supply information on stores predicated on the assumption of simultaneous war by 1939; ibid. 1420 Parkhill speech, ‘Statement of the Government’s Policy regarding the Defence of Australia’, 2 December 1935, in McCarthy, Australia and Imperial Defence, 129; Sydney Morning Herald, 3 December 1935, 8, f. 1421 Parkhill, ‘Statement’, 2 December 1935; Sydney Morning Herald, 3 December 1935, 8, f. 1422 Holsti, 133, differentiates between a ‘representational’ model of language, where verbal expressions are valid indicators of belief and an ‘instrumental’ model, where the language has been constructed to conceal belief. 1423 M. Gilbert, “Appeasement in Action”: 1573, referring to the election of November 1935. 1424 Lyons, Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, fourth meeting, 23 May 1935; Bruce in CID, 9 November 1933, CAB 2/6, quoted in Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 329ff. 194 program of 1933 (originally intended to run until 1936/37) had been superseded by a new, more ambitious triennial program. No member of the Mosman audience who followed Parkhill’s reasoning could but conclude that Canberra held London culpable for the onerous scale of the new burden.

The details of the second rearmament program indicated that the Lyons cabinet had heeded the warnings about the Singapore strategy and its timetables given by Admiral Hyde in the new Council of Defence on 19 June 1935,1425 and on 10 September 1935, a cabinet sub- committee considered the possibility of a ‘prolonged delay’ in the arrival of a British fleet at Singapore.1426 This disagreeable prospect weakened the appeal of the ‘Blue Water’ approach of forward naval deployment, but did not nullify it. Accordingly, under the new rearmament program, the RAN was to continue to receive funding priority, in an allotment of as yet unspecified millions, although this was probably due to the onerous expense of structuring an adequate ‘Australian’ navy, rather to any instinctive assumption of naval priority1427 ─ Parkhill chose barely to mention the navy (or Singapore) in his ‘Statement’, preferring to concentrate on the needs of the other services. The equipment of the Army was to be modernised and Hughes’s call for employer support of militia recruitment was repeated, without acknowledgement of its source.1428 The greatest emphasis of the Parkhill speech, however, was on the needs of the air arm, where the Salmond scheme was to be expanded with greater coastal surveillance and a greater commitment to air-sea liaison.1429

What was arguably the most radical element in the December ‘Statement’ (and also foreshadowed by Hughes in November) was left to the last part of the minister’s survey.1430 It was, from the British point of view, the most sensitive aspect:

The Government hoped before long to accomplish the establishment of a local aircraft industry, so as not to be forced to rely on overseas sources which might not be available in time of war.1431

1425 McCarthy, Australia and Imperial Defence, 130; Horner, Defence Supremo, 47. The first meeting of the Council was not on 9 April 1935, pace Andrews, Writing, 173. 1426 Cabinet defence sub-committee considering war preparation, both in Europe and the East in the event of a ‘simultaneous war’, vide above, on 10 September 1935, Cabinet Papers, CRS A606/9. Ross, Armed and Ready, 126, noted the many warnings that Lyons had received and heeded on Singapore. 1427 Some, like ‘Albatross’, 47-51, believed that Australia could never afford to fund an adequate navy. The program called for the financially ambitious refitting or replacement of 5 cruisers and 5 destroyers. May, 211, lists the cruiser and destroyer forces after 1934. The destroyers were obsolete and scrapped in 1936. Even after the delayed arrival of the new Sydney in 1936, the cruiser force remained predominantly obsolete or decommissioned. 1428 Hughes, Australia and War Today, 119; Parkhill, ‘Statement’, 2 December 1935. 1429 Parkhill, ‘Statement’, 2 December 1935. This involved the acquisition of reconnaissance bombers and other amphibious aircraft. Twelve sea-going aircraft were to be utilised in each of 4 permanent squadrons, double the usual number of machines in such formations, whilst an unspecified number of other squadrons were to consist of 12 aircraft each, triple the usual number. May, 209-10, provides technical details of the type of aircraft ordered. 1430 Both the Salmond expansion and this particular suggestion were found in Hughes, Australia and War Today, Chapter 14, passim. 1431 Parkhill, ‘Statement’, 2 December 1935. 195 This concept appealed to Lyons as a political manager because of its ramifications for the development of Australian secondary industry, let alone on grounds of national security.1432 Alongside the modernisation of land forces and the Salmond expansion outlined by Parkhill, it was further evidence that the Lyons government believed in the primacy of the third ‘safeguard’, the ‘Commonwealth’s own resources’, although such an outlook did not exclude the ‘blending’ of imperial needs with the demands of home defence.1433 These two elements were never easy to balance, but they were not contradictory and would be made more complementary once Britain commenced its own rearmament in a substantial manner. Naval expenditure, for example, was conducive to both imperial and home needs, even if invariably portrayed publicly as chiefly intended to make a contribution to a wider imperial scheme.1434 Defence council and sub- committee considerations of 1935 gave no evidence of any unquestioning or automatic commitment to Whitehall’s naval strategies, nor did the deployment of the refitting RAN (recent exceptional events in the Mediterranean aside), even if some wartime naval liaison was accepted as highly likely.1435 It was a mistake, however, to believe that even the naval element of Parkhill’s statement, let alone the other components, constituted ‘imperial integration’, as Hankey did for his own purposes.1436

On 24 March 1936 in Adelaide, the Prime Minister put his own stamp on the second rearmament program and provided an insight into the reasoning of an appeaser who was also a rearmer. His speech was a considered response to the recent shadow of war over the Mediterranean and a very personal, as well as prime ministerial, reaction to the emergency on the Rhine.1437 Lyons warned his audience that the deteriorating international situation necessitated the modernisation of Australia’s defences, a process that had begun in September 1933 and was now to continue apace. Recent international developments concerned him and he observed that some European countries were becoming ‘armed camps’, characteristically without attaching blame to any single nation for this process.1438 The address revealed that the homely gentleness of his early

1432 Ross, Armed and Ready, 169-70, on Lyons’s realisation that Australian economic recovery depended on the growth of secondary, not the recovery of primary, industry, vide Chapter 5. He also provides an account of the difficult birth of the aircraft industry and of the tepid British reaction, 285ff.; also Holland, 147, for British opposition. 1433 Parkhill, ‘Statement’, 2 December 1935. 1434 The maintenance of RAN funding priority was in accordance with Admiral Hyde’s lament about local naval inadequacy; Memorandum, 3 April 1935, but also in accord with Hankey’s suggestions of the need for imperial naval supremacy, quoted in McCarthy, “Australia and Imperial Defence…”: 28. 1435 Lyons’s decision to allow the newly refitted HMAS Sydney, en route for home, to co-operate temporarily with the Mediterranean fleet at this time seemed sensible, given the imminence of hostilities; Round Table, “Australian Defence Policy.” vol.26, no.101 (December 1935): 68. The cruisers Australia and Canberra also made extended Mediterranean cruises in 1936; May, 211, and cabinet accepted that the RAN would make some contribution to Imperial Naval Defence; Cabinet Agenda, 6 July 1936, A3258, NAA, Canberra. But vide Chapter 5, where Lyons carefully avoided future commitments on deployment at the 1937 Imperial Conference. 1436 pace McCarthy, Australia and Imperial Defence, 129. Shedden sent a copy of Parkhill’s statement to Hankey, mistakenly asserting that it was the government’s first comprehensive statement on defence principles, 17 December 1935, CAB 21/397, PRO, London. Hankey circulated it to the cabinet believing it the implementation of ‘the policy which I recommended on the occasion of my visit to Australia’, 17 January 1936, CAB 21/386, PRO, London. 1437 Lyons address to Commonwealth Club, Adelaide, 24 March 1936; “Defence Needs”, Age, 25 March 1936, 12, f. Holland, 191, referred to this period as containing a ‘public campaign of defence propaganda’. 1438 Lyons address, Adelaide, 24 March 1936, Age, 25 March 1936, 12, f. 196 years had not left him, for when Lyons offered an analysis of the causes of this rearmament he preferred to offer a simple, almost domestic explanation, rather than to analyse the aggressive, ideological imperatives of certain European rulers. Rearmament, he assured, was not due to a desire for war, but due to a ‘fear of one another’.1439 It was true that Germany had maintained throughout the Rhineland crisis that she feared Franco-Soviet aggression, a point that Lyons had recently appeared eager to disseminate1440 ─ one may speculate that he recalled Latham’s 1934 observation that Japan also feared the USSR.1441 He was more probably simply transferring his own anxieties to the minds of others, for Lyons as readily attributed motives of good faith, humanity and sincerity to other international statesmen as he had earlier done to domestic politicians. Until the remedy of appeasement could restore some equilibrium to international relations, however, he could discern little alternative to the difficult balance of conciliation and rearmament. For at least the next triennium, Lyons emphatically concluded: ‘It [rearmament] may cost millions and you will pay those millions cheerfully. First things first, and nothing comes before defence.’1442 This broad statement alone was an indication of the depth of his individual anxiety about the recent threats of war─ these sentiments indicated that Lyons had undergone something of a personal and political catharsis in recent years in his attitudes to disarmament and collective security.

Although April 1936 brought a lull in the recent period of crisis, the preparations for a fuller disclosure of the second rearmament program continued and, at Sydney on 15 June 1936, Parkhill delivered a second important speech reviewing defence and offering specifics which Lyons had not himself provided in any public statement, for the prime minister was happy to be the government spokesman on external affairs, even insisting on being so, but was less comfortable with the defence portfolio.1443 This second, extra-parliamentary speech reached into the past in order to justify further defence expenditure beyond that indicated in September 1933.1444 Parkhill stressed the failure of disarmament and listed three specific ‘setbacks’ to collective security ─ the Japanese withdrawal from the League, the war in Abyssinia and the recent German treaty violations. Significantly, in accordance with Lyons’s particular idée fixe, the Manchurian episode was not mentioned in this list of aggression. The corollary of this international turmoil was the need for stronger defences, but only ‘compatible with the financial resources of the country’ and desirably with defence matters put above ‘Party considerations’1445 ─ these were very Lyons-like sentiments and unusual for a man of Parkhill’s partisan reputation,

1439 ibid. 1440 Lyons to Bruce, 11 March 1936, CP 290/5/2. vide above. 1441 Latham, “Secret Report”, 3 July 1934, 23-4; vide Chapter 2. It is difficult to see whom Lyons thought Italy feared. 1442 Lyons address, Adelaide, 24 March 1936, Age, 25 March 1936, 12, f. 1443 Parkhill speech, Sydney, 15 June 1936, published as a pamphlet, The Defence of Australia. What the Lyons Government Has Done, subtitled ‘The International Trend in Recent Years and Its Relation to Australia’s Defence’, Australian Defence White Paper, MP 1587/1 218AO, NAA, Melbourne; Ross, Armed and Ready, 112. 1444 Pearce’s September 1933 speech and the Mosman speech of December 1935 had all been made outside the parliament. 1445 Parkhill speech, 15 June 1936, MP 1587/1 218AO. 197 but characteristic of his leader’s sound economic management and the desire for consensus.1446 The minister indicated that further budget surpluses, thought to be about £1 million in the coming year, were to be directed exclusively to defence, a considerable sacrifice at a time of continuing high unemployment and trade disruption─ Casey, as Treasurer, believed that the days of this practice were numbered, foreseeing an end to such surpluses by July 1937.1447 Thus every penny of the surpluses accumulated since January 1932 under Lyons and Casey would have been directed to the Department of Defence alone. Lyons remained content for the moment to keep this extra defence expenditure within budgetary limitations and despite his call at Adelaide that ‘nothing comes before defence’; economic prudence was allowed to predominate.1448 These new allocations would nevertheless bring defence spending up to an average level of £6.5 million p.a., a figure equal to that of the prosperous ‘twenties under Bruce, when Australia’s average national income was higher. Parkhill justified the sacrifices such spending would entail by both reaching back to the pioneer past and looking to the perils of the future. The pioneers had faced and overcome great difficulties in their time, he said, and this spirit must be brought to bear today, ‘if we wish to hold our heritage in peace and safety’1449 ─ qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.1450

The conclusion of Parkhill’s address indicated that Canberra’s strategic outlook remained unchanged despite recent challenges and the temporary lapse into acquiescence that had occurred in the external affairs arena. It also gave notice of future political turmoil ─ the modernised Army was to be structured to form the ‘nucleus’ of seven future divisions, a size more suggestive to the suspicious of expeditionary forces than of any fear of ‘light raids’, but the latter scenario was still the one envisaged by the Lyons cabinet on 6 July 1936, with the Army at a level below 2,000 permanent personnel (Lavarack wanted 130,000, including conscripts).1451 But neither this service, nor a militia previously noted by the minister as inadequately manned at ‘only 27,000’,1452 was to be strengthened by conscription, in accordance with Lyons’s particular antipathy: ‘It is the policy of the Government to continue the Voluntary System.’1453 It was still hoped to lift militia recruitment to 35,000 through enticements rather than compulsion.1454 This was one Labor reform to which Lyons doggedly adhered, despite his defection to the conservatives and it would increasingly appear to be less the policy of the ‘Government’ and

1446 Parkhill was noted for his partisanship in parliament; Lloyd, “Rise and Fall…”, 137. 1447 Ross, Armed and Ready, 112ff., on the economic difficulties of 1936-37. Unemployment still stood at just under 10%. Some £1.3 million was spent in the following year on defence capital expenditure alone, ibid., 111. Casey to Bruce, 6 July 1936, 1421/3/22, NAA, Canberra, predicting the exhaustion of the Trust Fund by 30 June 1937. 1448 This resolve crumbled during the later rearmament programs, vide later chapters. 1449 Parkhill speech, 15 June 1936, MP 1587/1 218AO. 1450 ‘Whoever desires peace, let him prepare for war’; Vegetius (c.390AD), Epitome Rei Miltaris. Some in Labor, such as Brennan, specifically rejected this view; Robertson, Scullin, 270. 1451 The ‘light raids’ scenario was re-endorsed in cabinet on 6 July 1936, Cabinet Agenda, A3258, NAA, Canberra. On Lavarack’s wish; Horner, Defence Supremo, 48; vide Chapter 5. Plans for a ‘regular’ army, supported by Curtin, were rejected by the government; Wilcox, 102-3. 1452 Parkhill, ‘Statement’, 2 December 1935; Wilcox, 92. 1453 Parkhill speech, 15 June 1936, MP 1587/1 218AO. 1454 Wilcox, 100. 198 more the personal obsession of J.A. Lyons. Parkhill’s June assertion was the opening barrage of a dispute that would tear the Lyons government internally from this time onwards. The first rearmament program of September 1933 had excited some interest in ‘universal training’ from the RSSILA, amongst others, and the service chiefs were generally in favour of conscription, as outlined by Lavarack in April 1936.1455 The proposal came to be supported by an increasing number of cabinet ministers, but Lyons would not countenance such measures under any circumstances. His pacificist principles had long accommodated rearmament, but he would never accept compulsory service.1456

The implementation of the second rearmament program was intended to be over a three- year period,1457 with Casey providing an elegant summary of the government’s perspective in the middle of 1936, when he complained to Bruce: ‘We are the only part of the Empire…that is making any serious attempt to deal with Defence.’1458 He could also have stated that Australia was also the only part of the Empire that had made any serious contribution to international conciliation over the previous two years, especially in the Pacific. If Lyons hoped that there would be no need for future, supplementary rearmament programs, a hope that would have been contrary to the predictions furnished to cabinet, he was disappointed.1459 Like the first measures of rearmament of 1933, these second proposals would be expanded before their due completion and superseded by more ambitious preparations.

Ω The tumultuous period September 1935-June 1936 had indicated that Lyons’s prime ministerial search for peace and conciliation had made little progress. The number of obstacles in his path had actually multiplied, as the outline emerged of a new tripartite partnership between the professedly aggrieved nations; Germany Italy and Japan. This evolution of what he soon called ‘new alignments’ was most unwelcome to those Australians conscious that Japan remained unappeased ─ the shadow of European war made more urgent the search for peace in East Asia.1460 No-one was more conscious of this than the figurehead of Australian appeasement himself, conscious that Australians could not ‘live to ourselves alone’.1461 Despite these difficulties, Lyons had shown in this period his desire for wide-ranging appeasement ─ he now considered it as applicable in Europe as in his own region and was prepared to say so to Whitehall, although without, as yet, any discernible effect. It was a policy

1455 Sandes, 21-2; Horner, Defence Supremo, 48; Wilcox 102-3. 1456 In this opposition, he was more of a ‘pacifist’; Bentley, 121-2. vide Chapter 7 for the final and decisive cabinet battles over the issue. 1457 Pearce, ‘Statement’, 2 December 1935. 1458 Casey to Bruce, 6 July 1936, 1421/3/22, also quoted in Cumpston, Bruce, 137. 1459 Note Lyons’s inquiry into the assumption of the cabinet defence sub-committee, 10 September 1935, Cabinet Papers, Roll 9, CRS A606, that a world war was possible by 1939. 1460 Lyons, Record of the Lyons Government, “Commonwealth Parliamentary Year 1936. Review by Prime Minister”, 17 December 1936, A601/165/1/1, NAA, Canberra. Japan entered the Anti-Comintern Pact on 25 November 1936. 1461 ibid. 199 whose critics in Canberra had been marginalised for, from March 1936, wider appeasement would not be removed from the top of the Australian political agenda until after Lyons’s demise, despite the periodic rumblings of opponents such as Pearce and Hughes. The first task before Lyons the appeaser after mid-1936 was to further pursue a way to conciliate Tokyo before any new alignments solidified into alliances. He continued to work diplomatically for what he thought of as the best-case scenario, while preparing defensively for the worst.

200 Chapter 5: annus mirabilis − The Imperial Conference and its Aftermath, May 1936-December 1937

‘I am hardly a pilot, but a beacon.’1462 J.A. Lyons at the Imperial Conference, May-June 1937.

‘Never enter an international conference until you have reached a basis of agreement.’1463 Marquis of Salisbury, quoted in Round Table, October 1934.

Trade diversion – League reform – conference preparation − Italian appeasement – the Imperial Conference and the Pact proposal – initial responses – defence and the conference – conference outcomes – the third rearmament program – the October election and conscription.

The latter half of 1936 presented new obstacles to impede the already slow progress that Australian appeasement had been making since December 1933, as a trade confrontation (trade diversion) with Japan and the US revealed the difficulties inherent in Lyons’s prime ministerial attempts to isolate ‘political’ appeasement from its ‘economic’ variant, as well as the difficulties of balancing conciliation with defence considerations. There were, however, new opportunities for appeasers like Lyons to advance their agenda, given a widespread recognition that the League of Nations was ailing. Differences emerged within the Australian cabinet before the end of the year over the issue of League reform, but Lyons was honing his own proposals, which he took to London for the Imperial Conference of May-June 1937. These included a revival of his earlier suggestions of a regional pact, which had been allowed to tread water since the period leading up to the Abyssinian episode of late-1935 and during the perils of the Rhineland crisis of early-1936, until Geneva reawakened interest in such projects ─ despite this peculiar interlude, Lyons showed that he had retained his personal faith in a project described by him in late-1934 as ‘one of the greatest contributions that could be made to world peace’.1464 Lyons personally hoped that 1937 would be ‘full of hope and promise and good intent’,1465 and accordingly he punctuated it with more amateur, personal diplomacy, including an attempt to conciliate Rome and personal negotiations with foreign diplomats in London. From mid-1937, Lyons was no longer behaving as if a joint-minister of external affairs alongside Pearce, but as de facto minister, increasingly dominating policy-making in the manner of many of his predecessors, and even behaving as a self-perceived imperial statesman ─ this year proved an annus mirabilis in which, it is argued, he indicated his further desire for the improvement of Whitehall-dominion consultation in imperial foreign policy-making and publicly unveiled a second Pacific initiative, the resuscitated Pacific Pact proposal, his magnum opus and the climax

1462 Quoted in Mister Prime Minister, ABC video. 1463 Round Table, vol.24, (1933-34): 693. 1464 Lyons, as reported in Moffat to Hull, FRUS, 1935, vol.3, 364, point 5, 12 October 1935. 1465 Lyons, New Year radio broadcast, 7BU Burnie, 31 December 1936, Joseph Lyons Papers, MS 4851/2/16, NLA, Canberra. 201 of his eastern appeasement.1466 Lyons’s close association with the origins of the proposal was universally acknowledged─ the reasons for its failure may also be partially found in an examination of this individual’s thinking and methods, for even though the proposal was arguably an innovative attempt to settle affairs in the region in a manner conducive to Australian security, it was inadequately drafted and poorly managed; although endorsed by the Imperial Conference in June 1937, the resolve of Whitehall to pursue it was limited. Lyons did not, however, leave London disconsolate, for the conference had also endorsed the concept of ‘wider appeasement’ as a co-ordinated goal of imperial policy. This diplomatic outcome was pleasing to the assembled dominion appeasers, of whom Lyons was a prominent member, and seemed matched by the conference’s nominal commitment to ‘imperial co-operation’ in defence, especially a quantitative commitment on Singapore ─ after 9 June 1937, the Australian prime minister had fewer illusions about the strengths and weaknesses of the Singapore strategy, even if the Australian delegation had failed to attain the level of joint defence planning that it sought. An awareness of the defence deficiencies highlighted at the conference was, it is argued, a factor in the ‘New Programme’ of rearmament, the third, announced in August 1937. Defence also played an important part in the poll of October, where Lyons sought to highlight these particular policy distinctions between the parties at a time when regional war was a reality. Against his will, a great deal of electoral attention was focused on conscription where, ironically, the prime minister was more at one with Labor than with his own party. Nevertheless, with universal appeasement now signalled by London as the imperial course, it seemed by late-1937 that Lyons’s world-view had finally come into its own on the broader international stage. I No sooner had Germany been soothed in the Rhineland, and Italy in Abyssinia, than the Australian government brought on itself, in May 1936, a state of disturbance in its relations with Japan through the curious trade diversion episode. A full examination of this dispute is beyond the scope of this work, but the episode contained elements relevant to external and defence policy.1467 Henry Gullett, the minister without portfolio responsible for trade treaties, seemed the guiding force (and was subsequently the chief political casualty) with Casey behind him, a significant factor given the Treasurer’s increasing impact on Lyons’s thinking ─ but Lyons bore the ultimate responsibility as prime minister and trade diversion could not have proceeded without his assent.1468 He had been searching for a political solution to the problem of Japanese

1466 Even where the significance of this pact has been recognised, for example as an antecedent of ANZUS, Starke, 4, Lyons’s role has been unduly minimalised. 1467 Revealing analyses may be found in Attard, “The Limits of Influence…”: 325-43; D. Sissons, “Private Diplomacy in the 1936 Trade Dispute with Japan.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.27, no.2 (1981): 143-5; ibid., “Manchester v. Japan”: 480-502; O’Brien: 569-86. 1468 On Gullett; ADB, vol.9, 138; Lloyd, “Rise and Fall…”, 137. He was appointed minister in October 1934. On Casey; A. Ross, “Australian Overseas Trade and National Development Policy 1932-1939: a story of colonial larrikins or Australian statesmen?” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.36 no.3 (1990): 191-2. On Bruce and Gullett, O’Brien: 574. Cabinet indicated its willingness to act against Japanese imports on 23 January 1936, Cabinet Minutes, A2694, vol.15, part 1, NAA, Canberra. Murphy, 244, thought Gullett alone responsible for the exercise and he was 202 aggression for nearly three years, but had long avoided any attempt to address the issue of trade.1469 Therefore when Gullett suddenly terminated the negotiations for a ‘Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation’ in May 1936, his action threatened to poison the ‘friendly relations’ that the prime minister had been cultivating since December 1933.1470 Lyons’s failure to deflect Gullett from a full-scale confrontation was either a misjudgement or an indication of his continuing inability to co-ordinate economic and foreign policy. This proved a costly mistake and when, by December 1936, Canberra had gained a putative economic victory through trade diversion, it was one bought at the expense of political appeasement, even if ultimately to the benefit of defence readiness.1471 This was the first indication of the shadow that rearmament would cast over conciliation in this region and elsewhere.1472

The debate on the economic motives for trade diversion has chiefly centred on the level of British input into the policy and on Lyons’s attempts to lever greater access to UK markets while maintaining the level of British imports.1473 From the external affairs perspective, it was only natural that Tokyo would resent any attempt to restrict her Australian exports, whatever Canberra’s economic motives ─ neither Hirota nor Debuchi had been able to persuade Australia to open its markets further and the Gullett-Murai treaty negotiations had also broken down by late-May 1936.1474 Consequently, on 22 May, the minister announced import restrictions that had a serious impact on Japanese trade, as well as irritating the US.1475 The former minister, Charles

compelled to resign following the episode in March 1937, Smith, 84-5, at a time of great tension between himself and Lyons; ‘Austra’, “The March of Events.” Australian National Review, vol.1, no.4 (April 1937): 89. Gullett and Lyons were not close and appeared to have differed at this time on the extent of rearmament, possibly over conscription; Enid Lyons audio interview with Mel Pratt, Tape 1, 68-9. 1469 Moffat was only half right to believe that Australia was not prepared to offend Japan politically or commercially; Moffat to Cordell Hull, FRUS, 1935, vol.3, 363-5, 12 October 1935. 1470 Lyons Wollongong speech, 12 October 1935, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 October 1935, 11, e. Shepherd, 101, noted Japanese resentment. Jones, 133, notes that the policy was unheralded in the press and announced without consultation even with the Tariff Board. 1471 Nish, “Relations with Japan,” 163, suggests, quoting Japanese sources, that the exercise was a failed gamble that Japan would meekly endure trading restrictions. 1472 vide later chapters on this over-shadowing after March 1938. 1473 The preservation of British imports and the enhancement of Australian exports to Britain were linked by Lyons; Tsokhas, “The Wool Industry and the Trade Diversion Dispute”: 442; Sissons questioned the government’s profession of such a link, “Manchester v. Japan”: 501. British exports to Australia had halved, 1929-1936; K. Tsokhas, “Protection, Imperial Preference and Australian Conservative Politics, 1923-39.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol.20, no.1 (January 1992): 79, and foreign markets remained more important to Britain than did Empire ones, despite Ottawa; O’Brien: 569. Nevertheless, the UK remained Australia’s chief trade destination, absorbing over 50% of Australian exports in 1935-36; J. Crawford, “Australia as a Pacific Power”, in Duncan, Australia’s Foreign Policy, appendix table. Jones, 136, restated the view that the episode marked a willing Australian return to ‘imperial interests’, but his chief contribution to the debate lies in his analysis, 155 and passim, of the racialist aspects of attitudes towards Japan. I accept Attard’s thesis that Australian commercial policy in this period was neither entirely subordinate to British interests nor the product of the careful calculation of Australian self-interest pursued to its conclusion; Attard, “The Limits of Influence…”: 340. 1474 Murai was the Sydney consul; full details of these negotiations are in D. Sissons, “Private Diplomacy in the 1936 Trade Dispute with Japan.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.27, no.2 (1981): 143ff. The Japanese were assisted in their efforts by Dr. Melbourne; Melbourne to Murai, 5 September 1936, C443 J45, NAA, Sydney. 1475 CPD, vol.150, 2211ff., 22 May 1936. Gullett tabled a list of goods prohibited for import from non-Empire countries. The British were not informed beforehand of the initiative; Megaw, “Goodwill…”: 258, quoting a Foreign Office minute on Board of Trade communications, 3 February 1936, FO 371/202081. 203 Hawker, thought that the Lyons government had underestimated the likely Japanese response,1476 and no-one was more aware of the likely impact on Japanese opinion than A.C.V. Melbourne, who wrote to Lyons on 2 July 1936, expressing his view that the whole episode was a ‘serious mistake’.1477 The attempts made by the Lyons government since 1933 to improve relations with Tokyo had now been replaced by a mutual hostility, at least in the economic arena, something that caused the prime minister some immediate distress and the desire to consult Dr. Melbourne.1478 The Japanese (perhaps buoyed by the latter’s inside information) persisted in the following months with a retaliatory boycott of Australian wool, despite Gullett’s confidence that they would accept the quotas proposed in May1479 ─ finally, an agreement was reached between the two sides on 26 December 1936, setting out tit-for-tat volumes of trade over the coming eighteen months.1480 Although it ended the pressure by Japan for further market access and their attempt to displace British textiles, the agreement represented a Pyrrhic victory for Australia in that it actually reduced the volume of bilateral trade, as contemporaries, including Giblin, alarmingly noted.1481 It was also thought to have increased Japanese interest in autarchy,1482 a feature more disturbing to the adherents of ‘economic appeasement’ (usually Britons and Americans, although including Bruce), than to Lyons, who remained an economic nationalist.1483 The only consolation for the political appeasers, Lyons among them, was that, with Japanese

1476 C. Hawker, “The Japan-Australia Trade Dispute.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.1, no.1 (April 1937): 7. On Hawker, Sawer, Australian Federal Politics, 43; Page, Truant Surgeon, 233. 1477 Melbourne to Murai, 2 July 1936, C443 J45, NAA, Sydney. The Lyons letter is missing from the Melbourne Papers. 1478 Within a week of the missing Melbourne letter, Lyons replied and invited Melbourne to confer with him in Canberra ‘in the next few weeks’; Lyons to Melbourne, 8 July 1936, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. This did not prove possible, but Melbourne replied on 22 July, enclosing his advice that by failing to conclude a commercial agreement, Australia had disappointed Tokyo and allowed slip an opportunity to place them under an obligation; Melbourne to Lyons, 22 July 1936, ibid. The two men eventually met in Brisbane, at Lyons’s further request, on 5 August 1936, but the meeting achieved little other than to fuel Lyons’s fears of a southward thrust; vide below. At a January 1938 summer school of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, Melbourne described trade diversion and the Pacific Pact, as the products of ignorance; Discussion following the J. Crawford paper, “Australia as a Pacific Power”, 113ff. 1479 Gullett to cabinet, 10 September 1936, Cabinet Minutes, A2694, vol.15 (2). Melbourne told Murai of the details of Gullett’s views, gained after an interview, and what Canberra believed that the Japanese were likely to do; Melbourne to Murai, 23 October 1936, C443 J45, NAA, Sydney. 1480 The agreement was to expire on 30 June 1938; Sissons, “Private Diplomacy…”: 154; Harris, 102. It was renewed in July 1938 on terms less favourable to Australia; I. Cumpston, “The Australian-Japanese Dispute of the Nineteen- Thirties.” Australian Quarterly, vol.29, no.2 (June 1957): 53. 1481 The acceptance of Japanese textiles was directly linked to the importation of Australian wool - every additional 10,000 bales resulted in the acceptance of 2 million square yards of textiles; K. Tsokhas, Markets, Money and Empire. The Political Economy of the Australian Wool Industry (Melbourne: MUP, 1990), 117ff. Contemporary opinion was mostly hostile; Shepherd, 44, regarded the whole as a ‘disaster’, using Department of Commerce figures; Campbell, “A Foreign Policy for Australia”, 176-7, noted the drop in volumes; Giblin described the policy as ‘irrational’, H. Burton, “The Trade Diversion Episode of the ‘Thirties.” Australian Outlook, vol.22, no.1 (1968): 9; Eggleston, Reflections, 3. vide Smith, 84-5, on the alleged long-term damage to the wool trade, although Tsokhas, “Wool Industry”: 459, believed that the industry was largely unaffected by the Japanese boycott and prices continued to rise in the later ‘thirties. 1482 The view of Shepherd, 118, in 1939. 1483 Campbell, “A Foreign Policy for Australia”, 176-7, noted the settlement was contrary to ‘economic appeasement’. Bruce was the foremost Australian proponent of this concept, vide below. The attitude was well-entrenched in Washington; A. Offner, “Appeasement Revisited: the United States, Great Britain, and Germany, 1931-1940.” Journal of American History, vol.64 (September 1977): 376ff. On US perceptions of its impact on Germany; H. Schröder, “The Ambiguities of Appeasement: Great Britain, the United States and Germany, 1937-9,” in Fascist Challenge, 390-99. On abandoned British economic appeasement; Best, “Economic Appeasement…”: 80ff. 204 industrial expansion southwards obstructed by this settlement, the Asian mainland (Manchukuo) beckoned as the alternative, in accordance with A.C.V. Melbourne’s 1934 advice.1484 Trade diversion did secure greater access to the British market for Australian goods and had drawn something of a line under Japanese economic ambitions in the south, but it did nothing to enhance Australia’s reputation in Tokyo, where some suspected the hand of Britain.1485 Despite Gullett’s confidence that their ‘long and happy’ trading association could now be resumed, Lyons was to find that the political fall-out was longer-lasting and that Casey’s fears of Japanese ‘retaliation’ were well based.1486 When he later raised issues of eastern appeasement in London, Japanese opinion continued to suggest that they were ‘premature’ without a permanent economic settlement.1487 The Japanese were not alone in thus detecting a contradiction between trade diversion and appeasement ─ Curtin too puzzled over the dissonance inherent in Lyons’s desire to establish cordial Pacific relations alongside a trade policy that had damaged relations with the two regional powers.1488 Lyons himself came close to admitting these contradictions, and thus his poor policy co-ordination, when he conceded in London on 7 June 1937 that economic and political problems were now ‘closely connected’, an admission he had hitherto avoided.1489 This admission was, however, an aberration ─ he persis ted thereafter in his former view that the two problems could be divorced, despite the evidence to the contrary, again expressing his confidence at the Imperial Conference that the episode had not damaged Australia’s relations with Tokyo.1490 After January 1937, this was a position that looked increasingly perilous, but Lyons continued his attempts to separate commercial and diplomatic policy (as he had done before trade diversion)

1484 Melbourne had advised that Japan was conducting an economic experiment in its exploitation of Manchukuo; A.C.V. Melbourne memorandum, “A Foreign Policy for Australia”, enclosed in Melbourne to Lyons, 30 October 1934, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2, 8; similarly in “Australia and Japan”, 14-19 August 1933, Brisbane Daily Mail, ibid. J. Crawford, “Australia as a Pacific Power” in Australia’s Foreign Policy, ed. W. Duncan, summer school of Australian Institute of Political Science (January 1938), Sydney, 1938, 77, 82, warned in 1938, however, of the dangers of blocking industrial expansion in the Pacific. 1485 Earle Page, Truant Surgeon, 244, boasted of improved meat access to the UK; Martin, Menzies, 181-5. Tsokhas, Markets, 117ff., sees success in the greater access to UK markets for Australian primary products. ibid., “Wool Industry”: 446, notes the successful link made by Lyons and Page between protecting British textiles and giving Australian meat preference over Argentine beef. Ross, Armed and Ready, 94, also sees success in that Japan had failed to displace British cotton and had not seriously affected the Australian wool trade. Best, “Economic Appeasement…”: 88, on Japanese suspicions. Andrews, History, 72-3, suggested that pressure from British textile manufacturers was the prime motive. 1486 Gullett, 27 December 1936, quoted by Shepherd, 94. Casey to Bruce, 26 May 1936, A1421/3/21. 1487 vide below on the Pacific Pact. J. Crawford, “Australia as a Pacific Power,” 109-10, quoted Japanese sources in September 1938, to the effect that the pact was doomed unless it could promote a ‘freer interchange of goods and services in the Pacific’; also 90, that there could be no political agreement without economic appeasement. The Oriental Economist thought that only the ‘bread’ of freer trade would distract Japan from the ‘guns’ of the 1936 Anti- Comintern Pact, quoted in J. Crawford, “The Pacific Pact 1937,” in Towards a Foreign Policy, ed. W. Hudson, 72. 1488 Curtin’s parliamentary observations on the Pact and trade diversion, CPD, vol.154, 103, 24 August 1937, quoted in F. Shedden n.d., draft chapter, A Regional Pact in the Pacific, A5954/69/764/27, NAA, Canberra, 5. Heydon, 130, thought that Pearce’s advocacy of a Pacific pact was an attempt to counter the ill-feeling of trade diversion. 1489 Lyons speech of 7 June to the Foreign Press Association, London, A1606 B41/1 PACT, NAA, Canberra. 1490 Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 28, 22 May 1937, fourth meeting of principal delegates. 205 with the likely blessing of External Affairs.1491 This aspiration was ambitious, but not unattainable.1492 If relations with Tokyo were damaged by the trade war of 1936, then the process of drawing closer to the US, initiated in July 1935, was retarded. US trade policy at this time sought the conclusion of bilateral agreements,1493 but the Australian cabinet preferred imperial preference on the Ottawa model, at least until world trade improved.1494 When Gullett announced his May 1936 restrictions, the heavier industry of the US, particularly the motor industry, was as affected as its lighter Japanese counterpart.1495 Lyons actually suggested at the beginning (to Lloyd, the trade commissioner at Tokyo) that the US, not Japan, was the target of the new import licences.1496 Washington had made its own observations with Moffat noting in September 1936 that trade diversion had only driven a wedge between the US and the ‘British’ countries, surely not a conclusion that Lyons would have wished to hear.1497 Unlike Japan, where at least a temporary truce was struck in December 1936, the trade war with the US ground on without any conclusion prior to Lyons’s death, despite Canberra’s contrition of December 1937.1498 Trade diversion had destroyed an important opportunity to improve US-Australian relations and Lyons, who had been so keen to improve bilateral relations, paid the penalty with US indifference to his Pact proposal in mid-1937 ─ this was not quite the American ‘retaliation’ that Casey had envisaged in April-May 1936, but the two issues of trade and diplomacy proved intertwined in US perspectives of Australia thereafter.1499 So distracted were US-Australian relations in the aftermath that he was even reluctant to accept the invitation of June 1937 to revisit Washington,

1491Anon., “Our Infant ‘Foreign Office’ ”: 6, prepared in 1937 with a close insight into the External Affairs Department, commented on the department’s view of this recent ‘disaster’ of mixing commercial and external policy. 1492 vide Chapter 6 on Lyons’s refusal to consider sanctions against Japan in late-1937 and the favourable Japanese response. 1493 Schröder, 382ff. Such an agreement was struck with Britain in November 1938, effectively ending the Ottawa process, vide Chapter 7. 1494 Cabinet discussed the imbalance of trade with the US and expressed its concern on 23 April 1936, Cabinet Minutes, A2694/15/2, NAA, Canberra. Gullett himself referred to Ottawa in September 1937 as a temporary, ‘give-and-take agreement’, Murphy, 229, although Canberra ultimately refused Bruce’s suggestion of accepting voluntary restrictions, Attard, “The Limits of Influence…”, 335; also O’Brien: 571, on Lyons v. Bruce over Ottawa negotiations. Ottawa represented a reasonable compromise for Australia, with her agricultural goods enjoying free access to the British market, although some of the concessions could be set aside after 30 June 1934; Attard, ibid., 332-3; Ross, “Australian Overseas Trade”: 188. The agreement was as much symbolic as economic, by Lyons’s own admission, O’Brien: 570. Bruce regarded it as only a beginning, ibid., 573. 1495 Gullett’s list included many motor parts, which could only be replaced by British industry or by the development of local endeavour; CPD, vol.150, 2211ff., 22 May 1936. 1496 Lyons to Longfield Lloyd, 22 May 1936, A601 402/17/27, NAA, Canberra, quoted in Murphy, 193. He failed to mention the tariff measures that were primarily aimed at Japan. 1497 Moffat Diary, 9 September 1936. Esthus, 30-1, noted that Moffat continued to take an interest in Australian affairs at State after 31 March 1937 when he was withdrawn, replaced at Sydney-Canberra by the less influential Albert Doyle. 1498 White, Minister of Customs, announced the government’s intention to change the licensing system in December 1937, but there was no resolution and dissension in cabinet; Esthus, 42-3, 61. Cabinet recognised that a bilateral agreement with the US was the only way out, but only after Britain had already concluded such an agreement on 11 November 1937; Cabinet Agenda, “US Trade Negotiations and Ottawa Renewal”, 26 November 1937, A3258, NAA, Canberra. FDR responded favourably and offered a return of Australia’s former ‘most-favoured-nation’ status, “Note to the Government of Australia by the American Consul-General”, Documents on American Foreign Relations, 27 January 1938, 363-4. 1499 Some have seen trade diversion as the lowest ebb of US-Australian relations; C. Bell, Dependent Ally: A Study in Australian Foreign Policy (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1988), 11-12. Casey to Bruce, 7 April 1936, A1421/3/21, NAA, Canberra; Casey to Bruce, 26 May 1936, A1421/3/21; vide below on US perceptions of the Pact. 206 despite an assurance that trade talks were not on the agenda.1500 This was a dismal situation for a man who had perceived the potential of the US to provide a counter-balance in the Pacific to the weight of Japanese aggression, but it was one partially of his own making. Trade diversion might have troubled Lyons the appeaser, but it at least presented an opportunity to Lyons the rearmer, for there was an important defence imperative in the episode that has been overlooked in the historiography, an imperative that helps to explain the willingness of Lyons to allow such an economic showdown when he had made considerable efforts up to 1936 to avoid precisely that. The episode played a vital part in the deliberate development of Australian secondary industries, which the Lyons government desired both for economic and defence reasons.1501 Australian secondary industry, protected by tariffs, was the tool envisaged to forge Australian munitions, as well as building aviation and motor industries, thereby providing both employment and national security: ‘If we are to hold our heritage, we must people and develop it.’1502 This aspiration demanded the halting of the Japanese ‘snowball’ as Lyons called it ─ the importation of their cheap industrial goods which it was feared was an attempt to isolate Australia from Britain economically1503 ─ as well as the replacement of American heavy products (such as automobiles) with either those from Britain or, in due course, those of local manufacture, in accordance with the vision expressed by Casey to Gullett and Bruce (and presumably also to Lyons) in March to ‘GO OUT AFTER THEM.’1504 The ‘twenties had already seen local manufacturing taking a steady percentage of the home market from British imports and some important concessions gained from Britain during the course of the dispute, such as the grudging recognition of a nascent Australian aircraft industry through the Commonwealth Aircraft

1500 Bingham, US Ambassador, London, to Cordell Hull, Secretary of State, FRUS, 1937, vol.2, 142-3, 11 June 1937. 1501 There was a gradual realisation in the post-Depression period that primary industry could never revive the Australian economy, only the expansion of secondary industry; Ross, Armed and Ready, 83ff., pace Cumpston’s suggestion, “Australian-Japanese Dispute…”: 54, that Lyons continued to believe that primary industries represented Australia’s economic future. vide his broadcast comments below and his call for ‘more employment’ through secondary industry when opening the EverReady battery plant, Rosebery, NSW, on 25 January 1938, Sydney Morning Herald, 26 January 1938, 13, g. On secondary industry in the 1930s; Robertson, Scullin, 451. Ross, “Australian Overseas Trade”: 184-5, sees the policy as a deliberate attempt to stimulate secondary industry. 1502 An undated quote from Lyons, in Harris, 85; similarly on 30 April 1934, in Ross, “Australian Overseas Trade”: 190. He also quotes the similar sentiments of Curtin and Menzies. Lyons later stated his belief that there was immense potential for the general stimulation of Australian secondary industry through the development of defence industries; Lyons broadcast, Australia’s Future Development, 28 March 1939, Episode no.180769, ScreenSound, Canberra. 1503 Lyons referred to these trends on 17 August 1936, as a ‘snowball’ effect; Cumpston, “Australian-Japanese Dispute…”: 50. Ross, “Australian Overseas Trade”: 192; Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, 277, quoting Gullett to Hawker, June 1936, on fears of Japan’s aims. Clunies-Ross, “Australian Representation in Japan.” Australian Quarterly, no.22 (June 1934): 61-2, thought these fears lacked a sense of proportion, since such imports had only increased 5% in recent years. He acted as an occasional intermediary with Japanese wool purchasers during the dispute, considering trade diversion inept; Sissons, “Private Diplomacy…”: 145ff., was of a similar opinion. His assessment ignored the fact that Japanese penetration in some areas was almost complete, as in cotton and rayon, where British imports were threatened by a trebling of Japanese products from 44 to 153 million square yards p.a.; Casey to Bruce, 26 May 1936, A1421/3/21, NAA, Canberra; Harris, 101; vide also the statistics on textiles in Cumpston, “Australian-Japanese Dispute…”: 50, showing the substantial decline in Australian imports of British textiles, 1932-35, from 23% of all British imports to 13%. 1504 Casey proposed to Gullett that British industry should be given the opportunity to establish full auto production in Australia; Ross, “Australian Overseas Trade”: 191-2. Similarly to Bruce, 23 March 1936, A1421/3/17, NAA, Canberra, where he proposed that British industry ought to be enticed with tariff protection. Casey to Bruce, 26 May 1936, A1421/3/21, where he admitted the government’s aim of procuring a motor industry. 207 Corporation, would increase that trend.1505 Even if British industry benefited in the immediate term from trade diversion, ultimately it was the Australian economy and defence-related industries that would be the chief beneficiaries, as Parkhill (the defence minister) had implied in December 1935, when he announced the intention to establish Australian aircraft manufacturing as an adjunct to defence.1506 Gullett gave further indication of the government’s motives on 22 May 1936, by calling for the development of secondary industry, particularly a motor industry.1507 The minister made no parliamentary reference to the defence implications of this, but Shepherd, the Secretary of Defence, soon welcomed it ‘from the defence standpoint’.1508 Cabinet, however, had known and considered the defence imperative from the beginning, a sub-committee paper having outlined its importance on 1 June 1936.1509 This document was candid and noted that the expansion of secondary industries was a major consideration in the implementation of trade diversion and would result in the ‘transfer’ of some British industries to Australia.1510 Trade restrictions were intended to encourage engineering enterprises and industries using ‘precision machinery which form a valuable asset for defence purposes’.1511 The development of a complete Australian motor industry, it was suggested, would also have obvious defence benefits.1512

The prime minister had always been a public advocate of the development of protected Australian secondary industry ─ the new leader, as a father and husband, had personally urged housewives, in July 1932, to buy ‘Australian’ goods in order to increase local employment.1513 The same principle of local stimulus applied in 1936,1514 and Lyons was even confident that his

1505 Tsokhas, “Protection, Imperial Preference and Australian Conservative Politics, 1923-39”: 79. By 1936, British exports to Australia were half those of 1929, whilst Australian exports in the other direction had reached their pre- Depression levels; Ross, “Australian Overseas Trade”: 186, charts Anglo-Australian trade in the 1920s and the growing advantages for the UK; ibid., Armed and Ready, 93, on the British acceptance of the CAC, provided it manufactured only British types; ibid., “Australian Overseas Trade”: 197-8; May, 210, on British outrage at the breach of that condition when it was instructed to trial American aircraft such as the NA-33 (Wirraway). Holland, 147, commented on the opposition in Britain to an Australian aircraft industry, given the parallel potential of a motor industry. 1506 On his 2 December 1935 statement, vide Chapter 4. Parkhill, 11 May 1936; Hasluck, Government, 43. This was to be in tandem with the similar development of a motor industry. Parkhill pursued aviation at the Imperial Conference, vide below and McCarthy, “Australia and Imperial Defence”: 30-1. 1507 Gullett, CPD, vol.150, 2211ff., 22 May 1936. He proposed an ad hoc engine bounty; R. Conlon and J. Perkins, “Australian Governments and Automotive Manufacturing, 1919-1939.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.45, no.3 (September 1999): 390. Round Table, vol.26 (September 1936), noted the significant desire to establish an Australian motor industry; Anon., “The Trade Diversion Policy” in Australian Commentaries, ed. L. Robson, 167. 1508 Anon., “The Trade Diversion Policy” in Robson, Australian Commentaries, 167, quoting, Shepherd to the Tariff Board, Report, no.850, 1936, 22. 1509 Cabinet sub-committee document, “Considerations which led to the Adoption of the Trade Diversion Policy”, 1 June 1936, attached (but not released publicly) by Publicity Officer, Irvine Douglas to ministerial press release of 22 May 1936, CP4/2 33, NAA, Canberra. He later became Lyons’s press secretary. 1510 ibid., points 2,6. When this became a reality, Lyons publicly expressed his satisfaction at this ‘steady transfer’, speech at the EverReady plant, Rosebery, NSW, Sydney Morning Herald, 26 January 1938, 13, g. 1511 Cabinet sub-committee document, 1 June 1936, CP4/2 33, point 7. 1512 ibid., point 8. It was not therefore surprising that restrictions on US motor imports survived after 1937; Bridge, “Relations with the United States”, 180. 1513 Lyons statement forwarded to R. McCosker, Riverina, 4 July 1932, for the Murrumbidgee Propsperity Drive, CP103/19/28, NAA, Canberra. 1514 Lyons speech at the EverReady plant, Rosebery, NSW, Sydney Morning Herald, 26 January 1938, 13, g, noted the employment benefits of secondary industry. 208 own pastoral state could share in the industrialisation that must follow trade diversion.1515 His first broadcast on the dispute, on 25 June 1936, cannily chose not to emphasise any defence aspect (given that Japan had been specifically targeted), but warned that had the government not acted Japanese competition and market penetration ‘would have menaced every [competing] Australian industry…including our secondary industry’.1516 This was a public view that had long been widely held amongst those in favour of a protective wall against cheaper Japanese goods.1517 Lyons further stressed the importance of secondary industry to the health of the Australian economy and promised that British manufacturers would be given access to local markets only ‘as far as is consistent with the growth of Australian secondary industry’.1518 He had made similar points to British manufacturers themselves in May 1935 promising further access, but not at the expense of developing local industry.1519 In this broadcast, and in a second on 17 August 1936, Lyons laid the responsibility for the episode entirely at the door of Japan, further evidence that he regarded political appeasement as an enterprise separate from economic concerns, as well as evidence of his inability to concede the contradictions within his own policy-making.1520 He concluded: ‘Tariffs are a vital absolute right of every nation to protect itself.’1521 So too were defence industries.

The trade diversion episode of 1936 therefore represented a major shift in national development policy towards secondary industry and the need for defence industries was a major stimulus for its adoption.1522 Casey later (July 1937) accentuated these ‘considerations of defence’, noting the importance of secondary industries that were so vital in the event of the ‘bad fortune’ of war.1523 The unpredictable nature of the policy’s application and that the Lyons government usually argued publicly for it by stressing Empire loyalty has led some to conclude that the process of trade diversion ignored Australian national interest.1524 This is confusing the rhetoric with the reality, an error that was not made by many contemporaries, who saw the

1515 Lyons speech notes on trade diversion, UAP convention, Launceston, 30 May 1936, Joseph Lyons Papers, MS4851/2/15, NLA, Canberra. He mentioned that the aims of the policy were to increase exports and to encourage new industries, specifically mentioning the motor industry. 1516 Joseph Lyons broadcast, ‘The truth of our trade position with Japan’, 25 June 1936, Episode Title No. AUD D 2992, ScreenSound, Canberra. The broadcast was in part a response to the Japanese counter legislation of that day, the Law Concerning Adjustment of Trade and Safeguarding of Commerce, Murphy, 217. This law effectively prohibited Australian imports, Cumpston, “Australian-Japanese Dispute…”: 52. 1517 Anon., “Australia and Japan”: 92. 1518 Lyons broadcast, “The truth of our trade position with Japan”, 25 June 1936, AUD D 2992; Cumpston, “Australian- Japanese Dispute…”: 52. Tsokhas, “Protection, Imperial Preference and Australian Conservative Politics, 1923-39”: 81, noted that any advantage generally given to British industry in this decade was only as a result of decisions taken to benefit particular Australian industries. 1519 The Times, 28 May 1935, 13, d. He made no pledges to these manufacturers, nor did he do so in Manchester to the cotton industry; The Times, 13 June 1935, 9, b., although Sissons, “Manchester v. Japan…”: 488, refers to the head of a Manchester delegation recalling ‘promises’ made by Lyons at that time. 1520 Details of the 17 August 1936 broadcast are found in Harris, 101. 1521 Lyons broadcast, “The truth of our trade position with Japan”, 25 June 1936, AUD D 2992. 1522 Cabinet sub-committee document, 1 June 1936, CP4/2 33. Ross, Armed and Ready, 92-4, noted that this development was ultimately contrary to British policy and interests, also quoting the Department of Trade, 100. 1523 Casey, “Australia in World Affairs”: 11. 1524 Ross, Armed and Ready, 93, and “Australian Overseas Trade”: 194, on this debate. Lyons was as open about the domestic benefits of such a development; ibid., 100, where he quotes the Prime Minister during the October 1937 election campaign touting the local benefits of the growth and spread of secondary industry. 209 intended development of motor, iron, steel and engineering industries for defence purposes as an important objective of the policy.1525 It was a perspective that Lyons retained until his death, for in his last, defence-oriented broadcast to the nation, on 28 March 1939, the prime minister restated his continuing faith in the ‘capacity for extensive industrial development in Australia’.1526 The trade diversion policy had indicated the depth of that faith, even though it had seemed to critics to qualify his commitment to conciliation.

II Collective security had endured severe challenges in recent times, but late-1936 saw some rearguard action from its supporters. Pearce informed the Senate on 24 April 1936, that while ‘collective security’ was in need of ‘re-examination’, he maintained confidence in the League as an institution.1527 Lyons agreed with at least the first part of the statement and in his ‘sanctions’ cable to Bruce, on 18 June 1936, he too noted the need for a ‘re-examination of the Covenant in the light of the experiences of the last six months’.1528 There were several mooted models of League reform, ranging from Bruce’s suggested dilution of the Covenant to the more ‘academic exercise’ (according to Geneva’s own resolution of 4 July 1936) of ‘regional pacts’, whereby League members in particular regions would assemble in order to focus on local problems.1529 It was this model that was used by Lyons as a means of reviving his old ‘pact’ proposal of 1935, which he had since allowed to lapse amidst the chaos of Abyssinia and the Rhineland, although he saw little role for the League in the process,1530 given his private belief in its ‘doubtful effectiveness’ and conviction that any reform process must also encompass the interests of non-members (notably Japan and the US).1531 Lyons’s scepticism about Geneva was contrary to the views of Pearce and Menzies. The matter was accordingly referred to a cabinet sub-committee on 8 September 1936, following consideration of an External Affairs memorandum prepared at Pearce’s behest.1532 Lyons chose

1525 Harris, 100, in his paper prepared for the September 1938 British Commonwealth Relations Conference at Glenbrook, NSW. Round Table thought that Lyons had ‘skilfully’ made suggestions about defence during the episode; Anon., “The Trade Diversion Policy and Japan”, vol.27 (December 1936), in Australian Commentaries, ed. L. Robson, 171. It is untrue to state that it was not made clear which secondary industries were to be protected; Jones, 152. 1526 Lyons broadcast, ‘Australia’s Future Development’, 28 March 1939, Episode no.180769. vide Chapter 7 for other aspects of this broadcast, where he boasted that employment in secondary industry had increased since 1932 from 330,000 to 550,000. 1527 Pearce, CPD, vol.150, 900-01, 24 April 1936. He quoted Eden in the League Council, on 20 April, that ‘alternative policies’ would be needed if the League was judged futile, thought to be a reference to intended British rearmament. 1528 Lyons to Bruce, 18 June 1936, A2908 118 PART 2; Current Notes, vol.1, no.11 (September 1936). 1529 Bruce, President of the Council, thought dilution would encourage non-members to join; Cumpston, Bruce, 129. He made a detailed speech on reform in the League Assembly, 2 July 1936, extracts in Cabinet Minutes, Appendix, 21 August 1936, CP 222(36), CAB 24/263, PRO, London. Hudson, League, 182, suggests that Canberra regarded covenant reform as an ‘academic exercise’. League resolution; External Affairs Department, Annual Report, 1936, Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, vol.5, no.4 (1937). Murphy, 263, 268, on the July suggestion of regional Pacts, formalised by a League committee presided over by Bruce, on 8 October 1936; Hasluck, Government, 66ff. 1530 vide Chapter 4 and his statement of 18 June 1936 on the League and sanctions; to Bruce, A2908 118 PART 2. 1531 Lyons, Cabinet Papers, 10 July 1936, CRS A6006 Roll 10; Lyons to Bruce, 18 June 1936, A2908 118 PART 2. 1532 Cabinet Agenda Submissions and Decisions, 8 September 1936, CRS A6006, Roll 10, NAA, Melbourne, dealing with External Affairs memorandum, “Reform of the Covenant”, 25 August 1936, indicating that Pearce had requested such. The memorandum was resubmitted to the sub-committee on 11 September 1936, DAFP, vol.1, 5; also in “Imperial Conference and League Reform”, CP 4/2/35, n.d., NAA, Canberra. 210 not to sit on this body, which consisted of Pearce, Menzies, Hughes, Parkhill and Casey ─ the last was to work closely with Lyons in the following year at the Imperial Conference and provided something of a balance against the pro-Geneva views of the first two.1533 The cabinet subsequently endorsed (on 15 September) the compromise position suggested by External Affairs, midway between League repudiation and militant resurrection─ support for the severance of the Covenant from the Versailles system, but also for an extension of ‘regional agreements within the framework of the League’ that would include ‘pacts of non-aggression’.1534 This was also a position that was broadly in accord with Bruce’s earlier suggestions of July, as well as his 1923 call for a ‘league of nations of the nations of the Pacific’.1535 Lyons’s reservations, however, had not been ignored, for it was also recognised that any ‘regional agreement’ in the Pacific was ‘unacceptable’ without the inclusion of non-League members, Japan and the US, something also acknowledged by Bruce1536 ─ the potential area of dispute was whether such a pact in the Pacific could proceed without their inclusion in a reformed League structure, but still according to the spirit of the League. Bruce implied not and that membership was a sine qua non, External Affairs and the sub-committee seemed uncertain, but Lyons’s subsequent actions indicated that he envisaged an extra-League structure that could thus include non-members.1537 These differences were not, however, immediately apparent and, in the meantime, the reference to ‘pact of non-aggression’ sounded similar to the model hawked by Lyons in London and Washington since mid-1935. Before the end of September the compromise of the sub-committee was adopted by the cabinet, announced in parliament and dispatched to Geneva as Australia’s response to reform.1538 The compromise of September 1936 was not sustainable. The possibility of enticing belligerent Japan back into the League seemed minimal, which immediately raised the question of whether such measures could ever be adopted in the Pacific under the aegis of Geneva and if not, at all. The new opposition leader, Curtin, perceived some of these contradictions, but failed to elicit much clarity in parliament from the Attorney-General, on 29 September 1936, as to whether these agreements were to be within the League or not, but he was assured that it was possible at

1533 Andrews, Isolationism, 66-70, in his review of the issue failed to notice that Casey was a member of the sub- committee. Casey’s name was included in a list of members written beneath the cabinet agenda in Lyons’s own hand; Cabinet Agenda Submissions and Decisions, 8 September 1936. It met only once, on the afternoon of 11 September 1936, and then Hughes was absent; Hudson, League, 182. 1534 External Affairs memorandum, “Reform of the Covenant”, 25 August 1936, CRS A6006, Roll 10, 3ff. Imperial Conference and League Reform, CP 4/2/35; Cabinet Minutes, Report, 15 September 1936, A2694, vol.16(1), NAA, Canberra. 1535 Bruce speech, Geneva, 2 July 1936, extracts in Cabinet Minutes, Appendix, 21 August 1936, CP 222(36). Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 170, suggests that this theme remained part of Australian liberal thinking in the 1920s. 1536 Cumpston, Bruce, 129. 1537 Robert Garran, “Diplomatic Relations in the Pacific” in Australia and the Far East, 91-2, recognised the weakness and ineffectiveness of the League in the East, but concluded that any eastern body must be within the general League, as members had universal responsibilities. 1538 Hasluck, Government, 66ff.; Pearce speech, 11 September 1936, Current Notes, vol.1, no11 (September 1936); CPD, vol.151, 54ff., 11 September 1936. Menzies repeated them on 29 September; External Affairs Department, Annual Report, 1936, Australian Parliamentary Papers, vol.5, no.4 (1937). 211 least to gain understandings ‘within the spirit of League undertakings’.1539 Some in the influential Eastern Department of the Foreign Office did not think any such accommodation possible, concluding that such pacts in fact equalled ‘a repudiation of League principles’1540 ─ if so, this was a price that Lyons at least proved ready to pay ‘in the interests of future world peace’.1541 His vision could only have been threatened by another Menzies suggestion made at the same time, when it was stated that the government was receptive to the idea of obligatory military sanctions in any reformed League system. This idea was later thought to have emanated from Pearce and it likely revealed further cabinet divisions, for Lyons was most unlikely to have supported it, if his past and subsequent responses were anything to go by.1542 Lyons proved to be considering structures which did not reform the League through enhanced membership, but circumvented it with refined models of appeasement. Significantly, he had insisted in July 1936 that External Affairs provide him with arguments to counter the debating point (and Bruce’s 1923 view): ‘That the Nations Bordering on the Pacific Should Form Their Own League of Nations.’1543 Hodgson willingly did so,1544 himself convinced that only extra-League regional agreements were attainable, under the assumption that neither the US nor Japan would join any ‘Pacific League’.1545 This was an important coincidence with Lyons’s thinking and he needed little confirmation, spending the following months ruminating on a pact intended to be outside the League (after the model of 1935). His final proposal, presented to London not Geneva, came to resemble what External Affairs had recently called an ‘extreme alternative’, that is one that dispensed with all coercive mechanisms.1546 In refining his own recipe for League reform (September 1936-May 1937), Lyons maintained a certain secrecy─ when writing to his ministers, in January 1937, seeking further input into the agenda of the forthcoming Imperial Conference, he did not even mention the pact proposal, ensuring that most ministers had little concept of his model with its pre-1936 origins.1547 Pearce had been informed of likely agenda items in his portfolio, but he too remained

1539 Meaney, Australia and the World, 408ff., provides some of the parliamentary exchanges on 29 September 1936, CPD, vol.151, 622ff.; Current Notes, vol.1, no.12 (1936), 330-1; Hudson, Towards a Foreign Policy, 68. Lyons took no part in these debates. 1540 Orde of the Foreign Office Eastern Department had reached this conclusion in September 1934, quoted in Louis, “The Road to Singapore…” in Fascist Challenge, 364. He was supported by Sansom, the Commercial Counsellor at the Tokyo embassy, a man highly regarded by Simon. 1541 Lyons to Bruce, 18 June 1936, A2908 118 PART 2, referring to the need for reform to the Covenant. 1542 Menzies, CPD, vol.151, 622-3, 29 September 1936, repeated by Pearce in the Senate, CPD, vol.151, 642ff., 30 September 1936; Current Notes, vol.1, no.12 (1936), 330-1. Heydon, 129, believed that Pearce was keen to establish regional military pacts against aggressors. Lyons did not speak in this parliamentary debate. 1543 External Affairs memorandum to J. Halligan, Prime Minister’s Department, 10 July 1936, Hodgson notes, A2938/14, NAA, Canberra. 1544 Hodgson agreed on this point and prepared his own speaking notes at around this time also to demonstrate the point that the League could not settle Pacific disputes with the US and Japan as non-members and with China as a moribund one; Hodgson notes, vol.1, MM 1516, NAA, Canberra. 1545 He said so in the 13th point of his External Affairs memorandum to J. Halligan, Prime Minister’s Department, 10 July 1936, Hodgson notes, A2938/14. The phraseology is similar to that of the speaking notes above. Lyons was long familiar with these sentiments, such as point 8 that the League was out of touch with the Pacific. 1546 External Affairs memorandum, “Reform of the Covenant”, 25 August 1936, CRS A6006, Roll 10. 1547 Lyons to various ministers; Lyons to Pearce, 27 January 1937, A461 C326/1/4 PART 1 Imperial Conference, NAA, Canberra. There was no cabinet discussion on the pact. 212 unaware of the full nature and intention of the Lyons proposal, despite his likely involvement in the drafting of speeches for the conference.1548 Even on the eve of his departure for the Imperial Conference in March 1937 (without Pearce), Lyons made no mention of any specifics other than to hint at ‘relevant questions of a less general character which may require consideration’.1549 What followed was truly ‘Mr. Lyons’ proposal’, even if recently revived by requests from Geneva and the counsel of Hodgson.1550 Its immediate origins were not in Bruce’s speeches, cabinet sub-committees or departmental memoranda, but in Latham’s 1934 suggestion of a ‘formula’, an idea that Lyons had taken to ‘transform…into something bigger and more comprehensive’.1551 Lyons had given an indication in his New Year broadcast, on 31 December 1936, of the optimism he felt about an initiative yet to be made public: ‘We are facing a new era─ carefree 1937, so full of hope and promise and good intent.’1552 The cloud of League decline had a silver lining, for Geneva’s old objections to the de jure recognition of Manchukuo now seemed irrelevant.1553 Lyons had apparently reached the same conclusions as the US ambassador in Tokyo, Grew, who saw (in August 1936) that League impotence reopened the possibility of such recognition, given that the standing policy of ‘non-recognition’ rested on a now discredited institution.1554 The 1937 Imperial Conference would be Lyons’s first international opportunity, and a public one at that, since July 1935 to address this possibility and others through his pact proposal.

III The Imperial Conference of 1937 (the first since 1930) proved a landmark in the shaping of Commonwealth policies in the late ‘thirties,1555 and was intended to concentrate on foreign affairs and defence─ not surprising given the new level of uncertainty brought a bout by the decline of the League and the continuing dominion pressure for some separate responsibility for external policy.1556 When Whitehall, in its preparations (November 1936), asked the dominions

1548 Pearce was likely to have been one of the senior ministers who saw the draft opening speech Lyons had prepared for the Imperial Conference, but references there to the Pact were brief and vague; Lyons draft speech, n.d., A461 C326/1/4 PART 1, NAA, Canberra, vide below. Heydon, 121-31, exaggerates Pearce’s role in the origins of the Pact. 1549 Lyons statement, pre-16 March 1937, Current Notes, vol.2 (May 1937), 378-9. 1550 There is no evidence that the details were devised by other senior ministers, pace Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, 271ff., repeated in Andrews, Isolationism, 45. External Affairs was mistaken, or seeking to downplay the role of the deceased Prime Minister, to assume, as it did in 1940, that the proposal for pacts of non-aggression had emerged from the September 1936 sub-committee; External Affairs assessment and outline of the Pact prepared for Latham, 23 September 1940, Pacific Pact, A981/4/PAC 23, NAA, Canberra; Hodgson notes, A2938/14, NAA, Canberra. Even here, the proposal was referred to as ‘Mr. Lyons’ proposal’. 1551 Hart, “Piper...”, 138-9, quoting contemporaries on his consensual practices; vide Chapter 1. 1552 Lyons, New Year radio broadcast, 7BU, Burnie, 31 December 1936, Joseph Lyons Papers, MS 4851/2/16. 1553 Bennett and Simon had objected that such recognition would offend the League; Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, third meeting, 9 May 1935, A981 IMP 135; vide Chapter 3. 1554 The post-sanctions observations of Grew, US ambassador in Tokyo, to Cordell Hull, State Department, FRUS, 1936, vol.4, 261-4, 6 August 1936. 1555 Mansergh, Experience, 274, suggest this and two other landmarks; the Czech crisis of September 1938 and the Anglo-Polish guarantee of March 1939. 1556 Ottawa in 1932 was an economic imperial conference and the 1935 London summit saw much discussion, but neither was an Imperial Conference proper; pace O’Brien: 570. Whitehall wanted to keep Ottawa off the 1937 agenda; 213 for suggested topics of discussion, most of the responses from Canberra were under the category of ‘Foreign Affairs’,1557 including the desire for discussions on the relationship of the dominions to ‘imperial foreign policy’.1558 Australia was the first dominion to propose an examination of international issues and the only one to seek a consideration of defence matters (which it had sought since the Hankey mission of 1934), itself some indication of the different agendas pursued by different dominions and of the difficulty of co-ordination.1559 Within the Australian delegation (Lyons, Casey, Parkhill and Bruce; both Pearce and Menzies had been excluded), there appeared to have been a division of labour ─ the Prime Minister was to deal with most matters of foreign relations and especially with the Pacific Pact (although Bruce, Casey and Hodgson were brought into that process after 28 May), in accordance with an evolving prime ministerial dominance, but assisted by the trusted Casey in some aspects of external policy, especially those involving European affairs.1560 Casey would play a particularly prominent part in pursuing the wider appeasing agenda of the delegation, often working in tandem with Lyons or attending meetings as the sole Australian representative in an indication of prime ministerial confidence (for example on 21 May 1937) ─ it was intended that the Treasurer would then proceed to Berlin for further meetings on economic policy.1561 Casey and Bruce together dealt with matters relating to Geneva, including the League Covenant and Versailles,1562 while Parkhill was to oversee defence discussions and, significantly, any discussion on New Guinea (and its ‘UNTHINKABLE’ return). This role was at Menzies’s instigation. The reasoning behind it was unstated, but one may speculate that it was an indication of cabinet restlessness about Lyons’s flexibility on this issue and/or recognition that the possible return of the mandate presented a risk to Australian security.1563 However, when the matter of mandates was eventually raised on 2 June, it was Casey, after an introduction by Lyons, who gave ‘the point of view of the

R. Tamchina, “In Search of Common Causes: The Imperial Conference of 1937.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History vol.1, (1972): 80. On the impact of League decline on British thinking and planning; Mansergh, Experience, 270. 1557 Pearce circulated this request on 9 November 1936; A461 C326/1/4 PART 1, Imperial Conference, NAA, Canberra; Hasluck, Government, 55-6, noted a Whitehall cablegram of 18 November 1936. 1558 Pearce circular, 9 November 1936, A461 C326/1/4 PART 1. 1559 Hasluck, Government, 55-6, thought it the only one to propose international relations, but South Africa also suggested such discussions, A461 C326/1/4 PART 1. On preparations for the defence discussions; McCarthy, “Australia and Imperial Defence...”: 30ff., where the issues of Australian aircraft production and UK orders were to the fore. On the 1934 request for a defence conference; Pearce to Hankey, Hankey Diary, 2 October 1934, CAB 63/66. On different dominion focuses; Mansergh, Experience, 270. 1560 The Australian entourage included Hodgson and Stirling of External Affairs; Shedden of Defence; Strahan and Douglas of the Prime Minister’s Department, “Imperial Conference Summary of Proceedings”, Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, 1937, vol.5, no.80, 2249-87. 1561 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 256-7, thought him the principal Australian spokesman on such matters, with Lyons often seconding his views, but the record suggests more of a division of labour; vide Chapter 6 and the discussion of the third and fourth meetings of delegates; Casey, DAFP, vol.1, 27, 21 May 1937 and Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 28, 2 May 1937. It was hoped that Casey in Berlin would see Dr. Schacht, the economics minister; Casey to Strahan, Prime Minister’s Department, 19 February 1937, A461 C326/1/4 PART 1, Imperial Conference. 1562 DAFP, vol.1, 37, 2 June 1937; DAFP, vol.1, 39, 3 June 1937; DAFP, vol.1, 40, 4 June 1937. 1563 Parkhill’s designation by cabinet as spokesman on New Guinea, vice Pearce; Cabinet Minutes, 9 March 1937, A2694, vol.17, part 1, NAA, Canberra. External Affairs thought such return ‘unthinkable’; Memorandum NC 10/36, 9 March 1937, CP4/2/45, NAA, Canberra. It supplemented this with a later memorandum; “Germany-Question of Colonies”, n.d. but c. May 1937, A5954 1045/5, NAA, Canberra. 214 Government of the Commonwealth of Australia’ and it was a point that quoted Pearce in its ‘firm determination’ not to give them up.1564 Aside from these defined roles, Lyons wished to indulge in more personal diplomacy by including another visit to Rome, an aspiration shared by Casey.1565 The desire for a second interview with Mussolini was due in part to the recent Anglo- Italian Agreement of 2 January 1937, of which he heartily approved, significantly referring to it on 6 March 1937 as a ‘pact’, and Lyons proposed on behalf of the ‘Commonwealth Government’ (although a view now unlikely to include Pearce), that Whitehall should consider it as a ‘model’ for the east, whilst offering no warning of how he individually intended to improve Australian- Japanese relations through what became largely his own proposals.1566 He did, however, warn London that Australia continued to be perturbed about Tokyo’s attitude to a policy of ‘Southward advance’, a view that Dr. Melbourne had put to him personally on 5 August 1936, in Brisbane.1567 This concern (along with the older one about ‘new alignments’) was a likely stimulus for his desire for extended conference conversations on foreign affairs and defence.1568 The Lyons government’s ‘feeling of perturbation’ about Tokyo was unwittingly well-founded,1569 given that a Japanese ministerial conference had endorsed the southward strategy only days after the Lyons- Melbourne interview.1570 Nevertheless, the cable to Bruce of 6 March 1937 indicated that the prime minister remained satisfied, on the eve of his departure, that the time was ripe for some renewed approach to Tokyo.1571 This was a further expression of his characteristic duality towards Japan throughout the decade─ fearful, but hopeful that the diplomacy of appeasement could avoid conflict. Pearce no longer seemed to share this view and had given indications of his alarm to his political opponents1572 ─ the gulf between the two men was now unbridgeable. Despite the hard-line views of his minister and his own growing reservations about appeasement, Hodgson, in his preparation of departmental memoranda for the delegates, endorsed the view of Australia as a potential broker in the Pacific, alone able to encourage the coming together of its imperial partners with the US, alone able to utilise geographical links with China and Japan in the

1564 Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 37, eleventh meeting of principal delegates, 2 June 1937. 1565 Lyons to Bruce, 4 March 1937, CP4/2/1, NAA, Canberra. He also wished to see Premier Blum in Paris, perhaps conscious of the criticism he had received in the US press in July 1935 that he had then seen Mussolini, but no French politicians, vide Chapter 3. Lyons met Blum in April, Enid Lyons Diary, 29 April 1937, MS 4852/30. Casey wanted to meet Mussolini and/or Hitler; Casey to Bruce, 2 February 1937, A1421/4/3, NAA, Canberra. 1566 Lyons to Bruce, DAFP, vol.1, 12, 6 March 1937. 1567 ibid. Japan had recently entered the Anti-Comintern Pact, on 25 November 1936, although Ambassador Yoshida in London had also presented Whitehall with a memorandum seeking improved relations on 6 November; ibid., footnote. Melbourne wrote to Lyons on 2 July 1936, vide above. The reply is in Lyons to Melbourne, 8 July 1936, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. He cabled Lyons on 15 July 1936 seeking an interview in Canberra and further wrote on 22 July setting out what he would have said, after which Lyons replied on 31 July 1936, Lyons to Melbourne, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2, and arranged an interview in Brisbane on 5 August 1936. It was their only meeting. Melbourne was ‘disappointed’ with their discussion; Melbourne to Forgan Smith, 15 August 1936, ibid. 1568 Lyons had expressed a concern about ‘new alignments’ on 17 December 1936, Record of the Lyons Government, “Commonwealth Parliamentary Year 1936. Review by Prime Minister”, A601/165/1/1. 1569 Lyons to Bruce, DAFP, vol.1, 12, 6 March 1937. 1570 Frei, 136ff., 140ff., on the Five Ministers’ Conference that endorsed the “Fundamentals of National Policy” on 7 August 1936. Meaney, Towards a New Vision, 77, acknowledges that the “Fundamentals” were unknown to Lyons. The policy was modified in January 1938 in a way that appeared to favour a less immediate commitment to the southward approach; Frei, 143, vide Chapter 6. 1571 Lyons to Bruce, DAFP, vol.1, 12, 6 March 1937. 1572 Day, Curtin, 350-1, 351 footnote, on Pearce’s liaison with Curtin in 1936 about Japanese aggression. 215 pursuit of conciliation.1573 It was a concept that London was soon to see appealed to Lyons the consensus-builder. IV When the Orontes docked at Naples on 14 April 1937, Lyons soon showed that his earlier enthusiasm for Italian appeasement was unchanged. The trauma of Abyssinia had been overcome by the Anglo-Italian ‘Gentlemen’s Agreement’ of January 1937, of which he was an enthusiastic supporter, unlike Eden.1574 External Affairs suggested that relations had been improving since July 1936 ─ Lyons was keen to see them further improve. 1575 The importance of these relations was brought home to (Dame) Enid Lyons, on 7 April 1937, when she noted: ‘In Red Sea-passed many ships-makes you realise how important Red Sea is to us and how valuable the friendship of Italy is at the present moment.’1576 This was a view shared by her husband (and Pearce), when he referred in February to ‘vital Empire communications’.1577 Casey gave further indication in July 1937 of the other considerations running the minds of Lyons’s circle, when he confessed that whilst Suez was not ‘absolutely essential’ to Australian trade, it was essential for ‘quick contact’, including the rapid movement of a fleet to Singapore.1578 It was not therefore surprising that Lyons was so anxious to approve of the January agreement and to see it as a suitable model for Anglo-Japanese rapprochement.1579

Lyons had indicated a desire to meet Mussolini before his departure and although he never stated his intentions it would seem reasonable to speculate that, given his insistence on a meeting and his March enthusiasm about Anglo-Italian accord, he was seeking to express approval of recent developments through personal diplomacy.1580 Given also the pacific sentiments expressed by Rome since the conquest of Abyssinia in April 1936, the opportunity might have existed in Lyons’s mind to build on this apparent desire for─ peace such an

1573 Memorandum by External Affairs prepared for delegates, DAFP, vol.1, 13, 8 March 1937; A. Watt, Australian Diplomat, 22, cites this as evidence that the department was seeking to formulate ‘a realistic foreign policy’; also ibid., “Australia and the Munich Agreement: underlying assumptions and operative methods of Australian Foreign Policy.” Australian Outlook, vol.17, no.1 (1963): 39-40; ibid., Evolution, 21. vide Chapter 4 on Hodgson’s reservations about Italian appeasement in February 1936. 1574 Lyons to Bruce, DAFP, vol.1, 12, 6 March 1937. A sceptical Eden continued to see Mussolini as a ‘gangster’; Mack Smith, Mussolini, 244; Lamb, Mussolini and the British, 175ff. Mussolini was, by his own admission, no ‘gentleman’; Peters, 122, but the agreement could still have had some beneficial impact on Anglo-Italian relations. 1575 External Affairs memorandum, “The Foreign Situation-March 1937”, 10 March 1937, (DAFP 17, vol.1), CP4/2 119, NAA, Canberra. 1576 Enid Lyons Diary, 7 April 1937, Enid Lyons Papers, MS 4852/30, NLA, Canberra. She received notice of her damehood shortly after reaching Venice on 19 April 1937; White, Joseph Lyons, 164; Itinerary, CP290/5/7, NAA, Canberra. 1577 Pearce, 11 November 1936, Current Notes, vol.2 (1936-7), 67; Lyons, ibid., 257. This Australian concern was noted by Andrews, “The Australian Government and Appeasement,” 74. 1578 The naval aspect was noted in “Review of Imperial Defence, prepared for the Imperial Conference”, 22 February 1937, CAB 32/127, Committee of Imperial Defence, PRO, London and by Casey in July 1937, “Australia in World Affairs”: 8. 1579 External Affairs also viewed the agreement favourably, whatever Hodgson thought; Memorandum, DAFP, vol.1, 13, 8 March 1937. 1580 Lyons to Bruce, 4 March 1937, CP4/2/1, NAA, Canberra; Lyons to Bruce, DAFP, vol.1, 12, 6 March 1937. Alfred Stirling, Lord Bruce, 85, at External Affairs, believed that Lyons saw Italy as being of great importance and as holding one of the keys of peace. 216 impression had certainly been accepted at Whitehall by Chamberlain, amongst others.1581 There was even talk in London of an extension of the January 1937 bilateral agreement to include the de jure recognition of Italian East Africa.1582 It is uncertain how much detail, if any, of these attitudinal changes was known to Lyons, but Officer had assured him in January of Mussolini’s view that ‘all African accounts were settled to the penny’.1583 One British diplomat, Drummond (Lord Perth), seemed to share any desire to take advantage of the moment and one may speculate that he encouraged a second Mussolini interview (already scheduled via Bruce), when Lyons lunched at the British Embassy in Rome on 15 April 1937 at his own request.1584 Perth remained as keen as ever on Mediterranean détente,1585 and Dame Enid later suggested that he then sensed an opportunity to reinvigorate the process, conscious that Ciano and Mussolini were almost desperate for some sign of friendship ─ his guest seemed a perfect medium, as a Catholic of high position, already due to see the Italian leader.1586 Lyons (or Dame Enid) had little doubt that he was the right man, confident that his position as a dominion leader with ‘full and free intercourse with the home government, yet completely independent in matters of policy, would give an authority to his words that would not fail to impress Mussolini’.1587 Although her account contains elements of retrospective justification (from 1965 and later) for what was regarded in the post-war period as a controversial meeting, its details generally are in accord with contemporary evidence (including her travel diary and Lyons’s own account at the London conference) and provide a legitimate insight into her husband’s thinking. This is the case with her memoirs in general ─ despite the occasional error or falsehood, they provide a plausible account of affairs that may generally be confirmed elsewhere and thus are useful sources, if used with caution. Care is needed, for the Lyons accounts (husband and wife) remain the chief source of the Mussolini talks of 1937, as they were of the 1935 talks with Roosevelt, and one-sidedness is thus unavoidable, even if that one-sidedness has an inner consistency that stretched over decades.1588 They are not to be taken as being of unquestionable accuracy and it is important to note, for

1581 These sentiments had satisfied Chamberlain that Italy was ‘satisfied’, vide Chapter 4. Mussolini had aired his peaceful sentiments and colonial satisfaction to Ward Price on 5 May 1936 and on 18 March 1937, both interviews noted by Chamberlain; Notebook, Neville Chamberlain Papers, NC 2/25; Seton-Watson, 269. He gave a speech in Libya expressing similar sentiments; The Times, 18 March 1937; Current Notes, vol.2 (1936-7). He had even sought to approach Churchill and King Edward VIII; Lamb, Mussolini and the British, 165. Chamberlain was accordingly convinced that Italy now had her hands full consolidating her conquests; Chamberlain to Morgenthau, US Treasury Secretary, March 1937; D. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 166. The Foreign Office also noted these sentiments, DBFP, 2nd series, vol.18, 314, 19 March 1937. As always, Mussolini also sent belligerent signals; Rotunda, 358ff. 1582 Eden opposed any recognition; Lamb, Mussolini and the British, 177, but Vansittart supported it in the interests of a common front against Germany. Mussolini's sincerity was suspect; the January agreement recognised a Mediterranean status quo that he was determined to alter; Mack Smith, Mussolini, 244; Mack Smith, “Appeasement...,” 260-1. 1583 Officer to External Affairs, The Foreign Situation, January 1937, A981 EXTE 192 PART 6, NAA, Canberra. 1584 Lyons to Bruce, 4 March 1937, CP4/2/1. Lyons had first met Drummond in 1935 and asked Bruce to arrange a call at the British embassy; ibid. 1585 Rotunda, 369, 395ff., on Drummond's declining prestige at Rome and his failure to secure an interview with Mussolini; Drummond to Eden, 30 April 1937, FO 954/13A/62, PRO, London. Drummond’s diplomatic correspondence at this time indicated his strong, frustrated desire for a personal meeting with Mussolini in order to make a personal assessment of his views; DBFP, 2nd series, vol.18, 463 (4 May 1937), 487 (13 May 1937) and footnote to 741, Eden was granted permission for an interview, but only with Ciano; Lamb, Mussolini and the British, 175-7. 1586 Enid Lyons, So We, 259-60. 1587 ibid. 1588 The Lyons-Mussolini interview of 15 April 1937 does not appear in the series I Documenti Diplomatici Italiani. 217 example, that the interview on the evening of 15 April 1937 at the Palazzo Venezia was not, as she claimed, held at Perth’s request (or at that of Whitehall)─ it had been brought about by Lyons’s own impulse, fortified by Perth, but without London’s sanction, even if the messages of friendship conveyed in it suited certain trends at Whitehall.1589

This meeting was not just a courtesy call, but a peacemaking initiative intended, in Enid Lyons's immediate post-war description, to convince Mussolini ‘of the truth of Britain’s protestations of friendship with Italy’.1590 It serves as a good example of face-to-face appeasement and the effect of dictatorial charisma upon those motivated by an overwhelming desire for conciliation,1591 although Enid Lyons’s memoirs were keen to downplay any suggestion that her husband had been ‘duchessed’, claiming that he found the famous study and the stare more mirthful than intimidating.1592 Lyons was nevertheless struck, she said, by Mussolini’s ‘massive intelligence…his anticipation of every shift of argument, the speed of his responses to new lines of thought, the completeness of his knowledge of all aspects of government’ and he now took the opportunity to remind him of ‘British’ feelings of friendship for Italy.1593 The Italian did most of the talking and one may speculate that he saw the Australian merely as an intermediary, as he later certainly saw other dominion representatives.1594 Mussolini’s final words, in English, were instructive, given any assumption that Lyons was a conduit to the British prime minister-designate, Chamberlain:1595

Please tell the British government for me that I, too, want peace. I have boasted that I will make a new Roman Empire. To do that I need peace to develop Abyssinia. If war broke out I couldn’t do it. Tell the government I want peace.1596

1589 Enid Lyons, So We, 259-60, suggested that the request of the embassy was the sole reason for the meeting; Enid Lyons audio interview with Mel Pratt, March 1972, 1st tape, 74-5. Her diary does not mention origins; Enid Lyons Diary, 15 April 1937, MS 4852/30. C. Hughes, Mr. Prime Minister, 91, believed the interview was at the request of the ‘British embassy’. Ovendale, “Appeasement,” 191; Appeasement, 57, mistakenly believed that it took place after the Imperial Conference. 1590 Enid Lyons, My Life, 34. 1591 Rock, 64, on ‘near-ritualistic’ interviews; another example was provided in September 1936 when Lloyd George met Hitler at Berchtesgaden; Lentin, Chapter “The Magic Mountain”, 92. 1592 Halifax too was said to have found Hitler ‘comical’, being, like Lyons, ill-equipped by background to understand the psychology of the dictators; R. Adams, British Politics and Foreign Policy in the Age of Appeasement, 1935-39 (London: Macmillan, 1993), 72. Smith's Weekly, 1 May 1937, 14, illustrated Lyons's reception, saluting a swarthy Mussolini with both arms raised in a Roman salute reminiscent of a gesture of surrender. 1593 Enid Lyons, So We, 259-60. The description reads like that offered in fascist propaganda of the cult of mussolinismo; Mack Smith, Mussolini, 193. 1594 He told Grandi during the Imperial Conference to encourage a Canadian who had seen him to believe that he could play a role in Anglo-Italian détente; Mussolini to Grandi, London, DDI, 8th series, vol.7, 623, 1998, footnote 1, 28 May 1937. 1595 Mussolini knew that Chamberlain was to become the new prime minister, as Baldwin had been transferring power for some months; R. Jenkins, Baldwin (London: Collins, 1987), 161. 1596 Enid Lyons, So We, 259-60. 218 The thrust and validity of Dame Enid’s recall are reinforced by other, contemporary Lyons sources ─ the Prime Minister later told the press that his ‘cordial’ host had emphatically stated a desire for the best of relations between Britain, the Empire and Italy and that he had also stressed the need for world peace.1597 Her husband also later told the delegates at the Imperial Conference that Mussolini had assured him that ‘he wanted peace, and wished to live on the most friendly terms with Britain’, conscious that otherwise ‘Italy could not possibly develop her homeland much less her overseas empire’.1598 A delighted Enid Lyons confided to her diary on the day of the meeting, ‘J. had interview with Mussolini at six, which he enjoyed and thought productive of much good for preservation of peace. M. says he wills peace.’1599 Decades later, she still thought Mussolini's attitude ‘sensible’,1600 quoting Perth to the effect that her husband had achieved more for the cause of peace in this half-hour than had yet been achieved on any formal diplomatic level, a claim confirmed in part by Perth’s counsel to Eden later in 1937.1601 The ambassador had also noted shortly after the interview the consistency of Mussolini’s professions of peace and friendship to ‘various personalities’, inferring (like Lyons) that consistency equalled sincerity.1602 However self-serving Enid Lyons’s claim of Perth’s ‘enthusiasm’ was and however contemptuous Mussolini’s private opinion of dominion politicians, the prospects of closer Anglo- Italian co-operation were arguably enhanced by the April interview─ Lyons himself was certainly so convinced.1603

Lyons’s personal diplomacy had now matured to a level where he thought that a dominion statesman could be a go-between in European affairs. Enid Lyons made a final observation, noting that ‘in the following year that interview was to have repercussions that helped to change the course of world history’.1604 This claim indicated the seriousness of peacemaking in the eyes of one appeaser and although it seems exaggerated at first glance, it was not without some foundation. Lyons himself referred to his interview on several occasions during the Imperial Conference and its aftermath ─ if Mussolini had expected him to assist Italian aims by championing Anglo-Italian détente in London, he was not disappointed. At the first meeting of delegates, on 19 May 1937, Lyons suggested that the question of Abyssinia was ‘urgent’ and

1597 Herald, Melbourne, 19 April 1937, Enid Lyons Papers, MS 4852/5; Smith's Weekly, 1 May 1937, 14. vide also below for Lyons’s account at the Imperial Conference. 1598 Lyons, Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 34, tenth meeting of principal delegates, 1 June 1937. 1599 Enid Lyons Diary, 15 April 1937, MS 4852/30. 1600 Enid Lyons audio interview with Mel Pratt, 1st tape, 77. 1601 Enid Lyons, So We, 259-60; Enid Lyons audio interview with Mel Pratt, 1st tape, 74-5. Perth noted the utility of gauging Mussolini's attitudes through the medium of high-level interviews; Perth to Eden, 15 October 1937, FO 954/13A/191, PRO, London, referring to the impending visit to Rome of Duff Cooper. 1602 Perth, DBFP, 2nd series, vol.18, 463, 14 May 1937. By 11 June, he too would believe that Mussolini now wanted 10-20 years of peace; DBFP, 2nd series, vol.18, 601. 1603 Mussolini was always sceptical of negotiation; Mack Smith, “Appeasement...,” 258. Grandi, the Italian ambassador at London, thought the dominion heads uncivilized (‘capi barbari’) in the knowledge that the Duce agreed; Grandi, London, to Ciano, I Documenti Diplomatici Italiani, 1935-39 (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1998), 8th series, vol.7, 622, 21 May 1937. On Mussolini’s low estimation of dominion politicians like Pirow, vide Chapter 7. 1604 Enid Lyons, So We, 259-60. She was referring to Lyons's role in bringing about Mussolini's intervention during the Czech crisis of September 1938, vide Chapter 6. 219 warranted immediate attention.1605 Not discouraged by Eden’s immediate negativity,1606 he further stated his belief, on 1 June 1937, that now was the time for an understanding with Italy and for the re-establishment of the traditional Anglo-Italian relationship, repeating Mussolini’s April assertions of peaceful intention and imperial satisfaction (as found in Enid Lyons’s later account) almost verbatim.1607 His report, unmatched at the conference in the depth of its plea for Anglo-Italian accord, brought little response from the delegates and its sentiments were not shared even by colleagues like Parkhill, who later suggested that Abyssinia had stimulated, not ‘satisfied’, Italy.1608 Accordingly, Lyons took his pursuit of Italian appeasement to a forum that he knew was more sympathetic─ to Downing Street and to Chamberlain, who assumed the premiership on 28 May 1937 with the intention of taking ‘a good deal more interest in foreign affairs’ than his predecessors.1609

The two prime ministers and their wives lunched alone at Downing Street on 11 June 1937 and a confident Lyons offered counsel.1610 The new premier was advised that a ‘personal contact’ with Mussolini might achieve a greater measure of détente than any reliance on more cumbersome diplomatic channels (an apparent echo of Perth’s praise in April).1611 Lyons then (after Casey) suggested a course of action reminiscent of his own personal diplomacy:

It could be achieved by an official call during a European holiday, but contact would have been established on a personal basis; who knew with what beneficial results in the future?1612

Dame Enid later recalled that Chamberlain agreed to give the consideration serious thought.1613 Even though doubts about such precise recall of a distant conversation may be mollified by her closer notes of 1940,1614 she remained convinced of a link between Lyons’s counsel and a

1605 Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 26, 19 May 1937; DBFP, 2nd series, vol.18, 510, first meeting of principal delegates. 1606 Eden wished the matter referred to the League and remained hostile to any proposals of concessions to aggressors, second meeting of delegates, 21 May 1937, CP4/2E, NAA, Canberra. 1607 Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 34, tenth meeting of principal delegates, I June 1937; vide above. Enid Lyons, So We, 259-60. 1608 New Zealand was especially unimpressed; Mansergh, Survey, 196. Parkhill speech, Mosman Town Hall, 28 July 1937, B1535/834/1/44, NAA, Melbourne. Tamchina: 83, although aware of the thrust of the 15 April interview, was therefore incorrect to suggest that nobody at the conference counselled sympathy for Mussolini or suggested any moral obligation to address Italian concerns. 1609 Chamberlain to Eden, Colvin, 47, quoting Eden’s memoirs, Facing the Dictators. 1610 Enid Lyons Diary, 11 June 1937, MS 4852/30; Chamberlain Pocket Diaries, 11 June 1937, Neville Chamberlain Papers, 2/29/1-37, University of Birmingham Archives; Enid Lyons, So We, 261-2. Tsokhas, “Tradition, Fantasy and Britishness…”: 4, on Lyons’s confidence by 1937 in his dealings with British statesmen. 1611 Enid Lyons audio interview with Mel Pratt, Tape 1, 75-6, where she recalled that they had thought such meetings conducive since the interview of 15 April 1937. 1612 Enid Lyons, So We, 261-2. Austen Chamberlain had occasionally called on Mussolini whilst yachting in the Mediterranean and the two men became friends. This view was in accordance with Casey’s 1931 suggestion that world affairs would be improved if leading statesmen holidayed together; Casey, Australia’s Place in the World, 57. 1613 Enid Lyons, So We, 261-2; ibid., My Life, 34-5. 1614 A closer, but similar, recall of the 11 June 1937 lunch is found in her notes for a 1940 radio broadcast on the Chamberlains; Enid Lyons Papers, MS 4852/8, NLA, Canberra. 220 personal visit by Chamberlain to Italy ‘a few weeks later’1615 ─ no such visit occurred (until January 1939), but Chamberlain did initiate ‘personal’ correspondence with the Italian leader on 27 July 1937.1616 There is no direct evidence to link Australian counsel to this correspondence and Lyons had not been alone in urging an acceptance of Italy’s olive-branch (Grandi, Halifax and Perth had earlier offered similar counsel),1617 but the April interview and the subsequent impressions conveyed by Lyons to Chamberlain were arguably one weapon in the arsenal of those seeking rapprochement with Rome ─ however, in accordance with his usual secretive practices, Chamberlain did not give much indication of the reasoning behind his initiative.1618 Enid Lyons’s assumption of some link between her husband’s counsel and the July initiative, despite her inaccuracies, was nevertheless understandable in the circumstances and Lyons’s especially warm reception of the enhanced Anglo-Italian Agreement of 16 April 1938 suggests that the possibility of such a link was in their mind from the beginning.1619 This is not to say that there was a connection, but it is to say that Lyons assumed that his counsel had been effective, an assumption that became important in September 1938, with Enid Lyons suggesting that there were consequences for world peace through the Lyons-Mussolini-Chamberlain links established at this time.1620 At the very least, the relationship between the two prime ministers was likely enhanced by their similar attitudes to Italian détente ─ any ‘mutual attraction’ that was claimed from the Lyons side of the relationship, if it existed, could only have been fuelled by consensus on the desirability of wider appeasement in the ‘pursuit of peace’.1621 V

Whatever contribution Lyons made to Mediterranean appeasement in this period, it was the Pacific that remained his chief source of concern at the Imperial Conference (14 May-15 June

1615 Enid Lyons, My Life, 34-5; ibid., So We, 261-2, recalled the visit as six months later; she was confusing the communications of July 1937 with the Chamberlain-Halifax visit to Rome in January 1939. 1616 Chamberlain to Mussolini, DBFP, 2nd series, vol.19, 65, 27 July 1937; PREM 1/276/339, PRO, London. Eden and Vansittart were opposed, DBFP, ibid., footnote 1, 120, detailing Vansittart’s minute, 29 July 1937, and a note in support of this position by Eden, 30 July 1937; also Peters, 282. Chamberlain was delighted by Mussolini’s cordial response; Chamberlain to Lord Weir, Chamberlain Papers, miscellaneous correspondence, NC 7/11/30/141, University of Birmingham Archives. The issue ultimately led to Eden’s resignation in February 1938, vide Chapter 6. 1617 Lamb, Mussolini and the British, 179-182, provides an excellent summary of the Chamberlain-Mussolini correspondence, although his account is too credulous of the part played by Grandi; also Adams, 70. The documents are found in DBFP, 2nd series, vol.19. vide especially where Lord President Halifax urged a letter from Eden to Mussolini; DBFP, 2nd series, vol.19, 45, footnote 2, 17 July 1937. Farrell, 290-1 (after Lamb), on Grandi. 1618 Halifax had heard Lyons’s account of his interview in London on 19 May 1937, DBFP, 2nd series, vol.18, 510. D. Watt, “Paradox”: 277, thought dominion reluctance to confront Germany the chief factor in this initiative. 1619 pace Ovendale, Appeasement, 63, suggesting that Chamberlain acted without any dominion influence. A. Crozier, Appeasement and Germany’s Last Bid for Colonies (London: Macmillan, 1988), 322, quoting Rotunda, 318-20, assigns some responsibility to Hankey; Rotunda, 363ff., on Hankey’s influence with Chamberlain and his desire for Italian détente, made keener by his holiday in Italy in September 1937. vide Chapter 6 on the April 1938 agreement and Lyons’s favourable response. 1620 Enid Lyons, My Life, 34-5. 1621 Enid Lyons 1940 radio broadcast notes, Enid Lyons Papers, MS 4852/8, thought that this attraction had begun with their first meeting in April 1935, vide Chapter 3. Enid Lyons also had a cordial and long-lasting friendship with Anne Chamberlain; Enid Lyons Diary, 11 June 1937, MS 4852/30; Anne Chamberlain handwritten note to Enid Lyons, 17 June 1937, Enid Lyons Papers, MS 4852/30. She described Chamberlain’s ‘burning zeal for peace’, something that could also be applied to her husband; Enid, Lyons, So We, 261-2 221 1937).1622 When the Australian delegation arrived in London on 30 April 1937, Lyons seemed to have clear external policy goals in mind ─ these were the framing of a process (not necessarily an institutional one) of consultation in imperial foreign policy-making, the encouragement of appeasement in Europe and the initiation of further measures of eastern appeasement. The latter included the unveiling of the second Pacific initiative of the Lyons period, the Pacific Pact of non-aggression ─ over two years in gestation but announced publicly in London for the first time. The proposal was Lyons’s particular political response, after Latham, to the circumstances of his decade (especially Japanese aggression and the Manchurian question), something he later made clear in an unusually personal, parliamentary assessment, where he placed the proposal into the recent perspective of a disturbed, post-war ‘equilibrium’.1623 It was not simply a revival of some preceding ones, of which there were many, ranging from Deakin’s ‘mark of political genius’ (1909),1624 those of Hughes (1921) and Bruce (1923), through to the musings of the Institute of Pacific Relations at Honolulu (1925) and Kyoto (1929)1625 ─ although the immediate stimulus for its revival in 1937 had come from the League’s interest in regional pacts in late-1936, the proposal that Lyons presented in London proved less sympathetic to Geneva than anything discussed by cabinet at that time.1626 Whilst Lyons never directly acknowledged any of these precedents, he certainly owed a debt to the mood of Pacific co-operation that had spawned them, later indicating that he was conscious of an Australian interest in the region even before Federation, and he had absorbed such sentiments in formulating his own particular model.1627 Yet, it was recognised that he had stamped upon the Pact his own character of consensus and appeasement, however vague on detail that stamp ultimately proved ─to ‘Mr.be Lyons’ proposal’.1628 The Prime Minister’s opening address to the First Plenary Session of the conference, on 14 May 1937, was one of the more important speeches of his career.1629 He prepared it himself, after consultation with senior ministers (most likely with Casey, judging from its diplomatic content, and with Bruce, judging from the economic content, but not with his deputy, Page),1630 although the text was little altered by the suggestions of the cabinet and thus remained a

1622 He identified this region as Australia’s chief, though not sole, area of concern; Speech by J.A. Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 25, First Plenary Session of Imperial Conference, 14 May 1937. He had already referred to the Pacific as the area around which the future development of the world was envisaged; Wollongong speech, 12 October 1935, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 October, 1935, 11, e. 1623 vide below; Lyons, CPD, vol.154, 22-31, 24 August 1937; Current Notes, vol.3 (September 1937), 149-50. 1624 Meaney, “A Proposition…”: 208-9. Bridge, “Relations with the United States”, 179 and Attard, “Australia as a Dependent Dominion”, 17, argue that it was a copy of Deakin’s model. It did follow in these earlier footsteps but mutatis mutandis. On Deakin’s Pacific ‘Monroe Doctrine’; Millar, 72; Meaney, Australia and the World, 187-90; ibid., “A Proposition…”: 200-13; ibid., Search, 195; Thompson, 11; Hudson, Australian Diplomacy, 24. 1625 Hughes supported a Pacific pact in 1921, ibid., Millar, 84-5; D. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 146. On Bruce and the IPR; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 170. 1626 vide above. 1627 Lyons statement, CPD, vol.154, 22-31, 24 August 1937; Current Notes, vol.3 (September 1937), 149-50. 1628 External Affairs assessment and outline of the Pact prepared for Latham, 23 September 1940, Pacific Pact, A981/4/PAC 23. 1629 Meaney's analysis of the conference is chiefly based on this speech; Meaney, “Foreign Policy…”: 178ff. 1630 Page was still seeking clarification of some passages of the speech in the following month; Lyons to Earle Page, 12 June 1937, CP290/5/7, NAA, Canberra. 222 document of both prime ministerial and personal perspective which showed in parts just how close the identification between national policy and Lyons’s personal outlook could be ─ he was, however, careful to offer it as the collegial viewpoint of ‘Australia’, the ‘Australian people’ and the ‘Australian Government’ (avoiding the term ‘Commonwealth’ in this context given the wider associations that this title was assuming) and it must also be taken as the collective view of the cabinet, even if it is difficult to imagine Pearce now endorsing many of its appeasing sentiments.1631 The speech as delivered indicated a broad vision of Australia's place in the world, in the style advocated by Casey at the time of his working relationship with Lyons, c.1932, a further indication of the collaboration of the senior man with his rising junior.1632 The prevailing theme of the sections on external affairs was that the dominions must play a part on the international scene and therefore warranted a consultative role in framing imperial policy─ this was in accordance with the pattern of earlier Australian external policy and was implicitly accepted by some at the Dominions Office (since the time of Amery in the mid-‘twenties), as well as being a view long espoused by Casey, now having its influence on Lyons.1633 Lyons now asserted this as a right, according to the principle of ‘free co-operation on the basis of equality’.1634 He was adamant that whilst Australia remained an integral part of the ‘British Commonwealth of Nations’, a ‘new’ Empire had recently come into being.1635 The ‘old’ one had passed away since the last conference (1930), replaced by an ‘equal partnership’, in which the dominions as ‘sovereign nations’ assumed the responsibilities and burdens of ‘nationhood’:1636

1631 Lyons submitted his draft to senior ministers, but the changes he made in response were minimal; Lyons draft speech, n.d., A461 C326/1/4 PART 1, NAA, Canberra. Note his working style, whereby he wrote his own speeches or closely supervised their preparation by others; Enid Lyons to P. Hart, n.d., Hart Papers, MS9410/4. vide Kitson Clark, 64, Holsti, 133, on the origins and context of a document. 1632 Casey; Australia’s Place, passim. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 256-7, on their collaboration at the conference. 1633 Casey, “The Need for a United British Foreign Policy,” (17 October 1932) in The World We Live In: A Series of Speeches on Current Events, 70ff. Casey had sought, as liaison officer in London in the 1920s, to create an atmosphere in which Australia played a part in the formulation of imperial policy; Hasluck, Light, 99, 103. The DO had been established in June 1925, in part to ensure better consultation; Leo Amery, Colonial Secretary, to G. Dawson, editor The Times, in Holland, 32. 1634 Speech by J.A. Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 25, 14 May 1937. The speech indicates a need for some revision of the McCarthy view, Imperial Defence, 148-9, that the Foreign Office settled the main lines of imperial foreign policy and was thanked for doing so. Lyons’s theme was not shared by other dominion PMs, to judge from their opening addresses, although they warmed to it at the conference; “Imperial Conference Summary of Proceedings”, Australian Parliamentary Papers, 1937, vol.5, no.80, 2275-7. Much material from the conference is also found in the microform printouts of series A4085, NAA, Canberra. 1635 He increasingly preferred the term ‘Commonwealth’ to ‘Empire’ in the imperial context, except where its use could be confused to mean the Commonwealth of Australia. 1636 ibid. He continued to welcome this transition in the following year, vide the Glenbrook speech, 3 September 1938, Chapter 6. 223 The people of the Dominions− and this is particularly noticeable in Australia − are taking a widespread interest in all questions of foreign policy, because of the growing realisation that no nation can live unto itself.1637

This recognition of constitutional development, with its demand for consultation, was not new─ Deakin had moved in a similar direction;1638 Smuts had made similar assertions in 1917;1639 Hughes had fulminated in 1922,1640 and dominion equality was finally acknowledged by the Statute of Westminster of 19311641 ─ Lyons’s rhetorical concentration on this new status was nonetheless notable, despite his government’s reluctance to ratify the statute itself,1642 and a recognition of constitutional maturity that was more conscious of national rights than of the limitations of national power.1643 Within this commonwealth of equals, he saw the dominions as both offering counsel and playing their wider part, in accord with his personal world-view, ‘in ensuring the peace of the world’ ─ this implied that they were to have an input into any imperial foreign policy as well conducting their own foreign affairs with the ‘autonomy’ of which Lyons had boasted so recently in Rome.1644 The only qualification of that autonomy was continued reliance on formal British diplomacy, something to be tolerated as long as there was dominion input into policy-making in some form ─ to emphasise his desire for diplomatic unity, Lyons had deleted earlier references to Australia’s evolving diplomatic representation.1645 His call at this

1637 Speech by J.A. Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 25, 14 May 1937. The last phrase was reminiscent of his 1936 review, where he stated that Australians could not, ‘live to ourselves alone’; Lyons statement, Record of the Lyons Government, “Commonwealth Parliamentary Year 1936: Review by Prime Minister”, 17 December 1936, A601/165/1/1. 1638 Hudson, Australian Diplomacy, 4; J. La Nauze, Alfred Deakin (Melbourne: MUP, 1965), Chapter 23, passim. 1639 Rose, 99, on Smuts’s 1917 draft resolution IX at the Imperial War Conference; also 130, on the recognition of equality contained in the Statute. 1640 He was motivated by the Chanak crisis; D. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 148, discusses the ramifications of Chanak for the development of Whitehall-dominion consultation; Millar, 77; Fitzhardinge, 485ff. 1641 A good summary of the evolution of dominion status, including the 1926 Balfour Report, is provided in Smith, 67; Mansergh, Experience, 235ff., 270. Dr. Melbourne noted that the 1926 Imperial Conference resolutions and that the statute made Australia an ‘independent nation’; “A Foreign Policy for Australia”, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2, point 1. 1642 It ought not to be concluded that there was no ‘independent’ foreign policy simply because the statute was unratified. The failure to ratify after December 1936 was due more to the legal objections than to any reluctance to assume full nationhood. The ratification bill was allowed to lapse during 1937, given the opposition of conservatives inside cabinet, like Hughes and Menzies, who still claimed to support its principles; CPD, vol.154, 94, 25 August 1937; Hodgson to Stirling, 21 September 1937, Hodgson notes, A981 EXTE 215, NAA, Canberra; Millar, 79. Latham too was opposed to it when Opposition Leader for legal reasons; Andrews, Writing, 51, but later changed his mind; Smith, 68. Cumpston, Bruce, 103, believes that there was an economic motive for non-ratification, allowing the continuance of cheap capital under the Colonial Stock Act of 1900. This motive was confirmed by B. Attard, “ ‘Moral Suasion’: Empire borrowers and the London capital market during the 1920s”, seminar paper, University of Melbourne, 21 March 2002. Elsewhere, “Australia as a Dependent Dominion”: 20, he referred to this Act as a form of ‘imperial preference’ in the British capital market. Lyons the populist also perhaps sensed the absence of much popular interest in ratification; W. Hudson and M. Sharp, Australian Independence. Colony to Reluctant Kingdom (Melbourne: MUP, 1988), 118-28, especially 125-6. Perhaps, it was as simple as Hasluck, Government, 49, observed: ‘The characteristic Australian tendency was to avoid definitions and to do what was politically advantageous.’ 1643 The latter observation on the dominion response to the statute was made in Haggie, 109. 1644 Speech by J.A. Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 25, 14 May 1937; Enid Lyons, So We, 259-60; Lyons told Mussolini that the dominions enjoyed ‘autonomy’ in foreign policy. He had already accepted in August 1934 that the dominions had treaty-making rights; Smith, 79. 1645 Tamchina: 81, referred to this as a ‘British-front policy’ intended to use British diplomatic weight for world peace. Casey, Australia’s Place, 17ff., had stressed the diplomatic advantages to Australia of imperial unity. One of the few alterations to the speech that he had accepted was the deletion of any reference to the appointment of Australian trade commissioners, seen by some as an incipient diplomatic service; Lyons draft speech, n.d., A461 C326/1/4 PART 1. 224 conference for ‘the formation of a consistent and unified Empire policy’ followed from the premises of diplomatic unity and dominion input.1646 Imperial foreign policy was no longer, according to this view, to equal British foreign policy (if it had ever previously done so)─ the Latham mission had already indicated that the dominions could, on occasion, take the initiative, as Casey believed.1647

The Australian prime minister had been offering his occasional counsel at Whitehall since 1932 in an attempt to exert some influence in policy-making, although without much consistency of application and with mixed success, but this new call signalled changes. Following the most recent European crisis, the sympathetic Dominions Secretary had called for ‘consultation on all matters of common concern’1648 ─ the speech of 14 May 1937 made it clear that Lyons wished that consultation to be taken as a matter of form, although characteristically enough he did not submit any proposals as to how such input was to be established or regulated, as Deakin had done.1649 Despite this vagueness, he was quite explicit about what he considered the broad aims of a ‘British Commonwealth foreign policy’ ought to be ─ ‘world peace’ and ‘the stabilisation and pacification of the world’.1650 These aims could no longer be achieved through Geneva, with Lyons ‘unhappily’ noting that the League’s ‘great ideals’ were impractical ‘under present conditions’, a view endorsed by Chamberlain shortly afterwards in another example of like-thinking.1651 His preferred instrument of peace was to be the transformed British Commonwealth ─ united, rearmed and acting as ‘a lesser League within the League…in support of the maintenance of international law and order’.1652

An important element of the speech was Lyons’s unveiling of a specific structure, the ambitious Pacific Pact, which arguably constituted the culmination of sixteen years of Australian calls for the establishment of a Pacific-centric diplomacy.1653 The proposal ipso facto not only indicated his belief in a dominion playing a part at the central level of policy-making, but also the conviction that a dominion could autonomously stimulate policy in its own region─ a startling example of the tail wagging the dog and of ‘equal partnership’. When Lyons had last suggested a

1646 Speech by J.A. Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 25, 14 May 1937. 1647 R. Casey, “Australia’s Voice in Imperial Affairs” in Australia’s Foreign Policy, ed. W. Duncan (Sydney: AandR, 1938), 51-2. Lyons’s offer of Australian mediation during the Rhineland crisis was another such initiative. Andrews, “Patterns…”, 96, was convinced that ‘imperial foreign policy’ remained ‘British foreign policy’ and makes no reference to a speech that belies his suggestion that the UAP was happy not to demand equality. 1648 Note by Malcolm MacDonald, following talks with Jordan, NZ high commissioner, 29 August 1936, CAB 24/264 CP236(36), PRO, London. 1649 vide Introduction on Deakin’s secretariat. 1650 Speech by J.A. Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 25 14 May 1937. 1651 ibid. Many British politicians felt the same but were similarly reluctant to openly abandon the League; Parker, “The Failure of Collective Security,” 27. Feiling, 324, quotes Chamberlain in his first parliamentary session as Prime Minister stating his belief that the League was ‘temporarily’ unable to fulfill its functions. Lyons's comments on the League were too candid to be referred to as a ‘smoke-screen’ for the substitution of collective security with appeasement; Murphy, 285. 1652 Speech by J.A. Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 25, 14 May 1937. Mansergh, Survey, 88-92, quotes Professor Coupland at the conference referring to the Empire as a ‘British league of nations’. 1653 The assessment of Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 388. 225 ‘pact’ in London, on 9 May 1935, the proposal had been universally decried,1654 and presumably for that reason, he had failed to give any indication to Whitehall of the impending renewal of the proposal in May 1937.1655 The British ministerial preparatory committee on foreign affairs and defence, chaired by Eden, had expected some dominion interest in eastern affairs, although little other than a ‘general discussion’ on security─ the pact proposal accordingly came as a ‘surprise’ on 14 May.1656 Even the UK High Commissioner in Canberra, Whiskard, had been unaware of it.1657 The only ‘pact’ mentioned at Whitehall in the preceding months had been a Chamberlain model applicable to Germany (mentioned in a cabinet sub- committee in March 1937), a parallel concept to his aborted 1934 eastern proposals.1658 The rejection of the various 1934/35 models by the Foreign Office gave some indication of the likely reception that awaited the renewed Lyons proposal, despite Chamberlain’s assured support and the stirrings of some in that department more inclined to see Britain as a mediator between the Pacific powers.1659

Given Lyons’s admission of League failure, this ‘regional understanding and pact of non- aggression by the countries of the Pacific’ was to be ‘conceived [only] in the spirit of the principles of the League’, thus not requiring the admission of any current non-members1660 ─ it was neither to be within the broader League of Nations nor in any Pacific sub-branch, for Lyons had rejected that concept some time ago (unlike Pearce and Menzies).1661 The Lyons model included those Pacific powers outside the structures of Geneva: ‘Towards the achievement of such a Pact we are prepared to collaborate with all other peoples in a spirit of understanding and sympathy.’1662 Although he did not say so on 14 May, Lyons soon showed that collaboration involved the recognition of certain recent territorial adjustments in Asia and Africa. No power was thus beyond the pale and once a Pacific Pact was realised, Australian security would be enhanced by the channelling of legitimized Japanese ambitions northwards and by the freezing of

1654 Transcript of Dominion PMs meetings, third meeting, 9 May 1935, A981 IMP 135, vide Chapter 3. 1655 Age editorials, 17 May 1937, 26 August 1937, were critical of the lack of ‘forewarning’; Murphy, 282. 1656 Preparatory Committee, 19 March 1937, 7 April 1937, CAB 32/127, PRO, London. Cadogan, deputy-head of the Foreign Office, told the US ambassador, Bingham, that the proposal was a ‘surprise’ to the British government; Bingham to Cordell Hull, FRUS, 1937, vol.3, 102-3, 18 May 1937. This lack of prior warning was later seen as one factor for British hostility to it; Esthus, 33, quoting US counsellor Atherton. 1657 Whiskard to MacDonald, Dominions Secretary, 31 March 1937, DO 35/587/2, PRO, London. He had predicted that Canberra would concentrate on defence co-ordination and Ottawa reform; Foreign Office minute, 20 May 1937, FO 371/21025, PRO, London. vide below on Whiskard’s low opinion of Lyons; by 1938 he was seriously concerned about his attempts to play a part in international affairs, vide Chapter 6. 1658 Foreign Policy sub-committee meeting, 10 March 1937; Colvin, 38. 1659 On Simon and the Foreign Office’s objections; D. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 93; Tarling, 13; Louis, “The Road to Singapore…”, 361, 364; Trotter, “Tentative…”: 59-82; Andrews, Writing, 145-54; P. Bell, 69ff., 134, 162-3. vide also Newman, 23; Louis, British Strategy, 213-5; Shen, 29ff.; Feiling, 253-4. A. Best, “Sir Robert Craigie as Ambassador to Japan, 1937-41,” in Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits, ed. I. Nish (Folkestone: Japan Library, 1994), 250-1, notes Craigie’s belief in this possibility – he became ambassador under Chamberlain’s patronage. 1660 Speech by J.A. Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 25, 14 May 1937. 1661 The earlier public references by Menzies and Pearce, in September 1936, vide above, were not of the same character as this Lyons model, which specifically excluded the process from the League’s structures; Meaney, Australia and the World, 408ff.; CPD, vol.151, 622ff. vide the debating notes above requested by Lyons; External Affairs memorandum to J. Halligan, Prime Minister’s Department, 10 July 1936. 1662 Speech by J.A. Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 25, 14 May 1937. 226 the eastern status quo brought about by the force of arms since 1931.1663 The whole represented a tabula rasa for British eastern policy in pursuit of international ‘stabilisation and pacification’, the noble ideals to which Lyons dedicated himself in this speech: the instrument of their attainment was chiefly to be ‘political’, not ‘economic’, appeasement.1664 No public details of the mechanics of his Pacific Pact were given on 14 May, according to the Lyons modus operandi. This struck some as vague and others as a sensible lack of ‘complicating detail’, but the failure to prepare any draft proposal would prove costly in the following weeks.1665

On only one other occasion in London did Lyons publicly refer to the proposal, in an address to the Foreign Press Association on 7 June 1937. The composition of his audience indicated that the concept was already faltering, for no British cabinet minister was present (although the Foreign Office was represented); of the dominions, aside from Bruce only the high commissioners of New Zealand and Eire attended, whilst the diplomatic corps was represented only by German, Japanese and Polish officials.1666 They heard Lyons deliver a more detailed prime ministerial exposition than that of 14 May, one that contained some personal elements:

Mr. Lyons said that the War had made it clear to Australia that in the eyes of the world she would henceforth rank as an independent nation and could not isolate herself from European and other international problems.1667

The fundamental similarity of the Australian and British outlook, he maintained, precluded the necessity for any ‘formal Diplomatic Service’, but Australia’s ‘special interest’ had led ‘her’ to put forward the proposal for a ‘Pact of non-aggression and consultation between all the countries

1663 Ovendale, Appeasement, 66-7, noted that the Pact would entail a Japanese recognition of British territory in the east, including the inviolability of Australia and New Zealand. To this regional extent, the Lyons proposal could be said to seek ‘to freeze the status quo’; N. Meaney, The Japanese Connection (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1988), 19. 1664 Lyons mentioned the need for ‘economic appeasement’, a major interest of Bruce and McDougall; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 410, but only after ‘the revival of world trade’. On McDougall; Twomey, “Munich,” 20, 22; on McDougall and Bruce; Hudson, League, 171ff.; O’Brien: 571; P. Edwards, “The Rise and Fall…”, 47; Ovendale, “Appeasement,” 188; W. Way, “F. L. McDougall and Commodity Diplomacy,” in Between Empire and Nation, eds. B. Attard and C. Bridge, 93-110. The British cabinet had been led to anticipate, perhaps by Bruce, that the Australian delegation would raise ‘economic appeasement’; DO memo to Cabinet, 22 April 1937, CAB 32/127/267, PRO, London. On the same day, Bruce submitted a memorandum to Chamberlain on the issue; B. Wendt, “ ‘Economic Appeasement’-a Crisis Strategy,” in Fascist Challenge, 157-73. His interest survived the outbreak of war, P. Edwards, “S.M. Bruce, R.G. Menzies and Australia’s War Aims and Peace Aims, 1939-40.” Historical Studies, vol.17, no.66 (April 1976): passim, 2, 14. 1665 The characteristic lack of detail could have accounted for Pearce’s lack of concern when reviewing the draft; Lyons draft speech, n.d., A461 C326/1/4 PART 1. ‘Anon.’, “The Pacific Regional Pact.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.1, no.2 (June 1937): 4-6, on the favourable response of Eggleston, Copeland and Piesse; also quoted in Murphy, 251. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 387, on the failure of the delegation to produce a draft proposal. 1666 The Times, 8 June 1937, 19. The Irish high commissioner, Dulanty, was a drinking companion of Lyons, but not a delegate to the conference, where Eire was unrepresented; Frank Green, an old Tasmanian friend of Lyons and parliamentary staffer, “Parade of Prime Ministers,” Sun-Herald, Sydney, 24 May 1959, related a drinking story with ‘Dillon’, the Irish delegate in 1935. Casey and Parkhill were present. 1667 Lyons speech to Foreign Press Association, Savoy Hotel, London, 7 June 1937; “Mr. Lyons on Australian Proposal”, The Times, 8 June 1937, 13, b. 227 of the Pacific’.1668 This was an acknowledgement of the difficulty of balancing Australian and British interests, although Lyons as prime minister was still reluctant to draw the complete conclusion of such an admission and to take the final step towards full Australian diplomatic representation in the event that Britain may fail to follow up Australia’s ‘special interest’, as would be the case with this particular proposal. Lyons was at last able to provide some public detail ─ he made it clear that his proposed instrument was intended to replace the three redundant Washington Treaties of 1921, which had effected only a ‘temporary settlement’ in the Far East (just as Versailles had done in Europe).1669 All that was needed was for every Pacific country to ‘renounce war...and agree to meet round a table if difficulties cannot be overcome, in the first place, by diplomatic means’1670 ─ this, of course, was the personal Lyons formula of consensus politics applied on an international scale. It was precisely this desire for an extra-League consultative process that so interested some parties and so disturbed others, although Lyons would find that his caution about the League was shared at the conference by Hertzog and Mackenzie King.1671 The diplomatic direction signalled by Lyons on 14 May and 7 June 1937, whereby Australia would, or could, pursue her ‘special interest’ with relative autonomy, was not new but the corollary of the thinking of himself and his circle since 1933-34. Some at home noticed its significance immediately, others only later ─ most observers were favourably inclined in the immediate term,1672 although not one whose opinion Lyons so valued, A.C.V. Melbourne.1673 Irrespective of the reaction at home, it was the attitude of the conference that mattered and the Prime Minister devoted the bulk of his attention (14 May-15 June 1937) to lobbying for

1668 Andrews, Writing, 53, suggested that an Australian diplomatic representation was unnecessary, in part due to the excellence of Stirling’s dispatches, after he succeeded Officer in London in May 1937. vide P. Edwards, “The Rise and Fall…”, 46, on the extent and quality of Stirling and Bruce’s work in London. 1669 Lyons speech, London, 7 June 1937; The Times, 8 June 1937, 13, b. The first, Four-Power Treaty (Britain, France, US and Japan) guaranteed island territories; the second, Nine-Power Treaty, agreed on respect for Chinese integrity; the third limited naval construction; Ball, 100. Meaney, “A Proposition…”: 208-9,noted the similarity of Deakin’s proposal to the Four-Power Treaty. A. Iriye, “Asian Factor,” in ‘The Origins of the Second World War’ Reconsidered: The A.J.P. Taylor debate after twenty-five years, ed. G. Martel (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1986), 277, noted that the Washington treaties were the ‘functional equivalent’ of Versailles for the Asian countries. 1670 Lyons Savoy speech, 7 June 1937, reported in the Daily Telegraph (London), 8 June 1937; quoted in Carter, 272. 1671 Der Mittag, (Berlin), 8 June 1937, A1606 B41/1 PACT, NAA, Canberra, believed that Lyons was still putting too much faith in the League, but it acknowledged that Australia was developing a new international political consciousness and that she had recognised the emerging new order. Mansergh, Experience, 274, on the South African and Canadian view that the League could now exist only as a moral force. 1672 External Affairs summary of press and academic reaction, including the responses of professors Roberts and Copeland, A981/4 EXTE 215, NAA, Canberra; Fairbanks, 109-10, gives a press survey. E. Ferguson, T. Fry, J. Holmes and A. Murray Smith, “Australian Foreign Policy-Formation and Expression of Australian Opinion”, Australian Supplementary Papers, Series D, prepared for the British Commonwealth Relations Conference, Glenbrook, NSW, Australian Institute of International Affairs, no.2 (September 1938), 5, thought it a welcome ‘tentative step’; similarly Harris, 124, note 5, in 1938; Shepherd, 48-9, in 1939 still thought it a laudable attempt to restore some ‘collective order’. The critics included Smith’s Weekly, 12 June 1937, 12; ‘Austra’, “March of Events.” Australian National Review, vol.1, no.6 (June 1937): 88. 1673 A.C.V. Melbourne to S. Lynch, Commerce Department, 21 June 1937, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2, where he believed the pact showed a lack of understanding of Japan. In January 1938, at the summer school of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, he described it in unflattering terms; discussion following the Crawford paper, “Australia as a Pacific Power”, 113ff. His outlook did not alter; A.C.V. Melbourne, “Australia’s Relations to other Pacific Countries.” Australian Supplementary Papers, Series E, prepared for the British Commonwealth Relations Conference, Glenbrook, NSW, Australian Institute of International Affairs, no.2 (September 1938), passim. 228 the Pact proposal, both in the official meetings and through ‘personal diplomacy’. He made little progress, perhaps due to the lack of preliminary preparation inherent in ‘amateur’ diplomacy, and from the first the proposal failed to excite much conference enthusiasm.1674 At the first meeting of principal delegates on 19 May, chiefly concerned with Abyssinia, Eden was critical of one of Lyons’s assumptions, ominously observing that the Japanese absorption of ‘Manchuria’ was based on ‘a wholly inadequate pretext’.1675 The second meeting, two days later, failed to address the Pacific,1676 as did the third (also on 21 May), which concentrated on Germany with Casey making a number of points in favour of an understanding with Berlin.1677 By the fourth meeting on 22 May, however, Lyons insisted on making some comments ‘of a more general character’, in which he repeated the sentiments of his opening address: ‘If this Empire meant anything it meant co-operative effort.’1678 Accordingly, the meeting finally addressed the issue of the Pact and its guide made a reference to the lapsed Quadruple Treaty of 1921 as a model, likening his envisaged consultative processes to those outlined therein, but never implemented.1679 In an attempt to rally some support, he cited the unexpected support he had received from Roosevelt in Washington in July 1935 for his pact1680 ─ finally, he was candid in expressing his motives (a mixture of personal altruism and national self-interest): ‘Australia's objective in this matter was the preservation of peace and the maintenance of ever-increasing friendly relations with Japan.’1681 What Lyons was now seeking from the conference was ‘encouragement and support’, but in the face of an indifference bordering on hostility from Eden, who doubted Roosevelt’s sincerity, the proposal was held over at Chamberlain's friendly suggestion until ‘greater detail’ was forthcoming.1682 Lyons had never been much of a ‘details’ man and Latham had noted in March 1931 that the aspiring leader of the fused opposition parties was ‘absolutely vague’ in his proposals.1683 The passing of time had not altered that working style and Hodgson attempted to fill this unexpected void in the details of the Pact proposal as quickly as possible, presumably at Lyons's request and with the assistance of Bruce and Casey, issuing a memorandum on 28 May 1937 that warned the

1674 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 387, on the failure to produce a draft proposal. 1675 Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 26, 19 May 1937; DBFP, 2nd series, vol.18, 510; A5954/1047/7, NAA, Canberra, first meeting of principal delegates. 1676 Imperial Conference, second meeting of principal delegates, 21 May 1937, CP 4/2E, NAA, Canberra. Lyons was silent in this meeting. 1677 Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 27, third meeting of principal delegates, 21 May 1937. Casey’s views are discussed in Chapter 6. Lyons reinforced them on 22 May and supplemented them on 1 June 1937; ibid. 1678 Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 28, fourth meeting of principal delegates, 22 May 1937. 1679 ibid. This treaty contained detailed consultative provisions. Its provisions did not extend to the Asian mainland, as Lyons's Pact would have to do. One account of the meeting has Lyons likening his proposal to ‘the old Treaty of Locarno’, possibly a reference to the non-aggression provisions of that agreement; A5954/1047/7, NAA, Canberra. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 386, on the pact as a revival of this treaty. 1680 vide Chapter 3. The Washington visit did not take place en route for the Imperial Conference; pace Beaumont, “The Evolution of Australian Foreign Policy…” 16-17, and McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 140. 1681 Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 28, fourth meeting of principal delegates, 22 May 1937. He expressed his confidence that trade diversion had not damaged these relations. 1682 ibid. Eden was also concerned about additional British commitments. 1683 Latham’s had requested detail on the ‘Seven Points’ program on party fusion of 27 March 1931; Hart, “Labour Minister…”, 47. 229 proposal could not proceed without the support of the UK, New Zealand and Canada.1684 As well as an attempt by others to provide the ‘greater detail’ that Lyons erred in not providing, this memorandum could possibly have been intended to illustrate that the proposal was not just a personal, Lyons ‘hobby’, as some critics were already suggesting it was, to its detriment.1685 As an acknowledgement of Eden’s objections, it referred to the ‘League principles’ contained in the Pact proposal and stressed that there would be no further commitments required by Britain, particularly no military obligations. It also repeated Lyons’s recent endorsement of the Anglo- Italian Agreement as a model.1686 Delegates were reminded that the Pact was intended to bring about political, economic and cultural collaboration, the middle criterion of especial concern to Bruce, but the memo admitted that further conference discussion would be necessary on what this entailed.1687 This represented a twisting of focus away from Lyons’s particular concern with political appeasement, as outlined on 14 May, a trend also indicated by the exclusion from this submission to conference (presumably by its author, Hodgson) of Lyons’s sensitive proposal of an immediate international conference in Tokyo ‘for holding the situation’ during the coming critical months.1688 Prime ministerial supervision of the proposal was being diluted by the process and detail of this memorandum, but Lyons had not surrendered his individual desire to steer it through the labyrinth of the conference.

Despite the continued absence of much detail, the UK delegates had grasped the obvious by 1 June 1937─ that Lyons intended the Pact to apply to the Asian mainland and thus to ‘Manchukuo’.1689 The proposal’s fate emerged from this meeting, but not before the (leaked) Lyons proposal of an ad hoc international conference was first discussed and sidelined in favour of referral to committee.1690 Defeated on detail, Lyons stood his ground on the aims of his general policy at a broader meeting on the same day, where he spoke with personal conviction and at some length of the virtues of ‘appeasement among nations’, believing it ‘vital if civilization was to be preserved’, as the present world situation was one of ‘extreme gravity and danger’.1691 He praised British policy where it was intended to secure ‘world appeasement and peace’ (a reference more to the future policy of the Chamberlain government than to Baldwin’s record), but followed these compliments with a characteristic warning. He reiterated his desire for a

1684 The memo was sent to Bruce first and seen by Stirling and Casey; Hodgson memorandum to Bruce, 25 May 1937, A2938/14, NAA, Canberra, containing his handwritten suggestions and amendments, which largely became the Memorandum prepared by Delegation to Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 33, 28 May 1937; Meaney, Australia and the World, 411-15. 1685 Hornbeck, Chief of State Department Far Eastern Department; Esthus, 33. 1686 Memorandum prepared by Delegation to Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 33, 28 May 1937, referring to Lyons to Bruce, DAFP, vol.1, 12, 6 March 1937. The 1921 consultative processes were also cited as a model. 1687 Lyons had jettisoned the Bruce concept of economic collaboration by 8-10 June 1937, vide below. 1688 Hodgson memorandum, 25 May 1937, A2938/14, containing deletions. The press had already canvassed the leaked idea of a Tokyo conference; The Times, 20 May 1935, 16, g. 1689 Meeting of UK delegates to Imperial Conference, 1 June 1937, CAB 32/127, PRO, London; pace Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 389, that the proposal was vague about Manchurian recognition. 1690 The minutes give no indication of the source of the leak; ibid. The Hodgson deletion had failed to prevent the circulation of the idea; Hodgson memorandum, 25 May 1937, A2938/14. 1691 Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 34, tenth meeting of principal delegates, 1 June 1937. It was at this meeting that Lyons relayed Mussolini’s ‘peace’ messages; vide above. 230 conference declaration on ‘imperial unity’, that is, an endorsement of consultation and appeasement, without which ‘he should return to Australia a thoroughly disillusioned man’.1692 It was a piece of brinkmanship that had its effect ─ only after this warning did the delegates finally set aside the following morning, 2 June 1937, to discuss the Pact proposal.

VI

Once the proposal finally received the attention that its guide had sought since 19 May, only the appeasers Chamberlain and Sir Samuel Hoare supported it.1693 Chamberlain repeated his unsuccessful arguments of 1934 about avoiding a two-front confrontation, acknowledging that ‘Mr. Lyons had taken a step in the direction in which he...had been anxious to move.’1694 No other dominion leader was anxious to join his endorsement─ Mackenzie King was concerned about US attitudes, despite Lyons’s earlier suggestion of FDR’s support; Savage was concerned about the level of British commitment; Hertzog seemed uninterested in the Pacific, if not in wider appeasement.1695 The main sticking point, as the UK delegation had pinpointed on 1 June, was the intended applicability of the Pact to Manchukuo.1696 Eden was still concerned that any suggestion of legitimization would give rise to technical and practical difficulties, knowing that to Lyons (as he in turn knew of Tokyo) de jure recognition was the sine qua non of the entire exercise ─ at the Foreign Secretary’s insistence the matter was thus referred to a ‘technical committee’, which Lyons grudgingly accepted (after praising Chamberlain's contribution), ‘provided that progress was made’.1697 Given that the committee included Cadogan, in the chair, and Orde of the Foreign Office, who were hostile to the proposal, such progress was unlikely.1698 Lyons remained optimistic, guaranteed of Chamberlain’s support at least, and accordingly informed Earle Page in Canberra on 7 June 1937, that the proposal was receiving ‘favourable consideration from all delegates’, a view also held by External Affairs.1699 Such prime ministerial and departmental claims were not based on much substance and some more detached observers thought the opposite, with Grandi describing it as having excited scarcely any interest at all.1700 Whatever assessment is made of these differences of assessment, Lyons was ultimately mistaken to believe

1692 ibid. His call received Chamberlain's endorsement; McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 144. Tamchina: 81 and footnote 17, suggests that this call for ‘imperial unity’ was a response to the 29 May Deutschland incident off the Spanish coast, which had escalated international tension, without setting it in the context of the Pact negotiations. Lyons's warning about disillusionment negates the suggestion by McCarthy, “Australia and Imperial Defence,”: 19, that his call for co- operation was an ‘Imperialist's dream’ − placed in context, it was more of an Imperialist’s nightmare. 1693 Hoare was now Home Secretary; vide Chapter 4 on the aborted Hoare-Laval proposal for Abyssinia. 1694 Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 36, eleventh meeting of principal delegates, 2 June 1937. 1695 ibid. Mansergh, Survey, 90, 93, on Hertzog and wider appeasement. 1696 Meeting of UK delegates to Imperial Conference, 1 June 1937, CAB 32/127. 1697 Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 36, eleventh meeting of principal delegates, 2 June 1937. 1698 Hodgson was a member, as was Berendsen of the Prime Minister’s Department; DAFP, vol.1, 38, has a full list. 1699 Lyons to Earle Page, Imperial Conference cables, 7 June 1937, 11 June 1937, CP290/5/7, NAA, Canberra. External Affairs suggested that it had been ‘cordially received’ in London; Current Notes, 1936-7, vol.2 (June 1937), 453. 1700 Grandi, Italian ambassador London, to Ciano, DDI, 8th series, vol.7, 705, 7 June 1937. External Affairs later admitted that the plan had received little attention at the conference, even if well received; Current Notes, vol.3, no.1 (June 1937); Murphy, 281. 231 that many delegates supported him and his hopes were the ‘father of his utterances’.1701 Much of Whitehall opinion (stretching from Eden downwards) was either indifferent or hostile and although the Foreign Secretary had avoided open offence to Lyons, behind closed doors there was no intention to proceed, only one to avoid offence to the Australian premier.1702 At the Foreign Office, Vansittart and his deputy, Cadogan were unusually united in their belief that the proposal could be misconstrued by Washington as constituting a British preference for Tokyo.1703 Cadogan therefore concluded that ‘nothing very much’ would come of it; a self-fulfilling prophecy.1704 Orde, head of the Far Eastern Department (who had been concerned about the AEM in 1934), thought the concept of ‘non-aggression’ risible, preferring the checks-and-balances of the ‘old diplomacy’ with its ‘mild friction’.1705 These were precisely the concepts that Lyons and his circle wished to replace with the new diplomacy of appeasement.

This new ‘personal diplomacy’ played its part outside the sessions of the conference itself, for the Prime Minister also pressed his concept by personally hawking it amongst the diplomatic representatives of the relevant powers, both before and during the period of the technical committee’s work. By early-June, Lyons claimed personal assurances of co-operation from the ambassadors of the USSR, France, the US, the Netherlands and China,1706 secured through interviews that some in External Affairs euphemistically considered ‘unusual’.1707 The favourable Chinese response, anticipated to some extent by External Affairs, was especially reassuring, for she constituted a potentially irremovable obstruction to the de jure recognition of Manchukuo.1708 Lyons, with his memories of the Latham mission and its indications of Chinese flexibility, maintained optimism about their co-operation (in the face of considerable Australian, British and US scepticism).1709 He even told Bingham, the US ambassador, that the Chinese

1701 A general assessment of Lyons by Whiskard, UK High Commissioner, Canberra; Whiskard to MacDonald, 31 March 1937, DO 35/587/2, PRO, London. 1702 Grandi thought Eden keen to torpedo (liquidare) the project, but in such a way as not to hurt the sensibility of its author, ‘…in maniera da non urtare pero le suscettibilita personali del suo ideatore’; Grandi to Ciano, DDI, 8th series. vol.7, 705, 7 June 1937.This also indicates the perception that Lyons was very connected to a pet project. 1703 Tarling, 13, quoting Cadogan and Vansittart, 13 May 1937. Chamberlain was not so precious about ‘the Yanks’; P. Bell, 164. 1704 Bingham to Cordell Hull, after a discussion with Cadogan, FRUS, 1937, vol.3, 102-3, 18 May 1937; also quoted in D. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 155. Cadogan did assure Bingham that Britain would approach the US ‘in due course’, but nothing eventuated; Bingham to Cordell Hull, FRUS, 1937, vol.3, 984-5, 8 June 1937. vide also below. 1705 S.O.Agbi, “The British Foreign Office and the Roosevelt-Hugessen Bid to Stabilize Asia and the Pacific in 1937.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.26, no.1 (1980): 88. 1706 Lyons to Pearce, DAFP, vol.1, 44, 10 June 1937; CP290/5/7, NAA, Canberra. External Affairs assessment and outline of the Pact prepared for Latham, 23 September 1940, Pacific Pact, A981/4/PAC 23. The USSR’s response was the most enthusiastic of all; Hood, External Affairs, London, to External Affairs, 29 May 1937, A981/4/PAC 23, NAA, Canberra. Their desire to appease Germany and Japan was strong; M. Beloff, “Was There a Soviet Appeasement Policy?”, in Fascist Challenge, 284; pace G. Niedhart, “British Attitudes and Policies towards the Soviet Union and International Communism, 1933-9”, ibid., 288. Anti-communism did not lead to any suggestion of Soviet exclusion; Memorandum prepared by Delegation to Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 33, 28 May 1937. Hodgson had also noted the co-operative attitude of the Netherlands, whose neighbouring possessions had been a focus for Australia since the Latham mission; ibid. 1707 A. Watt, Australian Diplomat, 22, speaking for those in the department opposed to appeasement. 1708 Memorandum prepared by Delegation to Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 33, 28 May 1937, had cited a favourable approach from a ‘Chinese official’ and a supportive statement by Dr. Kung, a Chinese minister. 1709 Latham on Chinese flexibility, vide Chapter 2. Stirling reported their ambivalence; Stirling to External Affairs, DAFP, vol.1, 31, n.d. but after 22 May 1937. Hornbeck at the State Department, regarded Chinese enthusiasm as highly 232 ambassador had expressed to him his belief that the pact presented the possibility of forging an agreement with Japan that would limit her aggression in Manchuria.1710 This, at least, was not wishful thinking ─ the Americans soon learned through their own diplomacy that some Chinese officials viewed the ‘most propitious’ proposal as ‘an enormous opportunity’ and British diplomats too had been given some indication from Tokyo of Chinese readiness.1711 Appeasement was therefore seen by some victims of aggression as a welcome instrument of containment, a response that could only have buoyed Lyons during the difficult conference sessions.

The attitudes of Tokyo and Washington, which Lyons attempted to gauge through personal diplomacy, were as important to the fate of the proposal as those of London─ the Pacific Pact could not proceed without Britain’s imprimatur, but it would be pointless to proceed without the endorsement of Japan and the US.1712 Lyons’s belief that the current interest of Tokyo was strong and that the moment was opportune might have been based merely on excessive optimism, but indications nonetheless existed that a ‘moderate’ party existed in Tokyo and was even in the ascent ─ Craigie, a senior British diplomat in Tokyo (and soon to be Chamberlain’s ambassador) was convinced of this,1713 and the new Japanese premier, Konoye, was said to represent a ‘peace’ party.1714 There were still powerful individuals within the byzantine Japanese political system in early 1937, such as the former minister Shigemitsu, who recognised that Australia was well-disposed and accordingly were keen to see a revival of a wider Anglo- Japanese friendship.1715 Although the Japanese press noted that ‘non-aggression’ was futile without ‘removing the causes of aggression’,1716 the Lyons model of post-signatory consultation was designed to meet such objections.1717 The Japanese military, however, sent mixed signals and the navy was less enthusiastic than the army, as always, about what would amount to the

suspect; Esthus, 33. Orde doubted Chinese participation; Agbi, 87. Eden implied scepticism about Chinese readiness; Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 36, eleventh meeting of principal delegates, 2 June 1937. 1710 Bingham to Cordell Hull, FRUS, 1937, vol.2, 141-2, 4 June 1937, following talks with Lyons; FRUS, 1937, vol.2, 140, 1 June 1937; Millar, 117. He noted Lyons’s intense enthusiasm. The Chinese were still keen after the conference, believing that Japan was receptive; Hornbeck memorandum, FRUS, 1937, vol.3, 988-90, 30 June 1937. 1711 US ambassador in Paris, Bullitt, to Cordell Hull, FRUS, 1937, vol.3, 983-4, 5 June 1937, reporting the views of Dr. Kung, Chinese Finance Minister. Hornbeck memorandum, FRUS, 1937, vol. 3, 985-6, 11 June 1937, following an interview with the Chinese ambassador at Washington. External Affairs assessment and outline of the Pact prepared for Latham, 23 September 1940, Pacific Pact, A981/4/PAC 23, quoting Dodds, British counsellor at Tokyo. 1712 Mansergh, Survey, 158, noted the difficulties of obtaining US and Japanese approval. 1713 Best, “Sir Robert Craigie…”, 244-5; G. Kennedy, “1935…”, 194-5, on Chamberlain’s faith in this. 1714 On Konoye’s ‘peace’ credentials; Yoshida, London ambassador, to Norman Davis, US envoy, FRUS, 1937, vol.3, 74-6, 23 April 1937. Yoshida believed that the militarists were losing ground, conversations with Cadogan in April; Davis to State Department, FRUS, 1937, vol.3, 975-8, 27 April 1937. Nish, “Relations with Japan,” 165, stresses Japan’s favourable reception of the proposal. 1715 Nish, “Relations with Japan,” 164, mentions that Shigemitsu, now ambassador at Moscow, wrote a report to that effect in March 1937 and the London ambassador, Yoshida, sought to cultivate Chamberlain and Bruce. Cadogan, Foreign Office deputy head, told Norman Davis, US envoy, that the Japanese had mentioned a pact ‘some time ago’; Davis to State Department, FRUS, 1937, vol.3, 975-8, 27 April 1937. 1716 External Affairs assessment and outline of the Pact prepared for Latham, 23 September 1940, Pacific Pact, A981/4/PAC 23; Summary of Japanese opinion, The Times, 20 May 1937, 16, g; US ambassador Grew to State Department, FRUS, 1937, vol.3, 979-82, 28 May 1937. 1717 Lyons, Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 28, fourth meeting of principal delegates, 22 May 1937, referring to the consultative procedures outlined in the 1921 Quadruple Treaty. 233 abandonment of any ‘southward’ expansion.1718 There was also an additional obstacle that Lyons continued to ignore─ the continuing trade imbalance. Japanese ministers in Tokyo had told the British ambassador, Clive, in May, what Yoshida told Eden in June; that a Pact was ‘premature’ before some economic settlement.1719 The best overall assessment of the Japanese response was perhaps somewhere between the two extremes: US Ambassador Grew thought that the Japanese Foreign Office had no objection to the proposal, but reserved its final assessment until the details were known ─ a ‘guarded welcome’.1720 Nevertheless, despite these obstacles, the Lyons proposal remained a ‘generous’ offer that would give Tokyo the political recognition in Manchukuo it had been seeking for some time.1721

Japanese acceptance was the sine qua non of a Pacific Pact, but US engagement was just as vital. Lyons could only have been mindful, when considering matters of security at the conference, of the ‘commitments’ that FDR had offered him in July 1935, whereby the president indicated a willingness to ‘enter into an agreement with Japan…to secure peace’1722 It is uncertain, however, whether he remained confident that the US was more inclined to Pacific commitment than to any in Europe (as Roosevelt had also indicated to him), a view that the Americans had also offered to Chamberlain.1723 Whatever his thoughts on such matters, Lyons’s expectations of the US were now apparently low─ there is no evidence that he saw the Pact as the instrument of a US military guarantee to Australia, although the environment created by a US- endorsed Pact would certainly contribute to her security.1724 All he sought in 1937 was some American diplomatic ‘blessing’ for the proposal, which he sought to gain through informal personal diplomacy, rather than through the formal mechanisms which now existed following the appointment of the Australian diplomat Keith Officer to the British embassy at Washington in

1718 External Affairs assessment and outline of the Pact prepared for Latham, 23 September 1940, Pacific Pact, A981/4/PAC 23, based largely on Longfield Lloyd, Tokyo, to Hodgson, DAFP, vol.1, 52, 14 June 1937. Some in the Japanese military thought it time to agree with a strengthening China, others thought it the time to strike; A. Iriye, “East Asia and the Emergence of Japan, 1900-1945”, in The Oxford History of the Twentieth Century, eds. M. Howard and R. Louis (Oxford, OUP, 1998), 148; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 389, on the attitude of the military. 1719 External Affairs assessment and outline of the Pact prepared for Latham, 23 September 1940, Pacific Pact, A981/4/PAC 23, on 19 May and 7 June 1937. This view also appeared in the Japanese press; Carter, 282, quoting Le Temps on Ayashi, 21 May 1937. Count Makino, a Japanese minister, to Clive in May; Hood, London, to Hodgson, DAFP, vol.1, 30, 22 May 1937; Hodgson notes, A2938/14. Yoshida told Eden the same on 7 June 1937; Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 41, 8 June 1937, fifteenth meeting of delegates. Yoshida had strong links to the military, which he sought to downplay in his memoirs, S. Yoshida, The Yoshida Memoirs. The Story of Japan in Crisis (London: Heinemann, 1961), 13ff. Murphy, 281, suggested that the Japanese preferred an economic agreement, but this did not preclude their acceptance of something else. J. Crawford, “Australia as a Pacific Power,” 90, that there could be no political agreement without economic appeasement. 1720 US ambassador Grew to Cordell Hull, FRUS, 1937, vol.3, 978, 17 May 1937. The quote refers to Yoshida’s attitude; Tarling, 17. 1721 The description given of the Pact by Longfield Lloyd, Australian commissioner at Tokyo, to Andrews, US embassy official, US ambassador Grew to State Department, FRUS, 1937, vol.3, 979-82, 28 May 1937. For Lloyd’s account of this conversation, DAFP, vol.1, 52, 14 June 1937. He was cautious about the Japanese response. 1722 Lyons, Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 29, 22 May 1937, fourth meeting of principal delegates. 1723 vide Chapter 3 and FDR’s suggestion to that effect. Chamberlain commented on 2 June that the US ambassador had told him in 1936 that a Pacific Pact was more attractive than ‘European entanglements’; Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 36, eleventh meeting of principal delegates, 2 June 1937. 1724 pace Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, 272. 234 May 1937 as a ‘counsellor’.1725 Lyons suggested in a conversation with Bingham that his minimum requirement was a UK-dominions agreement with Japan, with some measure of US endorsement,1726 but even that proved beyond Washington’s scope. Despite mixed signals from various diplomats (including a positive impression offered to trade commissioner Lloyd in Tokyo),1727 the US view was elegantly distilled in ambassador Grew’s scepticism about Japan’s propensity to respect new agreements at a time when she was breaching the old.1728 Ultimately, from the US perspective, the whole exercise seemed an act of antipodean self-indulgence, intended to extract commitments from other parties in the same manner as the trade diversion episode of 1936.1729 Roosevelt was in any case evolving his own ‘favourite project’ on Pacific ‘neutralisation’, in which there was no place for Lyons’s Pact ─ in the meantime, the envoy Davis urged London to do nothing.1730

Lyons’s ‘personal diplomacy’, whatever its achievements, could not overcome the need for some measure of Pact endorsement from the Imperial Conference. The prospects of this were in the hands of the ‘Technical Committee on the Pacific Pact’ after 2 June 1937, but it continued the process of attrition left incomplete by British bureaucratic hostility, Chinese inconsistency, Japanese ambiguity and American double-dealing. When this committee issued its ‘pessimistic’ report before 8 June, it noted little but the difficulties of the proposal, especially in any intended application to the Asian mainland.1731 Given that the majority of its members were Foreign Office opponents of the proposal, such pessimism was unsurprising.1732 The report endorsed only further delay and the primacy of British diplomacy, recommending that as a first step that the US and Japanese governments be formally sounded out, regardless of the fact that Lyons had been informally doing so since 1934-35. These steps were to be taken through the good offices of HMG, who ought to ‘have discretion as to the time and manner of doing so’.1733 Lyons had only

1725 Hasluck, Light, 103. Officer was later thought too British in his outlook; Moffat, Diary, 17 February 1937, quoting Judge Sheridan. Hull was unimpressed after meeting Officer for the same reason, memorandum, FRUS, 1937, vol.2, 28-9, 13 May 1937. 1726 Lyons to Bingham, FRUS, 1937, vol.3, 141-2, 4 June 1937; Millar, 117; Murphy, 287. 1727 A positive response was given to Lloyd probably by Andrews, US embassy official; US ambassador Grew to State Department, FRUS, 1937, vol.3, 979-82, 28 May 1937. Andrews is not named, but he had been in conversation with Lloyd; ibid. Bullitt, in Paris, told Dr. Kung that the US would not enter into treaties of mutual assistance; Bullitt to Cordell Hull, FRUS, 1937, vol.3, 983-4, 5 June 1937. 1728 Grew, Tokyo, to State Department, FRUS, 1937, vol.3, 979-82, 28 May 1937. Davis was similarly sceptical about Japanese trustworthiness; Eden to Lindsay, Washington, 3 May 1937, A981/4/PAC 23. 1729 Time, vol.26, 24 May 1937, 19. Esthus, 33, provides a useful summary of the immediate US reaction. 1730 The description used by Davis; Eden to Lindsay, Washington, 16 April 1937, A981/4/PAC 23; Agbi, 90ff.;Davis to Hornbeck, FRUS, 1937, vol.3, 974-5, 23 March 1937. It was pursued by Norman Davis in an April conversation with Cadogan; Eden to Lindsay, Washington, 22 May 1937, A981/4/PAC 23, reported to Canberra by Stirling, 4 June 1937, A981/4/PAC 23; Tarling, 18. 1731 “Report for Imperial Conference of Technical Committee on Pacific Pact”, DAFP, vol.1, 38, n.d, but 2-8 June 1937, points 4, 6. Eden described it as ‘pessimistic’; Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 41, fifteenth meeting of delegates, 8 June 1937. It noted difficulties hitherto unenvisaged, such as in any extension to Latin America; ibid., point 9. 1732 In the ten member committee, chaired by Cadogan, there were six Foreign Office members, including Orde and Troutbeck. External Affairs was represented by Hodgson only; DAFP, vol.1, 38, n.d, but 2-8 June 1937. 1733 ibid., point 13. 235 accepted a committee referral on 2 June on the condition of ‘progress’─ instead, he was offered a step that if not retrograde seemed unnecessarily repetitive.1734

Lyons accordingly began to show some personal impatience, especially towards Eden, repeating at a further meeting on 8 June his continued, characteristic confidence that the difficulties could be overcome and were ‘not insurmountable’, given goodwill and sincerity.1735 After Eden complained that he had been unable to give a sceptical Yoshida any ‘details’ at an interview on the previous day, Lyons finally made some clearer suggestions in an attempt to save his proposal.1736 He now suggested that the Pact ought to have the tripartite embrace of non- aggression, renunciation of war and ‘political collaboration’ ─ the 14 and 25 May references to ‘economic collaboration’ were gone, reflecting Lyons’s original desire to concentrate on political appeasement.1737 Economic factors, including Yoshida’s complaints, were an unwelcome complication that he feared would only ‘jeopardise political agreement’, a comment that reflected a turning away from the advice of the economic appeasers such as Bruce.1738 He also listed the twelve nations that ought to be approached, excluding the dragnet list of Pacific basin countries mentioned in the committee report.1739 An emphasis on regional security was evident ─ of his list of twelve, four were Commonwealth countries (UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada); four were largely limited in their regional interests to neighbouring south-east Asia (Portugal, Siam, France, the Netherlands); two were involved in the long-standing Manchurian dispute (Japan and China) and another had long been of interest to Australian strategic thinkers because of the security of the Philippines (the US). The remaining power (the USSR) had been part of Lathamite thinking about Pacific solutions as early as 1934.1740 Finally, he restated his satisfaction with future British diplomatic management of the process ─ with Australian diplomacy in its infancy, there seemed little alternative.1741 This was a concession that Lyons would soon regret, but with the proposal facing growing obstacles, any diplomatic avenue, however flawed, was better than none. He concluded by indicating his characteristic willingness to compromise, declaring himself satisfied that if the proposal did not meet with ‘complete success’, he would be consoled by an improvement in Anglo-Japanese-US relations, upon which Australian security so depended. In response, Chamberlain spoke strongly in favour of these ‘concrete proposals’ and made it clear

1734 Lyons, Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 36, eleventh meeting of principal delegates, 2 June 1937. 1735 Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 41, fifteenth meeting of delegates, 8 June 1937. The underlining was his own in the draft of the statement he presented to this meeting; Lyons draft, n.d., Hodgson notes, A2938/14, NAA, Canberra. He repeated these sentiments on his return home; vide below. 1736 According to Eden, Yoshida had suggested bilateral agreements and that a general Pact was ‘premature’ without an economic agreement; ibid. 1737 Lyons, Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 41, fifteenth meeting of delegates, 8 June 1937. vide above on 14 and 25 May statements. 1738 Lyons to Pearce, DAFP, vol.1, 44, 10 June 1937. 1739 Lyons suggested the UK, Canada, Australia, NZ, US, Japan, USSR, China, France, the Netherlands, Portugal and Siam; Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 41, fifteenth meeting of delegates, 8 June 1937. 1740 Latham, “Secret Report”, 3 July 1934, 23-4, noting the possibility of Russo-Japanese conflict. 1741 Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 41, 8 June 1937, fifteenth meeting of delegates. On the eve of Chamberlain’s premiership, Lyons had already stated his readiness to leave the proposal in British hands; Sydney Morning Herald, 26 May 1937, quoted in Murphy, 280. 236 that the Pact would have to apply to the Asian mainland, for it was manifest that Manchukuo would not return to Chinese rule.1742 Given this endorsement by the new British premier, the delegates at last, at their fifteenth meeting on 8 June 1937, approved the refined Australian model.

Lyons was in buoyant mood following the adoption of his model, judging from his 10 June cable to the absent Pearce, who did not appear to have been informed about any developments since cabinet had received its first report on 31 May.1743 Consequently and in the knowledge that Pearce was ignorant of recent twists and turns, Lyons talked of ‘great enthusiasm’ at the conference and of favorable responses from US and Japanese diplomats in the recent weeks, which he knew was only a partial account of a more complicated and nuanced scenario.1744 This cable was also misleading in its assurance that the proposal had been coined in the same language used in the parliament in the previous September (where its relationship to the League had been emphasised)─ in fact it was precisely the extra -League nature of Lyons’s suggestions had excited much antagonism and the refined proposal endorsed on 8 June 1937 was not of the same character as that mulled over by the cabinet in September 1936, as its relationship to any League structure was clearly tenuous.1745 Perhaps for these reasons, Lyons specifically discouraged Pearce (and similarly Page on 12 June) from making any ministerial statement on the matter, an indication that the minister no longer had much say over the course of external affairs and had lost his grip on the portfolio in favour of an increasingly ambitious prime minister.1746 Any kudos accruing from the Pacific Pact was to be the prime ministerial preserve on Lyons’s return. Lyons also reported that he had told Yoshida, on 9 June, he had done what he could to ‘launch’ the project and that Tokyo should now pursue the matter with Whitehall.1747 Lyons now saw himself in this matter as ‘hardly a pilot, but a beacon’,1748 an attitude of detachment strangely contrary to the quasi-diplomacy of the 1934 eastern mission and of his endeavours to pursue the pact in London and Washington in mid-1935. His virtual abdication of his pet proposal after 8 June 1937 seems difficult to explain and Lyons never explained why he was so eager to hand the responsibility over to Whitehall─ perhaps he was lulled by the meetin g of minds between himself and Chamberlain, in whom he placed great trust; perhaps the conference had brought home to him the unforeseen complexities of his proposal; perhaps he felt that nascent Australian diplomacy was only capable of dealing with bilateral arrangements and that the broad sweep of

1742 Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 41, 8 June 1937, fifteenth meeting of delegates, 8 June 1937. Chamberlain admitted he had not discussed the matter with Eden. Savage was still concerned at the prospect of applying the Pact to the mainland. 1743 Cabinet Minutes, 31 May 1937, A2694, vol.17, Parts 2, NAA, Canberra. 1744 Lyons to Pearce, DAFP, vol.1, 44, 10 June 1937. His account of US optimism at a meeting in early June is not borne out by the US account; Lyons conversation with US ambassador in London, Bingham, FRUS, 1937, vol.3, 141-2, 4 June 1937. Yoshida saw Lyons on 9 June 1937. 1745 Lyons to Pearce, DAFP, vol.1, 44, 10 June 1937. 1746 ibid. Lyons to Earle Page, 12 June 1937, CP290/5/7. 1747 ibid. 1748 Lyons on the Pact, quoted in Mister Prime Minister, ABC video. 237 such a Pact was beyond Canberra’s capabilities.1749 Whatever else the Pact proposal had indicated, it had revealed that the desire of the Australian government to play a role in world affairs outstripped the meager resources it was prepared to allocate to diplomatic representation.1750

VII

The Pact was intended to enhance Australian security but even in moments of great enthusiasm, Lyons (as he told the US ambassador) never lost his sense that the diplomacy of appeasement needed to be supplemented with military muscle, a conclusion that was now being shared at Whitehall.1751 The new enthusiasm for ‘non-aggression’ never quite concealed the old fears of Japanese aggrandisement.1752 While Lyons primarily focused on diplomatic concerns in London, Parkhill was given the prime responsibility for defence concerns in an environment in which the former had recently boasted of the government’s efforts to deal with defence ‘in so thorough a manner’ through the highest annual expenditure in peace-time (some £9 million).1753 The negotiations at the Imperial Conference illustrated that the defence imperative remained in the forefront of prime ministerial and government thinking, however much Lyons regretted the ‘tragic task of rearmament’.1754 The Pact proposal had certainly not been premised on any expectation of disarmament,1755 whatever Lyons said about ‘the renunciation of war’.1756

Lyons’s opening address of 14 May 1937 acknowledged that there were both (diplomatic) ‘privileges’ and ‘responsibilities’ for the dominions in the ‘new’ Empire ─ the latter included the ‘heavy burden’ of their own national defence.1757 As prime minister (Parkhill’s input into the speech is unknown), he expressed his government’s willingness to take on defence ‘responsibilities’, acknowledging that the dominions could no longer ‘shelter behind our partnership in the British Empire’.1758 The burden would not be lightened until appeasement had made some ground, as Enid Lyons noted in a peace speech (‘my favourite topic’) at London in

1749 vide below on the strengths of British diplomacy and Lyons’s transfer of the proposal to Whitehall. 1750 As suggested by Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 388. 1751 Lyons to Bingham, US ambassador, London, FRUS, 1937, vol.3, 141-2, 4 June 1937. The Chiefs-of-Staff had suggested in December 1937 that due to military weakness, appeasement was the only ‘immediate’ solution for Britain; P. Kennedy, “Appeasement,” 153. Chamberlain’s old reluctance to rearm has been noted; Rock, 56. 1752 Murphy, 297, suggested that fear of Japan was a major motivation for the Pact. 1753 Lyons statement, Record of the Lyons Government, “Commonwealth Parliamentary Year 1936: Review by Prime Minister”, 17 December 1936, A601/165/1/1. Labor did not question the extent of the expenditure, but its motivation. Brennan suggested that the government had fallen under the sway of ‘militarist imperialists’, describing Japan as a ‘friendly little nation’; CPD, vol.152, 1561-3, quoted in K. Inglis, “Conscription in War and Peace, 1911-1945,” in Conscription in Australia, eds. R. Forward and B. Reece (St.Lucia: UofQ Press, 1968), 48. 1754 Lyons speech, Imperial Conference Summary of Proceedings”, DAFP, vol.1, 46, 15 June 1937. 1755 pace J. Crawford in 1938, “The Pacific Pact 1937”, 108-9; also quoted in Starke, 7. pace Hudson, Towards, 71. 1756 Lyons, Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 41, fifteenth meeting of delegates, 8 June 1937. 1757 Speech by J.A. Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 25, 14 May 1937. The burden quote is from Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 29, fourth meeting of delegates, 22 May 1937. Hughes had long argued that the dominions could not expect any say in imperial foreign policy unless they shared in imperial defence; Hasluck, Government, 10. 1758 Speech by J.A. Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 25, 14 May 1937. This was far from the premise of ‘Austra’, “March of Events.” Australian National Review, vol.1, no.3 (March 1937): 83, that Australia ‘must rely, as ever, upon the protection of Britain and her Navy’. 238 May;1759 in the meantime her husband could balance the weight of the ‘insurance premium’ by establishing precisely where Britain stood on eastern defence, as well as lobbying for greater consultation in defence affairs.1760 Unlike external policy, however, he was wary of extended commitments to any broader, imperial policy─ Lyons in London was vocal in support of ‘a consistent and unified Empire [foreign] policy’, but he refused to support the call of weaker New Zealand for an ‘imperial defence policy’.1761 A serious degree of British rearmament had already been signalled by Eden in his Leamington speech of 20 November 1936 and Lyons, who had advocated it from 1935 (according to Bruce’s counsel), was very supportive.1762 The issue now at stake in 1937 was the extent of ‘imperial co-operation’ during and after general rearmament.1763 Australia therefore looked to the conference, Lyons said, for the ‘frankest discussions’ and for appropriate methods of ‘concerting’ imperial defence ─ the conference would yield him the former, if not the latter.1764 Australian defence, Lyons observed after Parkhill in 1936, was still premised on the three familiar ‘ramparts’, one of which (the League Covenant) was already moribund by his own admission─ the others were the strength of the ‘British Commonwealth’ and ‘her own Defence Forces’.1765 Lyons subsequently offered the delegates an extensive survey of recent Australian defence measures, implying their exemplary nature, concluding with an endorsement of the Leamington principles (of the use of weapons for defensive purposes only). Therefore, just as the 14 May speech indicated a desire for equality in foreign affairs, so too did it indicate that the Lyons government viewed the Commonwealth as constituting a military alliance of equals, united in their desire for mutual security, ‘peace and stability’.1766 There was to be no Australian subordination to, or ‘co-operation’ with, British strategy except where subject to strict conditions, which Lyons significantly described as ‘sovereign control of its own policy, and without prior

1759 Enid Lyons Diary, 6 May 1937, MS 4852/30. She had received notes from Shedden suggesting that the return of international law would bring about a ‘peace dividend’ - resources could then be directed towards social services; F. Shedden to Enid Lyons, “The Relation of Cost of War and Armaments to Social Services”, 30 April 1937, A5954/1070/8, NAA, Canberra. 1760 ibid. Both she and her husband employed this argument over the next two years, vide Chapter 7 in particular. It was hoped to reduce defence spending in the future; Parkhill, Imperial Conference, 24 May 1937, A5954/1047/7, fifth meeting of delegates, NAA, Canberra; Senator Foll, in his Ministerial Statement to Senate by Minister of Repatriation, 28 April 1938, Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, 1937-40, vol.2, no.40. Chamberlain too regretted such spending, but gave no promises of future redirection; Feiling, 321, Birmingham speech, April 1938. 1761 Speech by J.A. Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 25, 14 May 1937. Savage, Imperial Conference, 25 May 1937, sixth meeting of delegates, A5954/1047/7, NAA, Canberra. 1762 Eden, Leamington speech, 20 November 1936, CAB 32/129, PRO, London; Current Notes, vol.2 (December 1936), 141, assuring that British arms would be used for defence only; similarly Baldwin in the Commons on 18 February 1937. vide Chapter 3 on the earlier Bruce-Lyons advocacy of British rearmament; Bruce had most recently expressed his support to Casey; Bruce to Casey, 1 August 1936, A1421/3/28, NAA, Canberra. 1763 The other dominions were more relaxed; Ovendale, Appeasement, 31ff, 49-51 - Canada enjoyed proximity to the US and South Africa desired neutrality; maritime Australia had the most to gain from defence co-operation. 1764 Speech by J.A. Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 25, 14 May 1937. 1765 ibid. Parkhill’s review at Mosman, on 2 December 1935, in a Statement of the Government’s Policy regarding the Defence of Australia, had similarly talked of the ‘three safeguards’; vide Chapter 4. 1766 Speech by J.A. Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 25, 14 May 1937. Those who doubted that Lyons had outlined a defined external policy in London accepted his clarification of an intention to provide for Australian defence; Harris, 100. 239 commitment’1767 ─ these conditions were similar in their nationalist sentiment to the ones he had long levied in external affairs (although temporarily abandoned over Abyssinia), where Australian support for British policy was stated as conditional on some sort of peace policy.1768 His stance was far from the ‘hopeless’ and ‘dangerous’ reliance on Britain that A.C.V. Melbourne had feared it would be.1769 Some in the Australian cabinet worried that elements of the 14 May speech implied neutrality and it was modified accordingly, but to Lyons the defence component of the address professed the sense of imperial partnership that he so desired.1770

Britain did not necessarily share this vision of equal military partnership, nor any suggestion of the primacy of eastern defence, for both Baldwin and Chamberlain were agreed on a European defence focus, the former seeking to warn the southern dominions that this attended to their needs as well, given the danger of Japan running ‘amok’ during a European crisis.1771 While any European focus by Whitehall assisted Australian efforts to encourage the appeasement of Japan, it was not conducive to any substantial British military commitment in the Far East, something acknowledged by London prior to the conference, when the CID noted in February its defensive intentions in this region and sought to encourage a greater Australian participation in regional co-operative efforts.1772 This generally meant naval co-operation and efforts to sustain a poorly-reinforced, but ‘impregnable’, Singapore─ accordingly, in the White Paper of February 1937, the Naval Board requested a doubling of the RAN’s contributions to imperial naval defence.1773 Pearce was especially sympathetic to this concept, championing the concept of an Australian-funded capital ship based at Singapore, 1937-38, but the cabinet was less sanguine, preferring to increase RAAF expenditure.1774 Although the Lyons government was cautiously receptive to the ‘Blue Water’ so-called ‘Empire Naval Scheme’, its motivation was beyond any glib ‘easy attraction of simplicity’.1775 Forward naval deployment protected Australian, as well as British, interests and was a reasoned approach to the defence of an isolated, maritime trading nation, given the commitment of appropriate resources by Britain, for which Lyons continually

1767 Speech by J.A. Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 25, 14 May 1937. He had given the press some prior idea of what he was to say on defence; The Times, 1 May 1937, quoted in Ovendale, Appeasement, 33. This was Lyons’s qualification of the common view that imperial and Australian policy remained ‘essentially one’; ‘Austra’, “March of Events.” Australian National Review, vol.1, no.4 (March 1937): 86. 1768 vide Chapter 4. 1769 Melbourne to Longfield Lloyd, 11 January 1937, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2, also quoted in McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 136. 1770 At the suggestion by senior ministers, Lyons had deleted a section on the necessity for the dominions to stockpile and prepare resources; Draft Speech, n.d., A461 C326/1/4 PART 2 Imperial Conference Agenda, NAA, Canberra. 1771 Baldwin at Meeting of UK delegation to Imperial Conference, 29 April 1937, CAB 32/127/155, PRO, London; later repeated to the delegates on 8 June 1937; McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 142-3. Chamberlain wished now to concentrate on the German question; D. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 166, quoting his March 1937 letter to Morgenthau. 1772 Review of Imperial Defence, Committee of Imperial Defence, 22 February 1937, CAB 32/127, PRO, London. 1773 British Naval Board to Secretary of Defence, 8 December 1936, MP1049/9/1846/4/67, NAA, Melbourne. 1774 Cabinet rejected a Pearce memo of 21 January 1937 on such an Australian financial contribution; Page to Lyons, 11 May 1937, CP290/5/7, NAA, Canberra. Later, Pearce, on the verge of retirement, offered to assist Lyons in gaining public support for dominion financial contribution towards an imperial naval force; Pearce note to Lyons, 10 February 1938, Pearce Papers, MS1927/1, NLA, Canberra. Lyons declined the offer. 1775 McCarthy “Australia and Imperial Defence…”, 180. 240 lobbied as a pre-condition of any Australian commitment to an all-services forward defence of Singapore.1776 Parkhill, however, made it very clear in London (paraphrasing Lyons on 14 May and thereby indicating the collective views contained in that prime ministerial speech), that the government remained committed to ‘sovereign control’ and to the primacy of local defence.1777 Nevertheless, the ‘Blue Water’ adherents of forward naval defence would soon have their own man in the defence secretariat and the influential Shedden believed that imperial and home strategic interests dove-tailed in this instance ─ whatever reservations the strategic amateur Lyons possessed about the unrestrained application of such a strategy, he never denied outright that Australian naval forces would go forward to Singapore once war was declared.1778 Given that British and Australian thinking ran along similar lines (for Canberra never objected to a defensive posture in the east), the chief questions to be addressed about eastern defence in 1937 were those of command structure, quantity and timing. There was clearly a need for ‘a common understanding…as to the manner in which measures should be concerted between them’, as Lyons acknowledged on 14 May, and the conference was the appropriate forum for the dialogue by which it was hoped ‘to realize the means of co-operation’, as Parkhill later put it.1779 The broad attitude of the Australian delegation in London to imperial naval deployment was stated candidly by Casey at Chatham House in April 1937:

Our policy generally…is based on the belief that the British fleet, or some appreciable portion of it, will be able to move freely eastwards in case we in Australia get into trouble in our part of the world.1780

He was soon to learn that it was the Admiralty’s intention to dispatch only a ‘portion’, although this had been long suspected.1781 The imperative for the Australian delegates (and chiefly for Parkhill) then became to learn just how ‘appreciable’ the portion was to be and when it might ‘move freely eastwards’, a task that had been anticipated before the conference began (and even as early as 1935 by Lavarack).1782 Appropriate defence planning could then proceed, whatever the reply.

1776 May, “Fortress Australia,” 207, acknowledged that the ‘Blue Water’ approach of forward naval defence also suited Australian interests. 1777 Parkhill, Imperial Conference, 24 May 1937, A5954/1047/7, fifth meeting of delegates; vide below. 1778 Shedden became Secretary of the Defence Department on 17 November 1937; Horner, Defence Supremo, 52. Ross, Armed and Ready, 205-6, on his association with Hankey and his intellectual commitment to this strategy, as outlined in his, Outline of the Principles of Imperial Defence with Special References to Australian Defence of 1930. 1779 Speech by J.A. Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 25, 14 May 1937. Parkhill, Imperial Conference, 24 May 1937, A5954/1047/7, fifth meeting of delegates, paraphrasing Lyons’s 14 May speech. 1780 R.G. Casey, Chatham House address, April 1937, in J. Crawford, “Australia as a Pacific Power,” 98. 1781 vide earlier chapters and Ross, Armed and Ready, 126, on Australian scepticism; Millar, 84-5, on Australian fears about British weakness. 1782 A series of written questions on both foreign and defence policy, including war-planning, had already been submitted for extended British consideration on 28 April 1937; DAFP, vol.1, 20. Twomey, “Australia and the 241 Parkhill began the process of clarification on 24 May, at the fifth meeting of delegates, when Lyons was in the chair and could thus allow Australian expression full rein. The minister’s purpose seemed to be to outline the thrust of the Lyons government’s defence policy since 1933 and to indicate future directions.1783 He firstly explained the premise on which the government had based its efforts since late-1933, one very much part of Lyons’s own world-view. Increased defence expenditure, Parkhill admitted, was regrettable, but ‘would have served its purpose if it staved off a world catastrophe until measures for political and economic appeasement would be brought to fruition’─ only an enduring peace c ould ensure the actual reduction of armaments.1784 Turning to more practical matters, Parkhill then referred to Lyons’s recent reference to the ‘three bulwarks’ of Australian security (he meant ‘ramparts’ or ‘safeguards’ as he had himself called them in 1935), reminding the delegates that security could only be assured under the final two ─ co -operation and self-reliance.1785 He also outlined what it was that Australia wanted from the conference─ ‘optional’ co -operative war planning, not participation in any mooted imperial defence policy. He also confessed that his dominion was too weak to provide alone for her comprehensive naval defence, despite her expenditure ‘to the limits’ of her resources.1786 Australian policy consequently favoured participation in the Empire Naval Scheme, in order to defend sea-borne trade and to deter ‘invasion’ and ‘raids’ (an implicit ratcheting up of the old fears of ‘light raids’ only), but local naval resources would only be available for service elsewhere ‘later’, according to the primacy of regional strategic considerations.1787 Similarly, the Army and RAAF were primarily for local defence, but could possibly be available in a ‘wider capacity’ at some later time.1788 Both of these suggestions of extended service seem to have been deliberately vague (at a time when Canberra was seeking precise timetabling from London) and Parkhill’s summary was therefore dangerously close to a desire for defence ‘privileges’ without ‘responsibilities’.1789 Nevertheless, the demand for some co-operative planning was reasonable, if not to all observers, based as it was on the premise of equality.1790

The immediate British reaction to the Parkhill outline was blunt. Hoare, in his last days as First Lord of the Admiralty, repeated Britain’s commitment to Singapore on 26 May, promising the dispatch of ‘an adequate fleet’, although conceding that in the period late-1938 to mid-1939

Search…”, 397, suggests that this constituted an acceptance of Lavarack’s 1935 demands for guarantees on the composition and timing of any Singapore fleet, quoting a defence committee meeting, 21 March 1935. 1783 vide Kitson Clark, 64, Cox, 74, and Stanford, 66, on the purposes of a document. 1784 Parkhill, Imperial Conference, 24 May 1937, A5954/1047/7, fifth meeting of delegates. 1785 ibid. He dismissed the League as ‘an impracticable ideal and a tantalising mirage’. 1786 ibid. Parkhill had already submitted to London a series of questions; ‘Questions and Papers on Defence’, DAFP, vol.1, 20, 28 April 1937. They were not answered until 9 June 1937, vide below. 1787 There was to be no repeat of the 1935-36 Mediterranean deployment of HMAS Sydney; Round Table, “Australian Defence Policy”: 68, vide Chapter 4. On ‘light raids’, vide earlier chapters. 1788 Parkhill, Imperial Conference, 24 May 1937, fifth meeting of delegates, A5954/1047/7. He requested a British assessment of ‘invasion’ prospects up to 1942 and spoke of the potential of local aircraft and munitions manufacturing. 1789 Speech by J.A. Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 25, 14 May 1937. 1790 Time, vol.26, 24 May 1937, was uncharitable in its assessments of Australian motives, suggesting that Lyons ‘avoided talking money and showed that he knew where his guns were actually coming from’. 242 such a force would be inferior to any assembled by Japan.1791 He could only offer the intangible consolation that a suitable defensive position could be maintained, given ‘the superior fighting qualities of the British race’.1792 The dominions could enhance this position in the meantime by their own construction of cruisers and destroyers, a task that Australia had already begun in the ‘twenties and to which the Lyons government had already shown considerable commitment.1793 An unimpressed Parkhill wished to take counsel on these suggestions and evaded any parallel suggestion of air or military contributions to the Singapore garrison (air forces were now seen as vital by British planners in retarding any Japanese advance on the city), despite his tentative offers of 24 May.1794 Neither side seemed willing to engage in any definite or binding commitments to the other; both seemed to prefer the pursuit of their own regional interests.

It was in such an atmosphere that an extraordinary meeting on defence questions was called on 1 June 1937. Chaired by Inskip, the Minister of Defence Co-ordination, the British delegation included Lord Chatfield, the First Sea Lord, in an attempt to provide some of the technical detail lacking from earlier meetings, for the absence of detail was as destructive to the prospects of defence co-operation as it was to the prospects of diplomatic collaboration. Parkhill alone represented Australia, as Lyons concentrated on lobbying for the Pact through various ambassadorial meetings in the first week of June.1795 Chatfield advised that a British fleet of unspecified size could not reach Singapore until some 53 to 70 days after the commencement of hostilities, the ‘Period Before Relief’, even assuming that sailing orders were immediate, which they probably would not be in the event of war in Europe.1796

It was not, however, until 9 June 1937 that Parkhill’s April questionnaire and May outline elicited a fuller reply.1797 Chatfield’s earlier comments had hardly been reassuring, but this reply offered some consolation and the promise of the desired defence co-operation. The CID began with the unwelcome news that in the event of war in both west and east, Singapore would need

1791 Hoare, Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 32, seventh meeting of delegates, 26 May 1937; Millar, 102. He endorsed Parkhill’s admission that Australia’s resources were inadequate to withstand Japanese invasion. 1792 Parkhill, Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 32, seventh meeting of delegates, 26 May 1937. He also complained about delays in the delivery of British aircraft to Australia. 1793 vide earlier chapters. 1794 Parkhill, Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 32, seventh meeting of delegates, 26 May 1937.McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 81 saw this reluctance to base RAAF aircraft in Singapore as “illogical”, as they were better placed to protect Australia from this forward position. The British Joint Planning sub-committee, 7 May 1937, believed that a Japanese advance could thereby be prevented for up to seventy days; Neidpath, 132-3. 1795 Savage represented New Zealand. Tourism also beckoned Lyons; between 23 May and 10 June 1937, he and Dame Enid visited Reigate, Salisbury, Lyme Regis, Bath, Chester and Cambridge; Enid Lyons Diary, Enid Lyons Papers, MS 4852/30. 1796 Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 35, Meeting to discuss Defence Questions, 1 June 1937; Meaney, Australia and the World, 423-6. Chatfield noted that the Chiefs of Staff were aware that Singapore had reserves for only sixty days. Murfett, “Keystone…”, 166, notes that the period of relief had been extended to 180 day by late-1939.Haggie, 106ff. 1797 ‘Questions and Papers on Defence’, DAFP, vol.1, 20, 28 April 1937; Parkhill, Imperial Conference, 24 May 1937, fifth meeting of delegates, A5954/1047/7. The replies were in Report of Chiefs of Staff sub-committee of CID report, DAFP 42, vol.1, 9 June 1937. 243 greater ‘reserves’, an unwelcome reference to dominion commitment.1798 No timetable was offered on the dispatch of a fleet, other than at the ‘earliest possible moment’ and then subject to considerations of home security. These qualifications left the Australian delegation unhappy and sceptical about the adequacy of the matériel assembled to sustain the base in the interregnum (now assumed to be seventy days),1799 but the good news was that the size of ‘Z’ force was to be specified before the conference ended1800 ─ from mid-1937 to early-1940, it would consist of between eight and ten capital ships, although never more than three modernised vessels (as against nine Japanese counterparts).1801 This constituted a minimalist defensive strategy. The CID warned that such deployment in the event of universal war would strain the Royal Navy’s capacity to deploy cruisers, implying that this was one gap that the dominion navies could plug.1802 Lyons had no difficulty with that suggestion, given the redevelopment of the RAN’s cruiser force since September 1933, although he continued to resist any suggestion of Australian funding for an ‘imperial’ capital ship.1803 Whatever the overall impression of this report upon Lyons and Parkhill, the wisdom of the independent Australian deterrent developed since September 1933 must now have been apparent.1804 It was now quite clear that even in the best- case scenario, Singapore would be inadequately supplied on land and in the air (without considerable dominion reinforcement), whilst capable of little more than a barely-sustainable naval defence. The subsequent defence planning of the Lyons government was premised on these grim assumptions, which were far from reassuring.1805

VIII

The Australian delegation had arrived in London in April 1937 seeking (diplomatic and defence) consultation and co-operation. It left in June with some occasion for satisfaction, but also with further reason for anxiety.1806 The immediate diplomatic outcomes of the conference, from Lyons’s perspective, were the endorsement of the Pact proposal and the broad recognition by most of the Commonwealth of the need for wider appeasement, made the more urgent by the recent defence discussions. Yet, at the close of the conference on 15 June 1937, there was still no

1798 Report of Chiefs of Staff sub-committee of CID report, DAFP, vol.1, 42, 9 June 1937. It also suggested that ‘economic pressure’ would be the primary instrument of defeating Japan, not a welcome prospect for Lyons. 1799 It proffered supplementary questions about the capacity of the Singapore garrison to resist in the period prior to the arrival of a fleet; Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 43, n.d. on or after 9 June 1937, Notes on Chiefs of Staff Answers. Chatfield had only recently conceded matériel, for sixty days; Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 35, Meeting to discuss Defence Questions, 1 June 1937. 1800 As Savage had insisted, Imperial Conference, 26 May 1937, seventh meeting of delegates, A5954/1047/7. 1801 Report of Chiefs of Staff sub-committee of CID report, DAFP, vol.1, 42, 9 June 1937, Table ‘Heavy Ships’, point 20. Haggie, 109, suggested that this number of capital ships proved ‘highly optimistic’. A sequel is found in C. Bell, “The ‘Singapore strategy’ and the Deterrence of Japan: Winston Churchill, the Admiralty and the Dispatch of Force Z.” English Historical Review, vol.116, no.467 (June 2001): 604-34. 1802 CID report, DAFP, vol.1, 42, 9 June 1937, Table “Heavy Ships”, point 21. 1803 P. Bell, 162. vide above for Pearce’s support for such a proposal. 1804 The CID had endorsed the ‘raids’ scenario, suggesting that a Japanese ‘invasion’ was ‘in the highest degree unlikely’; DAFP, vol.1, 42, 9 June 1937. 1805 Neidpath, 139, believes that the dominion governments accepted British assurances and based their planning accordingly, which is strictly true, but one must note the caution of those critical of David Day’s claims that Australia accepted British assurances without much scrutiny; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 392ff. 1806 He left on 21 June 1937; Lyons to Page, itinerary, 19 June 1937, CP290/5/7, NAA, Canberra. 244 formal mechanism for imperial consultation on foreign policy (not that the practically-minded Lyons had made any proposal for such),1807 but this did not mean that consultation could not continue informally, as Casey later believed.1808 The question of Whitehall-dominion consultation was as much of an issue at the end of the conference as it had been at the beginning─ Lyons had been no more successful at finding a formula to enhance it than any of his predecessors.

The full impact of this failure did not seem to be immediately apparent given the soothing sentiments that emerged from the final conference resolutions on foreign policy (drafted at the final four meetings of 7-9 June 1937). Lyons’s call of 14 May for more dominion input into imperial policy-making had no measurable practical impact, but these resolutions at least recognised his repeated calls for greater liaison between Commonwealth members1809 ─ the final statement, 9 June, declared ‘their intention of continuing to consult and co-operate with one another’.1810 The official summary of proceedings, issued on 14 June, similarly referred to ‘the importance of developing the practice of communication and consultation’.1811 There was, however, no suggestion of any immediate consultative mechanism and Lyons was able, in his closing address at the Second Plenary Session on 15 June, to refer only to future possibilities rather than to concrete conference achievements in this area.1812 He would have cause to repent at leisure in 1938 over his vagueness and this informality, especially when Hughes observed the continued inadequacy of imperial consultation in August of that year, voicing particular criticisms of the intermediacy of the Dominions Office and forcing Lyons to defend in public a system that he had himself long criticised and sought to streamline1813 ─ Hughes, as usual, survived this public brawl politically unscathed and with Lyons’s desire to utilise him undiminished. Some level of ‘personal’ exchanges, however, had been attained at the Imperial Conference and Lyons accepted that the immediate future of imperial consultation would be on this personal level only, in the Australian case built around his cordial relationship with Chamberlain. Such methods at least suited Lyons’s political style and reproduced into Commonwealth relations the same principle of informal, individual contact that characterised much of the negotiating methods of appeasement.1814 As Lyons had not called for formal institutions of consultation on 14 May, this was about as much as he could have expected. Only time would tell whether such ad hoc

1807 The vagueness of some of Lyons’s proposals on consultation were a contrast, for example, to Deakin’s detailed demand for an Imperial Secretariat in 1907; La Nauze, 503ff. 1808 Casey, “Australia’s Voice in Imperial Affairs,” 51, was confident in 1938 that Britain welcomed Australian input. 1809 Imperial Conference, 1-9 June 1937, CP4/2, private meetings of delegates on draft resolution on Foreign Policy, NAA, Canberra; Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers,1937, vol.5, no.80. Lyons repeated his call at the first meeting on 7 June 1937. 1810 Imperial Conference, Statement, 9 June 1937 (issued on 10/6/37), CP4/2; Tamchina, 82. 1811 Imperial Conference, 14 June 1937, DAFP, vol.1, 45, Summary of Proceedings; Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, 1937, vol.5, no.80. 1812 Lyons speech to Second Plenary Session, Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 46, 15 June 1937; Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, 1937, vol.5, no.80. 1813 Hughes speech, Melbourne Town Hall, 8 August 1938, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 August 1938, 11, d, where he was critical of the Dominions Office and advocated the direct circulation of FO material to prime ministers. Lyons tepidly defended the DO; Age, 13 August 1938, 15, f, g. 1814 Meyers, “International paradigms…”: 56, on the individualism of appeasement. 245 consultation would be effective, even if Chamberlain himself seemed sanguine and his wife promised Dame Enid that their husbands’ ‘co-operation will assist in future work together’.1815

If Lyons’s quest for imperial consultation proved elusive, so too did his chief initiative, the Pacific Pact, which he had entrusted to ‘more forcible’ British diplomacy on 8 June, with whom it ‘properly belonged’, perhaps in accordance with Casey’s long-standing, abiding faith in this instrument.1816 He had already made clear his intention to do so on 25 May and events in the meantime had not altered that intention.1817 His optimism about the proposal’s future was implied on 15 June in his thanks to delegates for the ‘cordiality’ of its reception.1818 This was premature: although Lyons had secured Chamberlain’s patronage of the Pact, the ascendancy of the premier over a hostile or indifferent Foreign Office was incomplete,1819 and Chamberlain had himself ominously noted that such conferences were ‘not summoned to solve any particular problem or to achieve any specific result’.1820 The FO, for its part, had little intention of proceeding with a proposal it called ‘wooly’, ‘unfortunate’ and designed only for ‘making political capital in Australia’, an attitude correctly perceived and repeated at home by Labor.1821 Although Cadogan, shortly to be the head of the FO, gave some indication that Anglo-Japanese conversations would continue, the Pact proposal played no part in his thinking.1822 Eden still believed that the matter would have to wait until some Sino-Japanese détente was evident, turning Lyons’s vision of a Pact that implemented rapprochement on its head.1823 Chamberlain did make an attempt in September to raise issues of eastern détente in cabinet, suggesting British mediation in East Asia

1815 Chamberlain to cabinet, 16 June 1937, DBFP, 2nd series, vol.18, 620; Ovendale, Appeasement, 49-51.Anne Chamberlain to Enid Lyons, 22 June 1937, Enid Lyons Papers, MS4852/2, NLA, Canberra. 1816 Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 41, fifteenth meeting of delegates, 8 June 1937. Moffat (reporting Lyons) to Cordell Hull, FRUS, 1935, vol.3, 363-5, 12 October 1935. Bingham to Cordell Hull, FRUS, 1937, vol.2, 142-3, 11 June 1937. Casey, Australia’s Place, 17ff; ibid., “The Need for a United British Foreign Policy,” (17 October 1932) in The World We Live In: A Series of Speeches on Current Events, 71. 1817 Lyons indicated then that he intended to cede the lead in the matter to Britain, after he had tabled his proposals; External Affairs summary of press opinion, n.d. but late-May 1937, A981/4 EXTE 215, NAA, Canberra. 1818 Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 46, 15 June 1937, Lyons speech to Second Plenary Session; Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers,1937, vol.5, no.80; pace Murphy, 282, that the proposal was not mentioned in closing addresses. 1819 Malcolm MacDonald did not even mention the Pact in his review of the conference; MacDonald, Cabinet Minutes, 16 June 1937, CAB 23/88, PRO, London, but Chamberlain mentioned the Pact favourably to the CID on 17 June 1937, Tarling, 43. The FO’s hostility to Japan was manifest; Report of Chiefs of Staff sub-committee of CID report, containing a Foreign Office draft answers to Australian questions, DAFP, vol.1, 42, 9 June 1937, Part 1, question 4. On Foreign Office preference for China over Japan in the following months; Louis, “The Road to Singapore…” 376, with Orde minute of 29 July 1937; also Tamchina, 101. 1820 Chamberlain at Imperial Conference; Annual Report 1937, Department of External Affairs, Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, vol.3 1937-40, no.38 (May 1938). 1821 Troutbeck, Foreign Office, 15 June 1937, in Tarling, 43. It was opposed by some British diplomats on the spot; Dodds, Tokyo to Eden, 17 June 1937, A1606 B41/1 PACT, NAA, Canberra, where he was sceptical of Japanese willingness to compromise. Memorandum by US counsellor, Atherton, London, to Cordell Hull, FRUS, 1937, vol.3, 986-9, 16 June 1937. This paralleled the US view that the whole thing was a Lyons ‘hobby’; Hornbeck, Chief of State Department Far Eastern Department, quoted in Esthus, 33. On Labor; Baker question to Earle Page, House of Representatives, 22 June 1937, A981/4/PAC 23, NAA, Canberra. 1822 Cadogan approached Hornbeck in February 1938 about offering Japan some ‘special position’ in northern China, but the US rejected the suggestion in April; FRUS, 1938, vol.3, 89-93, quoted in Murphy, 366. Japan had claimed such a position since the Amau Declaration of 1934; J. Pratt, “Britain’s Policy in the Far East.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.2, no.4 (October-November 1938): 17-18. 1823 Eden to Dodds, Tokyo, Enclosure to DAFP, vol.1, 56, 19 June 1937. In the Commons on 25 June 1937, Eden suggested that negotiations could not proceed without the attainment of the views of certain other governments, A981/4/PAC 23, NAA, Canberra. Lyons was informed of the new British attitude that détente must precede negotiations by MacDonald on 23 July 1937, A1606 B41/1 PACT, NAA, Canberra. 246 (an idea that appealed to Hodgson and Lyons, mutatis mutandis), but hopes of British diplomatic activity in favour of the Pact remained unfulfilled.1824 The Japanese themselves finally ended the pantomime through the Marco Polo Bridge ‘incident’ of 7 July 1937.1825 This gave the Foreign Office the pretext to bury the Pact proposal once and for all.1826 The Pact was moribund before the Orford docked at Fremantle on 19 July 1937. Without any direct Australian diplomatic machinery, there could have been no other outcome in the face of such British indifference and hostility.1827

Lyons realised too late that the absence of Australian diplomacy had cost him his dream and he was able to repent at leisure, although without complaint and further aspirations, until he attempted some remedy (and then prompted by another) from December 1938.1828 It remains extremely unlikely; however, that Canberra could have pushed the project to fruition under any circumstances without Whitehall’s sanction, let alone given the ambivalence of Tokyo and Washington. Yet, Lyons’s culpability for the failure of his pet project was deeper than issues of diplomatic jurisdiction ─ he had allowed the proposal to lapse from late -1935 until late-1936, until its revival by Geneva, and much momentum to be lost. When it was unveiled in mid-1937, he had been vague enough in his initial conference references about its detail and intention to allow its sidelining in committee, finally showing undue haste in off-loading the refined model that emerged after 8 June. A more advanced and detailed draft, prepared after liaison with London and even Washington, could conceivably have stood greater prospects of adoption, something never acknowledged by Lyons in the aftermath.1829 The whole was truly an exercise in ‘amateur diplomacy’ that did not reflect well on the methods of the appeasers, however well any non-aggression pact might have protected Australian national interest and security.

Whatever the fate of the Pact, the conference had reinforced one aspect of Lyons’s thinking ─ his personal and political desire for the broader application of appeasement. The period May-June 1937 signalled the passing away at Whitehall of Baldwin’s cunctation in favour of Chamberlain’s appeasement and the Imperial Conference of 1937 certainly did not represent the covert, reluctant acceptance by Australia of a new British appeasement policy, as has been suggested1830 ─ the conference ‘crystallized a trend, rather than indicated a new departure’.1831 Lyons had been practising appeasement since December 1933, and the accession of Chamberlain

1824 The possibility of Australian mediation in the east had arisen in Memorandum by External Affairs prepared for delegates, DAFP, vol.1, 13, 8 March 1937. Chamberlain discussed the option of Britain acting as a go-between; Chamberlain in cabinet, 29 September 1937, CAB 23/89, PRO, London; vide DAFP, vol.1, 88, 28 October 1937, where Lyons made a similar proposal and Chapter 7 for A.C.V. Melbourne’s identical suggestion in January 1939. 1825 Beasley, 263. 1826 Cadogan memorandum, 15-16 July 1937, FO 371/20651, PRO, London. Later, in mid-1939, the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war was acknowledged as having removed it from the realm of ‘practical policies’; Shepherd, 48-9. 1827 Hudson, League, 186. 1828 vide Chapter 7 on his early regrets and attempt to revive the Pact. 1829 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 387, on the failure to produce a draft proposal. vide below on Lyons’s assessment of the Pact, July-August 1937. 1830 Fairbanks, 111, that the dominions reluctantly accepted appeasement at the conference. 1831 Mansergh, Survey, 88. 247 signalled a coincidental change of policy at Whitehall, taking the UK down the same path already trodden by Australia in its own modest fashion ─ although there is no suggestion that the dominions were responsible for Whitehall’s conversion.1832 The dominions had not, however, followed Whitehall, something of which Hodgson seemed conscious when he stated his belief that Australia had been able to assert ‘some basic principles with regard to our own foreign policy instead of being accused of blindly following the lead of the United Kingdom’.1833 Hughes was certainly not exaggerating when he implied, following Lyons’s death, that the ‘whole British Commonwealth’ had adopted Australian principles at the Imperial Conference.1834 When the delegates had agreed by 9 June 1937 on a concluding resolution that ‘the settlement of national needs should be sought by methods of co-operation, joint enquiry and conciliation’, this was a most satisfactory outcome for the man who had outlined Australia’s own foreign policy aspirations in 1935 as ‘international co-operation leading to political and economic stability’.1835 Lyons had called for a statement expressing support for ‘world appeasement and peace’ and ‘absolute friendship’ as early as 1 June, but this concluding statement was apparently similar enough to ward off the disillusionment of which he had then warned.1836 The wider endorsement of these sentiments eight days later by the bulk of the Commonwealth’s leaders can only have reinforced the course of his thinking, although there is no evidence that he believed himself responsible for the 9 June resolution, which owed much to the vigour of Hertzog.1837 The striking of such a resolution was, however, far from unanimous and revealed as many differences between the dominions as it did similarities, illustrating the difficulties inherent in securing any common Empire policy.1838 At the same time as accepting the principles of conciliation, the majority of the delegates had also agreed that differences in ‘political creed’ represented no obstacle to ‘international appeasement’, a view also conducive to Lyons the man of consensus and to the other like-minded members of his circle, like Casey.1839 In the future, Lyons (and Hughes when Minister of External Affairs) would refer to the concept of wider appeasement adopted in London on 9 June 1937 as ‘the policy’ of the broader Commonwealth, implying the acceptance of a

1832 Mansergh, Experience, 282, noted that dominion urging should not be taken as being responsible for Chamberlain’s adoption of appeasement. 1833 Hodgson to Officer, 24 August 1937, Officer Papers, MS2629/1/141ff, NLA, Canberra. 1834 Fitzhardinge, 651, noted that appeasement had been adopted at the conference, a comment that ought not to be applied to Australian policy. Hughes, Ministerial Statement, 20 April 1939, Current Notes, vols.6-7 (1939), 178. 1835 Imperial Conference, Statement, 9 June 1937 (issued on 10/6/37), CP4/2; Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, 1937, vol.5, no.80; part of the statement appears in Summary of Proceedings of Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 45, 14 June 1937. Lyons’s Debuchi speech, Canberra, 4 September 1935, Hodgson notes, M1516. 1836 vide above, Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 34, 1 June 1937, tenth meeting of principal delegates; Ovendale, Appeasement, 46. 1837 Mansergh, Survey, 90, 93. 1838 Mackenzie King expressed approval of appeasement, but criticised its tardy implementation; Mackenzie King to Malcolm MacDonald, 2 April 1938; Feiling, 349; Haggie, 109. The NZ commitment to ‘collective security’ was profound, although buried in a footnote of the final report; Mansergh, Experience, 275. 1839 Imperial Conference, Statement, 9 June 1937 (issued on 10/6/37), CP4/2; Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, 1937, vol.5, no.80. Casey, “At Home and Abroad,” (21 April 1933) in The World We Live In: A Series of Speeches on Current Events, 113, had indicated his lack of concern about Germany’s ruling ideology. 248 common approach to external affairs, which Lyons suggested was aimed to secure ‘peace’.1840 This was as close as he would come to realising his 14 May call for a ‘consistent and unified Empire policy’, and as close as anybody would come after 1919 to establishing ‘a common foreign policy of the whole British Commonwealth’.1841 Despite this modicum of co-operation in the sphere of external affairs, Australian aspirations for defence co-operation and joint planning had come to nought in Shedden’s informed view,1842 but there was some scope for post-conference satisfaction in that the Australasians had finally gained the last-minute (written) strategic assurances they had long sought, from the CID on 9 June 1937. The military arithmetic of this report might have been troubling, but the assurances on Singapore were adequate on the whole for the defensive posture envisaged by both London and Canberra (now both rearming),1843 although hardly adequate to match Lyons’s immediate description of them on 15 June as providing ‘ultimate safety’.1844 He preferred, in his subsequent public statements, to seize upon the offer of assurances per se, rather than to analyse any numerical deficiencies or to dwell on his failure to attain any concrete joint planning. This was not to say that his government was complacent, for his final conference reference to defence ‘consultations and co-operation’ was, like its diplomatic counterparts, as much directed to the future as to the present.1845 Accordingly, on returning home, the Prime Minister candidly suggested that the conference would yield future benefits for defence, rather than claiming any immediate success.1846 This was cold comfort and whatever gloss Lyons subsequently wished to attach to the matter, the conference had failed to give Canberra ‘a common understanding [of concerted] measures’, as Lyons had sought, and ‘to realize the means of co-operation’, as Parkhill had requested.1847

IX

The optimistic resolutions of the conference and the obligations of peacemaking were possibly in Lyons’s mind in the following weeks, during his second visit to the European war graves (21-22 June 1937).1848 The 1935 visit had played its part in strengthening his antipathy to

1840 Imperial Conference, Statement, 9 June 1937 (issued on the 10th), CP4/2. Lyons statement, CPD, vol.154, 22-31, 24 August 1937. Andrews, Isolationism, 24, on the ‘policy’, referring to Lyons’s statement in April 1938 in the parliamentary debate over the resignation of Eden. Hughes quoted the conference statement as late as 20 April 1939, in a speech on the international situation; Current Notes, vols.6-7 (1939); Fitzhardinge, 642. 1841 Speech by J.A. Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 25, 14 May 1937. D. Watt, “Paradox”: 277. 1842 Horner, Defence Supremo, 51. 1843 Report of Chiefs of Staff sub-committee of CID report, DAFP, vol.1, 42, 9 June 1937; vide above. 1844 Lyons speech to Second Plenary Session, DAFP vol.1, 46, 15 June 1937; “Imperial Conference Summary of Proceedings”, APP, vol.5, no.80 (1937), 2249-87. 1845 ibid. 1846 Lyons at Fremantle, Herald, 20 July 1937, 2, b-c. 1847 Speech by J.A. Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 25, 14 May 1937. Parkhill, Imperial Conference, 24 May 1937, A5954/1047/7, fifth meeting of delegates, paraphrasing Lyons’s 14 May speech. From Britain’s perspective, the conference had failed to secure dominion co-operation in imperial defence; Haggie, 109. 1848 Lyons also visited the Dutch and Belgian prime ministers. The Belgian premier, van Zeeland, was a prominent advocate of economic appeasement, issuing a report to that effect in January 1938; Crozier, 244. Dame Enid did not accompany him on this more private visit, remaining in Paris; Enid Lyons Diary, 22 June 1937, Enid Lyons Papers, MS4852/30. The visit 249 war; the horror of this one seemed to spur him towards more profound personal aspirations ─ ‘to banish war from the world’.1849 This sentiment was a contrast to the belligerent ones noted by his wife in some London circles in May 1937; ‘a wrong outlook altogether…all hatred and distrust; so sad, so sad’.1850 Accordingly, she lamented: ‘We came home to Australia at the end of July with the grim duty before us of preparing the people of Australia for the possibility of war.’1851 Lyons alone could never ‘banish’ this possibility and the probability of Australian participation in it, although Dame Enid clearly believed that he could help to limit the risk.1852 Retirement was no longer an option for the man whose self-image now included that of peacemaker.1853

It was clear from the first days after their return home that the forthcoming federal election was likely to feature the issue of defence.1854 The government accordingly signalled its intention to give greater priority to such spending within weeks, although it was not publicly admitted, and never could be, that the recent London revelations were sufficient incentive for the launching of a third rearmament program.1855 The emphasis was again to be on the local ‘rampart’ of self-reliance and Lyons took an early opportunity, during a Sydney speech on 28 July 1937, to stress that no defence commitment had been undertaken in London that was incompatible with ‘local control’ (which was true enough).1856 Parkhill was blunter on the following day, implying that since it was to be some time before British rearmament could have any impact, there was no alternative to local preparations.1857 At a civic reception in Melbourne, also on 29 July, Lyons stressed that the policy adopted at the conference was one of rearmament for defensive purposes

was reported in The Times, 24 June 1937; Andrews, “The Australian Government and Appeasement,” 73. vide Chapter 3 on the 1935 war graves visit. Mindful of Crick, 29-30, that it is ‘impossible’ to get into the mind of another. 1849 Lyons electioneering at Echuca, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 October 1937, recalling his June visit. Decades later, his widow still recalled his renewed horror of war following this visit; Enid Lyons audio interview with Mel Pratt, March 1972, Tape 1, 68. 1850 Enid Lyons Diary, 17 May 1937, Enid Lyons Papers, MS4852/30; Langmore, Prime Ministers’ Wives, 101-2. 1851 Enid Lyons, My Life, 34. She feared an ‘accidental’ war, like 1914; Enid Lyons, Herald, 20 July 1937, 2, b-c. His belief that Australia would be unable to keep out of the next war, if it came, was mentioned by his wife; Enid Lyons audio interview with Mel Pratt, Tape 1, 68-9. 1852 In Melbourne on 29 July 1935, she called for voluntary limits to free speech: ‘Often we become incensed by somebody saying something which was derogatory to the Empire, but we should remember that we said things which were derogatory to other countries.’; Enid Lyons speech at Melbourne, Age, 30 July 1937, Piesse Papers, MS882 /9/9/952, NLA, Canberra. 1853 Some had expected his retirement during the conference; Lyons obituary, The Times, 8 April 1939, 14, b-d, referring to the journalist, Trevor Smith. Ramsay MacDonald counselled him against it; MacDonald to Lyons, Savoy Hotel, London, 4 June 1937, Joseph Lyons Papers, MS4851/2/12, NLA, Canberra. So too did UAP officials soon after; Enid Lyons, Carrion Crows, 56-7. On self-image and ‘Life Myth’; Laswell, 22ff.; Walter, 279; Martin, “Elements…,” 11-15. 1854 Lyons at Fremantle, Herald, 20 July 1937, 2, b-c. 1855 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 395, made a similar observation about conservative politicians and their reluctance to express doubt about imperial defence guarantees after the 1937 election, but this also applies in the months between the end of the conference (June) and the election (October). 1856 Lyons speech at Sydney, later published as a pamphlet, Defence Aspects of the Imperial Conference: Australasian Position, 28 July 1937, MP1587/1/218AO, NAA, Melbourne. Smith’s Weekly had thus been wide of the mark to suggest, in April, that Lyons was a ‘Yes-Man’ who would be ‘gathered-up’ by Whitehall; F. McIlraith, Smith’s Weekly, 24 April 1937, 13. 1857 Parkhill speech to the National Club, Sydney, 29 July 1937, B1535/834/1/44, NAA, Melbourne, where he stated that Australia was the best prepared part of the Empire. 250 only (similar to Eden’s Leamington principles that he had endorsed in May)1858 and allowed himself some personal observations, as he often did on such occasions, pleasingly noting the absence of military uniforms in Australia and suggesting that war was due to ‘unjustified fear’ of neighbours.1859 These were wry comments from a man about to accelerate rearmament and they possibly reflected an inner struggle over the undiminished need for greater defence expenditure immediately following a conference that had endorsed policies of conciliation.1860

When Lyons spoke in the parliament on 24 August 1937, his speech served as both a prime ministerial-head of delegation report on the recent gathering, but also as a platform to outline the measures constituting the government’s third rearmament program in five years─ the so-called ‘New Programme’.1861 He again stated that no compromising commitments had been given to Britain, noting that Australian security now rested on ‘two pillars’, of which ‘our own maximum effort’ was listed first, followed by ‘Empire co-operation’1862 ─ gone was the old ‘rampart/bulwark’ of the League.1863 The Governor-General had already referred, in his opening address of 17 June (in Lyons’s absence), to the government’s recognition of the ‘present realities’ retarding the pursuit of peace by collective means, so Lyons needed to say no more.1864 He also preferred not to reveal some of the strategic lessons that the conference had taught the delegates, assuring parliament that an ‘adequate’ British fleet would proceed to Singapore in an ‘emergency’, knowing that the British definition of adequacy provided only knife-edge defence1865 ─ significantly, he failed to repeat his immediate London assessment of such measures as providing ‘ultimate safety’ and instead now referred publicly to the possibility of both ‘invasion’ and ‘raids’ (first mentioned by Parkhill in camera in May).1866 Lyons, as spokesman for his government, accepted that Australia must play its part in a program of Empire

1858 Lyons speech at Melbourne, 29 July 1937 Age, 30 July 1937, Piesse Papers, MS882/9/9/952, NLA, Canberra. He repeated many of these sentiments in a radio address over 7BU, Burnie, 31 December 1937, Episode Title No. AUD 2992, ScreenSound, Canberra and later in Bairnsdale, Bairnsdale Advertiser, 15 July 1938, 1, a-c. 1859 Enid Lyons had not thought European uniforms so displeasing in Venice; Enid Lyons Diary, 22-4 April 1937; also Langmore, Prime Ministers’ Wives, 100, although her public comments were more anti-militaristic; Enid Lyons quoted in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, 13 August 1937, as being unimpressed at the sight of young Italian cavalrymen; Enid Lyons Papers, MS4852/4. His comments on ‘unjustified fear’ tend to support Murphy’s contention, 297, that fear of Japan was a factor in the Pact proposal. 1860 Lasswell, 91, on inner contradictions. Although I am mindful of Crick, 29-30, that it is ‘impossible’ to get into the mind of another. 1861 Parliament had reassembled on 17 June 1937 for its final session prior to the poll, after a record six-month recess; ‘Austra’, “The March of Events.” Australian National Review, vol.2, no.7 (July 1937): 89. A critic such as May, 213, accepted that this was finally ‘a true programme of rearmament’. 1862 Lyons statement, CPD, vol.154, 22-31, 24 August 1937; Current Notes, vol.3 (September 1937), 149-50; Anon., “The Defence of Australia” in Round Table, vol.28, no.109 (December 1937): 125-34, especially 127. 1863 Lyons statement, CPD, vol.154, 22-31, 24 August 1937; Meaney, Australia and the World, 428-33; Current Notes, vol.3 (September 1937), 149-50. The speech was published as a pamphlet, The Commonwealth Government’s Defence Policy in the Light of the Imperial Conference, n.d., A5954 860/3, NAA, Canberra. Mansergh, Survey, 164, noted the discounting of any League assistance. 1864 ‘Austra’, “The March of Events.” vol.2, no.7 (July 1937): 89. 1865 Lyons statement, CPD, vol.154, 22-31, 24 August 1937. I do not accept Andrews’s interpretation that this speech indicated Lyons’s wholesale acceptance of British assurances; Andrews, History of Australian Foreign Policy, 78, as its thrust was self-reliance. 1866 Lyons speech to Second Plenary Session, DAFP vol.1, 46, 15 June 1937; “Imperial Conference Summary of Proceedings”, Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, vol.5, no.80 (1937), 2249-87. Parkhill, Imperial Conference, 24 May 1937, fifth meeting of delegates, A5954/1047/7. 251 naval defence, but only according to her financial capacity, for the cabinet had noted its preference for air expenditure over an imperial naval scheme during his absence.1867

The cautious language employed in this statement confirmed that the ‘Commonwealth Government’ did not see Australian security based on sheltering behind Britain in the period after the conference, any more than it had before it, particularly as British defence preparations were still far from developed.1868 Bruce, upon whose advice Lyons continued to lean in such matters, continued over the following months and years to stress this inadequacy and the only immediate alternative of ‘self-reliance’.1869 Lyons preferred this informed counsel over the instinct of those who urged him to consider Britain ‘our only sure shield and buckler’,1870 although naturally he was prepared to accept London’s ‘powerful aid’, whatever its motive.1871 He reminded his audience that Australia was, after all, one of ‘the small States existing on the sufferance of powerful neighbours’, an echo of the vulnerability he had privately voiced during the Abyssinian crisis.1872 That he was prepared now to repeat such warnings publicly suggested a higher level of anxiety. The thrust of the speech nevertheless indicated that, despite imperial shibboleths, Lyons wished his audience to infer that of the two ‘pillars’, the one grounded on local efforts was the more important and the more secure─ he remained reluctant to say so publicly, but would soon do so in government circles, following further advice from Bruce on British readiness.1873 The first line of security and counter-invasion was ‘naval defence’, but Lyons denied that the key to national security was furnished by any one service, for he confessed that the RAN was unable to provide a ‘complete defence’ against raids (let alone invasion), without an offensively-minded Royal Navy. The conference had shown that this service was so minded in the Far East. Accordingly, Lyons boasted in parliament of the virtual completion of the RAAF Salmond scheme and, misleadingly, of Parkhill’s ‘nucleus’ of seven Army divisions, when this service was actually required to concentrate on coastal defence.1874 His choice of language and emphasis on the non-naval services did not go unnoticed by those, like Piesse, hostile to the concept of naval primacy ─ ‘Albatross’ sniffed change in the air and it was the case that naval expenditure in the 1937/38 estimates remained static, whilst the bulk of the increases were directed elsewhere.1875

1867 Earle Page to Lyons, 11 May 1937, CP290/5/7, NAA, Canberra. 1868 vide Holsti, 133, (in my Introduction) on models of language. 1869 Bruce to Casey, 1 December 1937, A11857/50, NAA, Canberra. 1870 The advice of ‘Austra’, “The March of Events,” vol.2, no.7 (July 1937): 86. 1871 Lyons statement, CPD, vol.154, 22-31, 24 August 1937, where he acknowledged that the British commitment to Singapore was made out of a desire to protect its own ‘vast interests’. 1872 ibid.; Anon., “The Defence of Australia,”: 127. Lyons to Moffat, Moffat Diary, 2 October 1935. 1873 Lyons at Council of Defence meeting, 24 February 1938, Hughes Papers, MS1538/42/2, NLA, Canberra, following a series of talks between Bruce and Chamberlain; vide Chapter 6. 1874 Lyons statement, CPD, 24 August 1937, vol.154, 22-31; vide Parkhill speech, 15 June 1936, MP 1587/1 218AO, Chapter 4. McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 87 is correct to suggest that Lyons made it apparent that the Army and RAAF were primarily to be used to counter ‘raids’, despite his mention of invasion and of a ‘nucleus’. The Army’s priorities, to its disgust, were coastal guns and light mobile forces; Ross, Armed and Ready, 113, and ibid., “The Economics of Rearmament, 1933-39.” Journal of the Australian War Memorial, vol.9 (1986): 42, quoted in May, 210. 1875 Piesse to Hodson of Round Table, London, 15 September 1937, Piesse Papers, MS882/9/2/189, NLA, Canberra, noted that the increases for the Army and RAAF were much larger than naval increases and that their importance had 252 The same man who had complimented Australians on their lack of militarism on 29 July now boasted that the triennial program of defence increases (initiated in 1934/35 and expanded in June 1936) had now surpassed £7 million p.a.1876 More was to come in the service of strengthening the domestic pillar─ Lyons announced that the Parkhill program was to be expanded further until the 1939/40 financial year, involving extra capital expenditure of over £10 million: ‘This financial provision has never been equalled nor the purposes of the expenditure more unanimously endorsed by expert opinion.’1877 The first part of that assertion was beyond dispute; the second indicated Lyons’s individual desire for non-partisan approval of accelerated rearmament. Significantly, and for the first time, the economic manager accepted the necessity to skirt economic orthodoxy and to employ deficit spending for defence purposes, admitting the necessity to raise a loan of £2.5 million.1878 Far from being lulled into a false sense of security by the Imperial Conference, Lyons and his circle of like-minded rearmers (Casey, Parkhill, Hughes and Pearce) had apparently been spurred into taking radical economic measures at a time when the recovering economy was still fragile1879 ─ the incumbent Treasurer, Casey, conscious that the Trust Fund was now exhausted, expressed his assent within days (in another example of the Lyons-Casey collaboration of the period) and Hughes, who had long advocated deficit spending for defence, can only have been pleased that the course he had advocated for four years had now been adopted.1880 The political opponents of ‘Honest Joe’ now began to see him as something of a ill-fitted militarist.1881 He nevertheless considered the cost and political risks worthwhile in the context of a policy that sought ‘the general peace of the world’.1882

X

Lyons found in the period after the conference, including the federal election of October 1937, that it was becoming increasingly difficult to balance conciliation and rearmament. He nevertheless remained vociferous in defence of the recent Pact initiative in this period, even

been accepted. As ‘Albatross’, he had believed that Australia could never afford to fund an adequate navy, Japan and the Defence of Australia, 47-51. On the naval estimates; McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 81. Meaney, Australia and the World, 27, noted that the Army and RAAF received the bulk of the increases. Holsti, 133, on models of language. 1876 In fact, it had surpassed £8 million in the year 1936/37; Ross, Armed and Ready, 115, Table 4-2. 1877 Lyons statement, CPD, vol.154, 22-31, 24 August 1937. Ross, Armed and Ready, 111, Table 4-1, gives the increases, amounting to £10,024,235; Table also in Anon., “The Defence of Australia,”: 132. These figures were soon made redundant by supplementation in 1938, vide Chapter 6. ‘Austra’, “The March of Events.” Australian National Review, vol.2, no.10 (October 1937): 80, referred to ‘the heaviest expenditure for any year since the inauguration of the Commonwealth’, excepting the war years. 1878 pace Andrews, “Patterns…” 95, that Lyons never abandoned the economic orthodoxy against deficit defence spending. This spending necessitated a 16% increase in government borrowing in 1936/37, with a total loan commitment of £15.4 million; Ross, Armed and Ready, 115, Table 4-3. 1879 ibid., 113, discusses the economic dangers entailed by this expansion when unemployment was still 9.5%, still above the 1920s average; Martin, “The Politics of the Depression”, 115. 1880 Casey similarly stressed the defence imperative and its urgency in parliament; CPD, vol.154, 267ff., 27 August 1937. Casey to Bruce, 6 July 1936, 1421/3/22, on the Trust Fund expiring by 30 June 1937. Hughes had urged deficit spending since 1933; vide Chapters 1 and 4. The use of deficits did not stop Lyons boasting of his economic management and balanced budgets at the 1937 election; vide below, Martin, “The Politics of the Depression”, 115. 1881 Smith’s Weekly, 22 May 1937, 12, ridiculed Lyons the military strategist in an ill-fitting uniform. Lasswell, 91, would see his militarism as an example of the internal attrition of a doctrinal system, which results in compulsive behaviour and mental instability in those attempting to balance these complications. 1882 Lyons statement, CPD, 24 August 1937, vol.154, 22-31. 253 beyond the outbreak of a full-scale Sino-Japanese war on 19 September 1937, believing that it could have been avoided, if British diplomacy had taken up his suggestion:

I am very sorry that some action on the lines of the Pact I proposed was not taken earlier. If something of the kind had been in existence before this trouble in the east, it is possible that some pressure might have been applied to prevent the tragic events that are now occurring.1883

This very personal apologia failed to acknowledge his own culpability for the failure of the project and provided the first major example of a pattern that would become apparent from this time onwards ─ Lyo ns refused to countenance in public the possibility that appeasement was failing until the very end of the process was clear. Although there were private expressions of doubt, he remained publicly buoyant and searched for blame elsewhere.

The sudden demise of the Pact had come as something of a shock. At his Fremantle press conference on 19 July 1937, the Prime Minister had admitted the ‘difficulties’ that the proposal faced, but repeated in public the observations that he had made to delegates in June, that they were not ‘insurmountable’.1884 Normally calm in his public appearances, on this occasion Lyons gave some indication of the depth of his personal involvement in the project and vented his frustration at critics by expounding the extraordinary view that, as an instrument of peacemaking, the Pact ought to be above criticism.1885 Lyons the peacemaker had taken the moral high ground and he continued it to occupy until his death. It represented a move away from the centre, the political position he had occupied since the end of his youthful radicalism, and towards a self- righteousness that would become increasingly apparent by early-1939, by which time as Lyons, as prime minister, had removed himself from the counsel of all but a few. Lyons truculently asserted that there was not ‘the slightest ground for any opposition to the proposal’, an interpretation that he soon expanded to cover the wider appeasement recently adopted in London:

Indeed, how can there be criticism of a proposal which aims solely at maintaining peace in the Pacific, which would tie none of the parties to it to any dangerous commitments and which, in short, could only result in happiness for the peoples subscribing to it?…It passes my comprehension that one word should be raised against a plan aimed solely at avoidance of war.1886

1883 Lyons campaigning at Darlinghurst, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 October 1937; Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, 273. 1884 Lyons, Herald, 20 July 1937, 2, b-c. vide above his comments of 8 June 1937. 1885 ibid. 1886 ibid. 254 Lyons was especially tetchy about suggestions that the Pact proposal had been put into his mouth by London, an unsurprising reaction given that much of the opposition to it at the conference had been based on the perception that it was ‘his’ idea.1887 He further defended it in his parliamentary address of 24 August, according to his original conception of an instrument that would maintain both friendship in the Pacific and world peace, setting it in the historical perspective of long-standing Australian interest in the region and stressing his own role in the whole (‘I raised the Pact’) ─ such a personal reference had formerly been unusual in Lyons’s parliamentary speeches, which normally recited government policy only, but it was a practice that became more common as his dominance of the external affairs portfolio grew.1888 He finally drew attention to the conference’s resolution that the matter should be the ‘subject of further consultation between governments’. This proved an illusory hope. Curtin was unconvinced, pointing out the dissonance between the proposal and trade diversion.1889 Pearce was no more supportive, offering his own pessimistic observations to the Senate on 14 September (in a direct contradiction of his leader’s optimism), repeating the British line that the Pact needed to be approached ‘with some circumspection’ and that Sino-Japanese tensions had led to a necessary ‘suspension’ of conversations ─ Pearce was clearly more detached from the measure than was Lyons.1890 There could be no better example of the gulf that had appeared between the perspectives of prime minister and minister than these two parliamentary statements. Lyons himself would not concede until April 1938 that the measure was suspended and even then, he refused to believe that the second Pacific initiative was moribund.1891 At least by that time, one obstacle to its progress, Pearce, had been removed.

The defence aspect of the parliamentary speech of 24 August set the back-drop against which Lyons prepared to fight the October federal election─ ‘bland’ external policy was barely to rate a mention.1892 Where, for instance, the Sino-Japanese war was raised, it was addressed from the defence perspective rather than as an issue of external affairs and overt public criticism of Japan was generally avoided,1893 although Lyons allowed himself a personal observation on the Japanese methods of bombing civilians.1894 Confidentially, Lyons also informed Bruce of

1887 Anon., “Mr. Lyons Returns.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.1, no.3 (August September 1937): 1. 1888 Lyons statement, CPD, vol.154, 22-31, 24 August 1937; Current Notes, vol.3 (September 1937), 149-50. He referred to this statement in September when denying the need for a ‘Peace Department’, Lyons to Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Toorak, A981/4/PAC 23, NAA, Canberra. 1889 Curtin, CPD, vol.154, 103, 24 August 1937, summarised by Shedden, n.d., draft chapter, A Regional Pact in the Pacific, A5954/69/764/27, 5. 1890 Pearce, CPD, vol.154, 968, 14 September 1937. This is further evidence of Pearce’s distance from the proposal. 1891 Lyons, CPD, vol.155, 551, 27 April 1938. 1892 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 258. 1893 Murphy, 297, on Japan as an ‘appendix’ in the campaign - the renewed Japanese aggression cast a shadow over the whole and heightened the defence debate. The issue of union-inspired boycotts of Japanese trade came to the fore, but Curtin too was opposed to such unilateral action; Anon., “External Affairs and the Election.” vol.28, no.110 (March 1938): passim and 386-7. On Labor and the war; D. McDougall, “The Australian Labour Movement and the Sino- Japanese War, 1937-1939.” Labour History, no.33 (November 1977): 39-52. 1894 Lyons referred to his horror of the bombing of civilians following the outbreak of full-scale war in the East; electioneering report, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 October 1937. These reservations did not prevent him from ordering 255 Australian concern about ‘the ruthless nature of Japanese aggression’,1895 but the public avoidance of much reference to events in north-east Asia allowed Lyons to avoid discussion of the possible contradictions between conciliation and rearmament in the shadow of a new war ─ unlike Bruce, he seemed to have little faith in the League to address this new conflict.1896 In any case, there seemed little room for dissent on appeasement, as Labor was not unsympathetic to Curtin’s variety of ‘peace by negotiation’.1897 The UAP was also forthright in its admission that Australian foreign policy must be based ‘to some extent’ on ‘independent thought and action’, a principle that Labor could only endorse.1898 Lyons nevertheless regarded the impending poll with a sense of urgency and dread,1899 but duty (and/or ambition) kept him at the helm. He admitted Tasmanian temptations: ‘However, the job I am doing now is, I believe, my duty, and I shall continue to do it as long as I am wanted’.1900 He clearly felt that he alone was best suited to maintain his particular combination of conciliation and rearmament.

The UAP stood on its record of imperial co-operation and prudent defence expenditure, within a framework of skilful economic management─ Bruce had confidentially advised Lyons to concentrate on economic issues rather than defence, but on this occasion, the instincts of the latter triumphed over the counsel of the former.1901 Lyons argued that Australian security was best ensured through a balance of imperial co-operation and local efforts.1902 Labor preferred self- reliance and even though this was a view with which Lyons had long demonstrated sympathy, there was more political capital to be made by stressing the differences between the parties.1903 He was accordingly blunt in his employment of the imperial factor: ‘A vote for the government fifty Lockheed bombers for the RAAF in November 1938; J. McCarthy, “Australia and Imperial Defence: Co-operation and Conflict 1918-1939.” AJPH, vol.17, no.1 (April 1971): 29; CPD, vol.157, 1107. 1895 Lyons to Bruce, DAFP, vol.1, 70, 30 September 1937. 1896 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 315, on Bruce’s respect for the League’s capacity to facilitate peace negotiations in this dispute, quoting him at the League Assembly, 21 September 1937. 1897 On Labor and appeasement; E. Andrews, “Australian Labour and Foreign Policy 1935-39. The Retreat from Isolationism.” Labour History, no.9 (November 1965): 28. Some in Labor, like Brennan, preferred outright isolationism, ibid. There was no contradiction between Australian ‘commitment’ to Empire, as advocated by Lyons in the campaign, and appeasement (as Twomey, “Munich,” 24, suggests), for given that Chamberlain was on the same wagon, appeasement was now an example of Anglo-Australian co-operation. 1898 UAP pamphlet, Record of the Lyons Government, 1932-37: Federal Election 1937, A518 BB112/1, NAA, Canberra, 102-3, quoted in Smith, 92. This pamphlet was intended for the use of UAP candidates. 1899 He had declined a second visit to the US because of it; Bingham, US Ambassador, London, to Cordell Hull, FRUS, 1937, vol.2, 142-3, 11 June 1937. There was some suggestion that Casey may go in Lyons’s place; Kingsley Henderson to David Dow, New York, n.d. but after May 1937, Dow Papers, Personal H-L, U40/8. Chamberlain also declined a Washington invitation; C. MacDonald, “The United States, Appeasement and the Open Door,” in Fascist Challenge, 402; A. Offner, “The United States and National Socialist Germany,” in ibid., 418; Chamberlain to Roosevelt, FRUS, 1937, vol.1, 131-2, 28 September 1937. Lyons thought the prospects of electoral defeat were high; Enid Lyons Diary, 11 June 1937, where she welcomed this prospect, although ‘it will be a blow to Daddie’. 1900 Lyons election speech at Perth, Tasmania, Sydney Morning Herald and Argus, 22 October 1937. 1901 Bruce to Lyons, 30 June 1937, 9 July 1937, 14 July 1937 (including a McDougall memorandum), M104/5/1, NAA, Canberra; pace Cumpston, Bruce, 137; O’Brien: 574. Lyons stressed his economic management of six balanced budgets and the restoration of most of the Depression cuts; Martin, “The Politics of the Depression”, 115. 1902 P. Irvine, “The Defence of Australia”, Australian Supplementary Papers, Series D, prepared for the British Commonwealth Relations Conference, Glenbrook, NSW, Australian Institute of International Affairs, no.3 (September 1938), 18 noted this balanced approach, in contrast to Labor’s hostility to overseas commitments. Hasluck, Government, 85, provides a useful summary, as does Whitington, House, 63. 1903 Lyons’s views, ‘invasion’ aside, were not as removed from Labor’s as some electors thought on 23 October 1937, as the following year would show, vide Chapter 6. Day, Curtin, 359, noted that the Lyons government later implemented much that Curtin called for during the 1937 election. 256 means a vote for Empire co-operation in naval defence for the safeguarding of our shores from foreign aggression.’1904 It was a talisman that Labor found difficult to counter, unaware of the recent failure of the Imperial Conference to secure any real measures of co-operation. In his Deloraine policy speech on 28 September 1937,1905 the Prime Minister implied that any strategy that did not account for imperial co-operation (that is Labor’s ‘isolation’), bordered on the needlessly perilous, even the ‘suicidal’.1906 No-one had been more cautious about the nature of defence co-operation than Lyons or Parkhill recently in London, but to raise their reservations in public would have been electorally counter- productive.1907 UAP electoral material therefore put the choice starkly: ‘For Empire or Independence’.1908 The prime minister was as willing in October 1937 to use imperial rhetoric in his campaigning as the opposition leader had been in December 1931, following the example of the republican premier of 1925.1909

Lyons’s critics, then and now, have neglected to notice that he comprehensively addressed the second ‘pillar’ of self-reliance in his electioneering, for ‘imperial co-operation’ did not entail local neglect.1910 The differences with Labor in this area could be highlighted by standing on the government’s record. Accordingly, the Prime Minister boasted of the six budget surpluses allocated to defence and of increases since 1933 that had surpassed £31.5 million, including expenditure of £11.5 million in the last year (over ten per cent of all government spending): ‘Both figures are records in peace expenditure for any corresponding period.’1911 Lyons seemed especially pleased with the eight-fold increase in RAAF spending, the arm on which Labor concentrated its defence attention.1912 More of the same was promised, including the development of munitions (the ‘fourth service’ as some called it) and local aviation1913 ─ nothing was said of the conference disputes over these issues, disputes which some later suggested

1904 Lyons quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald, 22 September 1937; McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 81. He repeated this statement on 21 October 1937 in his final address; Hasluck, Government, 85. 1905 The choice of Deloraine was intended as a symbol of Lyons’s sincerity, vide below and Chapter 1 on ‘Deloraining’. There had been some criticism of the policy speeches of 1931 and 1934 having been delivered at Sydney; Sawer, 98. 1906 Lyons policy speech, ‘Successful Government’, 28 September 1937, A1928 670/112, NAA, Canberra, quoted in Whitington, House, 65, from the Sydney Morning Herald, 29 September 1937; also quoted in part in Anon., “The Defence of Australia”: 133. pace Whitington, 65, Lyons never questioned Labor’s patriotism, only its judgement. 1907 It is difficult to sustain the view that Parkhill was ‘a loyal fan of the Singapore strategy’; M. Murfett, “The Singapore Strategy,” in Between Empire and Nation: Australia’s External Relations from Federation to the Second World War, eds C. Bridge and B. Attard, 233, given the interrogation that he had initiated and his scepticism during the conference itself; vide Questions and Papers on Defence, DAFP, vol.1, 20, 28 April 1937, 1908 Argus, 20 October 1937, 1, g-h. Lyons stated that Labor’s policy of ‘independence’ would take Australia out of the Empire, although he maintained his own advocacy of autonomous policy control. 1909 vide Chapter 1. 1910 For example, David Day on ABC radio 774, Melbourne, 31 March 2003, that the conservatives refused to countenance Labor’s emphasis on local defence during the 1937 election. 1911 Lyons policy speech, “Successful Government”, 28 September 1937, A1928 670/112; Martin, “The Politics of the Depression”, 115. As always in electioneering, the figures were loose, but the thrust was true enough; £11.5 million was the entire defence appropriation of 1937/38; Esthus, 63. This represented at least 10% of all government expenditure; Ross, Armed and Ready, 115, Table 4-2, although his figure is £9.7 million. 1912 Curtin policy speech, 20 September 1937 and CPD, vol.154, 741-2, 8 December 1937; Meaney, Australia and the World, 433-5. 1913 Anon., “The Defence of Australia,”: 133-4. Also Round Table, no.107 (June 1937): 664. Local aircraft manufacturing became a reality at Fishermen’s Bend by 1939, vide Chapter 7; Sawer, 98. Canberra adhered to US aircraft over British types, including the NA33 (Wirraway), to the consternation of Whitehall; McCarthy, “Australia and Imperial Defence…”: 31. 257 brought about Parkhill’s political demise.1914 Lyons might have abandoned his economic caution several months earlier, but he had not abandoned the electoral appeal to safety that had swept him to office in 1931: a vote for Lyons was portrayed in UAP advertisements as the ‘SAFE’ option, both nationally and personally.1915 This appeal ultimately proved more attractive than Labor’s ‘lonely road’, as Earle Page tendentiously termed it, even if Curtin called for sufficient air and land power to repel an invader.1916

The most heat during the campaign was generated by one particular aspect of defence, the issue of conscription, as much a personal as a political topic, for its resurrection was something of a tilt at Lyons’s reputed integrity.1917 The issue also indicated a distancing between prime minister and most other ministers that would broaden in the following year, as Lyons pushed his opposition to the measure to the brink. His references to conscription on the hustings in October seemed more like those of a man on a personal campaign than the electoral statements of a prime minister. Labor chiefly feared the compulsion of overseas service, unaware of the London conversations in which Lyons and Parkhill had evaded any suggestion of an expeditionary force.1918 If the opposition had difficulty countering implications of imperial disloyalty and outright charges of ‘isolationism’, the emotional weapon of conscription offered some opportunity to balance the electoral scales, especially since there were UAP divisions that could be exploited.1919 In suggesting that the Prime Minister had slavishly agreed in London to introduce universal service, Labor was resurrecting some old bogies from the conscription debates of 1916-17, as reiterated by two of Lyons’s chief critics on the left, Ogilvie and Lang.1920

Lyons found suggestions of compulsion personally disturbing from the beginning, dismissing speculation about conscription as ‘ludicrous…too ludicrous to be taken seriously’ in

1914 Parkhill lost the seat of Warringah, NSW. After the election, there were rumours that his unseating had been assisted by the influence of British financial interests upset at the ordering of the Wirraway; Green, Servant, 110. Casey thought the loss was due to ‘personal reasons’; Casey to Bruce, 17 November 1937, A1421/4/13, NAA, Canberra. His successor in the seat, Percy Spender, became a prominent critic of the government’s foreign policy. 1915 The UAP took out full-page advertisements in the press featuring a half-page portrait of Lyons and the slogan: ‘The People’s Verdict. Carry on-Lyons. We Trust You. In Your Hands Australia is SAFE. Our Jobs are SAFE. Our Homes are SAFE’; Sydney Morning Herald, 22 October 1937, 5. Lyons offered ‘safe, sound government’ for the future; Martin, “The Politics of the Depression”, 115. 1916 Hasluck, Government, 24, 85; Day, Curtin, 351; Whitington, House, 64; Curtin, CPD, vol.154, 108-9, 25 August 1937; Andrews, History of Australian Foreign Policy, 78; Sawer, 98-9; Curtin policy speech, 20 September 1937; Meaney, Australia and the World, 433-5. 1917 Lasswell, 29, on such a reputation. Walter, 279, on it becoming the subject’s ‘Life Myth’. 1918 Andrews, “Australian Labour and Foreign Policy”: 28, on the general Labor opposition to conscription. 1919 pace Whitington, House, 65, Lyons never questioned Labor’s patriotism outright, only the wisdom of its desire to distance itself from imperial co-operation. Earle Page was less reluctant; Hasluck, Government, 85. Curtin was said to have rejected party advice to steer his electoral attention away from defence; Day, Curtin, 353. It learned the lesson of the electoral loss of October 1937, citing a policy of ‘NO ISOLATION’ in the Wilmot by-election of 27 May 1939 for Lyons’s former seat, which the ALP won; Labor pamphlet, May 1939, CP167/1/5, NAA, Canberra. Enid Lyons, Carrion Crows, 57, noted the widespread belief that voluntaryism would be inadequate in the future. The ALP had its own divisions on ‘isolationism’ which Lyons exploited during the campaign, Harris, 137. 1920 A. Ogilvie, Tasmanian Labor premier since 1934, linked the 1937 vote with the referenda of 1916-17; undated 1937 newspaper clipping by Clive Turnbull, M2270/1/10, NAA, Melbourne. Lang suggested that the poll was as much a vote on conscription as those of 1916-17; Anon., “External Affairs and the Election”: 391. 258 Sydney as early as 28 July 1937,1921 but it persisted and he was never quite capable of sloughing the suspicions of apostasy of those determined to believe them─ a vote for Labor could therefore be considered the ‘safe’ option for those opposed to compulsive service. Rumours about the UAP disposition towards conscription were not new; Hankey had noted them in January 1935.1922 Hughes’s Australia and War Today of 1935 had also been critical of Scullin’s abolition of compulsory militia service, but this was a ‘private’ expression and the government remained committed to voluntary service, as it had been since the first rearmament program of 1933.1923 The Army and its Military Board were at odds with the government on this issue, for in April 1936 Lavarack sought a peacetime army of 130,000 conscripts as an alternative to the present Militia (whose numbers stubbornly refused to rise above 30,000).1924 Parkhill, however, reiterated the government’s commitment to voluntaryism in his June defence 1936 speech and castigated the Board for any public suggestion that such a policy was inadequate─ meanwhile, militia numbers rose to 35,000, thought to be the minimum level required in peacetime.1925 The fact that the issue had not been raised at the London conference, against the wishes of the Admiralty, accounts for Lyons’s perplexity on his return in 1937, when faced with accusations of a secret deal that would see a conscripted expeditionary force doing Britain’s bidding.1926

The Prime Minister was determined to nullify any suggestion that he was planning conscription, expressing a confidence in a July speech that Australian manhood would take up the burden of defence without the ‘evil’ of compulsion, a very personal description that certainly drew a line against in favour of the measure, whatever their political allegiances.1927 He was indignant that his integrity had been questioned and throughout the subsequent campaign Lyons expressed a level of personal indignation akin to the preciousness of March 1931.1928 Lyons was never more forthright than in his denials of these weeks. In his policy speech on 28 September, the ‘Deloraining’ speaker referred to the present policy as ‘eminently satisfactory’ and sought to stress collegiality: ‘The Government saw no reason to depart from it.’1929 Of Labor’s accusations,

1921 Lyons speech at Sydney, later published as a pamphlet, Defence Aspects of the Imperial Conference: Australasian Position, 28 July 1937, MP1587/1/218AO. 1922 Hankey Diary, 4 January 1935, CAB 63/66. He was concerned about the prospect. 1923 Hughes, Australia and War Today, 120. Scullin’s defence cuts of 1929-30 saw an end to militia compulsion, Fairbanks, 28; Robertson, Scullin, 213. Pearce’s 1933 Statement, 25 September 1933, B1535 749/1/20, had called for young men to volunteer for the Militia. 1924 Horner, Defence Supremo, 48. Lavarack’s figure could be the origin of the government’s ‘nucleus’ of seven divisions, vide Chapter 4 and above. 1925 Parkhill speech, Sydney, “The Defence of Australia”, 15 June 1936, MP 1587/1 218AO. The Militia was then composed of 27,000 men; Parkhill to Military Board, 22 September 1936, A5954 800/20, NAA, Canberra. The minister repeated the policy in the parliament on 28 October 1936; CPD, vol.152, 1349. The Militia had reached 35,000 by September 1937; Parkhill speech on Defence estimates, 8 September 1937, M282 NN/1, NAA, Melbourne. 1926 British Naval Board minute, 8 December 1936, MP1049/9/1846/4/67, NAA, Melbourne. Curtin implied some deal with Britain on conscription in his policy speech on 20 September 1937; Souter, Acts, 308. 1926 Lyons speech at Sydney, 28 July 1937, MP1587/1/218AO. 1927 Lyons in Sydney Morning Herald, 14 and 19 October 1937, quoted in Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, 249. 1928 He had then been accused of venality, vide Chapter 1. 1929 Lyons policy speech, “Successful Government”, 28 September 1937, A1928 670/112. On “Deloraining”, where Lyons was irrevocably committed to his electoral promises, vide Chapter 1. Enid Lyons observed on conscription in 259 he denied even ‘an atom of truth’.1930 Recent charges had obviously stung this extraordinarily sensitive man. Dame Enid was similarly afflicted by self-righteous indignation, even stating that she would vote against any government that intended to introduce conscription.1931 The normally thicker-skinned Parkhill, himself rattled by Labor’s ‘lies’, instructed UAP candidates accordingly of the party line in October─ they were reminded to propagate Lyons’s denial of any such commitment in London and of the minister’s own recruitment broadcast of 16 July 1936, where he had cited that militia service was not for overseas service, but only for the defence of ‘hearth and home’.1932 Lyons’s own ardour was undiminished in the following weeks─ campaigning in rural Victoria in the week before the 23 October poll, he gave a ‘solemn’ declaration that his government would never introduce conscription, later substantiated by a politically unprecedented, personal statutory declaration to that effect.1933 At Daylesford, on 20 October, he further denied Labor ‘lies’, reiterating that no commitment had been given in London. Directly addressing Labor’s linkage of the issue with the old disputes of 1916-17, he reminded his Victorian audience that he had been the anti-conscriptionist leader in his own State at that time ‘and that was where he still stood’: he gladly accepted the forthcoming poll as a ‘third referendum’ on conscription.1934 The Prime Minister repeated, in his final electoral broadcast of 22 October 1937, what he had said at his final rally (at Launceston), on the previous day: there would be no conscription under his administration.1935 Curtin refused to accept these political and personal assurances (noting that conservatives always favoured conscription),1936 but while the cabinet machinations of late-1938 validated his scepticism about the current government, he had underestimated Lyons’s personal determination and was mistaken to tar him with the conservative brush.1937

If the poll of 23 October 1937 was considered a verdict on defence policy and/or a third referendum on conscription, both sides could take some solace. The Lyons government was returned, but with a decreased majority in both houses ─ the ministerial casualties included Parkhill and Pearce, the loss of the former a blow to Lyons in his collegial task of rearmament, but the latter a boost for the unfettered appeasement that Lyons and others now sought to apply in external policy.1938 Nevertheless, Lyons had his electoral ‘hat-trick’ and even amidst this unprecedented victory he could not resist scratching the itch of conscription, further indicating the

1972: ‘This was one of the things about which he was always adamant, he would not depart from anything he had promised in an election.’; audio interview with Mel Pratt, March 1972, Tape 1. 1930 Lyons policy speech, “Successful Government”, 28 September 1937, A1928 670/112. 1931 Argus, 20 October 1937, 1, g-h. 1932 Parkhill on ‘Labour [sic] lies’; Parkhill electioneering notes, 16 October 1937, A5954/69/1076/20, NAA, Canberra. 1933 Lyons at Bendigo, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 October 1937; at Echuca, he referred to his war-graves visit, ibid. Sawer, 99, on the statutory declaration. 1934 Lyons at Daylesford, Sydney Morning Herald, 8, a,b. vide Chapter 1 on his anti-conscriptionism of 1916-17. 1935 Lyons broadcast, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 October 1937; Lyons at Launceston, Sydney Morning Herald, 22 October 1937, where he also denied any intention to resign. 1936 Curtin at Norwood, SA, Sydney Morning Herald, 22 October 1937. 1937 vide Chapter 7, for Lyons’s defiance of his cabinet on conscription. 1938 Souter, Acts, 308-9. The UAP lost 4 seats in the house, giving the coalition 43 seats to Labor’s 29. 260 depth of his personal sentiment. On the day after the poll, at a time when many political executives would have sought to bury such a contentious electoral issue (particularly those who espoused consensus), he told a press conference at Devonport that conscription had no place in his policy, remarks presumably now addressed to conscriptionists within his own party rather than to his vanquished Labor opponents.1939 The electoral victory of 1937 was clearly taken by Lyons as an endorsement of himself and of his government’s ‘peace’ policy (although external policy had barely been mentioned during the campaign). On his return to the mainland, the victor told his newsreel audience that he saw no reason why Australia should not continue on her path to progress and prosperity ‘provided that we have peace in the world and my Government will do everything within its power to make that peace possible’.1940 The Mercury had already been told by Lyons in his prime ministerial capacity that ‘Our policy will be one of peace.’1941 At the close of 1937 therefore, Lyons’s aspiration to be a peacemaker was undiminished and waxing.1942 Yet there was also an acknowledgement that his government could only pursue that goal ‘within its power’, which remained limited on the international stage.

Ω

The prospects of success for that peace policy seemed as distant at the year’s end as they had been at any time since the end of the Rhineland and Abyssinian affairs, in April-May 1936. The new year had been an annus mirabilis for Australian appeasement policy and Lyons’s personal diplomacy, but without the results that Lyons himself had hoped for1943 ─ the Pacific Pact was unconsummated and a major war was raging in north-east Asia. Disappointment was likely matched by frustration, for in Lyons’s thinking, the second could have been avoided had the first been taken up by Whitehall in a serious fashion.1944 At home, rearmament was claiming ever greater proportions of a strained budget, now in deficit, at a time when Britain’s defensive preparations were still considered inadequate by the Australian best placed to know, Bruce, who sought remedying talks with Chamberlain before the year was over.1945 These debits were set beside the credits of modest Anglo-Italian agreement and the acceptance of wider appeasement at a Whitehall under new management and by the broader Commonwealth─ both of these developments held future promise. Yet, only one of the trio of aggressors (Italy) seemed ‘satisfied’; another (Japan) was again running rampant, whilst the third (Germany) was in a state

1939 Lyons at Devonport, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 October 1937, 13, c; Mercury, 25 October 1937, Enid Lyons Papers, MS 4852/5, NLA, Canberra; Holsti, 134, on the unrehearsed ‘spontaneity’ of press conferences. 1940 Video newsreel, “Prime Minister Lyons interviewed after Victory at the Polls”, n.d., 002 8139, ScreenSound, Canberra. 1941 Mercury, 25 October 1937, Enid Lyons Papers, MS 4852/5. 1942 So too was the aspiration of his wife; She passed on to him, in November 1937, articles from the Contemporary Review on Pacifism and the Peace Movement sent to her by Dr. J. Bean, brother of the historian; Enid Lyons to Bean, 5 November 1937, Enid Lyons Papers, MS4852/2, NLA, Canberra, having read them ‘with much interest’. 1943 His expectations had been high, vide above; Lyons, New Year radio broadcast, 7BU Burnie, 31 December 1936, Joseph Lyons Papers, MS 4851/2/16. 1944 Lyons at Darlinghurst, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 October 1937; Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, 273. 1945 Bruce to Casey, 1 December 1937, A11857/50. Conversations were held between Chamberlain and Bruce on defence in December 1937; DAFP, vol.1, 123-6. 261 of flux. Lyons, as an appeaser, was certainly anxious about the future and he began the new year with a personal call for ‘divine guidance’, something that suggested a sense of disquiet about the future prospects of the policy with which he had so associated himself.1946

1946 Lyons New Year radio address, 7BU, Burnie, 31 December 1937, Episode Title no, AUD D 2992, ScreenSound, Canberra. 262 Chapter 6: annus horribilis − The Climax of Appeasement, January-September 1938

‘The whole thing is profoundly disturbing and it is hard to foresee a satisfactory outcome without a long period of great stress and sacrifice.’1947 Joseph Lyons, 6 April 1938, on international turmoil after the Anschluss.

‘Are we to be allowed to live our lives in peace or are we to be plunged against our will into war?’1948 Joseph Lyons at Glenbrook, NSW, 3 September 1938.

Anglo-Italian accord – Anschluss – the fourth rearmament program – sanctions and Yampi embargo – the Czech crisis – September days and nights – ‘X-day’.

If 1937 was an annus mirabilis for Lyons’s peacemaking, then 1938 proved the opposite, although Lyons had begun it with optimism about future ‘peace and prosperity’, given the ‘guidance of divine providence’.1949 There was to be no change to the mixture of conciliation and rearmament that his government had applied since 1933, quite the reverse, for it was a year marked by the intense application (through Whitehall) of wider appeasement to Europe’s ‘two storm centres’, a process made easier for Chamberlain by Eden’s resignation from the Foreign Office in February.1950 London now applied appeasement with Lyons’s approval and counsel, for he continued to be a self-declared optimist, resolved that ‘the realities of the situation must be fairly faced to secure some degree of appeasement and to better relations’.1951 Italy seemed receptive and a measure of improvement in Anglo-Italian relations had been secured by April 1938, but Germany remained Chamberlain’s ‘key’ and the Anschluss showed the need for the appeasers to focus more sharply on Berlin.1952

The period also revealed the increasing difficulty of balancing escalating rearmament, through a fourth program of local (not imperial) priority, with conciliation ─ the Yampi episode from March 1938 marked an over-shadowing of Australian appeasement by rearmament, at least in East Asia.1953 Nevertheless, Lyons continued to appease Japan, despite further economic aggravation and a hardening of attitude on both sides. In Europe, the efforts of Chamberlain for conciliation continued apace, with Lyons’s strong assent, and the first Czech crisis (September 1938) demonstrated that there was still no greater advocate of wider appeasement in Canberra than the Australian prime minister ─ his task and that of his circle was now made easier by the

1947 Lyons to Bruce, 6 April 1938, A2908 G14, NAA, Canberra. 1948 Lyons speech to the Second Unofficial Conference on British Commonwealth Relations, Glenbrook, NSW, 3 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.5 (1938), 107ff. 1949 Lyons New Year radio address, 7BU, Burnie, 31 December 1937, Episode Title no, AUD D 2992, ScreenSound, Canberra. 1950 Chamberlain’s description of Berlin and Rome, 19 February 1938, Journals, Chamberlain Papers, NC 2/24A, 68. 1951 Lyons said he was ‘not a pessimist’; speech at Melbourne Town Hall, 29 July 1937, Age, 30 July 1937, Piesse Papers, MS882/9/952. The quote is in Council of Defence meeting, “Report on Progress of Developmental Programmes”, 24 February 1938, Hughes Papers, MS1538/42/2, NLA, Canberra. 1952 Chamberlain to Lord Weir, 15 August 1937, Chamberlain Papers, miscellaneous correspondence, NC 7/11/30/141. This chapter has applied the case-study approach to the two crises of the Anschluss and the first Czech crisis. 1953 This over-shadowing did not occur in his European appeasement until after Munich; vide Chapter 7. 263 departure of Pearce, which left Lyons as the unquestioned manager of external affairs after November 1937 (although he had been acting as de facto minister since the time of the Imperial Conference) to the frustration of the new minister, Hughes. The level of Australian involvement in the events of those ‘critical September weeks’, as Lyons later called them,1954 was far stronger than has been acknowledged by any commentator, for this crisis marked the climax of his recent efforts to secure better consultation in imperial foreign policy-making and witnessed a further attempt at some ad hoc participation.1955 The role of Lyons in the process is examined here in unprecedented documentary detail along with that of Bruce, whose status at Whitehall reached a peak in 1938, his having been reappointed by his prime minister to Australia House at the turn of the year as Lyons was eager to retain his services.1956 The climax of this crisis arguably brought about the greatest diplomatic triumph of political appeasement: the Munich Pact.1957 It is argued that Lyons regarded his role during these final September days, particularly on ‘X-day’, as significant and with good reason. Although it is extremely difficult to assess dominion influence, which necessarily occurred ‘at one remove’,1958 a series of mutually supporting probabilities gained through a sifting of many disparate sources points to the Australian contribution at the climax of the crisis as significant, if not necessarily instrumental1959 ─ at the very least the period marked the high tide of personal collaboration between the two appeasing prime ministers and seemed to signify the success of consultation on the personal level.1960 It also contained another revealing episode of ad hoc participation in imperial policy-making (in the style of 1936). Nevertheless, the year was ultimately viewed as an annus horribilis, for a general settlement in Europe remained elusive─ Lyons ended the year more, not less, concerned about the future prospects of peacemaking, despite his best efforts to persuade others, and himself, that a new era of peace had dawned.

I

The year began well for the appeasers. The Imperial Conference had acknowledged the need for wider appeasement to be applied to Europe and the first months of 1938 saw further progress in the consequent march towards the Anglo-Italian détente that Lyons had advocated

1954 Lyons to Bruce, 25 October 1938, M104/6/2, NAA, Canberra. 1955 Hasluck, Government, 92-5, suggested that Lyons was confusing information with consultation, but he admitted the shift from ‘acquiescence to participation’ was apparent by September 1938. It proved short-lived, vide Chapter 7. vide Chapter 4 for the attempt at ad hoc participation during the 1936 Rhineland crisis. 1956 I am conscious of Martin Gilbert’s warning that an historian cannot reconstruct the sequence of events in a crisis from documents alone; Seldon, 5, although this case-study come close to doing so. Mansergh, Survey, 428, noted the absence of much analysis of the dominion role during the Czech crisis. 1957 D. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 139, noted the ‘vulnerability’ of British premiers to dominion representation. This was especially so with Chamberlain, given the family tradition; ibid., 140. 1958 Mansergh, Experience, 281, referring, for example, to the links of Bruce and Massey with Dawson of The Times and with the Round Table group. 1959 Stanford, 59, on mutually supporting probabilities. Kitson Clark, 59, called them ‘probable deductions’. 1960 ‘X-day’ is found in Chamberlain’s notebooks, 28 September 1938, Chamberlain Papers, NC 2/25, University of Birmingham Archives. 264 since mid-1935 and counselled to Chamberlain in June 1937.1961 That such détente would need to address the legitimacy of Italian East Africa was recognised by the British cabinet in the first months of 1938, bringing with it concern about the dominion response, but there need have been no anxiety over Canberra’s likely reaction.1962 Lyons had already hinted at a British recognition of Manchukuo, according to Latham’s processes and through his Pact proposal, as the sine qua non of peace in his own region ─ he soon gave evidence that he viewed Abyssinia in a like manner, mutatis mutandis. The issue of the recognition of Italian East Africa was certainly in the air in early-1938,1963 but there were still considerable obstacles to any policy of recognition at Whitehall, where Eden and the Foreign Office also linked Abyssinia and Manchukuo, but not in a manner conducive to appeasement.1964 The State Department did the same and Lyons would find himself at variance with Cordell Hull’s opposition to any ‘green light’ for the ‘desperado’ aggressors.1965 There was also a considerable body of opinion at Canberra opposed to any recognition, including the new Minister of External Affairs, Hughes, who viewed any such suggestions as a reversion to ‘the laws of the jungle’, terminology reminiscent of Pearce in March 1936.1966 Lyons’s outlook, however, was closer to that of Rome, for the Italians too could see no reason why the west baulked at Abyssinia when ‘la couleuvre of Manchuria’ had been swallowed1967 ─ nor could Lyons and it was ultimately the view of the extreme appeasers such as himself that predominated on this issue in Canberra, not that of Hughes.1968

Accordingly, when MacDonald, the Dominions Secretary, floated the possibility at the beginning of 1938 of a reopening of Anglo-Italian talks in the light of the recognition of Abyssinia by many including Eire,1969 Lyons eagerly agreed on behalf of ‘My colleagues and I’ and later ‘we’ (signs of his personal enthusiasm), seeing it as a matter of ‘the utmost importance’

1961 Although there was no necessary connection between his counsel and the process; vide earlier chapters. 1962 The cabinet foreign affairs committee discussed the issue and the likely dominion response in March-April 1938; Carlton, “The Dominions and British Policy…”: 73ff. 1963 Hitler used a German recognition of Manchukuo to signal that Berlin now favoured a Japanese victory in the eastern war; Lammers, Reichskanzlei, to Ribbentrop, 17 February 1938, DGFP, series D, vol.1, 839; pace Iriye, “Asian Factor,” 238, where the decision is stated to have been in January. 1964 The Foreign Office remained adamant that there should be no recognition of Abyssinia, for this would lead to renewed demands for the recognition of Manchukuo; FO minute, 10 August 1938, PREM 1/276/266, PRO, London. Vansittart, who had supported the idea of eastern recognition was no longer the head of the department and Eden opposed it; Lamb, Mussolini and the British, 177. 1965 Ambassador Grew in Tokyo had noted that the League policy of the non-recognition of Manchukuo was in jeopardy, given suggestions of a recognition of Abyssinia; Grew to Cordell Hull, State Department, FRUS, 1936, vol.4, 261-4, 6 August 1936. Hull had referred to the aggressors as ‘desperado nations’; Cordell Hull to Lindsay, US ambassador, London, n.d., quoted in Esthus, 63-4. 1966 Andrews, Isolationism, 70. New Zealand opposed recognition in the League in May 1938; Carter, 296. 1967 The observation of Aloisi, the Italian delegate at Geneva, made to Eden in 1936; Shen, 96. This view overestimated the West’s acceptance of Manchuria and underestimated Japan’s continuing displeasure at its non- recognition. 1968 Australia did not offer de jure recognition until November 1938, pace Esthus, 63-4 that it did so in April; McIntyre, 138, makes a similar error. The April agreement with Italy, which promised Abyssinian recognition, was not effective until fully implemented in November 1938, vide below and Chapter 7. 1969 Malcolm MacDonald, Dominions Secretary, to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 121, 27 January 1938. Eire became the first part of the Commonwealth to acknowledge the new order in east Africa, on 14 December 1937; Current Notes, vol.4 (1938), 5-6. Italy had now left the League; Mack Smith, Mussolini, 252. 265 and wishing to be kept ‘fully advised’.1970 There was, however, the major obstacle of the opposition of the Foreign Secretary, Eden, who had resisted Chamberlain’s July 1937 initiative at the outset.1971 Ultimately the affair led to Eden’s resignation, on 20 February 1938, and the subsequent re-organisation of the Foreign Office in favour of the appeasers.1972 Within days of this watershed some Westminster MPs thought they had detected a shift away from Eden’s Leamington commitment to collective security when Chamberlain suggested in the Commons on 21 February that small countries ought not to expect the League to protect them.1973 The Eden resignation was, however, the endgame, not the harbinger, of the policy shift towards appeasement at Whitehall, as Lyons recognised even from his great distance ─ he said as much in parliament in March, where he suggested that it was Eden who had shifted from an agreed-upon policy of Anglo-Italian conversations.1974 As Bruce described it at the time, and Lyons remained largely reliant on his analysis, the move was intended to bring about conditions that Lyons had pursued for some years through lobbying and personal diplomacy─ Chamberlain wished, the High Commissioner said, ‘to undertake conversations with both Germany and Italy’ in order to address ‘justifiable grievances’ and to bring about ‘a general appeasement’.1975

This was music to the ears of the Australian prime minister, if not to all his cabinet, including the rising Menzies, who was thought to admire Eden, and Hughes, although Lyons expressed private confidence to Whiskard that he could manage the dissidence of the latter, as he had long done, an indication that the prime minister now thought ministerial opposition to his external affairs agenda to be of little significance.1976 Lyons’s parliamentary statement on the matter on 27 April 1938, although supposedly even-handed, was far from his usual bland recitations in this forum; it clearly approved of Chamberlain’s actions, stating that Eden had been

1970 Lyons to MacDonald, DAFP, vol.1, 122, 2 February 1938. He had expressed similar enthusiasm about Italian détente at the Imperial Conference, vide Chapter 5. 1971 Eden thought it wise not to be ‘over-eager’, 8 February 1938, The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 1938-45, ed. D. Dilks (London: Cassell, 1971), 45. Eden, like Vansittart, had opposed the Chamberlain-Mussolini letter of 27 July 1937, DBFP, 2nd Series, vol.19, 64, 27 July 1937, footnote 1, 120, detailing Vansittart’s opposing minute, 29 July 1937 and Eden’s support of this position, 30 July 1937. Chamberlain and Eden had long disagreed over Italian policy; Adams, 77ff.; Peters, 295; R. Douglas, “Chamberlain and Eden 1937-8.” Journal of Contemporary History, vol.13, no.1 (January 1978), passim, for a general account of their relations. 1972 The concealment of the 27 July 1937 letter by Chamberlain was the issue triggering the resignation; Chamberlain Diary, 19 February 1938, Neville Chamberlain Papers, NC 2/24A, University of Birmingham Archives; Colvin, 97; Feiling, 327; Thorpe, 205ff. Vansittart was replaced as head of the FO by Cadogan, whilst Chamberlain’s trusted adviser, Sir Horace Wilson, became his chief adviser on foreign affairs; Rock, 80; Jenkins, Baldwin, 188; Taylor, English History, 405; Roberts, Holy Fox, 83. D. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 85. Chamberlain saw Vansittart as an obstruction to any attempt at friendly contact with the dictators; Colvin, 47. 1973 On Eden’s Leamington speech, 20 November 1936, vide Chapter 5. Two MPs, Crookshank and Bernays, wrote to Chamberlain on 22 February 1938 and were invited to discuss with him what they perceived as a policy shift away from League commitments; Chamberlain miscellaneous correspondence, NC 7/11/31/92. Rock, 61, on Chamberlain and the back-bench. Colley, 50, thought that London had thrown over collective security for ‘diplomatic bargaining’. 1974 Lyons conversation with Whiskard, UK High Commissioner, Whiskard to Dominions Office, 2 March 1938, DO 35/552/F43/71, PRO, London. Lyons, CPD, vol.155, 535-6, 27 April 1938; Current Notes, vol.4 (1938), 206ff. 1975 Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 127, 22 February 1938; Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 309, quoting M104/6/1. The ‘Commonwealth Government’ sent a telegram to MacDonald seeking clarification of Chamberlain’s 21 February Commons statement on the resignation, DAFP, vol.1, 129, 6 March 1938. 1976 Martin, Menzies, 233, suggested that Eden was Menzies’s ‘hero’ and he sent a letter of consolation to him. Lyons expected ‘difficulty’ with Hughes but he was adept at handling such; Lyons conversation, Whiskard, UK High Commissioner, Canberra, to Dominions Office, 2 March 1938, DO 35/552/F43/71, PRO, London. 266 an obstacle to Anglo-Italian agreement and implying that he had acted contrary to the policy agreed upon at the Imperial Conference ─ his departure was thus welcome.1977 Such statements in the period of Lyons’s dominance of external affairs (mid-1937 onwards) were increasingly coming to express his personal views (and those of like-minded appeasers in cabinet such as Casey and Page), alongside those of the government for which he spoke ─ indeed any distinction in his mind between his own world-view and government policy would become further blurred as 1938 proceeded.1978 Lyons could now be considered to have attained much the same level of prime ministerial dominance of this portfolio as had been exercised by some of his predecessors, such as Deakin, Bruce and Hughes himself, for the view that had emerged from Canberra in the period following the Eden resignation was the one sanctioned by Lyons, approving of developments at Whitehall ─ this is not to say that there were not other ministers who agreed with him, but it is to say that the dissidents were not given a public voice and that the impression of collegiality was thus offered when in fact a particular view had dominated.1979 This too would become something of a pattern in the remaining year of the Lyons government.

The only disturbing factor about the Eden resignation from Lyons’s perspective had been the lack of direct prior Whitehall-Canberra consultation. The Prime Minister accordingly ensured that the UK High Commissioner, Whiskard, knew of his displeasure by ventilating it in two immediate press statements, where he warned that the absence of such consultation left Australia ‘free to determine her own policy’, an echo of his implied threat of policy divergence in the months before the Abyssinian war in 1935.1980 Whiskard was confident he could explain that this absence was due to the ‘speed of events’, which had not permitted ‘advance information or consultation’,1981 a response that seems likely to have contributed to Lyons’s more frequent use of the telephone from this point onwards. It was to be his preferred means of direct and immediate consultation in imperial foreign policy-making during 1938, for it seemed that Lyons did not fully believe his own concession in April that the level of consultation had, after all, been ‘adequate’ ─ this had certainly not been the impression that he had conveyed at the time through his press statements.1982 Later in the year, when Lyons defended the Dominions Office against an attack by

1977 Lyons, CPD, vol.155, 535-6, 27 April 1938; Current Notes, vol4 (1938), 206ff. 1978 Cox, 74, on the ‘leap of imagination’ required to assess the subject’s thinking, but vide below for an analysis of Lyons’s thinking during the crisis of September. 1979 On prime ministerial dominance; P. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 109-114, 189-90; “Introduction,” in Between Empire and Nation, eds. C. Bridge and B. Attard, 3-4; Thompson, 16-17; Meaney, Search, 92, 191; M. Grattan (ed. and intro.), Australian Prime Ministers, 16; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 23-4; Weller, First, 184-5. The dissidence of Menzies and Hughes indicated that collegiality did not exist, therefore I have assumed the dominance of the views of the Lyons circle, according to the analytical methods outlined in my Introduction. 1980 Whiskard, UK High Commissioner, Canberra, to Dominions Office, 1 March 1938, DO 35/552/F43/69. He made similar threats of divergence in August; vide below. 1981 Whiskard to Dominions Office, 1 March 1938, DO 35/552/F43/69. 1982 Lyons, CPD, vol.155, 535-6, 27 April 1938; Current Notes, vol.4 (1938), 206ff. On the two press statements; Whiskard, UK High Commissioner, Canberra, to Dominions Office, 2 March 1938, DO 35/552/F43/71. Lyons resorted to unflattering descriptions again in August; Age, 13 August 1938, 15, f, g, significantly saying nothing about the Eden resignation. Curtin was concerned about poor imperial consultation, but Lyons refused his request for a parliamentary recall; Andrews, Isolationism, 107; Herald, 4 March 1938, 3, b. This was the first of several occasions 267 Hughes directed against its poor methods of consultation, he significantly referred to the ‘cordial assistance’ he had received ‘where communication had been by telephone’, a candid indication of where the prime ministerial preference was now directed.1983

With the obstacle of Eden removed, Lyons wished Anglo-Italian negotiations ‘every success’, in March 1938:1984 it was ‘now or never’, as Chamberlain had put it.1985 His hunger for that success was increased by the crisis of the Anschluss, in mid-March, which threatened the process of rapprochement with Rome. By 20 March 1938, Lyons was urging his cabinet to endorse a cable to Chamberlain encouraging a ‘settlement’ with Italy, an example of prime ministerial initiative replacing debate on foreign policy in this forum, with Pearce no longer a minister and close to enforced retirement.1986 A cable as suggested by Lyons was accordingly dispatched on the following day, in which he expressed his strong, individual approval for an elusive Anglo-Italian accord, cloaked under cabinet collectivity:

My Government, in the belief that an understanding with Italy will be the most valuable contribution to general appeasement at the present time and in the best interests of the Empire, hopes that no effort will be spared to come to terms with Italy.1987

The Prime Minister was insistent that this accord and, by implication, a recognition of the recent Anschluss ought to form parts of a ‘general agreement for the principle of friendly collaboration in the rectification of grievances’.1988

When an enhanced Anglo-Italian Agreement was concluded on 16 April 1938, one may speculate that Lyons personally felt with a measure of justification that this cable, along with his efforts extending back to mid-1935, had played some immeasurable part in its consummation.1989 Although he gave no indication of doing so, he was correct in his assumption that its principles were in conformity with the wider appeasement agreed to at the Imperial Conference.1990 Lyons had urged its pursuit in the strongest possible terms and its ‘happy outcome’ was consequently

that he refused to do so. He was heavily criticised in the press, even in the sympathetic Argus, Anon., “Foreign Affairs and Defence.” Round Table, vol.28 (June 1938), in Australian Commentaries, ed. L. Robson, 176. 1983 Hughes: Sydney Morning Herald, 9 August 1938, 11, d; Age, 10 August 1938, 13, d. Lyons’s response; Age, 13 August 1938, 15, f, g. 1984 Lyons statement, 3 March 1938, ‘Views of Dominion Governments on Anglo-Italian Agreement’, n.d., DO 35/552 PART 1, PRO, London. Mackenzie King was equally enthusiastic. 1985 Eden reported Chamberlain stating his ‘faith’ in Mussolini, in July 1937; Peters, 347. The quote is from Neville Chamberlain to Ivy Chamberlain, Rome, 3 March 1938, Neville Chamberlain Papers, NC 1/17/9, University of Birmingham Archives. She had advised on 22 February that Mussolini was keen for an agreement; ibid., NC 1/17/8. 1986 Cabinet Minutes, 20 March 1938, A2694, vol.18/2. Lyons urged a post-Anschluss ‘settlement’ with Germany in the same meeting; vide below. DAFP, vol.1, 148, footnote 1, 21 March 1938, notes that no record of any cabinet meetings in the few days before 21 March 1938 has been found. This is one such record, albeit brief. 1987 Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 148, 21 March 1938. 1988 ibid. 1989 There is not ‘adequate evidence’ to make such a conclusion; Stanford, 63ff. 1990 Lyons, CPD, vol.155, 535-6, 27 April 1938; Current Notes, vol.4 (1938), 206ff. 268 the more welcome, especially since the agreement promised the conditional recognition of Abyssinia, which Lyons was confident would now follow.1991 He congratulated both Chamberlain and Lord Perth (whom he had met twice) on behalf of himself and his colleagues,1992 and expansively welcomed the agreement in the press ‘with a lively sense of satisfaction’ as a ‘material contribution to the alleviation of tension and to the general appeasement of Europe’.1993 A short time later, he personally and confidentially assessed the agreement as ‘a success for world appeasement and coming together and negotiation with reasonableness’.1994 This pleasing state of affairs was thus both personally satisfying for Lyons as an admirer of the new Italy and dove- tailed with Australian self-interest, for it enhanced the freedom of transit through Suez, which Lyons, like his predecessors, now viewed as ‘an essential factor’ (his having twice personally travelled that strategic route).1995 This view perhaps owed something to Casey’s observations to Bruce in March that ‘it is a mighty uncomfortable thing to have an antagonistic Italy astride our main communications’.1996 In asserting the merits of the new accord, Lyons also expressed the view that ‘political ideology’ was no impediment to international understanding1997 ─ a repetition of the resolution agreed to at the Imperial Conference.1998 Accordingly, as he had once believed the earlier Anglo- Italian agreement of January 1937 was transferable to Japan,1999 Lyons now thought the current agreement a model for one with Germany, which could be attained through similar ‘reasonable negotiations’ in order to remedy her ‘unfair disabilities’, a view consistent with that he had espoused since 1935 (and which was shared by Casey).2000 Lyons accordingly personally assessed the current prospects of world peace and appeasement as ‘favourable’.2001 Frustrated as the months dragged by without the full implementation of the accord, however, he and his colleagues eventually urged Chamberlain (on 6 July 1938) to implement its provisions unilaterally, including

1991 Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 188, 19 April 1938. Esthus, 63-4, noted that Australia was the only dominion to display ‘positive interests’ in the development of British policy. The agreement called for an end to hostile propaganda, exchanges of military information and the delineation of regional interests. Recognition was promised after an Italian withdrawal from Spain. On Lyons’s confidence; CPD, vol.155, 535-6, 27 April 1938. 1992 Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 188, 19 April 1938. 1993 Lyons statement, 17 April 1938, Views of Dominion Governments on Anglo-Italian Agreement, n.d., DO 35/552 PART 1, PRO, London; Sydney Morning Herald, 18 April 1938, quoted in Andrews, Isolationism, 106. FDR thought the agreement ‘proof of the value of peaceful negotiation’; Officer, Washington, to External Affairs, 20 April 1938, A981 UNI 78 PART 3, enclosing favourable US press reaction; Esthus, 63-4, on FDR’s ‘sympathetic interest’. 1994 Lyons debating notes, What are the prospects for World Peace?, n.d., but mid-1938, Joseph Lyons Papers, MS 4851/15, NLA, Canberra. 1995 Lyons statement, 17 April 1938, Views of Dominion Governments on Anglo-Italian Agreement, DO 35/552 PART 1; quoted in Ovendale, Appeasement, 184-5. vide Chapter 3 on the views of Hughes, Bruce and Pearce on Suez. Enid Lyons Diary, 7 April 1937, MS 4852/30; Lyons, 11 November 1936, Current Notes, vol.2 (1936-7), 257. 1996 Casey to Bruce, 21 March 1938, A1421/4/28, NAA, Canberra, quoted in Hudson, League, 75. 1997 Lyons debating notes, What are the prospects for World Peace?, n.d., but mid-1938, MS 4851/15. 1998 Imperial Conference, Statement, 9 June 1937 (issued on 10/6/37), CP4/2. Chamberlain informed Neville Henderson, in April 1937, that he did not wish to interfere in Germany’s chosen form of government; Griffiths, 281-2. 1999 Lyons to Bruce, DAFP, vol.1, 12, 6 March 1937. 2000 Lyons debating notes, What are the prospects for World Peace?, n.d., but mid-1938, MS 4851/15. His view on German disability resembled that of Chamberlain, as reported in Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 127, 22 February 1938, vide below. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 255, 259 and 411, on Versailles guilt. 2001 Lyons debating notes, What are the prospects for World Peace?, n.d., but mid-1938, Joseph Lyons Papers, MS 4851/15. 269 the quid pro quo recognition of Abyssinia (although the Italians had failed to meet their conditions), as a matter of ‘paramount importance’ given the worsening situation in central Europe.2002 The British premier declined to do so, urging ‘patience’.2003 This was a further example of different perspectives between Canberra and London on European affairs and evidence that Australian lobbying at Whitehall could only achieve limited results. Lyons would show later in the year that he did not share the British view that Italy ought still to be treated as if on probation, perhaps mindful of Casey’s view that it would be better to throw Italy some ‘bones’ in order to keep her quiet and on side.2004

II

Despite these developments in the Mediterranean, it was not Rome but Berlin that presented Chamberlain’s ‘key to peace’ in 1938.2005 Hitherto largely attentive to Tokyo and Rome, Lyons was forced by circumstances in this year to shift his attention to central Europe, as he had briefly done in March 1936, when his view of Germany as a benign power was first tested. There were two further, more severe tests of that view in 1938, the first in March with the Anschluss.2006 While Lyons was not amongst those Catholics publicly critical of Nazi persecution of their co-religionists and did not give any indication of having been influenced by the 1937 Papal indictment Mit brennender Sorge,2007 his head was turned by the death of Catholic Austria in March 1938. Here, however, he seemed more concerned about Mussolini’s response and the ramifications for Anglo-Italian détente than about the extension of Nazi rule outside of Germany proper.

One may speculate that Lyons’s immediate inclination, as an appeaser with demonstrated sympathy for Germany’s plight and as one who shared Versailles guilt, was to accept this annexation as the corollary of correcting the putative ‘justifiable grievances’ brought about by the settlements of 1919,2008 which he knew through Bruce was the current view of Chamberlain.2009 The Austrian problem had long been seen as a potential flashpoint by Australian appeasers and they had long advocated acceptance of any pan-German union, although Canberra was not

2002 Lyons to Page, DAFP, vol.1, 227, 6 July 1938. Rotunda, 381, on the quid pro quo of Abyssinian recognition for Spanish withdrawal. Hankey was also urging unilateral implementation; Middlemas, 68. 2003 Page, London, to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 228, 7 July 1938. 2004 Casey to Bruce, 21 March 1938, A1421/4/28. 2005 Chamberlain to Lord Weir, 15 August 1937, Chamberlain Papers, miscellaneous correspondence, NC 7/11/30/141. 2006 vide Chapters 3 on his 1935 view and Chapter 4 for his sympathetic attitude to the German position in 1936. 2007 Andrews, Isolationism, 125, discusses the turning of Catholic opinion, including that of D.M. Jackson of the Advocate, due to the trials of nuns and monks in Germany. Joseph and Enid Lyons were liberal Catholics; Enid Lyons Diary, 28 February 1935, Enid Lyons Papers, MS4852/30; Lyons to Protestant Truth Society, Sydney, 1 April 1939, CP 167/1, NAA, Canberra. By 1939, they saw themselves as alienated from the Church hierarchy; Enid Lyons, So We, 266. They had met Cardinal Pacelli, later author of Mit brennender Sorge, in Rome in June 1935; ibid., 241. 2008 On the appeasers’ guilt over the 1919 settlements; Rock, 56, 86, where he quotes Gannon, “The British Press and Germany, 1936-9”, that this guilt was the product of ‘the liberal conscience’. The Nazis targeted these feelings in their approach to the English-speaking world; D. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 120ff., on the ‘Anglo-German Group’. 2009 Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 127, 22 February 1938. Chamberlain’s view of the Anschluss varied; he said on 21 May 1937 that he ‘sympathised’ with the idea; Holland, 198, quoting CAB 32/128, and was prepared to accept ‘peaceful’ expansion; Feiling, 333 quoting the Diary, 26 November 1937. He was less enthusiastic post facto and later regretful; Crozier, 323, quoting Chamberlain to Ida Chamberlain, 13 March 1939, Chamberlain Papers, NC 18/1/1041. 270 without its opponents, such as Hughes.2010 In Venice en route to London, in April 1937, Enid Lyons had noted that the Duce was due to meet the Chancellor ‘Schusnick’ (sic), ‘to discuss peace and other matters of moment to both countries’.2011 Shortly after, at the Imperial Conference in May, Lyons had followed Casey in suggesting that the issue of an Anschluss was not one that ought to trouble the Empire, repeatedly stating that he had no concern over any future German acquisitions in this region─ he advocated instead that she be given a ‘freer hand’, endorsing the calls of Casey and Hertzog for a ‘lessening the degree of restraints’ hitherto exercised against Germany.2012 Lyons followed these derivative observations with a more individual call on 1 June 1937 for a more ‘sympathetic understanding and treatment’ of Germany’s position, a stance which he suggested was now more possible than it had been two years before.2013 These sentiments were considered at that time to be contrary to the general opposition to Anschluss current in the Foreign Office and taken in the British cabinet as criticisms of Whitehall policy.2014 Bruce ensured that Lyons was aware of Eden’s disapproval of Australia’s acceptance of ‘peaceful German expansion eastwards’ before 1937 was over,2015 a knowledge that could arguably only have increased Lyons’s pleasure at Eden’s departure from the Foreign Office in the following February.

By 1938 differences had emerged within Australia’s own foreign bureau, External Affairs, over the nature of the coming German expansion and its consequences for European appeasement. The assessment from London, through Officer and Stirling (presumably also representing Bruce’s view), was not sanguine and stressed the dangers of German expansionism and rearmament, but this pessimism was not shared by members of the same department at a greater distance from European affairs.2016 In Canberra, the department remained confident in early-1937 that, although Berlin was seeking the creation of a ‘Germanic bloc’, the possibility of it including non-German minorities ‘practically ceases to exist’.2017 Lyons’s immediate reaction to this suggestion is unrecorded, but Chamberlain had reached similar conclusions by February 1938 and the departure of Eden had set the scene for a Whitehall perspective on Anschluss more

2010 He had foreseen its dangers and prospects in 1935; Hughes, Australia and War Today, 84. 2011 She meant von Schuschnigg; Enid Lyons Diary, 21-2 April 1937, MS 4852/30, for an account of the Venetian visit. 2012 Lyons, Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 28, fourth meeting of delegates, 22 May 1937, after Casey, DAFP, vol.1, 27, 21 May 1937; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 257. Woodard: 48, suggests that Hudson skated over this view in his Casey biography. Austria was not the only area of German interest and these statements implied an acceptance of German ambitions in the Sudetenland as well, which Chamberlain already accepted in June 1937, according to Enid Lyons’s account; Enid Lyons audio interview with Mel Pratt, Tape 1, 79; ibid., So We, 261-2. 2013 Lyons, Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 34, tenth meeting of delegates, 1 June 1937. 2014 Lyons’s view was considered by Malcolm MacDonald, to be a criticism of ‘our opposition to the Anschluss’; CAB 23/88, 16 June 1937, PRO, London; Colvin, 43-4; DBFP, 2nd Series, vol.18, 620, 16 June 1937, outlining British cabinet conclusions on the conference. This opposition included Eden, who stated his intention to discourage it; DAFP, vol.1, 37, eleventh meeting of delegates, 2 June 1937, pace Tamchina: 87, that Eden was not opposed. 2015 Bruce, Brussels, to Lyons, 6 November 1937, AA1970/559/29, NAA, Canberra, reporting a breakfast conversation with Eden, where he informed the Foreign Secretary of Australia’s attitude to Germany. 2016 Keith Officer, Foreign Situation, 4 February 1937, attached to External Affairs memorandum, ‘The Foreign Situation-March 1937’, 10 March 1937, (DAFP, vol.1, 17), CP4/2 119, NAA, Canberra. 2017 External Affairs, Review of Relations between United Kingdom and Germany, n.d. but March 1937, CP4/2 46, NAA, Canberra. 271 in line with that recently advocated by Australian appeasers.2018 When Hitler moved in March 1938 he provided the first opportunity to measure the new similarity of these perspectives and to test the assurances of ‘personal co-operation’ made between the two prime ministers at the Imperial Conference. To this extent, the months that followed provided a case-study of the state of imperial consultation.

As the Austrian crisis assumed a momentum of its own in the second week of March 1938, the attentive Malcolm MacDonald did what he could to correct any perception of poor consultation lingering after the Eden resignation ─ Lyons would find himself well -informed of developments via the Dominions Office and via Bruce’s proven system of analysis and communication.2019 Nevertheless the rapidity and sudden turn of events, 10-12 March 1938, came as much of a ‘shock’ to Lyons as they did to the closer Chamberlain.2020 The Australian prime minister was as keen as ever that his voice be heard in the aftermath of the coup of 12 March 1938, given the likely sensitivities of Italy to new developments and he did not appear to share Casey’s (and Chamberlain’s) earlier, eager anticipation of a likely conflict between Italy and Germany, post-Anschluss.2021 His immediate reaction, on the collegial behalf of ‘my government’, to Chamberlain’s suggestion of a post-haste recognition of the Anschluss even before the Nazi plebiscite (scheduled for 10 April 1938) was cautious and a contrast with his earlier accepting views on German expansion, which Lyons now seemed prepared to set aside, for the moment, in the interests of Anglo-Italian détente.2022 The cable specifically mentioned the likely deterioration that would occur in Anglo-Italian relations given any speedy recognition of Anschluss, when recognition had been ‘so long refused’ to Abyssinia, and also referred to sensitivities of ‘public opinion’, one of the first indications that the appeasers were becoming conscious of a certain level of public hostility towards the aggressors (and consequently to their policy).2023 Its over-riding concern with the attitude of Rome could not have been a surprise to

2018 Chamberlain was confident that only Germans were wanted in the Reich; Foreign Policy Committee meeting, 18 March 1938; Colvin, 108. These views were common amongst British appeasers; Griffiths, 305-6, and an important factor in the events of September 1938, vide below. 2019 M. MacDonald, son of Ramsay, became Dominions Secretary in May 1937. He transferred to the Colonial Office in May 1938, but was acting minister at the DO from 30 August 1938, thus in situ during the September crisis. He informed the cabinet on 12 March 1938, the day that German troops crossed the frontier, that the dominions had been sent appropriate information on the previous evening; CAB 23/92/352, PRO, London. Stirling sent comprehensive dispatches throughout, including accounts of the Hitler-Schuschnigg ‘conversations’ at Berchtesgaden; Stirling, External Affairs, London, February-April 1938, A981 AUSTRIA 16 PART 1; AUSTRIA 17 PART 2, NAA, Canberra. 2020 German troops crossed the border on 12 March 1938. Lyons called it a ‘shock to world opinion’ on 27 April 1938, CPD, vol.155, 536. Hughes recalled Chamberlain’s public admission of ‘profound shock’, quoted in his statement on the international situation, 20 April 1939, Current Notes, vols.6-7 (1939), 179. 2021 Casey, DAFP, vol.1, 27, 21 May 1937. Chamberlain had also toyed with the idea in February 1938 of ‘encouraging Italian resentment at any absorption of Austria’, a possibility that greatly alarmed the South Africans; te Water to MacDonald, 11 March 1938, PREM 1/260, PRO, London. 2022 Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 139, 17 March 1938. Collegiality served to ease the palatability of a cable that advised a course counter to Chamberlain’s intentions; vide Introduction. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 267, on Lyons’s keenness to avoid offence to Italy. 2023 Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 139, 17 March 1938. He had earlier cabled Murdoch asking for self-control in the press; Lyons to Keith Murdoch, Melbourne, 14 March 1938, Murdoch Papers, MS2823/1/4, NLA, Canberra. 272 Whitehall, given Lyons’s long history of concern about the state of Anglo-Italian relations, evidence of which dated from mid-1935. The bulk of this cable included a prime ministerial plea on behalf of his government for ‘full confidential consultation’ via Bruce, ‘so that your views may be expressed to my Government [sic] in Australia and our views may be conveyed to you either direct or through Mr. Bruce effectively during actual process [of] formation [of] British policy’.2024 This was effectively a plea for what had been agreed to at the Imperial Conference and indicated Lyons’s continuing reliance as prime minister on, and trust in, the high commissioner, whose role later in the year would be so important.

The Dominions Secretary accordingly informed Lyons and the other dominion leaders by circular telegram on 19 March that Ciano-Perth discussions had begun, discounting his concern about the Italian reaction in a further cable on 20 March 1938, and dismissing the Abyssinian analogy as inappropriate. There was, he specifically assured Lyons, no indication from Rome of any adverse feelings over the coup.2025 Only then did the Australian leader curb some of the concerns (‘doubts’) expressed on 17 March and forward his acceptance, in line with his former views on Anschluss, which were shared by Casey and Page. Mussolini himself, as well as MacDonald, had solved Lyons’s dilemma by speedily acquiescing to the new developments, allowing any reservations about the longer-term impact of this shift in the balance of power and its ‘new alignments’ to be set aside.2026 On the day he received MacDonald’s assurances, the Prime Minister recited the recent cables from London on the matter and accordingly proposed an acceptance of the UK ‘settlement’, that is, an immediate recognition of the Anschluss according to Chamberlain’s earlier request, although not without simultaneously urging a settlement with Italy.2027 This suggestion seems to have excited some cabinet hostility, for the subsequent cable to Chamberlain did not specifically mention Germany, but satisfied itself with an endorsement of a ‘general agreement for the principle of friendly collaboration in the rectification of grievances’ given the ‘extremely difficult situation’.2028 Despite this apparent lack of immediate prime ministerial authority, Lyons was able to gain cabinet endorsement of his conversion to an attitude of immediate recognition by 8 April 1938, despite a submission from the new Minister of External Affairs, Hughes, that contained a number of preferred options including doing nothing,

This was reminiscent of his request of 31 August 1935, Lyons to Murdoch, ibid. vide also Andrews, Isolationism, 132, quoting his appeal for restraint in the ‘national interest’; Argus, 17 March 1938. 2024 Lyons copy to Bruce of cable to Chamberlain, 17 March 1938, M104/6/1, NAA, Canberra; edited as DAFP, vol.1, 139. 2025 The circular telegram to all dominion leaders (referring to Ciano-Perth discussions on 15 March 1938), 19 March 1938, is referred to in DAFP, vol.1, 148, footnote 2, 21 March 1938. The personal reply is MacDonald to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 147, 20 March 1938. 2026 Perth later saw Mussolini’s acceptance of the Anschluss as the beginning of the Axis; Rotunda, 381, quoting him on 11 May 1939. On Lyons’s old fear of ‘new alignments’, Record of the Lyons Government, “Commonwealth Parliamentary Year 1936. Review by Prime Minister”, 17 December 1936, A601/165/1/1; vide Chapter 4. 2027 Cabinet Minutes, 20 March 1938, A2694, vol.18/2. Lyons also again urged a ‘settlement’ with Italy; vide above. On Chamberlain’s request; Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 139, 17 March 1938. 2028 Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 148, 21 March 1938. The bulk of this cable concerned Italy, vide above. 273 or at least not doing anything before the Nazi plebiscite of 10 April.2029 These options were set aside and cabinet agreed to the extension of de jure recognition by the Commonwealth Government after the plebiscite ─ the approach argued by Lyons (after 20 March), not Hughes, a demonstration that the new minister was to have an uphill battle gaining authority over his portfolio.2030 Hodgson accordingly informed the Dominions Office on 14 April 1938 of the Australian attitude, which accorded with Chamberlain’s earlier request.2031 This would not be the last time that Lyons brought his policy into accord with Chamberlain, although the process, 17 March-8 April, had shown that such co-ordination was not automatic.

Although Lyons had no compunction about recognising ‘Greater Germany’ in April, he had expressed some concern about Hitler’s ‘methods’ to Chamberlain on 21 March, following the counsel of Bruce.2032 The lesson he had subsequently drawn was not, however, that these methods rendered appeasement invalid, but the reverse─ that appeasement was the only possible substitute ‘instead of’ such methods.2033 Bruce had informed him on 18 March of the apprehension caused by ‘the application of force and coercion’,2034 and Lyons read this letter ‘with great interest’.2035 The geography appeared to have disturbed him more than the morality, especially the threat of violence to ‘an old established European State’, which he apparently found more irksome than the violence perpetrated in Manchuria and Abyssinia.2036 Yet he was sincere in his admission to parliament at the end of April that the ‘elimination’ of Austria was ‘a profound shock to world opinion’.2037 There was no admission of the probability that the hasty recognition of 8 April rendered a repetition of such methods the more likely.

The other aspect of the Anschluss that concerned Lyons and his cabinet (like the Eden resignation before it) was the lack of consultation with Whitehall in the period from the beginning of the crisis, around 10 March, until shortly after the first indications of Australia’s pro-Anschluss attitude reached London on 21 March ─ communication through the Canberra high commission had been poor to judge from MacDonald’s instructions to Whiskard.2038 This concern was soon

2029 Hughes succeeded Pearce as Minister of External Affairs on 29 November 1937. He was the third such minister since 1932; Latham served 6 January 1932-12 October 1934; Pearce, 12 October 1934-29 November 1937; P. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 99. Cabinet Minutes, 8 April 1938, A2694, vol.18/3, NAA, Canberra, following the consideration of a External Affairs submission; DAFP, vol.1, 182, 7 April 1938. 2030 The approval was signed by Lyons himself, “Approved. De jure recognition after the plebiscite on the 10th. J.A. Lyons, 8.4.38.”; Cabinet Minutes, 8 April 1938, A2694, vol.18/3. . Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 267. Only after Lyons’s death would Hughes refer to the Anschluss as a ‘sudden act of intimidation’; Cabinet Papers, 14 April 1939, CRS A6006, Roll 12. 2031 Hodgson note attached to cable forwarded to DO, following further cabinet consideration on 10 April, 14 April 1938, A981 AUSTRIA PART 2, NAA, Canberra. 2032 Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 148, 21 March 1938. 2033 ibid., Roosevelt too was now concerned about the ‘brutality’ of German diplomacy, Offner, “Appeasement Revisted”, 381. 2034 Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 143, 18 March 1938, quoted in Twomey, “Munich,” 25. 2035 Lyons to Bruce, 6 April 1938, A2908 G14, NAA, Canberra. 2036 Lyons, CPD, vol.155, 536, 27 April 1938. 2037 ibid. 2038 Following cabinet, 20 March 1938, A2694, vol.18/2 and Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 148, 21 March 1938. MacDonald, Dominions Secretary, to Whiskard, Canberra, DAFP, vol.1, 179, 1 April 1938, where the commissioner was plied with suggestions about the recognition of the Austrian incorporation, should Lyons ask. 274 remedied, however, when Chamberlain addressed it by an unprecedented level of consultation, perhaps seeking dominion ammunition in support of his own cabinet skirmishes, according to his modus operandi.2039 The Australian prime minister was asked on 22 March for his suggestions on a draft parliamentary speech which his British counterpart intended to deliver on 24 March2040 ─ Bruce had already provided him with a draft.2041 As the speech was to deal with the possibility of German aggression against Czechoslovakia and any British response that could include a territorial ‘guarantee’, it was a matter of grave significance to the dominions. Since this was the first substantial example of the sort of enhanced consultation that Lyons (and others) had sought at the Imperial Conference, he seemed determined not to allow it to slip by, immediately warning on 23 March (on behalf of ‘My colleagues and I’) against any ‘definite commitment with regard to Czechoslovakia’, not an attitude that Chamberlain can have found surprising.2042 Nor was it an attitude that the British prime minister found unwelcome, for when he replied to his dominion counterpart on 24 March, he noted with pleasure that ‘our two Governments are in such close accord as to the policy to be pursued’, a reference to both Lyons’s insistence of the previous day and to his own failure to offer any commitment to the Czechs in the Commons speech, although it remains difficult to gauge how much dominion hostility to the proposal weighed in its rejection.2043

Lyons was equally candid about the Czech situation in his own parliamentary utterances. He noted on 27 April that the UK Government was ‘not prepared to declare its readiness to guarantee the independence of Czechoslovakia’, something with which his own government was ‘in agreement’.2044 The only option open to the Czechs in the absence of such a guarantee, Lyons stated in an echo of Chamberlain, was an enlistment of ‘all the resources of diplomacy in the cause of peace’, without making clear in this statement of government policy whether he was referring to the old diplomacy, or the new form of appeasement, although his critics assumed the latter.2045 Privately, his preference for the new over the old was made clear by references to

2039 vide below, MacDonald, on likely dominion opinion, to a British cabinet committee, 18 March 1938, Colvin, 108ff.; also quoted in Ovendale, Appeasement, 329. Middlemas, 281, contrasted the attention given to dominion opinion in March 1938 to that given at the time of Abyssinia in late 1935. 2040 MacDonald to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 150, 22 March 1938. Further indications of the contents of the speech were sent to Canberra on 23 March, DAFP, vol.1, 154, one day before its delivery. 2041 Bruce to Lyons, 21 March 1938, M104/6/1. 2042 Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 151, 23 March 1938. MacDonald had already warned a British cabinet committee on 18 March that the dominions were opposed to any guarantee and were unlikely to fight in its observance; Colvin, 108ff.; Ovendale, Appeasement, 329. 2043 Chamberlain to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 161, 24 March 1938. Despite the fact that Chamberlain referred to ‘your telegram of 23 March in regard to Czechoslovakia’ (surely a reference to DAFP, vol.1, 151), footnote 2, DAFP, vol.1, 302, suggests that this reply was to Lyons’s cable of 21 March, DAFP, vol.1, 148, which does not even mention Czechoslovakia. pace this footnote, DAFP 148 would have been received in London on either 20 or 21 March and could not be the cable referred to by Chamberlain. The Commons speech was on 24 March 1938; D. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 168-9. Rejection of the proposal had followed a ‘melancholy document’ from the Chiefs of Staff, which suggested that a long war could result; R. Douglas, “Chamberlain and Appeasement,” 83. 2044 Lyons, CPD, vol.155, 537, 27 April 1938. 2045 ibid. This statement was seen by the anti-appeasers as intended to apply ‘pressure’ on the Czechs; A. Watt, “Australia and the Munich Agreement: Underlying assumptions and operative methods of Australian Foreign Policy.” Australian Outlook, vol.17, no.1 (1963): 24, claiming to speak for a group of anti-appeasers in External Affairs. 275 ‘reasonable negotiations’ as the only course to remove the causes of war, including the Sudeten question.2046 The Chamberlain consultative offer of 22 March 1938 and the Lyons response, extending up to the parliamentary speech of 27 April, indicated that two of the more important criteria of the Imperial Conference, imperial consultation and wider appeasement, had been addressed to some extent. An anxious Lyons was nevertheless keen to ensure that no deals were being done behind the back of the Commonwealth government and in the following months he would badger, almost threaten, Whitehall for a full account of developments, often baulking at shadows.2047 He seemed determined to remain optimistic, telling Bruce on 24 March: ‘Despite all that has occurred…I agree with you that there is still hope that a solution of the present international difficulties may yet be found.’2048 Within a few weeks, however, Lyons confidentially admitted to Bruce the difficulties currently facing the optimist: ‘The whole thing is profoundly disturbing and it is hard to foresee a satisfactory outcome without a long period of great stress and sacrifice.’2049 The events of the following months were to demonstrate the validity of that observation. III

In making his April admission of ‘profound shock’, Lyons implied that Europe was a more dangerous place after the Anschluss than before.2050 He later confessed his fear at this time of a sudden ‘international war’ and his subsequent defence initiatives indicated an acknowledgement that Hitler’s recent ‘methods’ were a challenge to conciliation.2051 Accordingly, the defence increases of 1937 were further supplemented in March-April 1938 by a fourth rearmament program of unprecedented magnitude. As before, the burden of defence spending was becoming heavier at the same time as Lyons sought a more intense application of the general appeasement now accepted at Whitehall and he struggled to convince some contemporaries that this represented anything other than a failure of his foreign policy to ensure peace.2052

Although stimulated by the Anschluss, the seeds of the new, fourth program were sown as early as November of the previous year,2053 when the cabinet considered a Shedden submission tabled by Lyons himself, which advocated the reactivation of the slumbering Council of Defence (now the Australian version of the CID) and discussed greater priority for defence works.2054

2046 Lyons debating notes, ‘What are the prospects for World Peace?’, n.d. but between April-September 1938, Joseph Lyons Papers, MS4851/2/15. 2047 For example on 5 April 1938, when he sought the full text of a reported UK Government note to Germany of 2 April, Lyons to Dominions Office, A2908 G14, NAA, Canberra. The report appears to have been a false one. 2048 Lyons to Bruce, 24 March 1938, M104/6/1. Cox, 74, on the ‘leap of imagination’ required to assess the subject’s thinking. 2049 Lyons to Bruce, 6 April 1938, A2908 G14, NAA, Canberra. 2050 Lyons, CPD, vol.155, 536, 27 April 1938. 2051 Lyons speech to commercial travellers, Sydney, 3 July 1938, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 July 1938, 12, g. 2052 Colley, 49. 2053 At the cabinet meeting of 24 November 1937, vide below, rather than at the Council Of Defence meeting of 17 December, pace Ross, Armed and Ready, 116. 2054 Cabinet Agenda, 24 November 1937, A3258/2250, vol.4, NAA, Canberra; Horner, Defence Supremo, 55-6. Shedden had restructured the Council along CID lines in 1937; Twomey, “Australia and the Search”, 29. 276 Shedden’s galvanizing influence, as the new departmental secretary since 17 November 1937, was apparent at a time when the new defence minister, Harold Thorby, struggled to gain the respect and mastery that Parkhill had exercised.2055 A new defence sub-committee was subsequently formed, consisting of Lyons, Earle Page, Thorby and White, the trade minister, some indication that the Prime Minister was happier to share the burden of technical defence policy-making in a way that he was increasingly unwilling to do in foreign affairs. When the reactivated Council met on 17 December 1937, Lyons signalled the government’s anxiety to complete defence preparedness ‘as early as possible’.2056 The chairman also sought the body’s endorsement of the defence stance that had been hammered out in London, a blend of ‘Empire defence and Local defence’.2057 That mix, however pleased neither of the warring camps and the meeting only exacerbated the squabble between the services.2058

When the Council resumed, on 24 February 1938, for a ‘Report on Progress of Developmental Programmes’, Lyons was better prepared to press an agenda for further accelerating rearmament. Although he indicated that he thought the international situation had everywhere ‘deteriorated’, at a time when the Anschluss was still some weeks away, he nevertheless remained determined that ‘the realities of the situation must be fairly faced to secure some degree of appeasement…an important potential factor in the preservation of peace’ ─ this, at a meeting of defence policy-makers2059 ─ there is no better single example of Lyons’s desire to balance appeasement and rearmament. He also now took the opportunity to contain, almost to settle, the dispute between imperial and local priorities that had caused so much inter-service squabbling, as only a prime minister could do:

However, it was quite evident that Australia must press on and do all she could for her defence, particularly in view of the principle laid down at the Imperial Conference that the Dominions should reduce their dependence on Britain as a source of supply in emergency.2060

This statement was not an abandonment of the ‘blend’, but it was an admission of something that Lyons had implied for some time, that local defence was the more important element.2061 Lyons

2055 Thorby, deputy leader of the Country Party, was appointed on 29 November 1937. Shedden had unsuccessfully sought Menzies; Horner, Defence Supremo, 56. The appointment, unpopular in the services, was evidence of increasing collaboration between Lyons and Earle Page. On Thorby; ADB, vol.12, 216ff.; NAA, “Australia’s Prime Ministers”: Joseph Lyons. Available [Online]: http://primeministers.naa.gov.au/ [14 November 2002]. 2056 Council of Defence meeting, 17 December 1937, Hughes Papers, MS1538/42/1, NLA, Canberra. The Council had not met since 24 August 1936. 2057 ibid. 2058 ibid. Vice-Admiral Colvin, Chief of the Naval Staff, was irked by Hughes’s questioning of Singapore’s ‘impregnability’ and displeased at the freezing of naval increases until after the modernisation of Army units. Lavarack was displeased by the reaffirmation of the ‘raids’ strategy. 2059 Council of Defence meeting, “Report on Progress of Developmental Programmes”, 24 February 1938, Hughes Papers, MS1538/42/2, NLA, Canberra. 2060 ibid. 277 did not stray from this emphasis during the remaining fourteen months of his life, very conscious of British vulnerability following a series of defence talks that Bruce had recently undertaken with Chamberlain, December 1937-February 1938.2062 These consultations were intended to impress Whitehall with a sense of urgency over defence, but they appeared also to have impressed Lyons with the need for greater local efforts, pointedly at a time when the Singapore naval base was finally completed, on 14 February 1938.2063 This completion was something of great symbolic importance, but no longer of much practical significance in the prime ministerial view, as the Council discovered on 24 February, for a completed, but empty, base was of no more use to Australian security than an incomplete one.2064 Lyons continued to seek public assurances from Britain on eastern defence, notably following prevaricating parliamentary statements by Chamberlain on 7 March 1938 (clarified to Australian satisfaction on 11-12 March), but the government also continued to act on the assumption that local preparedness was the chief imperative.2065 He accordingly stated at the February Council meeting his personal readiness to secure the prompt delivery of aircraft and other military equipment through pressuring ‘the proper quarters in Britain’ and by ‘direct representation’ to Chamberlain.2066 Lyons clearly expected his relationship with Chamberlain to bear fruit in defence affairs as well as in diplomacy, but to suggest that he naively accepted British assurances on Singapore at this time, or at any other, is to ignore the evidence of his continuing caution, which ultimately led him to the unpalatable conclusion by late-1938 that Britain would not, or could not, offer any substantial defence assistance to Australia.2067

This February Council meeting was also intended to review the financial efficacy of recent rearmament. Despite the reservations of both the Treasurer, Casey, and the defence minister about much progress,2068 the response of a fiscally prudent government in the following

2061 vide Chapter 5 on Lyons at the Imperial Conference and in parliament during 1937 on the ‘ramparts’ and ‘pillars’ of defence. Nobody bothered to recall that there had once been a third arm; collective security. 2062 Reported in Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 123, 16 December 1937; CP30/3/24; M104/5/1, NAA, Canberra; Cumpston, Bruce, 137ff. 2063 Lyons expressed his gratitude to Chamberlain, through Bruce, for his co-operation in these talks; DAFP, vol.1, 124-6, 11-12 February 1938; Cabinet Minutes, 16 February 1938, CAB 23/92, PRO, London. 2064 Council of Defence meeting, 24 February 1938, Hughes Papers, MS1538/42/2. Wilcox, 103. 2065 Chamberlain’s speech of 7 March 1938 left the impression that the dominions must rely on their own resources; Current Notes, vol.4 (1938), 160-1; Anon., (A Correspondent), “Australia’s Defence Policy”: 11. This forced Lyons to cable him on 10 March 1938 seeking assurances; Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 132, 10 March 1938, which he received on 11 March 1938, DAFP, vol.1, 134, and 12 March 1938, CP290/5/2, NAA, Canberra. Lyons released Chamberlain’s replies to the press on 14 March 1938; Current Notes, vol.4 (1938), 160-1. 2066 Council of Defence meeting, 24 February 1938, Hughes Papers, MS1538/42/2. The first expressions of Lyons’s concern on munitions and aircraft reached Whitehall during March 1938; Ovendale, Appeasement, 125. The cabinet sent an encouraging letter to T.S. Nettlefold on 18 March 1938 re the manufacturing of Australian aircraft; Cabinet Minutes, vol.18/3, NAA, Canberra. 2067 Lyons to Whiskard, UK High Commissioner, November 1938, quoting Lyons; Andrews, Writing, 191; Cumpston, Bruce, 140; McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 144. vide Chapter 7. Suggestions that Lyons unquestioningly accepted assurances about Singapore are found in Murfett, 233; McCarthy, “Singapore and Australian Defence”: 180. 2068 Council of Defence meeting, 24 February 1938, Hughes Papers, MS1538/42/2; Casey, although he accepted that there was a ‘satisfactory’ state of readiness, thought there was little to show for the money spent. Hughes agreed; Fitzhardinge, 643. Thorby thought the RAAF and Army were over-spending on infrastructure; Ross, Armed and Ready, 116. May, 211-2, gives a survey of the progress of rearmament to mid-1937 and comes to the same conclusion as Casey. 278 months was the allocation of more funds, a sign of its increasing anxiety following the events in Austria. Casey had already publicly suggested that the Defence Department was the only one that ‘is able to write its own ticket. Any money defence wants it can get, and I assure you that this situation will remain.’2069 He was now about to convert rhetoric into policy, but at no time, in February or later, was the Council of Defence given any details of the measures that the Lyons government was about to undertake in order to improve local preparedness. This was a political matter out of the hands of the service chiefs and lesser ministers─ Lyons took it on himself to announce the further expenditure, in a national radio broadcast on 24 March 1938, before the dust of the latest act of aggression in Europe had settled.2070 In it, he welcomed further British efforts to rearm, in advance of Bruce’s counsel to do so, making clear that Australia’s own efforts ‘for greater preparedness’ were of more immediate concern.2071

Lyons’s direct communication with his constituency through radio became more frequent in the following months, as he seemed to prefer to announce new measures and government policy over this medium rather than in the parliament, which had to wait until 27 April to hear the full details from the prime minister, rather than from Thorby. The ‘New Programme’ of 1937 was now expanded to stretch until 1941, at a revised cost of £43 million. The RAN was still to receive the greatest share (£15.9 million), but the gap was narrowing,2072 and for the first time the RAAF allocation (£12.5 million) exceeded that of the Army (£11.6 million), a startling transformation for a service that was moribund in 1932.2073 The air arm was also to be the chief beneficiary of the ‘new’ expenditure (some £24.8 million), surpassing even the senior service for the first time.2074 This was some evidence that Hughes’s long-standing advocacy of air power and his Singapore scepticism, most recently displayed in the Council of Defence, were bearing fruit, as part of the ‘growing doubts’ amongst Canberra policy-makers at this time about the Singapore

2069 Casey address at Canberra, January 1938; Hasluck, Government, 104. Casey had been recently warned by Bruce that Australia would probably have to do more for itself in the light of the parlous British efforts; Bruce to Casey, 1 December 1937, A11857/50, NAA, Canberra. 2070 The broadcast involved 106 stations; Hasluck, Government, 103; Anon., “Foreign Affairs and Defence” in Round Table, vol.28 (June 1938), in Robson, Australian Commentaries, 128. 2071 ibid. Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 162, 24 March 1938 (which arrived too late for the broadcast); Lyons to Bruce, DAFP, vol.1, 163, 25 March 1938; Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 169, 26 March 1938. 2072 “The New Programme”, Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, vol.2, no.40 (1937-40), 28 April 1938. The RAN was to have two new Sydney class cruisers (7,000 tons, 6-inch guns). 2073 ibid.; Anon., (A Correspondent), “Australia’s Defence Policy.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.2, no.2 (June-July 1938), Table: 10; Hasluck, Government, 102, where the figures are slightly incorrect. A further £3 million was allocated for munitions, indicative of the desire to be less reliant on Britain. The RAAF was also to exceed the Army’s manpower, with an envisaged 5,300 personnel to the Army’s 3,500, although the volunteer Militia was to be brought up to 35,000; H. Thorby, “Mastering Our Military Destiny.” Australian National Review, vol.4, no.20 (August 1938): 13ff. 2074 Overall defence spending for the triennium was to be ₤43 million; Thorby: 7. New RAAF expenditure was to be £8.8 million, RAN £7.75 million, Army £5.5 million, “The New Programme”, APP, ibid.; Hasluck, ibid. Hamill, 287- 9, is incorrect to state that overall RAAF expenditure exceeded the RAN in these estimates; this was only so in ‘new’ expenditure; McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 81-2, makes the same error. The RAAF was now to consist of 17 squadrons (an increase of 9), making up 200 first-line aircraft, including locally manufactured types; McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 81-2. 279 strategy.2075 It also suggested that Hughes had the prime ministerial ear in defence matters, if not for those of his own portfolio of External Affairs, given that the two men could agree on the former, if not the latter. The whole of the new program was a considerable commitment, but one that Lyons hoped would be ‘flexible’, that is, capable of acceleration or deceleration according to the ‘trend of the international situation’, as clarified by Senator Foll, the Minister of Repatriation, in the upper house on the following day.2076 It was this thinking that allowed the Prime Minister to justify further considerable expenditure on the armed forces rather than on, for example, social services ─ as the spending increased, so too did these promises of future redirection.2077

The April parliamentary statement was notable not only for its detailing of the government’s new program. It also came as close as Lyons dared to a public admission that local defence was now the chief element of the old defence blend, as he had confidentially suggested to the Council of Defence in February and hinted at in his broadcast of March. In accordance with his characteristic pledges of imperial loyalty, he maintained that the expanded ‘New Programme’ was ‘related to a wider pattern of Empire defence’, which it was in part, for the Imperial Conference had called for the supplementation of the Royal Navy with dominion cruiser forces.2078 This ‘pattern’, however, was qualified by Lyons’s parallel observation that:

Nevertheless, complementary to this conception of Empire collective security we should do all that we can to defend ourselves and the new programme is claimed to be a substantial step towards this end.2079

The Prime Minister thereby made an effort to indicate that local imperatives were a major motivation for further defence expansion, contrary to any ‘hint’ of imperial co-operation that Whitehall wished him to give at this time.2080 The new, Australian cruisers were intended, he

2075 Hughes in Council of Defence meeting, 17 December 1937, Hughes Papers, MS1538/42/1; vide above. vide Chapter 5 on Hughes’s advocacy of air power. It continued into 1938; Hughes to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 196, 13 May 1938 (reply in Thorby to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 231, 20 July 1938); Murfett, 233. Robertson, “The Distant War: Australia and Imperial Defence, 1919-41,” 225, refers to ‘growing doubts’ about the Singapore strategy. 2076 Hasluck, Government, 103; Senator Foll, “Ministerial Statement to Senate by Minister of Repatriation, 28 April 1938, Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, 1937-40, vol.2, no.40. On Foll; NAA, “Australia’s Prime Ministers”: Joseph Lyons. Available [Online]: http://primeministers.naa.gov.au/ [14 November 2002]. 2077 vide Chapter 7. Chamberlain too regretted such spending, but gave no promises of redirection; April 1938 Birmingham speech, Feiling, 321. 2078 Lyons, CPD, vol.155, 561, 27 April 1938; Senator Foll, “Ministerial Statement to Senate by Minister of Repatriation, 28 April 1938, Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, 1937-40, vol.2, no.40. 2079 Lyons, CPD, vol.155, 561, 27 April 1938; Hasluck, Government, 102. His use of the term ‘collective security’ ought not to disguise his League scepticism; earlier in the same day, Lyons had expressed his views of the League’s weakness, CPD, ibid., 535-6. He had spoken in 1937 of the Empire as a ‘lesser League within the League’, DAFP, vol.1, 25, 14 May 1937, vide Chapter 5. 2080 Cabinet Minutes, 23 March 1938, CAB 23/93/57, PRO, London. 280 said, ‘for trade defence in our local waters’ and for the protection of the ‘main ports and centres of population’ ─ local defence.2081

Some contemporaries acknowledged the ‘local’ emphasis of government policy. The Australian National Review even suggested in August 1938 that it was a significant step in the march to nationhood and, with less hyperbole, that it represented ‘the greatest Defence Programme in Australian peace-time history’, echoing the prime minister description of July.2082 Despite the imperial rhetoric, there was little attempt to conceal local motives, which Thorby stressed in a seminal article in the same journal in August, mentioning the protection of trade routes and ‘territorial integrity’.2083 The role of the five-cruiser RAN flotilla within the orbit of ‘British sea power’ was defined by the minister as the defence of ‘seaborne trade in Australian waters, and to act as a deterrent to coastal raids’.2084 There had been no suggestion of naval service elsewhere in the statements of either Lyons or Thorby.2085 Back on land, the minister made neither suggestion of an expeditionary force, nor of conscription, reiterating the usual strategic approach by his admission that the Army was intended as a ‘deterrent to invasion’ and for ‘defence against raids’.2086 In the air, Thorby maintained that the RAAF was intended for inter-service co-operation and for ‘the direct attack on enemy raiding forces’ (something long advocated by Hughes and Curtin).2087 Its task was to be assisted by the government’s intention to boost the modest output of the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation, an aspiration whose origins may be traced to 1935 and the subsequent trade diversion episode.2088 Thorby closed his account by repeating the prime ministerial conclusion that Australia must do everything ‘to defend herself’ (although he made a ritualistic reference to Singapore and to ‘Empire collective security’) and clearly the ‘New Programme’ was intended to do as much as possible for local defence, although ultimately even this supplement would itself require supplementation.2089

Further armed readiness came, as Lyons had warned as early as March 1936, at a price.2090 Defence spending was to increase under this fourth rearmament program from some ten-and-a-half per cent of the federal budget (1937/38) to just under fifteen per cent (1938/39).2091

2081 Lyons, CPD, vol.155, 561, 27 April 1938. He spoke too of the ‘local production’ of munitions. There had already been press speculation of Australia becoming a ‘munitions centre’, Herald, 4 March 1938, 7, e. 2082 Forward to Thorby: 7. Lyons referred to it as ‘the most costly scheme this country has ever known’ in peace-time, Lyons speech, Sydney, 3 July 1938, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 July 1938, 12, g. May, 206, has been one of the few other than Ross to acknowledge that expenditure had reached ‘record levels’. 2083 Thorby: 7. 2084 ibid: 8. 2085 Parkhill had suggested that this could occur ‘later’; Imperial Conference, 24 May 1937, A5954/1047/7. 2086 Thorby: 9, noticed by Anon., “Australia’s Defence Policy”: 11. He repeated Lyons’s old ‘nucleus of seven divisions’ red-herring found in CPD, vol.154, 22-31, 24 August 1937. vide Chapter 5. 2087 Thorby: 10. On the Hughes outlook, via Curtin, vide earlier chapters. 2088 ibid.: 11. Its 1938 orders were for only some forty aircraft. 2089 Thorby: 14. 2090 Lyons speech, 24 March 1936, Commonwealth Club, Adelaide, vide Chapter 4. 2091 Ross, Armed and Ready, 115, Table 4.2; 1937/38 budget £93,730,78-defence expenditure £9,780,756; 1938/39 budget £98.658,504-defence expenditure £14,395,091. Such levels of spending are far from the alleged ‘run down’ in defences at this time; Murray, 50, especially coming at a time of declining revenue and threatening recession; Ross, Armed and Ready, 117ff. 281 As early as May 1938 it was clear that this envisaged sum was beyond the funding capacity of Casey’s Treasury, as he admitted to Bruce.2092 In the absence of further taxation to meet the envisaged triennial needs and Lyons’s reluctance to resort further to deficit spending, a loan appropriation of £10 million was approved in that month, almost half of the intended increases, of which £4 million was raised immediately.2093 Lyons personally consoled himself in mid-1938 over damage to his economic management by reflecting that the program was motivated by the needs of self-defence and peace:

It is a policy of defence, however, and not one of antagonism or aggression, a policy of peace side by side with the determination of the Australian people to defend themselves against any sort of aggression.2094

He had already said as much on his return from Europe 1937 and he reiterated the point now that Australian weapons were defensive and peaceful in their intention.2095 In rearming, nothing was further from his mind than the concept that these weapons would be used in the ‘blooding’ of Australians.2096 In the midst of a frenzy of rearmament that was partly of his own making, Lyons remained an anti-militarist and pacificist, albeit one with a troubled conscience.

IV

Also partly of prime ministerial making in 1938 was an increasing level of difficulty in relations with Japan.2097 That relationship had already been strained by trade diversion in 1936 and it was exacerbated in July 1938 when Lyons initiated the ‘Yampi’ trade embargo on the export of iron-ore, which drove a further wedge between Japan and the Empire and was quite inconsistent with political appeasement.2098 It was, however, like that earlier economic confrontation, largely motivated by a desire to enhance Australia’s defensive capacity, something for which Lyons seemed prepared to pay a cost in the coinage of conciliation. Defence

2092 Casey to Bruce, 3 May 1938, A1421/4/50, NAA, Canberra, where he outlined a program of borrowing and surplus allocation to fund some £15 million p.a. for three years. 2093 Hasluck, Government, 103. Lyons urged all departments to show financial restraint by mid-1938; Ross, Armed and Ready, 117ff. 2094 Lyons speech to commercial travellers, Sydney, 3 July 1938, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 July 1938, 12,g. 2095 ibid. For earlier, similar views; Lyons speech, 29 July 1937, Age, 30 July 1937, Piesse Papers, MS882/9/952: Lyons New Year radio address, 31 December 1937, Episode Title no, AUD D 2992 . He said the same in his Glenbrook speech, 3 September 1938, vide below. 2096 He rejected notions of the glory of war in his sesqui-centenary address at Sydney, 26 January 1938, Sydney Morning Herald, 27 January 1938, 6, d., even insisting that the gathering of warships in Sydney Harbour was a sign of peace. vide also Lyons’s restrained Anzac Day speech at Belfast in 1935, Chapter 3. 2097 Lyons had insisted during the recent election campaign of October 1937 that relations with Japan were cordial, undated press report of Lyons electioneering at Wollongong, M2270/1/10, NAA, Canberra. 2098 Fairbanks, 123, noted an ‘inconsistency’ in attitude towards Japan. He incorrectly referred to the decision being taken in May 1938. 282 considerations were assuming an equal, if not greater, part in his outlook towards an unremittingly aggressive Japan.

Despite the trials and failures of 1936-37, Lyons never abandoned the receding hope of eastern appeasement. His reluctance to apply sanctions to Japan even after the extension of hostilities to China proper in September 1937, was some evidence of this and due to the same mixture of appeasement and Australian economic self-interest that had motivated him in his earlier opposition to such measures.2099 Although he expressed to Bruce his personal support for the ‘moral condemnation’ of the ‘ruthless nature of Japanese aggression’,2100 he simultaneously told the Australian public in September 1937 that international disputes could only be solved by ‘methods of conciliation and mutual agreement’,2101 a public attitude in contrast to the open condemnations of Roosevelt and Chamberlain.2102 The Japanese consul, Wakamatsu, was given a written assurance of goodwill from the Prime Minister himself on 5 October 1937 (ostensibly on the grounds that Pearce was in Western Australia), where Lyons referred to his government’s disinclination to join ‘economic boycotts’.2103 The Dominions Office too was informed, on 28 October, that Canberra was committed only to ‘conciliation’ and that ‘economic boycotts’ were thus inadvisable.2104 Bruce, himself no adherent of sanctions, soon told dominion representatives at the mediatory Brussels conference on 10 November, that he had ‘instructions in his pocket to oppose any proposal for sanctions’.2105 There was to be no repeat of the Abyssinian fiasco and the overall aversion to sanctions found amongst Lyons and his circle prevailed at Brussels, in 1937- 38, where it had failed in London in late-1935. When he made a brief reference to the Sino- Japanese conflict in his parliamentary review of 27 April 1938, sanctions were not even mentioned.2106

Against the victory for economic and political appeasement that the demise of sanctions represented must be placed the setback of the Yampi episode. It was the more extraordinary

2099 vide Chapter 1 on his opposition to eastern sanctions in 1932-33. New Zealand alone favoured their application in 1937; Cockram to Wiseman, Dominions Office, 16 September 1937; Dominions Office minutes of Empire delegates meeting, 27 September 1937, DO 35/560, PRO, London. 2100 Lyons to Bruce, DAFP, vol.1, 70, 30 September 1937. 2101 Lyons public statement, Current Notes, vol.3 (October 1937), 253. Round Table, “External Policy and the Elections”: 387. Officer was informed of Lyons’s views by Hodgson on 15 October 1937, A981 EXTE 215, NAA, Canberra. Hudson, League, 90-1, discusses Bruce’s lack of enthusiasm for a League process of conciliation at this time. vide also Bruce-Lyons exchanges; DAFP, vol.1, 64, 22 September 1937, and ibid., 65, 24 September 1937. 2102 Roosevelt’s Chicago address of 5 October 1937 was notably critical of Japanese aggression and views were endorsed by Chamberlain; Current Notes, vol.3 (October 1937), 253. The full text is in a Foreign Office enclosure, A981 UNI 78 PART 3, NAA, Canberra. 2103 Lyons to Wakamatsu, DAFP, vol.1, 74, 5 October 1937. They met shortly afterwards and Lyons repeated these sentiments; Lyons to Bruce, DAFP, vol.1, 77, 7 October 1937. Lyons was referring to League-applied sanctions and to union boycotts of Japanese goods, which Curtin too opposed, as ‘futile and provocative’; Round Table, “External Policy and the Elections”: 386-7; Sawer, 98. Shepherd, 50 noted Lyons’s opposition to sanctions and boycotts. 2104 Commonwealth government to MacDonald, Dominions Office, DAFP, vol.1, 88, 28 October 1937. Hudson, League, 92. In the same cable, Lyons urged British mediation with Japan and instructed Bruce to take this anti- sanctions line at the mediatory November conference at Brussels; Lyons to Bruce, DAFP vol.1, 89, ibid. vide also Lyons to Mrs. Withers, Northam, WA, 22 February 1939, CP167/1/22, NAA, Canberra on scrap-iron. 2105 Dominion representatives meeting, 10 November 1937, DO 114/82/2, PRO, London, although Bruce thought that Lyons would withdraw his opposition if the US and UK took action. 2106 Lyons, CPD, vol.155, p538, 27 April 1938. His report on the war was neutral and anodyne. 283 because it came at a time when Japan seemed to be revising the ‘southward’ tendency that had been her covert strategic policy since August 1936─ both the Foreign Office and External Affairs were conscious of the changing relationships within the Japanese armed services after January 1938 and of Tokyo’s consequent desire to concentrate on the ‘north Pacific’.2107 Lyons nevertheless remained cautious and in March 1938, for the first time, placed issues of Australian national security above any others, either economic or political. The iron-ore deposits at Yampi, WA, were the catalyst.2108 The government had considered earlier warnings about the exploitation of this commodity, but no action was taken until Lyons read the Woolnough geological report in March 1938, which suggested that these resources had been over-estimated.2109 The Prime Minister took immediate note, writing to Bruce on 17 March and instructing him to inform Whitehall of his government’s intention to ban iron-ore exports in three months, owing to the report’s ‘alarming nature’, concluding ‘…we [sic] have no alternative’.2110 Accordingly, an embargo on iron-ore exports began on 1 July 1938, to Tokyo’s horror.2111 Curiously enough, cabinet accepted on the following day a Japanese request for the recognition of her ‘most- favoured-nation’ status in trade negotiations.2112 The security of raw materials was one thing, but there was still a desire, even if now an unrealistic one, for enhanced bilateral trade and conciliation.

Tokyo rightly felt itself the chief target of the embargo, despite assurances otherwise,2113 but the Lyons government was considering Australia’s geopolitical needs, as iron-ore was vital for local rearmament. It was no coincidence that the decision to take such measures came at the height of the Anschluss crisis and only a week before the national radio broadcast in which the

2107 There were indications that the Japanese navy had accepted the momentum of the Army’s northward strategy, curbing and/or consolidating its southward approach; Frei, 143. This was a retraction of the August 1936 “Fundamentals of National Policy”, ibid., 136ff., vide Chapter 5. The Japanese Foreign Ministry spoke in February 1938 of a Japanese axis in the ‘north Pacific’; Address by Tatsuo, Information Bureau, quoted in Nash, 304-5. External Affairs were informed of the curbing of the southward tendency through their copy of the cable; Craigie, ambassador in Tokyo, to Eden, 14 March 1938, A981 JAP 181 PART 2, NAA, Canberra. British talks with Foreign Minister Ugaki followed; Tarling, 18. 2108 Japanese capital had developed the deposits since 1934, through a dummy British firm, Brassert and Co., with the approval of the Australian government. The Nippon Mining Co. anticipated an annual export of 1 million tons, the bulk of production, annually to Japan for 15 years; Frei, 153. At the time of the embargo imposition, July 1938, no ore had yet been exported; Lyons to Bruce and Earle Page, DAFP, vol.1, 181, 7 April 1938. 2109 Cabinet considered aspects; Cabinet Minutes, 28 July 1937, A2694/17/1-3, NAA, Canberra. Longfield Lloyd to F. Murphy, Department of Commerce, DAFP, vol.1, 111, 6 October 1937. An embargo had been rejected in 1937; External Affairs summary of Yampi, n.d., A981 AUS 32, NAA, Canberra; Shepherd, 57; Fairbanks,123. 2110 Lyons to Bruce, DAFP, vol.1, 141, 17 March 1938. DAFP, vol.1, 203, gives a revised version of the report, dated 14 April 1938. Woolnough was the government’s ‘Geological Adviser’; DAFP, vol.1, 141; DAFP, vol.1, 601. 2111 Lyons warned Wakamatsu that the government was considering this matter of ‘grave national importance’, although the decision had already been taken, Lyons to Wakamatsu, Sydney, DAFP, vol.1, 171, 29 March 1938. He was not fully informed of the decision until 17 May 1938, although the matter had been much canvassed in the press; Lyons to Wakamatsu, DAFP, vol.1, 197, and on the following day, ibid., DAFP, vol.1, 203, 18 May 1938. The embargo did not apply to pig-iron, steel products or scrap metal; Fairbanks, 123; Lloyd to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 218, 17 June 1938. 2112 Submission by Perkins, acting Trade Minister, Cabinet Minutes, 2 July 1938, A2694/18/4, NAA, Canberra; Shepherd, 96. 2113 Bruce stressed to Yoshida that the US had also accepted substantial amounts of iron-ore, Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 225, 18 June 1938. Japan had invested some ₤500,000 in the project; Lyons to Bruce and Earle Page, DAFP, vol.1, 181, 7 April 1938. 284 prime minister announced a fourth rearmament program.2114 He confessed his ulterior motives (‘We think’) to Bruce on 7 April, stressing that he was not solely motivated by a desire for the preservation of resources, but also by the express wish ‘to avoid the establishment of this Japanese enterprise in North West Australia’.2115 Lyons also admitted that this blocking of Japanese enterprise came only after two years, during which ‘we have raised no difficulties’ and in which Japan had been permitted the bulk of iron-ore exports from other Australian sources2116 ─ the chief factors that had altered in that time were the continuing volatility of the international situation and the escalation of the defence imperative. Lyons was periodically prepared to allow the drawing of an economic line in the sand, as he and others had done in May 1936, and Yampi was part of the process of economic confrontation with Japan that his government had sustained since 1933. A parallel political line was, however, another matter altogether and one may speculate that Lyons was the more committed to ‘political’ appeasement because of his continual failure to acknowledge the need for any ‘economic’ equivalent. He replied to Wakamatsu’s protests in a forthright manner, stressing as prime minister the right of every government to determine its own needs for essential raw materials and emphasising the need to protect the Australian steel and iron industry.2117 This was an echo of the statements that he had made in June 1936, when he had publicly referred to the ‘vital absolute right of every nation to protect itself’.2118 Then Lyons had meant tariffs; now he meant vital raw materials essential for the nation’s war effort.2119

The extent of the negative political impact of the Yampi episode was uncertain. Lloyd assured Lyons from Tokyo on 15 June 1938 that Japanese commercial interests acquiesced to what they considered a ‘matter of Australian domestic policy’,2120 but the Foreign Office relayed a quite different impression to the Australian commissioner two days later, after which Lloyd referred to Tokyo’s ‘dictatorial outlook’.2121 The London ambassador, Yoshida, told Bruce on 14 June that Australia’s unilateralism had damaged the relations with the Empire that Japan was seeking to improve through recent talks at Tokyo between ambassador Craigie and the new

2114 Lyons radio broadcast, 24 March 1938; Hasluck, Government, 103; Anon., “Foreign Affairs and Defence.” Round Table, vol.28 (June 1938), in Robson, Australian Commentaries, 128. 2115 Lyons to Bruce and Earle Page, DAFP, vol.1, 181, 7 April 1938. Lloyd warned that the Japanese had used such investment methods to secure their economic penetration of China; Longfield Lloyd, Tokyo, to F. Murphy, Department of Commerce, DAFP, vol.1, 111, 6 October 1937. 2116 Lyons to Bruce and Earle Page, DAFP, vol.1, 181, 7 April 1938. Since 1934/35 Japan had taken the bulk of the exports from Iron Knob. 2117 Lyons to Earle Page, London, DAFP, vol.1, 213, 2 June 1938, enclosing his reply to Wakamatsu. Tokyo’s protests were conveyed in Wakamatsu to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 208, 24 May 1938; Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 225, 18 June 1938, after a meeting with ambassador Yoshida; Craigie, Tokyo, to UK Foreign Office, DAFP, vol.1, 222-223 24 June 1938 and 25 June 1938; Frei, 155. 2118 Lyons broadcast, “The truth of our trade position with Japan”, 25 June 1936, vide Chapter 5. 2119 Millar, 102-3 suggests the refusal to restrict Japanese access to raw materials before July 1938 was due to the Imperial Conference realisation that Australia was indefensible. This simplifies the matter, but it does recognise that Lyons was increasingly conscious of defence considerations after mid-1938. 2120 Lloyd, Tokyo, to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 217, 15 June 1938, after discussions with Ito, Japanese Mining Company. 2121 Lloyd to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 218, 17 June 1938. 285 Foreign Minister, Ugaki.2122 There were also darker aspects to the embargo beyond this diplomatic shadow-boxing ─ A.C.V. Melbourne warned Lyons on 14 July 1938, following extensive correspondence with Wakamatsu, that Yampi had placed Japan in an invidious position that could result in her having to fight for her markets.2123 This implied that Japanese geopolitics were about to meet the Australian determination to deter ‘any sort of aggression’, as the Prime Minister had described it only eleven days earlier.2124 An increasingly wary Lyons, however, thought in later months that he had the matter in hand to address this daunting prospect ─ a revival of his second Pacific initiative through personal diplomacy.2125 In doing so he was attempting to disperse the shadow that rearmament had thrown over eastern appeasement.

V

That shadow had not yet fallen over the European variety of appeasement to the same extent, but this variety of conciliation received its greatest challenge in September 1938 with the Czech crisis ─ a landmark in shaping Commonwealth policies ─ and gained its greatest, putative triumph at Munich.2126 Lyons had consistently maintained since 1933 that the de jure recognition of recent adjustments would lead to a lasting settlement with newly ‘satisfied’ powers.2127 As recognition had been granted to ‘Greater Germany’ in April, the crisis that followed in September provided an opportunity to test this nexus. It also proved to be the climax of his lobbying at Whitehall in favour of ‘European’ conciliation and provided a case-study of advanced appeasement. During the course of that anxious month and especially in its final days, the thesis suggests that Lyons and his circle successfully sought a major role in the formulation of imperial foreign policy and in so doing fulfilled a long-standing goal of Australian policy-makers. Lyons himself arguably had good grounds to believe that he had played a significant part in attaining the conclusive ‘Munich Pact’, which he certainly considered the greatest advance in conciliation since 1919. His claim to have participated in the working out of events in those final days has been generally ignored or slighted, but an examination of the evidence (much of it illuminated here for the first time) indicates that Lyons was not deluded ─ the Australian prime minister was a significant player in this formidable international drama, even if not as significant as he himself thought, and so too was the high commissioner, Bruce, whom Lyons directly linked to his initiatives.

2122 Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 225, 18 June 1938, reporting a conversation with Yoshida on 14 June and a Japanese note verbale. On the Tokyo talks, Tarling, 18, quoting minutes FO 371/22176, 2 June 1938. The imperial link was stressed by Tokyo when it suited her; Australian autonomy was stressed at other times, for instance by Hirota in 1934 and Debuchi in 1935, vide earlier chapters. 2123 A.C.V. Melbourne to Lyons, 14 July 1938, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. The 1939 observation that Japan was driven towards autarchy by trade diversion, Shepherd, 118, seems as applicable to Yampi. 2124 Lyons speech to commercial travellers, Sydney, 3 July 1938, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 July 1938, 12, g. 2125 vide Chapter 7 and the Pact redux. 2126 Mansergh, Experience, 274, on the crisis as a landmark, along with the Imperial Conference and the Anglo- Polish guarantee of 1939. 2127 Although the Anschluss had been recognized by mid-1938, both Manchukuo and Abyssinia remained illegitimate. 286 Enid Lyons later claimed that her husband was amongst those who received an early warning that the next expansion of Greater Germany was likely to come at the expense of Czechoslovakia.2128 Whatever the plausibility of her chronologically confused claim, Australian appeasers like Lyons and Page advocated in the months following the Anschluss that the Czech polity too should go under the knife in the interests of a general settlement. As early as 20 May 1938 there were serious disturbances in the Sudeten border regions, indicating an escalation of strife with Germany and the anti-Czech position of Canberra in this dispute was made clear from the beginning. Lyons (‘My colleagues and I’) had already made clear to Chamberlain in March his view that Prague ought not to be supported in this dispute,2129 and following the May disturbances Hughes publicly endorsed Chamberlain’s refusal of any ‘commitment’ to defend the Czechs against a German assault.2130 In private, on the same day, Lyons’s deputy and associate in appeasement, Earle Page, advocated a further step.2131 At a meeting of dominion representatives held in London on 25 May 1938, Page put forward what he called ‘the Australian point of view’, which was more accurately the view of the circle of appeasers predominating in the cabinet.2132 It was not in accord with the more moderate suggestions made at the same meeting by the Foreign Secretary, Halifax, for (like te Water, the South African representative) Page preferred a ‘parochial’ alternative to Halifax’s moderation: 2133

Would the German Government be satisfied if they got the Sudeten Germans, and if they would be satisfied, would it not be wise to give the Sudeten Germans to them?2134

Clearly Page (and Lyons) hoped so, although Menzies, still not in the first rank of the appeasers, thought not.2135 This was an early indication of the acceptability to some Australian appeasers of

2128 In a chronologically confused account, she recalled Chamberlain’s concern about the Sudeten problem as early as 11 June 1937, at their Downing Street lunch; Enid Lyons, So We, 261-2. 2129 Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 151, 23 March 1938; Lyons, CPD, 27 April 1938, vol.155, 537, vide above. 2130 Hughes statement, CPD, vol.155, 1375ff., 25 May 1938, on Chamberlain’s 24 May statement; A. Watt, Australian Diplomat, 168. 2131 Lyons had been insistent to Bruce that Page see all the recent ‘secret cables’ on the Czechs; Lyons to Earle Page, London, 25 May 1938, A2908 C34, NAA, Canberra. While Earle Page was in situ, Lyons communicated through him rather than through Bruce. 2132 Meeting of UK and Dominion Representatives, DAFP, vol.1, 209, 25 May 1938. Bruce also attended the meeting, while other ministers, including Menzies and White, were in trade talks. Ovendale, Appeasement, 125, thought the dominion reluctance to support the Czechs influenced the later British decision to refuse any guarantee to Prague. 2133 Halifax repeated Chamberlain’s assurance that no commitment was offered to Czechoslovakia, but he believed that Prague could be steered towards moderation and that the Germans would accept a compromise short of annexation; DAFP, vol.1, 209, 25 May 1938. Halifax also thought the Germans unwilling to acquire any non-German subjects, a belief that became important in later months; vide below and Chapter 7. 2134 Earle Page, DAFP, vol.1, 209, 25 May 1938. Martin, Menzies, 233, called this view ‘parochial’. Its sentiments were similar to those later expressed by Chamberlain on 27 September 1938, when he referred to ‘a quarrel in a far- away country between people of whom we know nothing’; vide below. 2135 Menzies was not yet the open adherent of appeasement that Andrews supposed; “The Australian Government and Appeasement,” 75. His conversion came with the visit to Germany in late July 1938, vide below. His late conversion has not been adequately recognised, for instance in Ovendale, “Appeasement,” 186. 287 a territorial transfer from democratic Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany in the name of conciliation, even before the crisis had come to a head.2136

Lyons remained conscious in the following months of the disastrous potential of the Sudeten question to disturb the post-Anschluss calm, specifically citing it, on 6 July 1938, as an urgent reason for the immediate, unilateral implementation of the Anglo-Italian agreement.2137 He received tepid British assurances in response on the following day, suggesting that ‘progress’ was ‘not at all unsatisfactory’2138 ─ what was regarded as ‘progress’ by the appeasers was made evident after the Attorney-General, Menzies, made a ‘semi-official’ visit to Berlin, 27-30 July 1938, which appeared to bring about a Damascene conversion (after which he may be counted as a member of the appeasing circle until at least March 1939).2139 Everything that he subsequently told Lyons confirmed the latter’s convictions of recent years in regard to the Germany, including the suggestion that Berlin’s outlook on the Sudetenland was peaceful and displayed willingness to compromise.2140 Menzies had now joined Lyons in ‘[imputing] to Germany a peace-loving spirit which I should imagine she does not possess’, as he had once put it.2141 Contrasting with the light emanating from Berlin was the darkness at Prague, for the same observer also warned that Berlin feared a belligerent Benes (whom Menzies elsewhere described as ‘greasy’ and ‘tiresome’), supported by Paris.2142

Whatever the significance of the new unanimity between Lyons and Menzies, the former’s anxiety was sufficient for him by 1 September 1938, to submit to cabinet his personal suggestion of a ‘Day of Divine Guidance’, which he then announced publicly in an address to the Second Unofficial Conference on British Commonwealth Relations at Glenbrook, NSW, two days later.2143 This speech gave a valuable insight into Lyons’s personal and prime ministerial

2136 As noted by Twomey, “Munich,” 32-3. As defence readiness was advanced, it was not advocated solely owing to a consciousness of defence weakness; pace Murray, “Munich Revisited”: 50 2137 Lyons to Earle Page, London, DAFP, vol.1, 227, 6 July 1938; Ovendale, “Appeasement,”185. 2138 Earle Page, London, to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 228, 7 July 1938. 2139 Martin, Menzies, 234. Menzies was impressed, if not over-awed. He also visited Amsterdam and the Hague, 30 July-1 August 1938. White, Love Story, 191-2 is incorrect to state that Menzies was in Berlin at the time of the German ‘invasion’ (sic) of Czechoslovakia. The Times called the visit a ‘minor landmark in the progress of the Dominions towards an individual European policy’; Stirling, London, to Hodgson, DAFP, vol.1, 236, 3 August 1938. 2140 Menzies, London, to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 237, 6 August 1938, following Stirling, London, to Hodgson, DAFP, vol.1, 236, 3 August 1938. Menzies also suggested that the Germans were impressed by Chamberlain and were prepared to accept a ‘federal’ solution for the Sudetenland. The most senior official to meet Menzies was Dr. Schacht of the Reichsbank, former economics minister, whom Casey had wished to meet in 1937; Casey to Strahan, Prime Ministers Department, 19 February 1937, A461 C326/1/4 PART 1. The non-ideological Schacht was frequently employed to meet distinguished foreign visitors, such as Lord Lothian; Griffiths, 271; Martin, Menzies, 235. Menzies issued a statement in London on 8 August 1938 reiterating the positive aspects of the visit; Current Notes, vol.5 (1938), reported in The Times, 9 August 1938 and the Age; ibid., in Andrews, History, 80. 2141 Menzies Diary B, 30 April 1935, MS 4936/13/397, on Hertzog; Martin, Menzies, 154. vide Chapter 3. 2142 Menzies, London, to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 237, 6 August 1938, point 5, concluding that a ‘very firm hand’ was therefore needed to chastise Prague. On his personal reservations about Benes, the Czech premier; Menzies to Frank Menzies, 30 May 1938; Martin, Menzies, 233. This was not the first time that Benes was seen in Canberra as a villain - Latham had reported the views of Ramsay MacDonald that he was an intriguer; Parkhill to Latham, 15 November 1932, Latham Papers, MS 1009/56. 2143 Cabinet Minutes, 1 September 1938, A2694/18/5, NAA, Canberra. Lyons opening address to the Second Unofficial Conference on British Commonwealth Relations, Glenbrook, NSW, 3 September 1938, where he suggested that the churches set aside a ‘Day of Prayer for Divine Intercession and Guidance’; Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, 110. Smith’s 288 thinking at a time when the September crisis was in gestation. His personal fear about the future was manifest throughout and appeared to have momentarily displaced his characteristic optimism:

At times national viewpoints become so irreconcilable that it would seem that no human agency could devise a solution and our hope of achieving a lasting peace must emanate from the intervention of a Higher Power.2144

This admission of reliance on personal faith did not signify the end of earthly appeasement, which Lyons justified in the remainder of the speech, but it did offer some indication of his state of mind at a time when the crisis was escalating.2145 He restated the question that had consumed him since 1932 to some degree or another: ‘Are we to be allowed to live our lives in peace or are we to be plunged against our will into war?’2146 Yet, amidst this very personal analysis, Lyons refused to assign the blame for these crises to specific purveyors of ‘intense nationalism’, reminding delegates that people were free to adopt ‘other systems of government’ as they saw fit.2147 He did, however, note that the rule of international law and order now appeared ‘more honoured in the breach than in the observance’. Lyons’s only earthly solution was more conciliation and accordingly he urged the delegates to examine its further application through a ‘broad and more liberal outlook’. He saw his own mission and that of his government in the coming weeks clearly: ‘We must strive actively for peace and not merely piously hope for it.’2148 Lyons therefore remained confident that the horrors of war could thereby be avoided, given the ‘almost universal’ wish of ‘the masses of the people of all nations…to live in peace and harmony with their fellowmen’, a view reminiscent of that publicly espoused by his wife in 1935 and a further example of personal sentiment being translated into political principle, as Lyons was wont to do.2149 There was, however, to be no relaxation of rearmament, despite Lyons’s continued regret at its necessity and present scale, which was now beyond that of even 1914.2150 In the meantime, there was the need for ‘God-granted wisdom…to those in whose hands lies the decision [for

Weekly, 17 September 1938, paraphrased the Prime Minister’s call as ‘Heaven Help Australia’, in an editorial letter. Two prominent British appeasers, Lothian and Curtis, were also at Glenbrook; Rose, 189. 2144 Lyons Glenbrook speech, 3 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.5 (1938), 107ff. 2145 It suggests a state of distress conducive to the ‘psychologic’ of Holsti, 120-1, whereby the rational fragility of decision-making becomes apparent under extreme stress. 2146 Lyons Glenbrook speech, 3 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.5 (1938), 107ff. 2147 This was a repeat of the 1937 sentiment that differences in ‘political creed should be no obstacle to friendly relations’, vide Chapter 5, which he had restated earlier in 1938; CPD, vol.155, 535-6, 27 April 1938. 2148 Lyons Glenbrook speech, 3 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.5 (1938), 107ff. 2149 Enid Lyons broadcast, 15 August 1935, reported in Sun News-Pictorial, Melbourne; Courier Mail, (Brisbane), 16 August 1935; Age, 16 August 1935, MS 4851/4. Lyons Glenbrook speech, 3 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.5 (1938), 107ff. 2150 ibid. He endorsed a recent statement of Cordell Hull in favour of limiting armaments and regretted that there were now more than seven million men under arms. 289 peace or war]’, in which category he naturally included himself.2151 Therefore, from the beginning of the Czech crisis, Lyons was aware of the probable consequences of the failure of conciliation.

Accordingly, he wished to make his conciliatory attitude perfectly clear to Whitehall during those early weeks. In an interview with the acting UK high commissioner, Liesching, on 31 August 1938, Lyons personally and confidentially warned him not to overestimate the ‘ultimate moral support’ in Australia for a Czech stance of defiance.2152 It was made clear to the diplomat that the issue ought not to constitute a casus belli, for Lyons argued, in accordance with similar recent observations by Menzies, that Czech repression was largely responsible for the crisis ─ Bruce too was circulating similar views in London.2153 Liesching reported that the Prime Minister was concerned about the Empire being dragged into war through a ‘second-hand commitment’ to France’s treaty obligation (an attitude similar to that of March 1936),2154 for it was his private view that the French were ‘rotten to the core’.2155 Lyons significantly warned Liesching in this interview of ‘the probability of an embarrassing divergence from the policy of the United Kingdom Government’, a direct threat that was rare in public discourse, where much the same was often implied but not so candidly stated.2156 Whilst Lyons thus implied that equals could and would have policy differences, he avoided any suggestion that Australia would not be committed to any resulting war; certainly that was the impression that Officer, in Washington, offered the State Department.2157 The differences that emerged between Canberra and London over the coming weeks would be centred on the ways to avoid such a war, although dominion lack of enthusiasm about the prospect was certainly a factor in British policy-making.2158 What Lyons meant by ‘divergence’ remained unclear, but the high commissioner thought it an empty threat at the time, believing it due to an ‘over-simplified appreciation’ and lack of contact with the trio of returning ministers (Menzies, Page and White) due

2151 Lyons statement in response to the ‘Day of Prayer’ organised by the Independent Church, Collins St., Melbourne; Herald, 29 September 1938, 7, e. 2152 Liesching, UK High Commission, Canberra, to Lord Stanley, Dominions Secretary, DAFP, vol.1, 242, 31 August 1938. Liesching often found Lyons’s attitudes alarming. Malcolm MacDonald was already acting for the ailing Stanley; Cabinet, 30 August 1938, CAB 23/94, PRO, London. The 31 August interview provided an excellent example of P. Edwards, “Australian Foreign Policy…”: 336, that Australian foreign policy was often what the Prime Minister told the UK High Commissioner. 2153 DAFP, vol.1, 242, 31 August 1938. Bruce on a casus belli in London on 24 August 1938; D. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 171, which he repeated on 27 September; Adams, 119, vide below. Menzies, London, to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 237, 6 August 1938, point 5, on the Czechs. 2154 Liesching to Stanley, DAFP, vol.1, 242, 31 August 1938; Martin, Menzies, 237. vide Chapter 4 for his low opinion of the French during the Rhineland episode. Lyons did tell Liesching that he was horrified by the Nazi treatment of Jews and the oppression of Catholics, but he divorced this sentiment from his foreign policy. 2155 Enid Lyons quoting her husband from 1938, audio interview with Mel Pratt, Tape 1, 79. Note also his disdain over French policy in 1923; DAFP, vol.1, 28, 22 May 1937. 2156 Liesching to Stanley, DAFP, vol.1, 246, 2 September 1938. Colley: 51, commented on the rarity of public divergence. 2157 Officer, Washington, conversation with Moffat, 22 September 1938, informing him that the government’s advice to Britain had been to avoid a war over Czechoslovakia; Moffat Papers in Hooker, 208-9; A. Watt, Evolution, 15. Mansergh, Experience, 276. on the absence of doubt about Australia’s solidarity over war. 2158 vide below. 290 home on 6 September ─ he later had cause to take it more seriously.2159 Liesching remained confident that their experiences and what he called the ‘far-sighted and realistic appreciation’ of Hughes would prevail in cabinet.2160 He was mistaken, for the returned Menzies repeated his anti- Czech sentiments to cabinet at Melbourne on 12 September, advocating a ‘very firm hand’ at Prague, and thus only hardened attitudes.2161 It was the cautious, half-threatening, stridently anti-Czech attitude of the circle of Lyons, Menzies, Page and Casey, that predominated over the coming weeks, with little evidence of any tempering by Hughes, despite that minister’s efforts to do so. Even before their return, Lyons gave evidence that he had accepted Menzies’s earlier counsel,2162 for by 2 September the Prime Minister, on behalf of himself and his colleagues, had placed the chief responsibility for the escalating crisis onto the Czechs and urged Chamberlain to use his influence to compel them to make ‘liberal concessions’, failing which Britain ought to renounce any interest in a Sudeten solution.2163 This advice was contrary to the increasingly anti- appeasement sentiments of External Affairs, which advocated support for any British warning against the use of force by Germany.2164 Joseph Kennedy, the US ambassador in London, correctly, if bluntly, summarised it as implying that ‘if the Czechs did not satisfy the Sudeten Germans they should be told where to get off’.2165 In the British cabinet, the collective phraseology of the Australian message was similarly taken to mean ‘that we should advise [Prague] to do something generous, and advise them that unless they did so, we should wash our hands of them’.2166 Appeasement, in Lyons’s view, implied activity and intervention, not the interested detachment of cunctation, and he remained forthright throughout this crisis that there must be an active striving for peace, as he had said at Glenbrook on 3 September.2167

Chamberlain was already considering his own options in early September and the possibility of any divergence between British and dominion policy already concerned him.2168

2159 Liesching to Lord Stanley, DAFP, vol.1, 246, 2 September 1938. On his later attitude, vide below; DAFP, vol.1, 280, 27 September 1938. The ministers were due home on 6 September 1938. 2160 Liesching to Lord Stanley, DAFP, vol.1, 246, 2 September 1938. 2161 Cabinet Minutes, 12 September 1938, A2694/18/5, NAA, Canberra, provided no details of what Menzies said, for which we are reliant on press reports. His conciliatory attitude towards Germany was quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald, 12 September 1938 and West Australian, 13 September 1938; Martin, Menzies, 236; Ovendale, Appeasement, 154. He was not uncritical of Germany, but was prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt. 2162 Menzies, London, to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 237, 6 August 1938, point 5. Menzies was observed on 14 September offering ‘powerful support’ to Lyons’s anti-Czech point of view; Liesching to Stanley, DAFP, vol.1, 253. 2163 Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 245, 2 September 1938, using the most formal language of ‘His Majesty’s Government in the Commonwealth of Australia’ alongside ‘We’. The Czechs had been warned by Simon, Chancellor, on 27 August 1938 not to expect British military aid; Lanark speech, extracts, Current Notes, vol.5 (1938), 136-7. 2164 External Affairs Memorandum, DAFP, vol.1, 243, 1 September 1938. Woodard: 49, suggested that an anti- appeasement trend in External Affairs began with the recruitment of Watt and Deschamps in April 1937. Alan Watt, “Assumptions…” passim, later portrayed himself as a champion of anti-appeasement, as the head of the International Co-operation Section. 2165 Joseph Kennedy to Cordell Hull, FRUS, 1938, vol.1, 577, 6 September 1938. He noted that Australia was the only dominion that had so far officially defined its attitude. 2166 MacDonald, Cabinet Minutes, 12 September 1939, CAB 23/95, PRO, London. 2167 Douglas, “Chamberlain and Appeasement,”88, suggested that any critique of Chamberlain’s policy ought to examine the possibility that Britain could simply have desisted from any involvement. Lyons Glenbrook speech, 3 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.5 (1938), 107ff. 2168 Chamberlain and MacDonald believed that the Empire could disintegrate and that dominion participation in any war would not necessarily be universal or automatic; Cabinet, 30 August 1938, CAB 23/94, PRO, London; also 291 Some, like Foreign Secretary Halifax, later thought that dominion opinion had been a decisive influence on him; others, like Eden, disputed this.2169 A close examination of the events of September 1938 supports suggestions that dominion opinion played a more decisive role than was publicly admitted at the time.2170 Throughout the crisis, the British cabinet was certainly conscious that any war over the Sudetenland could lead to the dissolution of the Commonwealth, for the ‘isolationist’ dominions were said to prefer ‘almost any course to war’.2171 At the very least, Chamberlain’s own inclination towards conciliation was bolstered by the support he received during these weeks from dominion sources (with their lack of European commitments), especially from the more supportive premiers like Lyons.2172

VI

What Lyons had meant by his Glenbrook preference for activity over pious hope became clear in the course of the subsequent September days and nights, as he urged and encouraged intervention by Whitehall on a number of occasions, as well as participating in one final initiative himself.2173 The Sudeten impasse was resolved not by ‘the intervention of a Higher Power’ but by the intervention of the appeasers.2174 There was an acknowledgement at London that the crisis had moved into its final stages following Hitler’s Nuremberg speech of 12 September 1938 (monitored directly in Canberra) and considerable efforts were made thereafter to inform and consult the dominions.2175 Some fourteen meetings were held (12 September-1 October 1938)

Ovendale, “Britain, the Dominions and the Coming of the Second World War.” 329. Hitler was confident, by November 1937, that these factors retarded Britain’s willingness to make war on Germany; D. Watt, “South African Attempts to Mediate Between Britain and Germany,” in Studies in International History, eds. K. Bourne and D. Watt, (London: Longmans, 1967), 402-3. 2169 Ovendale, Appeasement, 146-7. Eden’s view has predominated in the historiography; for example R. Meyers, “British Imperial Interests and the Policy of Appeasement,” 339 and ibid., “Britain, Europe, and the Dominions in the 1930s: Some Aspects of British, European and Commonwealth Policies.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.22, no.1 (1976): 36-50, passim. 2170 P. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 115, and Holland, 167, saw it as a general factor. 2171 vide below for specific mention of dominion commitment at cabinet on 25 September. Ovendale, Appeasement, 180, 280, on dominion opinion and its significant influence; similarly in Rose, 192. The quote is MacDonald to cabinet, Cabinet Minutes, 14 September 1938, CAB 23/95, PRO, London. The Americans were told that the dominions were ‘isolationist’ and that war was therefore likely to tear the Empire apart; D. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 169, quoting a memorandum given to Washington on 7 September 1938, FRUS, 1936, vol.1, 580-1; Mansergh, Experience, 280. The Germans also showed a keen interest in such matters; G. Weinberg, “Germany and Munich,” in Reappraising the Munich Pact. Continental Perspectives, ed. M. Latynski (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1992), 14; vide below. 2172 Mansergh, Experience, 280ff. Ovendale, Appeasement, 180; Rock, 48; P. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 115, that dominion opinion was utilised to reinforce an already set course. Chamberlain claimed in his parliamentary statement of 3 October 1938 that dominion reluctance to undertake military commitments had been a factor in conciliation; Ovendale, ibid.; Feiling, 362. 2173 Lyons Glenbrook speech, 3 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.5 (1938), 107ff. Enid Lyons recalled his belief that the British were reluctant to intervene directly due to a lack of support from France; Enid Lyons audio interview with Mel Pratt, Tape 1, 79. 2174 Lyons Glenbrook speech, 3 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.5 (1938), 107ff. 2175 MacDonald was concerned that ‘reasonable consultation’ take place; Cabinet Minutes, 12 September 1938, CAB 23/95, PRO, London. Lyons had his own summary of the 12 September speech; External Affairs summary, A981 CZE PART 1, NAA, Canberra, gleaned from an officer listening to the short-wave broadcast in his own home, but poor 292 between Malcolm MacDonald and dominion representatives at which a prominent, and eventually the predominant, voice was that of Bruce, who although he was at Geneva until 14 September was fully aware of Whitehall’s intention to streamline consultation during this period of impending crisis.2176 The important role that Lyons was to play during this month was due not only to his insistent and direct communication with Chamberlain, but also to the ‘special influence’ of Bruce as the senior dominion spokesman and as a former prime minister (cum privy councillor), a status noted by his envious Canadian counterpart, Massey.2177 Lyons was to rely heavily on this considerable influence and on Bruce’s extensive contacts (which had impressed Menzies in 1935),2178 conscious that the high commissioner was at ‘the centre of activities’, although he supplemented this method of communication with direct telephone contact with Chamberlain.2179 Liesching, Bruce’s counterpart at Canberra, was also granted an occasional interview when Lyons determined that a cable or telephone message required additional emphasis. Despite the tyranny of distance, the Australian prime minister was thus able to remain well-informed throughout September, as well-informed as the most senior British cabinet ministers themselves, as Casey had foreseen and as Bruce later confirmed after MacDonald.2180

The Nuremberg speech insisted that the choice between peace and war was in the hands of Prague.2181 Lyons was in no doubt that Benes must be forced to concede in the greater interest, and at the first of the London crisis meetings of dominion delegates, on 12 September, this view was made clear.2182 External Affairs, despite the growing reservations of some of its junior members and its belief in Germany being warned against violence,2183 was still of the opinion that Prague was the obdurate party in need of compulsion, as stated in a memorandum of the following day.2184 Lyons had personally and emphatically made this point to Liesching (with the

reception caused a problem. Alan Watt, Australian Diplomat, 25, mentioned that he did this monitoring himself after March 1939, but perhaps he was also the officer referred to in September 1938. Bruce thought the speech had at least not accentuated tension; Bruce Diary of events; 12 September 1938, M104/6/2, NAA, Canberra. 2176 Cumpston, Bruce, 160. Bruce, Geneva, to Lyons, 12 September 1938, M104/6/2, NAA, Canberra. 2177 Lyons reappointed Bruce in December 1937 for five years, ten months before his term expired; Stirling, 60. Bruce had declined Chamberlain’s offer of the BBC chairmanship; C. Edwards, Bruce, 255-6; P. Edwards, “The Rise and Fall…”, 53. Mansergh, Experience, 279, quoting the diary of Massey. Bruce put his influence down to his former prime ministerial status; Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 304, 7 October 1938. Bruce’s high opinion of himself was shared by Hasluck, Chance, 38; by Carlton, “The Dominions and British Policy in the Abyssinian Crisis”: 62, and by Cumpston, Bruce, 158. Attard is correct to believe that the influence of the high commissioners has been underestimated, a view especially relevant to Bruce; Attard, “The Australian High Commissioners”: 17; also discussed in P. Edwards, “The Rise and Fall…”, 39ff. 2178 Menzies had been impressed by the wealth of Bruce’s contacts and influence in London; Martin, Menzies, 154. 2179 Lyons to Bruce, 25 October 1938, M104/6/1. 2180 Casey already thought in January 1938 that the Australian prime minister received ‘as much information’ as ‘most’ British ministers; R.Casey, “Australia’s Voice in Imperial Affairs” in W. Duncan (ed.) Australia’s Foreign Policy, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1938, 55. Bruce extended this conclusion; DAFP, vol.1, 304, 7 October 1938, in accordance with the opinion of MacDonald; High Commissioner’s meeting, 30 September 1938, PREM 1/242/11, PRO, London. Ovendale, “Britain, the Dominions and the Coming of the Second World War,” 325, noted the tendency to confide in dominion leaders rather than in British ministers. He also provides an example from December 1935 of the high commissioners receiving information before British cabinet members; ibid. 2181 I. Kershaw, Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesis, vol.2, (London: Allen Lane, 2000), 109-110. 2182 Cumpston, Bruce, 160, even though Bruce was still in Geneva. 2183 External Affairs Memorandum, DAFP, vol.1, 243, 1 September 1938. 2184 External Affairs memorandum, Cabinet Minutes, 13 September 1938, A2694/18/5, NAA, Canberra. A circle of junior officers, including Watt, later expressed opposition to this attitude, vide below. 293 ‘powerful support’ of Menzies) by 14 September, endorsing the similar opinions of Neville Henderson, the British ambassador at Berlin, and reiterating that ‘almost any alternative’ was preferable to war ─ indicative of his attitude as an appeaser of peace-at-almost-any-price.2185 The hopeful concession of Sudeten autonomy made by the Czechs on 5 September, was apparently now insufficient and remained unmentioned (until after the event, when Lyons admitted that it had contained prospects), even though in accord with Canberra’s earlier insistence on just such a measure.2186 Lyons now seemed determined on a settlement that was on German terms, which were leading towards annexation, not autonomy, and although he never explicitly stated why he preferred the Berlin solution to that of Prague, it may be speculated that he viewed the former model as offering a more durable settlement. He was circumspect about his rejection of Czech moderation and his alternative endorsement of the more extreme British appeasers, such as Henderson, in his public response to the Nuremberg speech, on 14 September. The public was simply told that consultation with Whitehall was constant and that the prime minister had ‘discussed the latest developments by telephone with Mr. Bruce’.2187 There was no mention of the culpability being assigned to the Czechs by Canberra or of Lyons’s anxiety about the failure of the mediatory, Runciman mission.2188 This crisis was to be handled in the same manner as its predecessors, that is, with a minimum of public and parliamentary (after 21 September) statements, more obfuscation than information in the latter instance, whilst Lyons confidentially bombarded Whitehall with his counsel, little of which was ever made public. Frenetic activity was accordingly confused with its opposite by many of his critics.

Lyons gave no indication at the time of his parliamentary statement of any advanced knowledge of measures being contemplated by Chamberlain, which were fully in accord with the concept of personal diplomacy that he had favoured since 1934 and urged on his British counterpart after the Imperial Conference. ‘Plan Z’, which proposed a personal visit to Germany by Chamberlain, a subsequent meeting with Hitler himself and even a four-power conference, was first mentioned at a British ministerial meeting on 13 September and presented to the British cabinet as a fait accompli on 14 September.2189 Lyons first learned of the proposal through a cable

2185 Liesching to Stanley, DAFP, vol.1, 253, 14 September 1938, noting Menzies’s support. Lyons had clearly studied Stirling’s London digests of material from many sources with care; ibid. On Henderson; Griffiths, 281-2, 298, where he was seen by some as ‘our Nazi ambassador in Berlin’ and as ‘a complete Nazi’. He was close to Chamberlain, who urged a conciliatory attitude at the time of his appointment in April 1937; ibid., 281. 2186DAFP, vol.1, 245, 2 September 1938. Later, Lyons later admitted the 5 September concession had provided ‘hope’, but at the time he called only for more; Prime Minister’s Speech on the International Situation, midnight, 28 September 1938, Episode Title No.245919 JAL, Screen Sound, Canberra. 2187 Lyons statement, 14 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5 (1938), 141-2. Parliament was in recess until 21 September 1938. Bruce only returned to London from Geneva on that day-Lyons’s communications in the previous fortnight had chiefly been with Chamberlain, MacDonald and Liesching. This provides an example of Lyons wishing to associate himself with Bruce’s high standing. 2188 ibid. The Runciman mission to Prague had stalled-Enid Lyons recalled their concern about its failure; Enid Lyons audio interview with Mel Pratt, Tape 1, 79, vide below. 2189 Colvin, 151ff. Chamberlain had discussed such a visit with his sisters on 3 September; Feiling, 357. The Informal Meetings of ministers on 13 September consisted of Chamberlain, Halifax, Simon and Hoare. Chamberlain presented it to the cabinet on 14 September only after he had made a decision to proceed on the previous night; ibid., 363, quoting Chamberlain to his sister, 19 September 1938. Stirling thought that the suggestion of a four-power conference 294 to Liesching on the same day, as part of a circular telegram to dominion leaders, indicating the seriousness of Chamberlain’s desire to keep the dominions abreast of developments.2190 His subsequent approval of ‘Plan Z’ was predictable, given that he had advised Chamberlain to make such contact on a ‘personal basis’ with one dictator as early as June 1937, believing (after Casey) that this alone, ‘rather than diplomacy’, could be more effective ‘in promoting international understanding’.2191 The same principle had earlier applied in the Eastern Mission and could now be applied to the third of the aggressors, Hitler, with whom some agreement still seemed possible.2192 Some measure of Lyons’s enthusiasm may be gained from the immediacy of his reply, via Liesching, for the diplomat it appeared had been asked ‘very urgently’ by the ‘Prime Minister’ to reply immediately to the ‘Plan Z’ cable, despite the fact that the advice had not arrived in Canberra until some time after 9.10pm (AEST) on 14 September ─ it reflected not only his views, however, but also those of Page and Menzies, in whose presence it was drafted.2193 Unlike his Canadian and South African counterparts, Lyons refused to ruminate on the matter, let alone wait for any cabinet consideration, as the cabinet did not meet that night.2194 Liesching’s peremptory reply, marked ‘IMMEDIATE’, indicated that Lyons had expressed not only ‘support for your policy and actions on behalf of peace’, but also ‘our warmest admiration’2195 ─ it is unclear who was meant by ‘our’, but presumably Lyons was referring to the aforesaid ministers.

The subsequent public, prime ministerial response to ‘Plan Z’ on behalf of the government, following Chamberlain’s intervention and the Berchtesgaden meeting of 15 September, was in accord with his private utterances; he detected statesmanship.2196 He believed the initiative ‘unprecedented’, modestly discounting his own earlier attempts at personal diplomacy, and a ‘courageous move’. Lyons expressed his very personal hope that Europeans

originated in Paris; Stirling to External Affairs, 14 September 1938, A981 CZE PART 1, NAA, Canberra. Lord Runciman also mentioned such a possibility in cabinet on 17 September, CAB 23/95, PRO, London. 2190 Stanley to Liesching, DAFP, vol.1, 254, 12.10pm (BST), 14 September 1938; Circular telegram B. no.230, DO 114/94, PRO, London. Ovendale, “Britain, the Dominions and the Coming of the Second World War,” 325, noted the practice of confiding in dominion prime ministers. 2191 Lyons to Chamberlain re Mussolini, 11 June 1937; Enid Lyons, So We, 261-2; ibid., My Life, 34-5; after Casey, Australia’s Place in the World, 57; vide Chapter 5. 2192 Churchill himself believed that there was a real prospect of some agreement even with Germany up to the period 1936-37; Lentin, 105. 2193 Stanley to Liesching, DAFP, vol.1, 254, 12.10pm (BST), 14 September 1938. This cable was therefore received at Canberra after 9.10pm (AEST) on the same day. Liesching’s reply on Lyons’s behalf, Liesching to Stanley, DAFP, vol.1, 255, 15 September 1938; Telegram No.7, 15 September 1938, DO 114/94, PRO, London, was received at Whitehall at 5.35pm, 14 September (BST), that is, at 2.35am (AEST), 15 September. Given that Liesching dated the reply ‘15 September’, he must have drafted it after midnight. vide Appendix II on the nine hour time difference, London-Canberra, as inaccurate time calculations have confused many analyses. 2194 Mackenzie King and Hertzog were also pleased, but their replies were less immediate, the former reaching Whitehall at 1.55am (BST) on 15 September and the latter not until 12.15pm, 17 September; Telegrams No.8 and 9, DO 114/94, PRO, London. Lyons was in advance of King by over 8 hours and of Hertzog by almost 2 days; Telegram No.7, 15 September 1938, DO 114/94, PRO, London. 2195 Liesching to Stanley, DAFP, vol.1, 255, 15 September 1938; Telegram No.7, 15 September 1938, DO 114/94, PRO, London. Page and Menzies were present at the drafting. 2196 Lyons statement, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 September 1938, 11, g. In his enthusiasm, he was joined by their editorial, 16 September 1938, 10, c-d; Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, 261. Others too, like the Labour Daily, were in favour; Anon., “Overseas Reactions to the Crisis.” Round Table, vol.29 (December 1938): 45. Curtin was less enthusiastic, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 September 1938, 11, g. B.S. Stevens, the UAP Premier of NSW, with an eye on a transfer to federal politics, tried to out-appease Lyons, calling it a ‘new approach’, heralding a ‘new and better era’; ibid. vide Chapter 7 on Stevens and Lyons after Munich. 295 would respond by ‘putting passion and prejudice aside and returning to reason and generous goodwill’, concluding with a prayer for peace2197 ─ a response that bordered on the ‘pious hope’ he had warned against at Glenbrook.2198 His motivation was clear ─ his fear of a war, which he believed would destroy ‘much that is best in European civilization’.2199 Lyons the appeaser was thus overjoyed at Chamberlain’s alternative of ‘direct conversation’,2200 in order to avoid this ‘barbarous and inconclusive’ means of settling differences.2201 Later he believed that the talks had enabled ‘the representatives of Germany and England to understand one another’s point of view’, a classic assessment of the virtues of appeasement by one of its prominent advocates.2202 Chamberlain had been appreciative of his support,2203 but other more Machiavellian politicians, like Mussolini and Lloyd George, were not persuaded of the merits of this approach.2204

Hitler demonstrated after the talks at Berchtesgaden and at Godesberg, 22-23 September 1938, that he was not ready to put aside ‘passion and prejudice’ in favour of ‘reason and goodwill’.2205 Neither the Australian nor the British prime ministers (like most of their Anglo- Saxon contemporaries) understood the inner nature of the German leader. This nature made conciliation difficult, although not impossible, yet arguably less likely than with the more pragmatic and ideologically flexible leaders of Italy and Japan, whose strategic and ideological links with Berlin remained tenuous─ Mussolini, for example, sent Chamberlain a favourable response to the Berchtesgaden initiative.2206 During these conversations, the ‘mercantile’ concept of appeasement, as Harold Nicolson called it, had met the ‘warrior’ concept of fascism and both sides were confident they had emerged in the stronger position.2207 Two particular points subsequently emerged in the minds of the appeasers that were accepted by Lyons without question for the remainder of the crisis. Firstly, Chamberlain believed that his concession of the principle of Sudeten separation (as opposed to autonomy) was a step forward and that the only

2197 Lyons statement, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 September 1938, 11, g. 2198 Lyons Glenbrook speech, 3 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.5 (1938), 107ff. 2199 Lyons statement, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 September 1938, 11, g. 2200 Chamberlain-Hitler conversation at Berchtesgaden, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 896, 15 September 1938. Chamberlain had thought since at least mid-1937 that it was possible to sit down with the Germans and go through their complaints with a pencil; Adams, 68, quoting Chamberlain to the Soviet ambassador. 2201 Lyons statement, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 September 1938, 11, g. 2202 Prime Minister’s Speech on the International Situation, midnight, 28 September 1938, Episode Title No.245919 JAL, ScreenSound, Canberra. 2203 Bruce to Lyons, 14 September 1938, M104/6/2/, NAA, Canberra, conveying Chamberlain’s thanks 2204 Mussolini thought it a mistake for ‘the old man’ to allow Hitler to see him and to approach him ‘in the guise of a bourgeois pacifist’, convinced that nothing could come of such talks; Lamb, Mussolini and the British, 222. Lloyd George, who subscribed to phrenology, thought that Chamberlain was mistaken to allow Hitler to see the shape of his head; Lentin, 109. 2205 Kershaw, Hitler, vol.2, 113-5, on the Godesberg talks. 2206 Rock, 89, suggests that the appeasers failed to understand the essence of fascist totalitarianism and that the reason and morality on which appeasement was based were alien to Nazism. It is hard to dispute this, but agreement was still possible, particularly with Japan and Italy. On Mussolini’s response through Grandi on 16 September; Middlemas, 380. 2207 Meyers, “British Imperial Interests and the Policy of Appeasement,” 340-1, quotes Nicolson and sees appeasement as rooted in liberalism and the ‘Anglo-American tradition of thought’. Rock, 56, offers a similar assessment of Chamberlain, equally applicable to Lyons. 296 problem was now finding a ‘practical method of execution’.2208 When he told the British cabinet of the details of the talks on 17 September, it was clear that the only dispute remaining was over ‘method’, not ‘principle’.2209 Similarly, at Canberra, while the method was problematic, the ‘principle of self-determination’ (as Bruce called it) caused no difficulty amongst the predominant circle2210 ─ Lyons had seemed to set aside any acceptance of autonomy after 5 September, despite his later claims.2211 The second emerging point accepted by the appeasers after these conversations was the mistaken belief that the Germans were not interested in any absorption of a Czech minority. Hitler had stated his lack of interest in obtaining Czech subjects in the Nuremberg address of 12 September and he had repeated his ‘racial’ outlook to Chamberlain three days later, something that the British premier carefully noted and confidentially repeated immediately afterwards.2212 The sacrifice of the Sudetenland, it was thought, would thus be the last required of Prague and was consequently pressed upon the Czechs the more urgently.

When British thoughts about the ‘method’ of transfer were communicated to the dominion representatives in London on 17 September, some of differences of outlook between Bruce and Lyons emerged, for the former expressed concern in favour of some ‘guarantee’ for what was to remain of the Czech state,2213 contrary to the latter’s insistence since April that nothing of the kind should be offered.2214 His comment was not the first suggestion of a revised ‘guarantee’, which had already been raised in the British cabinet, but by the following day Chamberlain and MacDonald had apparently decided that a territorial guarantee was to be the incentive, or reward, for Czech co-operation:2215 a ‘pretty stiff’ telegram to Benes was accordingly drafted on 18 September.2216 Although the nature of such a communication matched the desire of Menzies and Lyons for Prague to be brought into line, the issue of any territorial guarantee was a separate matter and one that could only have disturbed Lyons, judging from his earlier caution about such suggestions in April ─ Bruce seemed aware of these reservations and

2208 Chamberlain-Hitler conversation at Berchtesgaden, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 896, 15 September 1938. 2209 Cabinet Minutes, 17 September 1938, CAB 23/95, PRO, London; Meyers, “British Imperial Interests and the Policy of Appeasement,” 48; DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 896. 2210 Bruce to Lyons, 18 September 1938, M104//6/2, quoting Chamberlain. 2211 Earle Page had proposed the like; Earle Page, DAFP, vol.1, 209, 25 May 1938. Lyons had rejected autonomy after 5 September, vide above and Prime Minister’s Speech on the International Situation, midnight, 28 September 1938, Episode Title No.245919 JAL. 2212 Kershaw, Hitler, vol.2, 109-110. Chamberlain’s notes of Berchtesgaden conversation, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 895, 15 September 1938. Cadogan, Diaries, 100, on the 17 September cabinet meeting. 2213 High Commissioners’ meeting, 6.15pm (BST), 17 September 1938, PREM 1/242/55, PRO, London. The nature of the guarantee was never specified, but was presumably military. 2214 vide above, Lyons, CPD, vol.155, 537, 27 April 1938, when guarantees against military aggression were discussed. 2215 MacDonald told Bruce that a guarantee had been raised in cabinet but not discussed at length; High Commissioners’ meeting, 17 September 1938, PREM 1/242/55. It was discussed on 19 September, during which MacDonald suggested that a guarantee could bolster public opinion; Cabinet Minutes, 19 September 1938, CAB 23/95. 2216 Cadogan, Diaries, 18 September 1938. He wrongly believed the dominions ignorant of the proposed guarantee. A guarantee was discussed on 19 September as a bolster to public opinion; MacDonald, Cabinet Minutes, 19 September 1938, CAB 23/95. 297 initially described current proposals to Lyons on 18 September as ‘safeguards’, rather than as ‘guarantees’.2217

Chamberlain was keen in the following days to gain dominion support for a suitable ‘method’, as well as for some ‘guarantee’. Accordingly, the dominion prime ministers were kept informed by the Dominions Office almost hourly from this time onwards of the rapidly increasing pace of the international situation.2218 By 25 September, the dominions were happy to accept that ‘method’ was the only problem associated with any transfer of territory and the British cabinet, still debating principle, was told so in an attempt to accelerate Chamberlain’s agenda.2219 The only sticking point from the dominion point of view was the issue of any new guarantee. MacDonald reported that Bruce, becoming the most strident of the high commissioners,2220 was most insistent that the two issues be linked and that an endorsement of transfer be offered to Berlin on the condition that a guarantee was offered to the ‘new’ Czechoslovakia.2221 He was, however, yet to persuade Lyons of the merits of any ‘international guarantee’ as he now called it, let alone of any linking ─ on 19 September he had told his prime minister that he could see no alternative to such a commitment:

I think you should consider the desirability of your informing the United Kingdom Government of your appreciation of the necessity for and the value of her action in the cause of peace and at the appropriate time of your making a public announcement to this effect.’2222

Lyons did not do so and Bruce chose to defer the matter in his communications with his prime minister over the following days, until a compromise emerged between Bruce’s enthusiasm and Lyons’s caution.2223 The high commissioner also confidentially insisted that Australia would fight if the Germans went beyond the Sudetenland, which was clearly not the view of Lyons and it remains doubtful that he was ever aware of Bruce’s informal insistence ─ a similar Bruce offer of

2217 Bruce to Lyons, 18 September 1938, M104//6/2. 2218 Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 273, 24 September 1938. The Australian cabinet met four times, 19-22 September, where Hughes or Lyons read the Whitehall cables. There is little indication of much discussion; Cabinet minutes, 19- 22 September 1938, A2694/18/5, NAA, Canberra. Cabinet did not meet again until the climax, on 27 September. 2219 So MacDonald told cabinet, but he exaggerated his case, telling cabinet that the dominions had accepted ‘the principle of transfer a week ago’ and were now puzzled that British cabinet was still debating the topic; Cabinet Minutes, 25 September 1938, CAB 23/95 CP46(38), PRO, London. This was an example of the manipulation of dominion opinion in support of Chamberlain’s position, as suggested by Rock, 48. 2220 Mansergh, Experience, 279, quoting the diary of Massey, the Canadian high commissioner. 2221 MacDonald, Cabinet Minutes, 25 September 1938, CAB 23/95 CP46(38). 2222 Bruce to Lyons, 19 September 1938, M104//6/2. He misleadingly suggested that the proposal for a guarantee had emerged from Anglo-French talks on 18 September. 2223 Although he considered further mentioning the issue to Lyons, Bruce draft to Lyons, 23 September 1938, M104/6/2, NAA, Canberra, containing Chamberlain’s proposals including a guarantee, the subsequent cable, Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 273, 24 September 1938, did not mention the subject. 298 action against the Italians appears also to have remained unknown to the chief advocate of Anglo-Italian accord in Canberra.2224

Despite Bruce’s apparently unilateral offers, it was precisely the absence of any overt dominion commitment to war that troubled many British appeasers and led MacDonald to remind cabinet on 25 September that ‘every effort for peace’ was necessary if their future co-operation was expected.2225 Given that Hitler had set an ultimatum at Godesberg for Czech withdrawal from the Sudetenland by 2pm (BST and central European time/11pm AEST), 28 September 1938, a final effort was necessary if war was to be avoided within days.2226 Such a war could result either in imperial disintegration or, at the very best, in the unenthusiastic participation of some of the dominions.2227 What ‘every effort’ entailed was made apparent by Chamberlain at the last of the three cabinet meetings of 25 September, at 11.30pm (BST), where he informed his ministers that he intended to dispatch his friend and adviser, Horace Wilson, to Berlin with a ‘personal message’ contained in a letter.2228 This letter essentially urged Hitler not to fight over ‘method’, a territorial ‘transfer’ having been accepted in principle.2229 The cabinet was also told of an oral message that Wilson was instructed to deliver in extremis, warning that Britain would support France if she resorted to arms.2230 Chamberlain stated that one of his intentions in dispatching this peace mission was a rallying of ‘the Dominions to our side’ for they could not, as MacDonald repeated, be expected to co-operate without ‘every attempt to find a peaceful solution’.2231 The

2224 A handwritten note to this effect was added to the minutes by an unknown hand; Cabinet Minutes, 25 September 1938, CAB 23/95 CP46(38). On the previous day, Bruce had suggested that Australia would enthusiastically offer troops against the ‘dirty Italians’, again contrary to Lyons’s attitude; MacDonald report of conversation with Bruce, Cabinet Minutes, 24 September 1938, CAB 24/279/80 and CP 209, PRO, London. MacDonald thought that Bruce would telegraph his idea immediately to Canberra. I have found no record of such in the Australian records. 2225 MacDonald, Cabinet Minutes, 3pm, 25 September 1938, CAB 23/95 CP46(38). Middlemas, 281, thought that Whitehall’s mind had been focused on dominion commitment during this crisis by the matters at stake. Similar concerns about dominion opinion were shared by the Home Secretary, Hoare; Stirling,79-80, and by Geoffrey Dawson, editor of The Times, Feiling, 362, a prominent member of the appeasing ‘Cliveden set’; R. Cockett, Twilight of Truth: Chamberlain, Appeasement and the Manipulation of the Press (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989), 29-30. 2226 The ultimatum was included in the Godesberg memorandum of 23 September, although Hitler gave Chamberlain the informal concession that he would wait until 1 October; Kershaw, Hitler, vol.2, 115. Nevertheless, 2pm (BST and Middle European Time), 28 September 1938 (‘X-day’) was treated in the following days as the deadline. 2227 Pirow, the South African Defence Minister, later told Hitler that South Africa would not have immediately entered a war over Czechoslovakia; Pirow to Malcolm MacDonald, 5 December 1938, PREM 1/289, PRO, London. 2228 Cabinet Minutes, 11.30pm, 25 September 1938, CAB 23/95 CP46(38). This was a record number of meetings for a single day; Cadogan, Diaries, 25 September 1938, 105; Ovendale, Appeasement, 164. Wilson had also gone to Berchtesgaden and was considered an irritant by the Foreign Office. Chamberlain preferred his counsel over that of the bureaucracy, just as Lyons accepted the counsel of outsiders like Melbourne and Pratt. On his background; Rock, 58- 9; M. Beloff, “The Whitehall Factor: The Role of the Higher Civil Service, 1919-39,” in The Politics of Reappraisal, 1918-1939, eds. G. Peele and C. Cooke (London: Macmillan, 1975), 212. 2229 It offered an international commission to oversee that ‘transfer’; Chamberlain to Hitler, 25 September 1938, PREM 1 266A/91, PRO, London; also found in Chamberlain to Hitler, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1097, 25 September 1938. 2230 Ovendale, Appeasement, 164. DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1118, 26 September 1938, gives the details of the first Wilson-Hitler interview. The oral message was delivered on the following day, vide below. 2231 Chamberlain and MacDonald in cabinet, 11.30pm, 25 September 1938, CAB 23/95; Ovendale, Appeasement, 164; J. Charmley, Chamberlain and the Lost Peace (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1989), 127; R. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement: British Policy and the Coming of the Second World War (London: Macmillan, 1993), 173-4; K, Robbins, Munich 1938 (London: Casell, 1968), 293; L. Fuchser, Neville Chamberlain and Appeasement: A Study in the Politics of History (New York: Norton, 1982), 153. 299 Wilson mission was therefore of immense gravity per se, but so too was the anticipated dominion reaction.

The high commissioners were told on the following morning, 26 September, that Chamberlain was exploring the possibility of a ‘fresh initiative’, although no details were given.2232 Only the Australian government appeared to have already considered the issues at hand, some details of which had been circulated earlier that morning, and Lyons’s speedy response suggested a wish to be involved in the decision-making process and also revealed a closing of the gap in the perceptions of Bruce and Lyons on the issue of a territorial guarantee.2233 Lyons later admitted that he had sought ‘Bruce’s advice’ in a telephone call on 26 September and he apparently received a great deal of that.2234 Bruce informed the representatives of telephone contact with ‘his Prime Minister’, who had three points to make ‘Subject to confirmation by the Commonwealth Cabinet’2235 ─ no such confirmation followed, for these points originated from a circle of ministers, not the cabinet.2236 The first was that there should be no war over the present issue, something Lyons had already stated elsewhere.2237 The second was that Britain should work for a Czech acceptance of the German proposals, subject to the new frontiers being ‘guaranteed’ by Germany, a linkage that had hitherto been found only in Bruce’s thinking and, if taken as genuine, indicated that Lyons had accepted his ‘advice’─ Bruc e’s choice of language (‘guaranteed’) was, however, suspect, as Lyons carefully avoided similar descriptions in subsequent communications, suggesting that he was still not yet fully committed to the concept advocated by his high commissioner.2238 Finally, Lyons had wished Bruce to communicate his prime ministerial view that any further encroachment on Czech territory would involve ‘a definite moral issue’, a statement tougher than any he had voiced hitherto during the crisis, but one far from the high commissioner’s own earlier suggestion that Australia would fight under such circumstances.2239 That Bruce asked his fellow high commissioners for confidentiality until these views were confirmed by the Australian cabinet perhaps indicates that some details were still the

2232 High Commissioners’ meeting, DAFP, vol.1, 279, 10.15am (BST), 26 September 1938; PREM 1/242/29; DO 114/94, 33-4, PRO, London; Stirling, 79; Cumpston, History, 20. 2233 Circular telegram, Dominions Office to Prime Ministers, 3am (BST), 26 September 1938, A2937/85/B277, NAA, Canberra, vide Appendix II. Bruce had drafted a cable for Lyons on 25 September informing him of the latest developments, but it was not sent until 26 September and was superseded by telephone conversations; Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 277, 26 September 1938. Neither of these communications specifically mentioned the Wilson mission. 2234 Lyons handwritten note to Hughes, n.d. but 27 September 1938, Hughes Papers, MS1538/42/3, NLA, Canberra. Liesching to Stanley, DAFP, vol.1, 280, 27 September 1938. Cox, 82, and Aitkin, 83-4, notes the problem of undocumented telephone calls. 2235 Meeting of UK and Dominion Representatives, DAFP, vol.1, 279, 10.15am (BST), 26 September 1938; PREM 1/242/29; DO 114/94, 33-4. 2236 vide below; DAFP, vol.1, 278, 26 September 1938. 2237 In his Liesching interview; DAFP, vol.1, 242, 31 August 1938. Commissioner te Water made it clear that his government was adamant that Czech obduracy should not involve the Commonwealth in war; DAFP, vol.1, 279, 10.15am (BST), 26 September 1938. 2238 vide below, where he specifically avoided the term; DAFP, vol.1, 278, 26 September 1938 2239 Handwritten note, Cabinet Minutes, 25 September 1938, CAB 23/95 CP46(38); DAFP, vol.1, 279, 10.15am (BST), 26 September 1938; PREM 1/242/29; DO 114/94, 33-4. 300 subject of contention between himself and his prime minister, although he failed to explain his reasoning.2240

Lyons had spoken by telephone not only to Bruce that morning (BST), but later directly to Chamberlain.2241 The contents of this second call, as reported later by Lyons and Chamberlain, were also a good guide to Lyons’s state of mind on 26 September, for he offered his British counterpart his candid interpretation of the situation, having already drafted a written response to the developing circumstances.2242 Lyons told Chamberlain how ‘I felt about it all’ and his listener had ‘expressed great gratitude to us for all the help we had given him’.2243 This gratitude was unsurprising, for Chamberlain reported to cabinet that Lyons viewed the Sudeten question as one of ‘procedure rather than principle’, a view that confirmed his own sentiments in the Wilson letter.2244 The two seem also to have discussed that mission, for Lyons cabled his congratulations to Chamberlain on his ‘initiative’ later that day, before he had received official disclosure of its existence.2245

As was his custom, Lyons transmitted his views in writing a short time after these phone conversations, in an expansive cable that arrived at Whitehall at 12.57pm (BST), 26 September.2246 Feeling that ‘the time has now come to make three points’, Lyons now reiterated the sentiments reported by Bruce from their earlier conversation, although with some differences of emphasis, and offered a formal response in the wake of news of the Wilson mission (and which was subsequently treated as such by Chamberlain).2247 The cable was jointly drafted by Lyons, Menzies and Casey (Hughes was ill) and therefore may be taken as the collective view of this circle of appeasers, even if it reproduced the points already expressed by the Prime Minister verbally ─ it could not be said to be the views of the cabinet, which had not met since 22 September and did not gather again until 27 September.2248 The first point matched that reported

2240 DAFP, vol.1, 279, 10.15am (BST), 26 September 1938; PREM 1/242/29; DO 114/94, 33-4. 2241 Liesching noted that the call to Bruce was made before that to Chamberlain, ‘in the afternoon’ of 26 September; Liesching to Stanley, DAFP, vol.1, 280, 27 September 1938. That the Bruce call was first; Lyons handwritten note to Hughes, n.d. but 27 September 1938, MS1538/42/3. Chamberlain reported the conversation to cabinet at noon (BST); Cabinet Minutes, 26 September 1938, CAB 23/95/7, 247ff., PRO, London; Ovendale, Appeasement, 165. ibid., “Appeasement,” 194, mistakenly placed this conversation on the previous day. vide Appendix II. 2242 Lyons handwritten note to Hughes, n.d. but 27 September 1938, Hughes Papers, MS1538/42/3, NLA, Canberra; Cabinet Minutes, noon (BST), 26 September 1938, CAB 23/95/7. Liesching to Stanley, DAFP, vol.1, 280, 27 September 1938, on the draft. 2243 Lyons handwritten note to Hughes, n.d. but 27 September 1938, Hughes Papers, MS1538/42/3, NLA, Canberra. 2244 Cabinet Minutes, noon (BST), 26 September 1938, CAB 23/95/7, 247ff. vide above on Wilson and ‘method’. 2245 Lyons congratulated Chamberlain in DAFP, vol.1, 278, 26 September 1938, which arrived at Whitehall at 12.57pm (BST), 26 September 1938, vide below and Appendices II and III. He was not officially informed of the Wilson mission until Circular telegram, Dominions Office to Prime Ministers, dispatched 1pm (BST), 26 September 1938, A2937/85/B281, NAA, Canberra. The circular telegram referred to by Liesching (DAFP, vol.1, 280, 27 September 1938) as received before Lyons’s own cable (DAFP, vol.1, 278) was dispatched, cannot have been A2937/85/B281. 2246 Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 278, 26 September 1938; A981, CZECHOSLOVAKIA 13, NAA, Canberra; reproduced in Appendix III. Ovendale, Appeasement, 166, citing the original cable (Cablegram no.96), noted the time of arrival (12.57pm BST). He is considerably vaguer in his essay “Appeasement,” 195. Adams, 119, was incorrect to see this cable as having arrived in the afternoon of 27 September. 2247 vide below. 2248 Liesching, Canberra, to Lord Stanley, DAFP, vol.1, 280, 27 September 1938, on the drafting. Cabinet minutes, September 1938, A2694/18/5. 301 by Bruce, when Lyons repeated the view that there was no cause for ‘a ruinous, and perhaps inconclusive, war’ over ‘method’, as the cessation of the Sudetenland had been agreed ‘in principle’,2249 using syntax closely matching that employed at Glenbrook and at the time of Berchtesgaden.2250 Secondly, the cable expressed concern over the nature of the plebiscites, in a way sympathetic to the Czechs, obviously concerned that a settlement must be seen to have been even-handed, if it was to last.2251 Thirdly, it suggested that ‘adequate assurances as to the future of Czechoslovakia’ would be required in the aftermath, without employing Bruce’s terminology of a ‘guarantee’─ whatever an ‘assurance’ implied, it may be presumed that this was not considered to have the strength of a ‘guarantee’.2252 Either Lyons had now diluted his telephone commitment to a guarantee, as reported by Bruce that morning, or the high commissioner had been imprecise in his reporting─ whatever the explanation for this discrepancy, Lyons avoided any suggestion of guarantees hereafter. There was no suggestion in the cable that any further German acquisitions would present either a ‘moral’ difficulty or a military challenge, as Bruce had recently reported and thus no suggestion of any Australian support for a military line-in-the- sand.2253 The main point of the 26 September cable was the first one, and that was made with a consistency which stretched back over some months.2254 There was therefore to be no inconsistency about precisely where Lyons and his circle stood on the issue of war or peace, whatever the attitude to Prague at any given moment. The sentiments of the cable made it clear that Australian acquiescence in any war over Czechoslovakia would be tepid at best, to the consternation of the acting UK high commissioner, who had earlier been insouciant about Lyons’s warnings of policy divergence.2255 Liesching was especially concerned that the cabinet had not considered the matters presented in the 26 September cable.2256 Bruce was never to receive the cabinet ‘confirmation’ of which he had spoken on that morning.2257

The tripartite cable of 26 September was welcome to Downing Street, but it caused a flurry at Whitehall, where the Foreign Office correctly regarded it as a sign of ‘considerable

2249 Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 278, 26 September 1938; reproduced in Appendix III. Here he was supporting the views of those at Whitehall whom Bruce recognised were in favour of accepting the German memorandum; Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 277, 26 September 1938. MacDonald stated on 25 September that the dominions had accepted the point on ‘method’; Cabinet Minutes, 25 September 1938, CAB 23/95 CP46(38). 2250 His description of the problem of ‘national pride’ echoed his Glenbrook concern about ‘intense nationalism’; Glenbrook speech, 3 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.5 (1938), 107ff. Lyons statement, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 September 1938, 11, g, where he referred to war as ‘barbarous and inconclusive’. 2251 Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 278, 26 September 1938; reproduced in Appendix III. This was the only occasion on which Lyons expressed any sympathy for the Czech position, although it presented no obstacle to his acceptance of the territorial transfer. 2252 ibid. vide Holsti, 133, (in my Introduction) on models of language and the presumption that words have been chosen to have an impact on the communication target. 2253 Bruce, DAFP, vol.1, 279, 10.15am (BST), 26 September 1938; Cabinet Minutes, 25 September 1938, CAB 23/95 CP46(38). 2254 vide above on Lyons and the casus belli; DAFP, vol.1, 242, 31 August 1938. 2255 Liesching, having seen the draft of DAFP, vol.1, 278; Liesching, Canberra, to Lord Stanley, DAFP, vol.1, 280, 27 September 1938. vide below for MacDonald’s similar conclusions in cabinet on half-hearted dominion support for war. 2256 The cabinet resumed on 27 September, Cabinet Minutes, A2994/18/5; Liesching, Canberra, to Lord Stanley, DAFP, vol.1, 280, 27 September 1938. 2257 DAFP, vol.1, 279, 10.15am (BST), 26 September 1938. 302 [dominion] uneasiness’.2258 It also caused some consternation at Canberra, its having been composed without consulting the (indisposed) minister, Hughes, despite some attempt by Lyons to do so.2259 Hodgson, in the process of shifting from Lyons’s appeasing orbit into that of Hughes and obviously disturbed by the cable’s contents, took a copy personally to his minister at some time in the afternoon/evening of 26 September, seeking intervention.2260 Consequently, Hughes wrote urgently to the Prime Minister, asking him ‘most earnestly’ to desist from dispatching it: ‘I hope you will not send it. In my opinion it is most unwise and quite unnecessary.’2261 The minister then asked to be given the opportunity to put his views before the cabinet, scheduled to meet on the following day, before the cable was dispatched. Lyons refused, but he found time on the next morning, 27 September, to explain his haste. His handwritten apologia provided a perfect summary of his working style (telephone call followed by confirming cable) and psychological state during these later international crises, as well as an insight into his relationship with Chamberlain:

I was sorry not to be able to hold over the cable to Chamberlain because of the urgency of helping him. Ministers were generally in favour of it and when I asked Bruce’s advice on the phone he stressed the urgency. Then I rang Chamberlain and told him how I felt about it all (after having consulted ministers) and the cable was really a confirmation. Chamberlain expressed great gratitude to us for all the help we had given him. I am extremely sorry that your health has not been better − I think you and I could do with a real rest from all the worry and anxiety. I know I need it.2262

This account of the drafting of the cable insisted on the collegiality of the process, suggesting that the end result was the product of Bruce’s ‘advice’ and ministerial consultation (without mentioning Menzies or Casey by name).2263 Lyons admitted the personal element of the telephone conversation, although again using the collective ‘us’, perhaps in an attempt to console Hughes over his exclusion ─ this was not the last time that he would justify his lack of consultation by a

2258 Chamberlain welcomed the cable and approvingly quoted it in cabinet, vide below.Ovendale, Appeasement, 165, noted this FO minute of 27 September 1938 by Speight, FO 271/21777, PRO, London. 2259 To some extent, Hughes’s poor working habits might have played some part in this exclusion, as Lyons had been unable to contact his staff due to their ‘dispersal’; Hughes handwritten note to Lyons, 26 September 1938, M2270/1/24, NAA, Canberra. Hughes was sick and unable to participate in the extra-cabinet consultations of that day. 2260 Hughes handwritten note to Lyons, 26 September 1938, M2270/1/24. vide Chapter 7 on the Hughes-Hodgson co- operation against A.C.V. Melbourne in 1939. 2261 Hughes handwritten note to Lyons, 26 September 1938, M2270/1/24. As the cable DAFP, vol.1, 278, was drafted in the afternoon and dispatched before 9.57pm, vide above and Appendix II, Hodgson’s intervention and Hughes’s note came at some time in the afternoon or evening of 26 September 1938. 2262 Lyons handwritten note to Hughes, n.d. but 27 September 1938, MS1538/42/3. 2263 Liesching, Canberra, to Lord Stanley, DAFP, vol.1, 280, 27 September 1938, on the drafting. White, Minister of Trade and Customs, in his diary of 26 September 1938, thought the attitudes of this cable understandable from Menzies, but not from Casey; Martin, Menzies, 237. 303 sense of urgency. Nor was it the last time that Lyons revealed the depth of his personal anxiety during moments of crisis.

Chamberlain had been made directly aware of Lyons’s general sentiments before he read the tripartite cable of 26 September,2264 and this ‘telephone message from Mr. Lyons’ was timely for it affirmed the sentiments about method and principle that were conveyed in the Wilson letter.2265 He quoted these sentiments in cabinet at noon, in an attempt to demonstrate dominion support for the objectives of the Wilson mission.2266 Once the confirming cable arrived, it so pleased the British premier that he ensured a copy of it was sent to the dominion leader most likely to share its views, Hertzog of South Africa.2267 One similarity between the Wilson letter of the previous day and this subsequent Australian cable was striking. Chamberlain had written that ‘the tragic consequences of a conflict ought not to be incurred over a difference in method’; Lyons had cabled that ‘the precise method of giving effect to the decision is not a matter of sufficient importance to warrant a dispute leading to war’.2268 There is no direct evidence of collusion and unrecorded telephone conversations cannot provide it,2269 but the two appeasers were clearly of one mind on this aspect, so when Lyons referred to Chamberlain’s ‘great gratitude to us for all the help we had given him’, there is no reason to doubt his veracity over a unanimity of outlook.2270 The formal British reply to the tripartite cable, dispatched on the evening of 26 September, assured Lyons that ‘the considerations set out in your telegram have been and are most fully in our minds’.2271 The subsequent evidence confirms the sincerity of that assurance─ the process of imperial consultation seemed to be working more effectively in this crisis than in any of its predecessors.

The difference between method and principle might have been important in London and Canberra, but Wilson found that it mattered little in Berlin. The Wilson interviews with Hitler, 26-27 September, proved as unproductive as Chamberlain feared and his ‘small chance’ of

2264 Lyons handwritten note to Hughes, n.d. but 27 September 1938, MS1538/42/3; Cabinet Minutes, noon (BST), 26 September 1938, CAB 23/95/7, 247ff. 2265 ibid., Chamberlain to cabinet. MacDonald also reported to cabinet on the high commissioners’ meeting of that day, including an account of Bruce’s statement on Lyons’s outlook; ibid. The debate over when Chamberlain read the cable, DAFP, vol.1, 278, is immaterial. Cumpston, History, 21, thought that he might not have read it until late on 27 September, (pace DAFP 281 below), but she fails to account for the telephone. 2266 Cabinet Minutes, 26 September 1938, CAB 23/95/7, 247ff. Ovendale, Appeasement, 165-6, quoting cabinet minutes, noon (BST), 26 September 1938, CAB 23/95/1,5,7, 247-56; Cumpston, Bruce, 162; ibid., History, 20. 2267 DAFP, vol.1, 278, 26 September 1938. Hertzog responded with an aide-memoire that supported Lyons’s sentiments on avoiding a war over Czechoslovakia due to matters of ‘procedure’; Hertzog memorandum, 27 September 1938, PREM 1/242/25, PRO, London. 2268 Chamberlain to Hitler, 25 September 1938, PREM 1 266A/91; DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1097. Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 278, 26 September 1938. 2269 Cox, 82; Aitkin, 83-4, notes the problem of undocumented telephone calls. Cumpston, Bruce, 162, thought Lyons was simply repeating the sentiments of a peace faction within the British cabinet, as reported to him by Bruce; Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 277, 26 September 1938, where Bruce talked of disputes over ‘method’, but the sentiments of DAFP, vol.1, 278, are not a repetition of the gist of the Bruce cable. 2270 Lyons handwritten note to Hughes, n.d. but 27 September 1938, MS1538/42/3. 2271 Stanley to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 281, 6.57pm (BST), 26 September 1938. MacDonald, acting in Stanley’s place since 30 August, continued to use the Dominions Secretary’s name in some of his communications. 304 success was not realised.2272 The original Godesberg ultimatum, which called for the withdrawal of Czech forces from the Sudetenland by 2pm (BST) Wednesday 28 September, now stood and the approach to war became a countdown.2273 The news of the failure of the mission could only have horrified Lyons, as must have the accompanying information that Wilson had also been instructed to deliver a stern verbal warning.2274 This warning, declaring a British intention to support France militarily, was just what dominion Francophobes, such as Lyons and Hertzog, had long feared. Its delivery, at the second interview on 27 September, represented a substantial setback for the advocates of personal diplomacy and appeasement.2275 There was only one sign of optimism. When Hitler addressed a Berlin rally on the evening of 26 September, he reiterated the ultimatum, but also extended the promise of a subsequent guarantee: ‘I will no longer be interested in the Czech state. And as far as I am concerned I will guarantee to it (or ‘him’) ─ we don’t want any Czechs.’2276 This was the ‘guarantee’ that Chamberlain and Bruce had accepted was necessary since 17-18 September and the ‘assurances’ of which Lyons had spoken in his tripartite cable on the very day of the speech.2277 The statement also seemed to confirm the confidence of External Affairs and Chamberlain that Berlin was not interested in acquiring non-German minorities, something that Hitler had already denied.2278 Whitehall had anticipated some formal German response to the Wilson mission in this speech and this was the closest thing to it.2279 It was as close to a concession as Hitler could come during the crisis, until the intervention of other parties.2280 There still remained fewer than forty-eight hours to ensure that war did not come owing to any misunderstanding over ‘method’─ there seemed little

2272 The first interview: DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1118, 5pm (BST), 26 September 1938. The second interview: DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1127-9, 12.15pm (BST), 27 September 1938. Chamberlain ‘did not build any great hopes upon it’, but gave it ‘a small chance’; Anglo-French Conversations, London, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1096, 26 September 1938. 2273 First Wilson-Hitler interview, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1118, 5pm (BST), 26 September 1938. As Middle European Time (MET) was the same as British Summer Time (i.e. GMT+1), I have given these times in BST; vide Appendix II. Hitler was psychologically preparing himself for a speech that evening; Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 304, 7 October 1938, vide below. 2274 Lyons might have been told already by Chamberlain of the verbal warning during their phone conversation, but he was officially informed in MacDonald to Lyons, “International Situation”, 6.06pm (BST), 26 September 1938, A463/1957/1067, NAA, Canberra, which also gave wider details of Wilson’s intentions. The full text of the Wilson letter was included in ibid., 7.51pm (BST), 26 September 1938, A463/1957/1067 Part 2. Lyons was told of the failure of the first interview in ibid., 2.58am (BST), 27 September 1938, A463/1957/1067. 2275 DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1127-9, 12.15pm (BST), 27 September 1938. Hitler responded ‘very quietly’; Wilson’s description to the cabinet, 27 September 1938. vide below; Colvin, 166. 2276 Hitler Sportpalast speech, Berlin, 26 September 1938, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1126, footnote 2; J. Weitz, Hitler’s Diplomat: The Life and Times of Joachim von Ribbentrop (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1992), 183; Kershaw, Hitler, vol.2, 117; Lampe, 1. Some, like Lord Rothermere, DGFP, series D, vol.2, 939, 26 September 1938, still thought that 1 October was the deadline, but Hitler made it apparent that the telling ultimatum was 2pm (BST), 28 September 1938. 2277 vide above on the Bruce-Chamberlain ‘guarantee’ and DAFP, vol.1, 278, for Lyons’s ‘assurances’. I do not find the suggestion of Weinberg, 19, plausible, that Hitler was referring to a future occupation of Bohemia and expulsion of Czechs. No such interpretation of the speech was made at the time. 2278 External Affairs, Review of Relations between United Kingdom and Germany, n.d. but March 1937, CP4/2 46. Chamberlain at Foreign Policy Committee meeting, 18 March 1938, Colvin, 108; Chamberlain’s notes of Berchtesgaden conversation, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 895, 15 September 1938. Hitler had made denials of any desire to absorb Czechs at Nuremberg on 12 September; External Affairs summary, A981 CZE PART 1. 2279 Cabinet minutes, noon (BST), 26 September 1938, CAB 23/95 CP46 (38). The British cabinet discussed the speech that night and found little welcome in it; Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 304, 7 October 1938. 2280 Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 304, 7 October 1938, thought the speech ‘more moderate than had been expected’, a view he repeated when assessing the similarly belligerent Reichstag speech of 30 January 1939, vide Chapter 7. 305 Chamberlain could do other than to repeat this point and to offer further assurances of Czech compliance.2281

When the Australian cabinet met before lunch (AEST) on 27 September and reviewed the latest, pessimistic ‘Wilson’ cables,2282 it formed a sub-committee of Hughes, Menzies and Page to prepare a parliamentary statement for later that day.2283 It is unclear why Lyons did not include himself in this task, in accordance with his normal working practice, but given the prevailing sense of ongoing crisis, one may speculate that he was too preoccupied, or perhaps too distracted, to do so. That draft statement was ready and approved in the afternoon, but never presented to the House, as the acceleration of events preoccupied the Prime Minister for the remainder of that day and soon rendered it redundant. No statement was forthcoming until the following day and then it was one chiefly drafted by Lyons himself.2284 Meanwhile, Bruce, in London, thought that the situation had considerably deteriorated by the morning of 27 September (BST), after long meetings with British ministers, including Simon, overnight.2285 The high commissioner was most anxious that the his voice be heard at Whitehall and unilaterally approached MacDonald that afternoon to make the point that the dominion point of view must be before the inner cabinet during its decision-making.2286 Chamberlain proved sympathetic and first suggested a dominion submission through Bruce ‘in writing’, conscious as Chamberlain was of their attitude against war ─ his suggestion was subsequently amended to the offer to attend the inner cabinet as a dominion spokesman, which Bruce did late on the afternoon of 27 September, arguing against war and for settlement by negotiation with some sort of post-settlement guarantee for the Czechs (more Bruce’s own idea than that of the ‘dominions’).2287 He attended further inner-cabinet meetings in the following days as de facto spokesman for the dominions, an extraordinary recognition of his already exalted status.2288 He was the only high commissioner given such access, a reflection of either his prestige, or of Lyons’s favour with Chamberlain, or of both. The effect of Bruce’s privileged position was to magnify Lyons’s access to Chamberlain, as well as allowing him the sharpest insight of any dominion leader into the accelerating events of those final days, 27-28 September. Any gap unfilled by Bruce’s communications was filled by Lyons’s personal calls to Chamberlain. He was thus arguably better informed and better placed to play a

2281 After the Berlin speech, Chamberlain reassured Hitler on Czech compliance; Halifax to Henderson, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1121, 1am (BST), 27 September 1938, repeating his plea on ‘method’. Lyons was told of this immediately; MacDonald to Lyons, 2.59am (BST), 27 September 1938, A463/1957/1067, NAA, Canberra. DBFP 1121 was reissued at 10pm (BST), 27 September, vide below. 2282 That is the three cables, “International Situation”, 26-7 September 1938, A463/1957/1067, vide above. 2283 Cabinet Minutes, 27 September 1938, A2694/18/5, NAA, Canberra. 2284 The House resumed at 3pm, 27 September, and was told by Lyons that a statement would be made at 8pm. It adjourned at 8.33pm without one; CPD, vol.157, 236ff. 2285 Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 304, 7 October 1938. 2286 Bruce, Record of conversation with Malcolm MacDonald, 27 September 1938, M104/6/2, NAA, Canberra. MacDonald wrote to Chamberlain on 27 September 1938, urging that attention be paid to the mounting anxieties of the high commissioners, PREM 1/242/25, PRO, London. 2287 Bruce, Record of conversation with MacDonald, 27 September 1938, M104/6/2. The returned Wilson was kept waiting while Bruce spoke. 2288 Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 304, 7 October 1938; Cumpston, Bruce, 163. vide above on assessments of that status. 306 part in the final act of the Czech drama than any other dominion prime minister and most British cabinet ministers.2289

Dominion opinion certainly appeared to be a major consideration of the British cabinet by this late stage of the crisis, even if only to bolster Chamberlain’s already determined positions.2290 It was MacDonald’s view in the inner-cabinet on the afternoon of 27 September that if the dominions were compelled to fight at the present time, they would do so only ‘half- heartedly and with mental reservations about our policy’, a view confirmed by Bruce, who asserted it as the general dominion opinion.2291 Bruce, ‘of course’, also conveyed his own and Lyons’s resolution that no last-minute attempt should be spared, that ‘even at this eleventh hour some way had to be found of preventing the conflagration’.2292 Cadogan observed that the ministers were ‘frightened out of their wits’ by these views of MacDonald and Bruce,2293 and they provided support for Chamberlain’s evolving intention to seek further conciliation.2294 The British premier appeared to accept the need, as voiced by Bruce at least, for some ‘eleventh hour’ initiative and that evening he issued a five-point ‘last effort’ that guaranteed the transfer of the Sudetenland.2295 He pleaded with Hitler for an extension of the deadline into October and offered broader talks, elements which reflected the counsel that Bruce had offered Simon in the small hours of that morning, at least according to Bruce’s own later account.2296 This effort also included an insistence on an assurance/guarantee for Czechoslovakia, as mentioned in the earlier tripartite Australian cable and as reiterated by Bruce that afternoon (27 September) in inner cabinet. Such an assurance was something that Chamberlain had hitherto discussed in cabinet, but not yet presented to Berlin.2297 He now did so, proposing discussion between the parties in order to institute a system ‘guaranteeing the new Czechoslovakia’.2298 Australian repetition and lobbying through Bruce’s personal insistence and Lyons’s communications might have played some part in the launching of this modest ‘last effort’ at a time when hope for any ‘eleventh hour’

2289 vide above; Casey “Australia’s Voice in Imperial Affairs,” 55; Bruce; DAFP, vol.1, 304, 7 October 1938. Ovendale, “Britain, the Dominions and the Coming of the Second World War,” 325. 2290 As Mansergh, Survey, 440, suggested. 2291 MacDonald in cabinet, 3pm, 27 September 1938, CAB 46 (38), quoted in J. Doherty, “Die Dominions und die Britische Aussenpolitik von Műnchen bis zum Kriegsausbruch 1939.” Vierteljahrshefte fűr Zeitgeschichte, vol.20 (1972): 210. This reflected Liesching’s fears; DAFP, vol.1, 280, 27 September 1938. Bruce at inner cabinet, (4.30pm, 27 September 1938); Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 304, 7 October 1938; Cumpston, Bruce, 164; Ovendale, Appeasement, 168; Adams, 119. Mansergh, Survey, 441, on the possibility of a divided Empire. 2292 Bruce at inner cabinet, 27 September 1938; Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 304, 7 October 1938. 2293 Cadogan, Diaries, 107, cabinet, 3pm and after, 27 September 1938. They also feared French belligerence. 2294 Support noted by Ovendale, Appeasement, 180, and Mansergh, Survey, 440. News of the second Wilson interview (12.15pm, 27 September) filtered through Whitehall that afternoon and Wilson returned from Berlin by air immediately afterwards, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1128-9, 27 September 1938. 2295 Halifax to Henderson, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1140, 6.45pm (BST), 27 September 1938, proposing a guarantee of transfer, if Germany waited until October, as well as negotiations between Germany, Britain, France and the Czechs. 2296 Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 304, 7 October 1938. 2297 MacDonald to Bruce, High Commissioners’ meeting, 17 September 1938, PREM 1/242/55. 2298 Halifax to Henderson, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1140, 6.45pm (BST), 27 September 1938. 307 miracle seemed remote2299 ─ such influence remains impossible to measure, but it ought at least to be noted as a possibility, for Australian efforts to encourage last minute British initiative continued with unabated force over the following days.

The five-point ‘last effort’ of 27 September was dismissed by Berlin within an hour, the news arriving barely ten minutes before Chamberlain sat in front of the microphones in order to make a national broadcast at 8pm (BST).2300 This really did seem the last straw, even to Neville Henderson.2301 This was the grim consideration that faced Chamberlain as he began to speak and the premier was ‘wobbling about all over the place’, verging on exhaustion─ he later admitted his near ‘emotional breakdown’.2302 Lyons was in a similar state in Canberra, for the same reasons, despite his distance from events. This radio address offered little hope, for although the speaker reiterated his commitment to peacemaking, including the offer of a further personal visit to Germany, he concluded: ‘I see nothing further that I could usefully do in the way of mediation.’2303 The decision makers at Canberra, huddled around their short-wave sets at 5am (AEST), did not need to wait for the official text of the broadcast to learn that little hope remained.2304

The mood of the British cabinet was grim, when it resumed at 9.30pm (BST) following the radio broadcast.2305 This important cabinet meeting (the last before the resolution of the crisis) has been the subject of much inaccurate analysis made with too little regard for the archival record and too much regard for ex post facto claims. It warrants detailed examination. Chamberlain entered the meeting depressed, but apparently determined to press for further conciliation through a proposal to counsel Czech withdrawal to a line of demarcation─ Wilson had already drafted a telegram to this effect in anticipation of approval.2306 Wilson then gave a detailed report of his recent unsuccessful interviews, which Chamberlain used as ammunition for more of the same, rather than as an admission of the obstacles,2307 and he tabled the strongest material that he could assemble for his case, beginning with an earlier cable from Henderson,

2299 The initiative could also be taken as an attempt to formalise Hitler’s ‘offer’ in the Berlin speech, vide above. Wilson and Henderson had asked Hitler for an ‘eleventh hour’ gesture. He refused; DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1128-9, 27 September 1938. 2300 Henderson to Halifax, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1142, 7.50pm (BST), 27 September 1938. This was the swiftest interchange of London-Berlin communication during the entire crisis. 2301 ibid. Henderson observed: ‘Position is now crystal clear…If British nation desire to engage in war there is nothing to be done except to prepare for it. It is in any case quite useless to say anything more at Berlin.’ 2302 Neville Chamberlain to his sisters and the observations of Cadogan, in Fuchser in his account of the crisis, 153ff. 2303 Chamberlain radio broadcast, 8.00pm (BST), 27 September 1938, text in Circular Telegram, Dominions Office to Prime Ministers, 27 September 1938, A2937/85/B304, NAA, Canberra; also in N. Chamberlain, The Struggle for Peace (London: Hutchinson, n.d.), 274-6. This was the broadcast in which he referred to ‘a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing’. 2304 It was 5am (AEST) 28 September. A. Watt, Australian Diplomat, 25, on the practice of monitoring short-wave transmissions. The official text was dispatched in Circular Telegram, 27 September 1938, A2937/85/B304, NAA, Canberra. 2305 Cabinet Minutes, 9.30pm (BST), 27 September 1938, CAB 23/95 CP46(38), PRO, London, 261ff. 2306 For analyses of his state of mind, Cadogan quoted in Fuchser, 153ff.; Parker, 177; M. Gilbert and R. Gott, Appeasers (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967), 170. Roberts, Holy Fox, 120. 2307 Cabinet Minutes, 9.30pm (BST), 27 September 1938, CAB 23/95 CP46(38), 263ff. The disappointed Wilson had returned on the afternoon of 27 September; Robbins, 300-1, 307; Colvin, 166; Fuchser, 153ff. 308 which stressed the need to press the Czechs to make terms in order that they escape the fate of Abyssinia.2308 This was followed by the tabling of the Australian tripartite cable of the previous day, with Chamberlain drawing further attention to its salient point that war should not occur over ‘the precise method of giving effect’ to the transfer of territory.2309 Finally, he read Hertzog’s cable in support of the sentiments contained therein (a further example of Chamberlain’s selective employment of dominion material).2310 MacDonald followed the same course and pre-empted critics by questioning Liesching’s view from Canberra that Lyons’s sentiments did not represent those of other Australian ministers and that they underestimated the strength of Australian feeling against a settlement2311 ─ Lyons could not have better presented his case in person. Chamberlain might very well have received similar advice from other sources, but it seems significant that it was this particular counsel that he chose to quote in cabinet. This concentration on Australian opinion at a British cabinet meeting was notable and demonstrated the standing of both Lyons and Bruce with the British prime minister, based on the similarity of their thinking.

Yet, the Chamberlain-MacDonald-Lyons-Bruce line did not prevail. After Duff Cooper, the First Sea Lord, gave an impassioned account of the case against further concessions and discounted the role of the dominions in British policy-making, the cabinet resolved not to proceed with Chamberlain’s proposal2312 ─ an example where dominion opinion did not act as a potent discouragement of more resolute action, as has been claimed (and as Chamberlain himself suggested afterwards).2313 The five-point proposal of 6.45pm (BST), already rejected, was thus to stand as Britain’s final offer.2314 The cabinet’s resolution was a body-blow to Chamberlain, who now reluctantly set aside Wilson’s draft telegram, apparently prepared ‘to leave it at that’, having failed to secure even the support of the Foreign Secretary and fellow-appeaser, Halifax.2315 Only now did the scorned prime minister produce and read to cabinet Hitler’s formal response to the Wilson mission, which had arrived in Whitehall at 8.40pm that evening, in what could be considered a second attempt to proffer conciliation at the meeting.2316 Despite the fact that its

2308 This followed a talk with Göring; Henderson to Halifax, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1126, 1.20pm (BST), 27 September 1938. 2309 Cabinet Minutes, 9.30pm (BST), 27 September 1938, CAB 23/95 CP46(38), 261-78, (tabling DAFP, vol.1, 278). Chamberlain had already informed the cabinet of these sentiments on the previous day, when reporting Lyons’s phone call; Cabinet Minutes, noon (BST), 26 September 1938, CAB 23/95 CP46(38). 2310 Hertzog memorandum, 27 September 1938, PREM 1/242/25, PRO, London. 2311 Ovendale, Appeasement, 168, is incorrect to state that MacDonald supported the Liesching view of Lyons’s cable; DAFP, vol.1, 280, 27 September 1938, vide above. 2312 Duff Cooper gave his own account of his hostility to Chamberlain’s proposal, for which he apologised immediately afterwards, Old Men Forget: The Autobiography of Duff Cooper (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954), 239ff. 2313 Mansergh, Experience, 444 and 280-1, where he mentions that apologists for Munich claimed dominion factors. Chamberlain parliamentary statement of 3 October 1938 that dominion reluctance to undertake military commitments had been a factor in conciliation; Ovendale, ibid.; Feiling, 362. 2314 Halifax to Henderson, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1140, 6.45pm (BST), 27 September 1938. 2315 Cabinet Minutes, 9.30pm (BST), 27 September 1938, CAB 23/95 CP46(38), Appendix, attached draft telegram to Benes, 278-9. On Halifax; Roberts, Holy Fox, 120. 2316 Hitler to Chamberlain, arrived 8,40pm (BST), 27 September 1938, PREM 1/266A/72/545, PRO, London; DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1144 (not DBFP 1133, as in Fuchser, 220). This was the long-awaited formal reply to the Chamberlain-Hitler letter, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1097, 25 September, delivered by Wilson on 26 September. 309 terms now seemed redundant, the contents of this response were considered by cabinet (a fact curiously overlooked by many historians), for Chamberlain suggested that it ‘might be found on examination to afford some ground on which a further proposal for a peaceful settlement could be based’.2317 In the opinion of the other ministers it did not, despite the fact that it repeated Hitler’s offer of a guarantee for the ruptured Czech state.2318 This letter too was set aside and when cabinet concluded at about 10pm (BST), 27 September, the anti-appeasers appeared to have won the day ─ war now seemed unavoidable. 2319 The opponents of conciliation, however, had not bargained on Chamberlain’s doggedness and duplicity, or on the ‘useful intervention’ of Joseph Lyons.2320 This combination of factors over the next twenty-four hours was arguably to bring about appeasement’s greatest coup.

VII

Chamberlain was more downcast after this cabinet meeting than he had been at its beginning. The US ambassador, Joseph Kennedy, found him ‘utterly depressed’ and in a ‘bitter mood’ at an interview soon after 10pm (BST).2321 Kennedy noticed that the Wilson letter was still on Chamberlain’s mind, for the prime minister referred to ‘some excerpt from Hitler’s letter…He was not very encouraging. There is probably just a shred of encouragement.’2322 When the ambassador asked him if the letter had made him feel any more optimistic, Chamberlain replied: ‘Not much.’2323 Kennedy’s visit did help to secure a second conciliatory appeal from Roosevelt, but that appeared of little consolation to a depressed Chamberlain as he retired at the end of that long day2324 ─ Lyons himself independently sought to encourage US intervention on the

2317 Cabinet Minutes, 9.30pm (BST), 27 September 1938, CAB 23/95 CP46 (38), 275. Robbins, 307, concedes that Chamberlain received this reply ‘after the broadcast’, but does not mention its reading in cabinet; Charmley, 136, thought it arrived during the cabinet meeting; similarly Adams, 120 and Roberts, Holy Fox, 120-1. Ovendale, Appeasement, 168, was correct to note that Chamberlain read the letter to cabinet. Feiling, 372-3, accepted, in 1947, Chamberlain’s false claim that the letter had arrived at about 10.30pm (BST), as did Fuchser, 159 and R. Lamb, The Ghosts of Peace (London: Michael Russell, 1987), 86. Dilks in the Cadogan Diaries, 109, makes the same error. McDonough, 69, thought the letter arrived on 28 September 1938. 2318 Hitler had last offered such in his Berlin speech on 26 September; DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1126, footnote 2, 1.20pm (BST), 27 September 1938. An unknown hand underlined the ‘guarantee’ offer in blue pencil; Cabinet Minutes, 9.30pm (BST), 27 September 1938, CAB 23/95 CP46 (38). The letter contained nothing new; pace the implication of Roberts, Holy Fox, 121 and Chamberlain’s later claims, vide below. When a copy of this letter was sent to Canberra is uncertain, but Lyons had seen it by his 11pm (AEST), 28 September, parliamentary statement, vide below. 2319 Cabinet Minutes, 9.30pm (BST), 27 September 1938, CAB 23/95 CP46 (38), 276. It was fitting that Chamberlain closed the meeting by announcing the mobilisation of the fleet. Duff Cooper claimed in his memoirs, 240, that Chamberlain had desisted from doing so and that he was due the credit for securing it. Although caution must be exercised with memoirs, Hill, 16, Cooper had been urging mobilisation for some weeks, Colvin, 154. 2320 I have borrowed this term from Fitzhardinge, 647, contrary to his suggestion that there was no room for such at the time of the Czech crisis. 2321 Kennedy to Welles, Under-Secretary of State, FRUS, 1938, vol.1, 679, 11.45pm (BST), 27 September 1938; Middlemas, 396. On their friendship; Fuchser, 153ff.; Ovendale, Appeasement, 138. Kennedy was one of the few foreigners on a first-name basis with the Prime Minister, who later admitted his desperate state of mind at this time, Feiling, 374-5. 2322 Kennedy to Welles, Under-Secretary of State, FRUS, 1938, vol.1, 679, 11.45pm (BST), 27 September 1938. Given Chamberlain’s view, it is possible that the blue-pencil underlining of the guarantee offer in DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1144, was his own. 2323 Kennedy to Welles, Under-Secretary of State, FRUS, 1938, vol.1, 679, 11.45pm (BST), 27 September 1938. 2324 A first message of appeal had been sent from Washington at 1am (7am BST), 26 September; Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1948), 592, circulated to the dominions; Circular telegram, 310 following day in a very personal message to Roosevelt on behalf of ‘the people of Australia’.2325 Whatever move the British premier might have been contemplating, if any, there were no further Chamberlain initiatives that day, although MacDonald told the disconsolate high commissioners at 11.30pm (BST) that the prime minister wished to ‘preserve his attitude as a mediator until the last possible moment’, some clue that not all hope had been put to bed.2326 One of Chamberlain’s final acts of the day had been his authorisation for all British ambassadors to circulate the twenty-one hour old British assurance that every effort would be made to ensure Czech complicity; a last-minute signal on the verge of war that Britain was not responsible for the inevitable hostilities.2327 When the premier awoke on 28 September 1938, ‘Black Wednesday’ or ‘X-day’, the deadline of 2pm (BST) would only be hours away.2328

Despite distance from these grim developments, the Lodge was as frenzied as Downing Street during the climax of the crisis. The Australian cabinet met thrice on 27 September, its final, evening session at the prime ministerial residence considering the flow of Dominions Office cables and, ominously, ‘local defence’.2329 An emotionally fragile and distraught prime minister can only have dreaded the approach of the (secret) ultimatum of the following day (11pm AEST, 28 September 1938).2330 Lyons was alone in Canberra, Dame Enid being absent in Melbourne but, as so often, he sought her counsel and support, phoning her at about 7pm (AEST) on the evening of 27 September according to her account: ‘He always wanted to speak to me when an issue was worrying or depressing him.’2331 Lyons told his wife: ‘Ug [her pet-name], come back will you. It’s war in the morning, and I just feel I can’t face it alone like this.’2332 Her account of the spirit of the conversation that followed is largely supported by external evidence: Lyons

DO to Prime Ministers, A2937/85/B285, 1.45pm (BST), 26 September 1938, NAA, Canberra. Welles offered to talk to FDR and to transmit a second supportive message after his conversation with Kennedy; FRUS, 1938, vol.1, 679, 27 September 1938. It was sent soon after; Robbins, 307. On FDR’s appeal, A. Offner, “The United States and National Socialist Germany,” in Fascist Challenge, 419; Esthus, 65. The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 September 1938, 10, b, thought Roosevelt’s intervention the instrumental factor; Ovendale, “Appeasement,” 196, agreed. At some unspecified time on 28 September. 2325 Lyons to Roosevelt, DAFP, vol.1, 286, 28 September 1938, vide Ovendale, Appeasement, 175ff. 2326 MacDonald to High Commissioners, DAFP, vol.1, 284, 11.30pm (BST), 27 September 1938. Ovendale, Appeasement, 167-8, mistakenly thought there were two high commissioners’ meetings that day, the first at 11.30am. This was not the case and he has confused the 11.30pm meeting for another, suggesting that a meeting at 11.30am (sic) discussed Henderson DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1126, which was not received until 1.20pm (BST). The commissioners talked until 2am (BST), 28 September; Massey, 260. 2327 This assurance had originally been circulated in Halifax to Henderson, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1121, 1am (BST), 27 September 1938. It was reissued to all ambassadors at 10pm; ibid., footnote 2, 559. In it Chamberlain had talked of the necessity to avoid ‘a bloody struggle over a question on which agreement has already been largely obtained’. 2328 Chamberlain’s notebooks, 28 September 1938, Chamberlain Papers, NC 2/25. There were even indications from Paris that by that morning Britain would be facing war without an ally; Middlemas, 397. 2329 Cabinet Minutes, 27 September 1938, A2694/18/5, during which it considered much material now redundant, including Circular Telegram, DO to Prime Ministers, A2994/85/B281, 1.00pm (BST), 26 September 1938, on the dispatch of Wilson; A2694/85/B285, 1.45pm (BST), 26 September 1938, the text of Roosevelt’s first message and MacDonald’s three ‘Wilson’ cables, A463/1957/1067, 26-27 September 1938. 2330 Very few commentators have been conscious of the correct Australian timing of the deadline. One of the few to have been so was Anon., “Overseas Reaction to the Crisis”: 47; also in “Australia and the Czech Crisis.” vol.29 (December 1938) in Australian Commentaries, ed. L. Robson, 181. vide Appendix II. 2331 Enid Lyons audio interview with Mel Pratt, Tape 2. Moffat had noted: ‘When she is not with him he seems to lose some of his self-confidence’; Moffat Diary, 25 August 1936. 2332 Enid Lyons, audio interview with Mel Pratt, Tape 1, 76-7. Her accounts of their conversation in My Life, 34-5 and So We, 267-9, are very similar. 311 assured his wife that everything possible had been done in the pursuit of peace but, incredulous, she asked if Chamberlain had contacted Mussolini, as ‘the one man living who might still have influence with Hitler’, suggesting that he ought to do so rapidly.2333 The idea apparently appealed to Lyons, who had himself enjoyed two cordial interviews with the Italian leader and was accordingly convinced of his reasonableness, and he agreed to convey this suggestion to the British premier.2334 The recent process of Anglo-Italian conversation that Lyons, amongst others, had urged on Chamberlain from mid-1937, offered some hope of a favourable reception.2335 Lyons did, however, sleep on it and it was not until the following day that he prepared to put such a proposal before Chamberlain, whether it had originated in his own mind or in that of his wife, a delay that was risky given the imminence of war. He intended to do so by both telephone and cable, as he had done on 26 September. It remains unclear whether the Prime Minister had informed his cabinet colleagues of his intention at either the Lodge cabinet meeting of the evening of 27 September, or in their emergency session on the morning of ‘X-day’, 28 September.2336 The record gives no indication that he did so, but Lyons spent the morning ruminating on eleventh-hour possibilities, before putting pen to paper in the early afternoon (the cable was dispatched at 1.15pm AEST) and before telephoning London, at about 4.30pm AEST, at a time when Chamberlain would be breakfasting.2337

In putting his proposals in writing first, Lyons was reversing his recent practice of preceding any cable with a telephone call, presumably conscious that Chamberlain would be abed at the time of the dispatch of the cable and that there was little point in calling until the late afternoon (AEST). Despite this delay, his now pressing sense of urgency was indicated by the fact that the uncoded message was marked ‘URGENT CABLE IN CLEAR’.2338 In the course of the morning of ‘X-day’, it was likely that Menzies, Page and/or Casey at least, were consulted in the drafting, but the finished product was very personal in nature and uncollegial in its

2333 Enid Lyons, So We, 267ff.; Enid Lyons audio interview with Mel Pratt, Tape 1, 76-7, March 1972. Her recollected advice was very close to the form of the subsequent cable, DAFP, vol.1, 288, vide below and Appendix III, the text of which was not published until 1975, a decade after her memoirs were written. This supports the accuracy of her recall in this instance. 2334 She claimed that he responded: ‘My word, that’s a good idea. I’ll do that.’; Enid Lyons, audio interview with Mel Pratt, Tape 1. She incorrectly recalled, ibid. and So We, 267ff., Chamberlain’s personal relationship with Mussolini (they did not meet until Munich), perhaps thinking instead of the correspondence of July 1937, vide Chapter 5. 2335 Sir John Simon, Retrospect, 247, thought this process made Mussolini receptive; Lamb, Mussolini and the British, 226 agreed, as did Seton-Watson, “The Anglo-Italian Gentleman’s Agreement,” 277-8, quoting Perth, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1231. vide Chapter 5 on Anglo-Italian conversations. 2336 Cabinet Minutes, A2694/18/5, 27 September 1938 and before 10am (AEST), 28 September 1938. Enid Lyons, in her audio interview with Mel Pratt, Tape 1, 76-7, was initially uncertain about whether any cabinet consultation took place, although she later recalled, ibid., 80, that it had, a suggestion found in her earlier memoir, So We, 267-9. 2337 Original telegram (=DAFP 288), Lyons to Chamberlain, 28 September 1938, PREM 1/242/19, PRO, London. It was ‘drafted’ on ‘Wednesday afternoon’; Lyons, CPD, vol.157, 332-3, 29 September 1938; Current Notes, vol.5, no.7 (1938), 191-3. Enid Lyons thought the phone call was made at about 7am (AEST), 28 September 1938, So We, 267-9, but this is far too early - she was in Melbourne and had no personal role that day. The British record gives the precise time of the call, vide below, and she could have been confusing time zones. 2338 Lyons to Chamberlain, 28 September 1938, A483 1957/1067, NAA, Canberra (DAFP, vol.1, 288; PREM 1/242/19), reproduced in Appendix III. 312 language.2339 The cable was two-fold and provided the clearest example of an Australian desire to participate ad hoc in imperial policy-making since the similar, personal proposal of March 1936.2340 Firstly, Lyons formally suggested, in accordance with Dame Enid’s counsel, an appeal to the Italian leader: ‘At this late hour I venture to suggest… [a] personal appeal to Signor Mussolini’ as ‘I can think of no other individual who might be able to influence Herr Hitler towards a peaceful solution.’2341 His confidence in the Italian leader was based on the personal experience of his earlier visits to Rome, for ‘as Prime Minister of Australia, am on good personal terms with Signor Mussolini’.2342 Secondly, as in March 1936, Lyons urged the employment of an Australian intermediary, offering Bruce’s services to Chamberlain ‘by flying to Rome bearing personal message’, an expression of confidence in his high commissioner that he had been reluctant, for whatever reason, to make in his earlier proposal of ad hoc participation.2343 On this occasion, Bruce was not to be with dispensed with in favour of another. This offer seemed to recall Chamberlain’s hope for his ‘personal message’ via Wilson and Lyons still apparently retained his confidence in personal diplomacy, at least if directed at Rome rather than Berlin.2344 Lyons could additionally only have been more confident of a positive reception at Whitehall for this offer of Australian participation than had awaited its predecessor ─ Baldwin had ignored the proposal of a dominion intermediary in 1936 (if he ever learned of it), but Chamberlain’s association with Bruce was close, as the latter’s recent attendance at the inner cabinet had shown. There is no record of prior consultation with Bruce over the proposal and the cable suggested that he would be subsequently instructed to make himself available, but it would have been extraordinary if Lyons had not at least gained some preliminary awareness of Bruce’s readiness to undergo such a mission2345 ─ he was certainly not the only person to be considering the Australian high commissioner as an intermediary at this time, which suggests some wider knowledge of Bruce’s willingness to serve in such a capacity.2346 In order, however, to prevent a repetition of the fate of the 1936 ‘Menzies’ offer, which had disappeared without trace, Lyons publicly revealed its successor to a stunned parliament on the following day.2347 Although Chamberlain ultimately preferred not to employ the high commissioner, Lyons’s first suggestion

2339 Lyons, CPD, vol.157, 332-3, 29 September 1938; Current Notes, vol.5, no.7 (1938), 191-3 on its drafting. 2340 vide Chapter 4. 2341 Lyons to Chamberlain, 28 September 1938, A483 1957/1067, NAA, Canberra (DAFP, vol.1 288; PREM 1/242/19), reproduced in Appendix III). The wording was similar to that used by Enid Lyons, So We, 267ff. 2342 DAFP, vol.1, 288, 28 September 1938, copy sent to Bruce. This was not the last time an Australian suggested Mussolini as an intermediary. Bruce did so again in May 1940; P. Edwards, “S.M. Bruce, R.G. Menzies and Australia’s War Aims and Peace Aims, 1939-40.” Historical Studies, vol.17, no.66 (April 1976): 1-14; A. Clarke, “Menzies and Hitler.” Australian Financial Review, 19 April 2001, 57. 2343 Lyons clearly believed that Bruce would be more acceptable to Mussolini as an Australian; DAFP, vol.1, 288, 28 September 1938. vide Chapter 4 on the 1936 attempt at ad hoc participation. 2344 Chamberlain too had talked of a ‘personal message’ in the Wilson letter; Cabinet Minutes, 3pm, 25 September 1938, CAB 23/95 CP46(38). 2345 Bruce gave Stirling no indication of prior knowledge on the morning of 28 September; Stirling, 81. 2346 Bruce was also suggested by Henderson later that day as a suitable British plenipotentiary; Cadogan note of phone conversation with Henderson, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1172, 2.30pm (BST), 28 September 1938. 2347 Lyons, CPD, vol.157, 332-3, 29 September 1938; Current Notes, vol.5, no.7 (1938), 191-3. 313 of some contact with Mussolini does appear to have played some part in Chamberlain’s pursuit of that option, following further representation.2348

This participatory cable was unambiguous in its sentiments and far from any expression of ‘naïve bewilderment’ ─ Lyons had clearly judged the situation as well as he could from a distance and produced a rational response to an urgent situation, even if produced in the hot- house atmosphere of extreme crisis.2349 It was one of the more important communications dispatched from Canberra to London in the Lyons years, both in its appeasing spirit, which showed enormous faith in the new diplomacy, and in its apparent impact. It was also the most ‘personal’ of Lyons’s official communications of those years, featuring ‘I’ throughout and not referring to the government at all, except where it espoused what was very much a personal conclusion about Mussolini, although supposedly made ‘as Prime Minister’2350 ─ the whole was a good example of the notions of the individual being incorporated into policy-making, as was so common in the Lyons years. The claim of being on ‘good personal terms with Signor Mussolini’, for example, was extraordinary and based on his two brief encounters with the Italian leader, indicating just how much faith Lyons placed in the power of ‘personal diplomacy’.2351

Hitherto, this cable has been dismissed as having arrived too late for Chamberlain’s consideration prior to his diplomatic frenzy of the morning of 28 September.2352 These assessments are unwarranted, as it arrived at Whitehall at 5.00am (BST) on that day.2353 The question of when Chamberlain read it, however, is irrelevant to this aspect of the debate, as its contents were directly communicated by Lyons through an important phone call to Downing Street shortly after 7.30am (BST)/4.30pm (AEST).2354 This thesis reveals the precise timing and details of that call for the first time, chiefly through previously uncited British sources.2355

Lyons himself gave the first public account of that conversation and its offer of Australian mediation in a parliamentary statement on 29 September 1938:

2348 vide below. 2349 The description of Lyons at this time in P. Edwards, “The Rise and Fall…”, 43. Lyons’s appeasing logic was clear in this instance and there is no reason to question it by referring to Holsti, 120-1, on the rational fragility of decision- making made under extreme stress-‘psychologic’. 2350 Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 288, 28 September 1938. 2351 DAFP, vol.1, 288, 28 September 1938, copy sent to Bruce. 2352 Andrews, “The Australian Government and Appeasement”, 75ff., wrongly thought so; similarly Andrews, Isolationism, discussed at length in Appendix B of Cumpston, Bruce, 279-80. Andrews, “Patterns…”, 96, made the general point that communicative delays meant that close consultation with remote dominions was impractical. 2353 Original telegram (DAFP 288), Lyons to Chamberlain, dispatched 1.15pm (AEST), received 5.00am (BST), 28 September 1938, PREM 1/242/19. D. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 172-3, had correctly estimated its time of arrival without the evidence to substantiate his claim. Cumpston, Bruce, 165, was aware that the cable had reached Chamberlain ‘in the first hours of 28 September’, but could be no more specific than that. 2354 Anne Chamberlain’s handwritten notes on Number 10 stationery on the events of the morning of 28 September 1938, n.d., but after January 1939, Chamberlain Papers, NC 8/26/15, University of Birmingham Archives. There was no indication of the intended reader. The Anne Chamberlain’s record gives us the precise time and nature of the call. Czechoslovakia: Memoranda, Correspondence and Records of Meetings, n.d, but re 28 September 1938, DO114/94/186, PRO, London, refers to a phone conversation ‘early on the 28th September’ (BST), although it is inaccurate in later stating a difference of only 7 hours between AEST and GMT. 2355 vide Appendix II. 314

I may add that we called Mr. Chamberlain out of his bed in the early hours of the morning in order to discuss this matter with him and to express our views. Mr. Chamberlain replied thanking the Commonwealth Government for its suggestion and saying that he was at the moment considering action of this nature.2356

The husband’s prosaic account was self-effacing and stressed a collegiality (‘we’, ‘our views’) not found in the original, which had not mentioned the government at all; Lyons here admitted that he had reinforced Chamberlain’s intention, rather than planted a seed, but he nevertheless exposed an important Australian initiative at the height of the crisis. His wife’s account was more assertive: Dame Enid claimed accurate recall of the telephone conversation in which her husband had suggested to Chamberlain an approach to Mussolini. Her husband’s role was more instrumental in this version and Chamberlain was said to have replied: ‘We had thought of that and then dismissed it as completely impracticable, unlikely to have any result, but if you fellows out there think like that, then I’ll have another try.’2357 He had previously set aside this possibility as a ‘forlorn hope’, she claimed, but Chamberlain had certainly kept the lines of communication to Rome open during the crisis.2358 The full significance of the call, however, is shown only by the British record, in the details provided by Anne Chamberlain herself.2359 These sources tend to fall somewhere between Lyons’s own suggestions of reinforcing Chamberlain’s intentions and Enid Lyons’s ex post facto suggestions of decisive personal and prime ministerial impetus.

Lyons’s ‘Mussolini’ cable arrived at Whitehall before dawn on ‘X-day’ and a member of the Downing Street staff, Syers, noted: ‘To supplement this telegram Mr. Lyons telephoned to the Prime Minister this morning and Mr. Bruce called here. The Prime Minister had already decided to send his message to Mussolini.’2360 However, Mrs. Chamberlain’s knowledge of her husband’s composition of his cables of appeal to Hitler and Mussolini on that morning suggested a more co- operative effort between the two prime ministers, particularly in the cable addressed to Rome. She wrote:

2356 Lyons, CPD, vol.157, 332-3, 29 September 1938; Current Notes, vol.5, no.7 (1938), 191-3. The statement was referred to in the Department of External Affairs, Annual Report, 1938, Australian Parliamentary Papers, 17 May 1939, no.153. A similar account was given to the press, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 September 1938, 11, h. It seems odd that Chamberlain was still in bed at about 7.30am, given the dire circumstances, but he was severely despondent and fatalistic, as he explained to his sisters in October, as quoted by Feiling, 375-6. He had undoubtedly slept poorly. 2357 Enid Lyons, in her audio interview, Tape 1, 76-7, or, 80, the more unlikely, ‘I’ll have a go.’ The words recalled in So We, 267-9, are similar. 2358 Enid Lyons, My Life, 34-5. When Mussolini responded favourably to the Berchtesgaden talks, on 16 September, Halifax was instructed to keep him informed through Grandi; Middlemas, 380. The murky role of Grandi in the whole episode has been examined by Lamb, Mussolini and the British, 224ff., Farrell, 299, but is worthy of a more extensive study. Also vide below for instructions to Lord Perth on 27 September 1938. 2359 Neville Chamberlain thought in October that only he and “Annie” knew of the details of those hours, informing his sisters that she would tell them at some time, quoted in Feiling, 375-6. 2360 C. Syers handwritten note, PREM 1/242/18, PRO, London, attached to Lyons to Chamberlain cable, PREM 1/242/19, 28 September 1938, PRO, London. A similar note allowed Cumpston, History, 21, to conclude that the cable had preceded the phone call; handwritten note, initialled ‘CGS 28/9’, PREM 1/242/18, PRO, London. 315

He [Chamberlain] was called to the telephone at 7.30. When he while waiting [sic] for his call from Mr. Lyons − he started his letter to Hitler. When I came down to breakfast at 8.30 he ( had just completed the one to-[line ruled out]) was writing something.

He soon after told me that it was to Mussolini. He then read the two letters and took them down all as soon as the Secretary arrived− They got through to the Foreign Office and Lord Halifax and [indecipherable, possibly ‘about’] 10 o’clock the letters were on their way to Germany and Italy.

They appeared in the Press and as can be seen there was practically no alteration− the notes − the original draft − Neville woke early that morning and felt that to ask Mussolini to intervene with Hitler was the one hope left. The Germans were to march in [indecipherable] afternoon at 2 o’clock − and war for us all would have started − Anne Chamberlain.2361

There were indeed only minor changes between the enclosed drafts and the final cables dispatched from London to Hitler and Mussolini, at 11.30am (BST),2362 indicating that Wilson and others had little subsequent input into their composition.2363 The suggestion that the counsel of the Australian prime minister was heeded in some measure is supported by Chamberlain’s notes made during the call ─ above the draft message to Mussolini, in Chamberlain’s handwriting, is an indication of what it was that the two prime ministers discussed: ‘Lyons Cable suggesting Mussolini Bruce might go himself 3 hours statement 2pm’.2364 When Lyons rang to reinforce the preceding cable, perhaps fearful that it could be some time before Chamberlain would see it, the British premier was already composing his note to Hitler. His notation of Lyons’s suggestions above the composition of the Mussolini appeal was a self-explanatory indication of Australian input at this juncture. It is notable that Lyons at no time suggested any appeal to Hitler, such as the one that Chamberlain was in the process of composing, but that the message to Mussolini appeared to have been composed jointly ─ at the very least, it would have been a remarkable coincidence if Lyons called to suggest an approach to Mussolini at precisely the time that Chamberlain was composing one. Joint

2361 Anne Chamberlain’s handwritten notes (on Number 10 stationery) of the events of the morning of 28 September 1938, n.d., but after January 1939, Chamberlain Papers, NC 8/26/15, University of Birmingham Archives. A call at 7.30am (BST) seems late to fit a description of calling Chamberlain out of bed in the early hours of the morning (CPD, vol.157, 332-3, 29 September 1938), but it fits, given the possibility that an exhausted Chamberlain was still abed. 2362 Halifax to Henderson, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1158, 11.30am (BST), 28 September 1938, intended for Hitler, appealed for delay and a further meeting. Halifax to Perth, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1159, 11.30am (BST), 28 September 1938, intended for Mussolini, appealed for intervention and participation. 2363 The Whitehall consultations on the cables, between 8.30-11.30am (BST), led to only minor changes, made without cabinet consultation; Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 304, 7 October 1938. Wilson was therefore less influential than suggested in Adams, 120; Gilbert and Gott, 172. When MacDonald told the high commissioners at 11.50am (BST), that the cables had been sent ‘early in the morning’, he was perhaps inadvertently referring to the fact that the texts of that time had been little altered; Note of Meeting of UK and Dominion Representatives, DAFP, vol.1, 289, 11.50am (BST), 28 September 1938. 2364 Neville Chamberlain’s handwritten notes above draft Hitler-Mussolini cables, in Anne Chamberlain’s handwritten notes, 28 September 1938, n.d., but after January 1939, Chamberlain Papers, NC 8/26/15, University of Birmingham Archives. The ‘3 hour’ reference remains unclear. 316 composition and the confidence implied by it would seem the more likely explanations given Chamberlain’s notes and the observations by Anne Chamberlain that the note to Mussolini was not yet begun at the time of the telephone conversation. That the composition of the Mussolini note followed the Chamberlain-Lyons dialogue does not necessarily mean, of course, that Chamberlain heeded Lyons’s counsel or had not intended to write such an appeal anyway, but the probability of some connection seems high given the weight of the evidence.2365 A reflective Bruce (not normally generous in his assessments of Lyons) was later happy to credit the Australian prime minister with responsibility for the appeal to Rome, but thought the appeal to Berlin an added ‘inspiration’ of Chamberlain alone, which it certainly appeared to have been from Anne Chamberlain’s account.2366 The appeal to Berlin was likely composed as a response to ‘some excerpt from Hitler’s letter’ (the ‘Wilson’ letter of 27 September, rejected by cabinet) as Kennedy described it, over which Chamberlain had mulled through the night. 2367 The accompanying appeal to Mussolini was of a quite different origin. Considering the evidence as a whole, the Australian prime minister’s later assertion to a bemused parliament that he shared responsibility for the subsequent settlement at Munich, was not an empty or baseless one.2368 Only Dame Enid and/or Chamberlain were in a position to confirm it, however, and the latter soon made exclusive claims for the authorship of this desperate snatch at the ‘last tuft of grass on the very verge of the precipice’.2369 At the very least, the telephone call had reinforced in Chamberlain’s mind the possibility of some contact through Mussolini and/or reassured him of the wisdom of a preconceived intention, of which there already were some indications2370 ─ Lord Perth, at his own request, had been given permission at 11pm (BST) on the previous night to probe Mussolini, but no more explicit instructions had followed.2371 On the other hand, one may speculate that immediately prior to Lyons’s call Chamberlain was content to allow matters to take their own course in Rome via Perth. Given also his state of despondency, the Lyons message may then indeed have acted like ‘a flame in a darkened room’, as Dame Enid chose to describe it later.2372 There is some contemporary evidence to support this suggestion─ Bruce certainly believed at the time, after considerable discussions at Whitehall including with Chamberlain himself, that Lyons’s suggestion had ‘kindled a new thought in his [Chamberlain’s] mind’.2373

2365 Following Stanford, 59, on mutually supporting probabilities; Kitson Clark, 59, on ‘probable deductions’. 2366 Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 304, 7 October 1938. Bruce was not normally generous in his assessments of Lyons. 2367 Halifax to Henderson, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1158, 11.30am (BST), 28 September 1938, where Chamberlain began: “After reading your letter…”, referring to Hitler to Chamberlain, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1144, 27 September 1938. Kennedy to Welles, FRUS, 1938, vol.1, 679, 27 September 1938. 2368 Lyons, CPD, vol.157, 332-3, 29 September 1938. 2369 Chamberlain to his sisters, October 1938, quoted in Feiling, 376; R. Lamb, The Drift to War (London; W.H. Allen, 1987), 258; vide below for Chamberlain’s claims in the Commons. 2370 Mansergh, Survey, 169-70. 2371 After the reissue of DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1121, to all ambassadors, at 10pm (BST), 27 September 1938, vide above, Perth was granted permission to raise the issue of Mussolini’s intervention; Halifax to Perth, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1125, footnote 2, 11pm (BST), 27 September 1938. Perth had first asked for such permission at 1.20pm (BST), 27 September 1938, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1125, ‘May I act accordingly?’, but had received no immediate response. 2372 Enid Lyons, My Life, 34-5. 2373 Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 304, 7 October 1938, reviewing the crisis. 317 Some Australian influence was also later suspected by D.C. Watt and Cumpston, but their primary evidence was not strong enough to make firm conclusions.2374 It is now possible to do so, given a more exact examination of the timing of communications and a greater knowledge of the contents of the telephone communication. The evidence now suggests the ‘probable deduction’ that Australian advice played some immeasurable part in pushing Chamberlain over the edge from nocturnal, depressed detachment to early morning, precipitous frenzy, regardless of whether he was already considering such a move.2375 There were obviously other factors and influences working on Chamberlain’s mind at this time independent of anything contributed by Lyons, and it is difficult to suggest that any one influence was the decisive factor, but it would also be an error to ignore this Australian contribution to that final initiative of 28 September (especially to the Italian aspect of it).2376 It is clear, however, that Lyons himself later believed that his intervention had been important and it was this personal conclusion, whether deluded or not, that reinforced in his mind the efficacy of appeasement and its technique of personal contacts.2377 The Australian cabinet had resumed following Lyons’s telephone call to Chamberlain (at 5.30pm AEST, 28 September) and the Prime Minister immediately telephoned Bruce within the earshot of his ministers to dispatch him on an errand to Downing Street to reinforce the thrust of the Mussolini cable and presumably also to ready him for the role of intermediary.2378 The high commissioner was not given any lengthy access to a busy premier that morning, for Chamberlain was already aware of the cable’s sentiments, although he had not already sent a message to Mussolini (as Bruce was told).2379 Bruce did not, however, leave Downing Street empty handed, for ‘on instructions’ he had been furnished with copies of Chamberlain’s already composed messages to the dictators, in order to ‘assure’ Lyons in the words of Syers ─ an important sign of the Prime Minister’s confidence in his Australian counterpart (and Bruce), as the texts were not officially circulated to the dominions until over four hours later, after they had reached their destinations.2380 Neither Bruce nor Lyons viewed this direct prime ministerial contact via

2374 D. Watt, Personalities and Policies, 172-3, in 1965, thought the intervention of Lyons had played an important part in galvanizing Chamberlain, but admitted that the evidence was ‘inconclusive’. Cumpston, History, 21 and Bruce, 166, 279-80, accepted that it must have strongly reinforced Chamberlain’s resolve, without much primary analysis. 2375 pace Ovendale, Appeasement, 63, keen though he was for a reassessment of the dominion and US contribution during this crisis, although elsewhere, ibid., 180ff., he admits that Chamberlain and the cabinet were continually conscious of dominion considerations. Kitson Clark, 59, on ‘probable deductions’; Stanford, 59, on ‘probable conclusions’; vide Introduction. 2376 There is not ‘adequate evidence’ to make any conclusion of a decisive Australian role; after Stanford, 63ff. Farrell, 299, thought Grandi’s efforts important, but admitted his inability to demonstrate their decisiveness. 2377 vide below. 2378 This phone call is referred to in Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 290, 11.42am (BST), 28 September 1938 (where footnote 1 notes that there is no record of its substance, which I have attempted to reconstruct through surrounding sources) and in Cabinet Minutes, 28 September 1938, A2694/18/5. Bruce went to Downing Street immediately after it (vide above the Syers note). DAFP, vol.1, 288, had indicated that Bruce would be instructed to make himself available. 2379 DAFP, vol.1, 288, had been sent in duplicate to Bruce; Original telegram, Lyons to Chamberlain, 28 September 1938, PREM 1/242/19 Bruce thought this cable followed the phone call, but his knowledge of the night’s events was not precise, hence his mistaken belief that a message had already been sent; Notes of Meeting of UK and Dominion Representatives, DAFP, vol.1, 289, 11.50am (BST), 28 September 1938. 2380 Syers handwritten note, PREM 1/242/18, attached to Lyons to Chamberlain cable, PREM 1/242/19, 28 September 1938. Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 290, 1.42pm (BST), 28 September 1938. Copies were sent to all dominions in the Circular Telegram, 1.15pm (BST), 28 September 1938, A2937/85/B318, NAA, Canberra. 318 telephone as a qualification of the communicative role of Australia House, but that was certainly one effect of the speed of developments, as Bruce discovered on the morning of ‘Black Wednesday’. Soon after the Lyons-Bruce telephone conversation, the cabinet adjourned (at 5.45pm AEST), for Lyons had promised a long-awaited parliamentary statement.2381 He could do little now but anxiously await the fate of the Chamberlain appeals, copies of which arrived that night but which Lyons does not appear to have seen until the following day.2382 Despite his personal intervention and Chamberlain’s positive response, the Prime Minister appeared to fear the worst as the hours of ‘X-day’ went by and the ultimatum approached, at 11pm (AEST). There was still no news by 9.30pm (AEST), when the cabinet resumed its examination of the latest cables and Lyons finalised the parliamentary statement.2383 Accordingly, when he finally addressed the House, at 11pm (AEST) 28 September 1938, Lyons still had no positive indications from Whitehall at a time when the European deadline had just expired and the ‘last moment’ had expired.2384 His demeanour and the contents of the speech were only comprehensible given knowledge of the expired deadline and of his anxiety about recent initiatives, no details of which were publicly known until the following day.2385

The core of this speech largely consisted of his own observations, an unusual practice in Lyons’s parliamentary addresses, which were normally prosaic statements of government policy, but this was a moment of great significance─ Lyons had ensured that it contained the usual protracted summary of events (prepared by Alan Watt of External Affairs), but he also gave some indication of his intimate knowledge of developments, which could not have been added by any other hand.2386 The final draft was not substantially different from one prepared earlier in the day within the Prime Minister’s department and there were no last minute prime ministerial interpolations, as later asserted by Watt on behalf of a circle of anti-appeasers within the

2381 The statement had been expected since 11.30am, when Lyons called for an adjournment, promising one at 2.15pm, but the House was kept waiting all day, as Beasley complained, CPD, vol.157, 306-12, 28 September 1938; Argus, 29 September 1938, 1, .e-f; Herald, 28 September 1938, 1, d, e. Ovendale, Appeasement, 171, thought that Bruce had persuaded Lyons to postpone it. 2382 The official texts of the appeals (DBFP 1158-9) arrived some time after 10.42pm (AEST), when Bruce cabled copies; Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 290, 1.42pm (BST), 28 September 1938. Copies were sent to all dominions in the Circular Telegram, 1.15pm (BST), 28 September 1938, A2937/85/B318, NAA, Canberra. That Lyons did not see these texts until the 29th is clear from his parliamentary statement of that day, where he referred to their arrival ‘this morning’; CPD, vol.157, 332-3, 29 September 1938. 2383 Cabinet Minutes, 9.30pm (AEST), 28 September, A2694/18/5, NAA, Canberra. 2384 Lyons parliamentary statement, 11pm (AEST), 28 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.7 (October 1938); Argus, 29 September 1939, 2, f, g. A. Watt, Evolution, 1, acknowledged that the temper of the speech was determined by the ultimatum, although he was wrong in his timing (thinking that midnight was the deadline, an error repeated in “Assumptions…”: 23 and Australian Diplomat, 24); Andrews, Isolationism, 24, thought Lyons had left it until the ‘last moment’, so as to avoid charges that he had waited before warning the nation of the imminence of war, but this seems precisely what he did do. 2385 When he made a second statement; Lyons, CPD, vol.157, 332-3, 29 September 1938, where he tabled a number of relevant documents, although many were not tabled until 23 November 1938; “International Situation”, A463 1957/1067; CP290/2/1/BUN 1/15, NAA, Canberra. 2386 The drafts are not found in that department’s records, but in those of the Prime Minister’s Department, International Situation 1938, Lyons parliamentary statement, 11pm (AEST), 28 September 1938, A463 1957/1067, NAA, Canberra. Alan Watt, Australian Diplomat, 23, a relatively junior officer, later claimed to have drafted the speech. 319 department.2387 Nor were passages inserted by the same officer in an attempt to discredit the government’s harsh attitude towards the Czechs, as he also later claimed2388 ─ Lyons made no attempt in this speech to conceal the fact that the Czechs had been pressured to make concessions, as he had been admitting such pressure since April.2389 Whatever else this speech conveyed, it revealed ‘close and prompt consultation’ with Whitehall, for Lyons was able to table an impressive array of communications that had passed London and Canberra up to 26 September.2390 He was also able to convey impressions that could not be gleaned from the documents themselves, but which he had gained through his recent contacts ─ when, for example, he tabled a recently arrived copy of the Hitler reply to the Wilson mission,2391 Lyons referred to it in pessimistic terms as an ‘unfavourable reply’, a likely repetition of the Chamberlain view, to which he had been exposed only hours before.2392 ‘Notwithstanding’ Hitler’s response, Lyons stated that all now depended on a Chamberlain ‘note’ containing ‘further proposals’; the first public reference (in either Australia or the UK) to Chamberlain’s appeals to Berlin and Rome, which he knew through his own contacts.2393 MPs were, however, told nothing of the details of these cables, dispatched two-and-a-half hours earlier at 11.30am (BST)/8.30pm (AEST), and still swinging in the balance. These matters remained confidential, but it was their fate that made Lyons so visibly anxious, as he closed with a personal affirmation of his peace policy and employed what was noted at the time as an ‘authentic Lyons ring’.2394 Clearly expecting that war would come, given the expiry of the unspoken ultimatum, the peacemaker made an extraordinary final effort for posterity to exculpate himself and the policy of conciliation, significantly employing collective language:

2387 ibid., 23ff., on the circle of young anti-appeasers and his claim to have allowed for Lyons to make some interpolations. These, however, are found in the typed draft and were clearly not last-minute verbal additions; Prime Minister’s Department, International Situation 1938, 28 September 1938, A463 1957/1067. 2388 Alan Watt, Australian Diplomat, 23ff. 2389 Lyons statement, 11pm (AEST), 28 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.7, (1938), 161. He had first publicly suggested this course in CPD, vol.155, 537, 27 April 1938, which explains why this alleged ‘insertion’ excited no comment at the time; pace Woodard: 49. Nor did Menzies conceal this attitude to the Czechs in parliament on 5 October 1938, after that pressure appeared to have produced peace. Rather, he boasted of the sense of such a course, CPD, vol.157, 429ff. For further Watt observations on Menzies’s speech; “Assumptions…”: 38. 2390 As noted by Mansergh, Survey, 169. 2391 Lyons parliamentary statement, 11pm (AEST), 28 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.7 (October 1938), Document J, 188-90 (DBFP 1144). A copy of this letter had been sent at 12.30am (BST), 28 September 1938; Circular Telegram, A2937/85/B311, NAA, Canberra. 2392 Current Notes, vol.5, no.7 (October 1938), 159ff. This admission was contrary to Chamberlain’s later claims that he had detected positive elements, vide below. 2393 Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 290, 1.42pm (BST), 28 September 1938; Circular Telegram, 1.15pm (BST), 28 September 1938, A2937/85/B318, enclosing the appeals may have just been time for Lyons to see them before his speech, but he stated that he had not seen them until the following day; CPD, vol.157, 332-3, 29 September 1938, when he also claimed that his reference to a ‘note’ had been to Chamberlain’s earlier message to Hitler, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1121. It was not, vide below, but was a premature reference to the Hitler/Mussolini cables, DBFP 1158/9. 2394 The quote is from A. Watt, Australian Diplomat, 24. 320 Our hands are clean. We have done our best to keep the peace. We have no selfish interest to serve. Even as the clouds gather about us we still hope that peace may be preserved.2395

It was the epitaph of appeasement, even if a slightly premature one.

Lyons’s audience, unaware of the negotiations, letters, notes, deadlines and cabinet conclusions found this speech confusing, anti-climactic and perilously neutral.2396 Normally a skilful parliamentarian and an effective speaker, a distracted and heart-sick Lyons had conveyed the unusual impression that he did not have ‘complete familiarity and mastery of the text’.2397 Curtin, in the absence of any tabled Australian documentation, made the understandable assumption that Canberra had done nothing other than support the British position, a view still common in the historiography.2398 The Opposition Leader’s assessment was owing to his ignorance of the traffic of recent weeks and arguably unwarranted from a man who still believed that it was ‘sheer folly…for Australia to regard herself as a major element in the settlement of International [sic] antagonisms’.2399 Lyons revealed nothing that disabused him, but actually deepened the confusion by finally referring to the present moment as the ‘most critical period in the life of the country’, concluding the night’s session with a signal of impending war by informing the House that it would be required to sit tomorrow, 29 September, ‘in respect of certain matters that may have to be done’.2400

Lyons then proceeded directly from the chamber to his parliamentary suite for an unprecedented national broadcast at midnight (AEST), 28 September.2401 He was somewhat more composed before the microphone, apologising for the ‘lateness of the hour’, but justifying his intrusion by referring to the international situation. Lyons repeated appropriate parts of his parliamentary address, but included some further personal insights. He admitted the ‘increasingly serious’ nature of the crisis, but believed it had been moderated by Chamberlain’s recent personal diplomacy, a process that had performed ‘the important purpose of enabling the representatives of Germany and England to understand one another’s point of view’, although he still failed to

2395 Lyons statement, 11pm (AEST), 28 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.7, (1938), 168. CPD, vol.157, 306- 12, 28 September 1938. 2396 Liesching thought it confusing, vague, colourless, neutral and lacking in national leadership, quoted in Ovendale, Appeasement, 171; ibid., “Apeasement,” 195. Round Table, “Overseas Reactions to the Crisis”: 42, aware of the ultimatum in later weeks, still thought that confusion had been caused by the absence of any clarifying statement from Australian politicians. 2397 A. Watt, “Assumptions…”: 22. 2398 Curtin, CPD, vol.157, 326, 28 September 1938. Lyons had tabled only British documents and many were not tabled until the following day; CPD, vol.157, 332-3, 29 September 1938. Some had to wait until 23 November 1938, “International Situation”, A463 1957/1067; CP290/2/1/BUN 1/15. Anon., “Overseas Reactions to the Crisis”: 47, was puzzled by the scant press attention that the speech had received. Anon., “March of Events”, Australian National Review, vol.4, no.22 (1 October 1938): 3, accepted that Canberra had put its attitude firmly to London. 2399 Curtin on Abyssinia, Sydney Morning Herald, 22 October 1935, quoted in Andrews, Isolationism, 27. 2400 Lyons, CPD, vol.157, 326, 28 September 1938. Curtin accepted the necessity to sit, but many other Labor MHRs did not, thinking Lyons was wasting their time again; Argus, 29 September 1938, 1, f. 2401 This broadcast had been delayed since 9.30pm (AEST); Herald, 28 September 1938, 1, d, e. 321 reveal that more of the same was in the air according to his recent advice to Chamberlain.2402 This was arguably another attempt to exculpate aspects of appeasement on the verge of war, even though Lyons was still awaiting news of the fate of the last initiative. He concluded with sentiments similar to those of his parliamentary statement, praying for peace in ‘troubled times’ ─ Lyons had begun the Czech crisis by resorting to pleas for divine guidance and he had now completed the full circle.2403 His prayers had in fact been answered shortly before the broadcast, when news of the fate of the last initiative was dispatched from London. While Lyons was speaking, British cables began to arrive at Canberra informing him that Hitler had accepted a twenty-four hour postponement of mobilisation (and therefore of the ultimatum), owing to Mussolini’s intervention.2404 None of Lyons’s staff had the nerve to interrupt the speaker, as Chamberlain was shortly to be interrupted in the Commons ─ had they done so it would have made spectacular radio, just as the Westminster incident was seen by some as spectacular theatre.2405 Such an extraordinary opportunity to announce personally the triumph of last-minute intervention would certainly have prevented a later assessment of this broadcast as demonstrating Lyons’s ‘reticence and…tendency to deplore discussions and criticisms’.2406

At the same time as Lyons spoke from his parliamentary suite, Chamberlain stood in the Commons, around 3pm (BST) 28 September 1938, to give his own overview of the situation. If Lyons expected any credit for his peacemaking efforts, he was to be disappointed, for Chamberlain asserted an exclusive claim to the title of peacemaker.2407 It was of a very different character from the one just delivered in the Australian parliament.2408 The House was tense and unaware that Chamberlain had already received notice of Hitler’s acceptance of a delay in mobilisation,2409 but there was as yet no knowledge of the fate of the appeal to Hitler for a four- power conference.2410 Following a lengthy account of the Sudeten situation, which included a flattering account of his visit to Berchtesgaden, Chamberlain set the scene rhetorically for a questionable account of the events of the last twenty-four hours. He claimed that events had

2402 Prime Minister’s Speech on International Situation, midnight, 28 September 1938, Episode Title No.245919 JAL, ScreenSound, Canberra. 2403 Prime Minister’s Speech on International Situation, midnight, 28 September 1938, Episode Title No.245919 JAL. 2404 Circular Telegram, 2.45pm (BST), 28 September 1938, A2937/85/B321, NAA, Canberra; MacDonald to Lyons, 3.17pm (BST), 28 September 1938, A981 CZE PART 3, NAA, Canberra. Henderson had first advised the FO of this at 2.30pm (BST), DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1172. Further details soon arrived; MacDonald to Lyons, 4.25pm (BST), 28 September/1.25am (AEST), 29 September 1938, A981 CZE PART 3, NAA, Canberra. 2405 vide below on Chamberlain’s speech. 2406 This assessment of the broadcast appeared in Anon., (Libra), “Commentary.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.2, no.4 (October-November 1938): 6. 2407 Chamberlain, Parliamentary Debates, 28 September 1938, 5th series, vol.339, especially cols.23ff. 2408 The Argus, 29 September 1938, 1, e-f, close to Lyons, thought that the two prime ministerial parliamentary statements of 28 September were intended to be simultaneous and were ‘practically identical’. They were not, which might account for some of the back-tracking that Lyons attempted the following day; vide below. 2409 Lord Perth had cabled this news from Rome at 1.00pm (BST); Perth to Halifax, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1166, 28 September 1938. 2410 Contained in DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1158. News of the acceptance arrived at Whitehall at 3.15pm (BST), while Chamberlain was speaking; Cadogan note on conversation with Henderson, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1174, 28 September 1938; Cadogan, Diaries, 28 September 1938, 109; Gilbert and Gott, 173; Robbins, 312. It is therefore incorrect to suggest that Chamberlain had known of this before he began his speech; pace Gilbert and Gott, 175. 322 turned on the previous night when, at ‘about 10.30’ he had received Hitler’s formal reply to the Wilson mission.2411 Every cabinet minister, as well as the observing US ambassador, Kennedy, knew this assertion to be false, but it is a demonstrable falsehood that some historians have overlooked.2412 Chamberlain then asserted that his subsequent perusal of this letter, with its ‘additional assurances’ of a Czech guarantee, had persuaded him ‘to send one more last letter − the last last’.2413 Only then did the Prime Minister dramatically announce the mobilisation delay and shortly thereafter the even more dramatic news of Hitler’s acceptance of a four-power conference at Munich.2414

The reason for Chamberlain’s deception over the time of arrival of the Hitler letter remains unclear, although by asserting that it, and it alone, was the factor responsible for the last initiative, he was able to discount any other factors, such as the counsel of Lyons to use Mussolini as an intermediary, even if he may have decided upon such a course beforehand in any case.2415 Chamberlain had given no indication in cabinet on the previous night that he thought the Hitler letter of much importance, something reflected in Lyons’s description of it as an ‘unfavourable reply’,2416 but quite possibly he was sincere in his suggestion that he had reconsidered the letter late on the night of 27 September─ Kennedy’s account certainly supports this contention. 2417 Nevertheless, this at least partly misleading account of a lone brooder seizing a final opportunity allowed Chamberlain alone to claim the mantle of peacemaker ─ the role of others such as Lyons, Lord Perth, Grandi and the proposed intermediation of Bruce remained unmentioned (and often unexamined in the historiography).2418 The only other person whom Chamberlain thanked, for his ‘gesture’, was Mussolini himself.2419 To exclude Lyons from some recognition for the Chamberlain─Mussolini─Hitler equation, as the evidence suggests he was due, seemed ungrateful at best and misleading at worst. This failure to make any mention of an Australian contribution in the final hours left Lyons in an invidious position, for to make such a claim would now seem exaggerated, although he came as close as he dared to asserting a major contribution to the overall process on the following day.

2411 Chamberlain, Parliamentary Debates, 28 September 1938, 5th series, vol.339, col.24. The Times compounded the confusion by incorrectly reporting Chamberlain as saying “about 12.30”, 29 September 1938, 7, b, an error repeated by the Sydney Morning Herald, 30 September 1938, 9, c. 2412 The letter arrived at 8.40pm (BST) and was discussed in cabinet after 9.30pm and by Chamberlain with Kennedy at 10pm, 27 September 1938, vide above. Those historians who have accepted Chamberlain’s account have done so at the expense of the cabinet records and other primary sources; Feiling, 372-3; Fuchser, 159; Lamb, Ghosts, 86; Dilks in the Cadogan Diaries, 109. 2413 Lamb, Mussolini and the British, 227, thought this claim one of Chamberlain’s misleading parliamentary statements. I am in agreement with him. The offer of a ‘guarantee’ was not a new assurance, vide above. 2414 Chamberlain, Parliamentary Debates, 28 September 1938, 5th series, vol.339, col.26. 2415 As Syers suggested in his note, Syers handwritten note, PREM 1/242/18, attached to Lyons to Chamberlain cable, PREM 1/242/19, 28 September 1938. 2416 Cabinet Minutes, 9.30pm (BST), 27 September 1938, CAB 23/95 CP46 (38); Lyons, Current Notes, vol.5, no.7 (October 1938), 167. 2417 Kennedy to Welles, Under-Secretary of State, FRUS, 1938, vol.1, 679, 11.45pm (BST), 27 September 1938. 2418 It is a claim that has survived in many accounts, such as Fuchser, 153ff., where a lone Chamberlain composes the cables ‘without seeking advice from anyone’. 2419 Chamberlain; Parliamentary Debates, 28 September 1938, 5th series, vol.339, col.26. Roosevelt’s initiatives were unmentioned. 323 Lyons was not about to reveal the nature of his confidential prime ministerial conversations, although he did subsequently imply, in parliament on 29 September, a greater involvement than was then thought plausible.2420 He thought long and hard about this carefully constructed parliamentary statement, personally writing a summary draft of the speech─ as this was not Lyons’s normal parliamentary practice, it may be taken as a personal exposition of his role in the climax of the Czech crisis.2421 Lyons now clearly regretted his earlier pessimistic reference to Hitler’s Wilson letter,2422 as Chamberlain had since claimed that it contained elements suggesting Hitler’s good faith.2423 Accordingly, he claimed that his observations of the previous day on Hitler’s ‘unfavourable reply’ and on Chamberlain’s ‘further proposals’ had referred to an earlier British offer.2424 No reading of Lyons’s 28 September speech could reasonably support that claim, for his original reference had come immediately after his analysis of Hitler’s ‘Wilson’ letter and had made it clear that such proposals were subsequent to it. Lyons had also then stated that ‘an answer is now awaited’, which could only have been a reference to Chamberlain’s ‘last last’2425 ─ this was the only answer that had been awaited on the night of 28 September (AEST). The whole was a clumsy attempt at obfuscation intended to emphasise unanimity of outlook between the two prime ministers that could only have confused his audience to the same degree of bewilderment experienced on the previous night.

Finally, after a description of these ‘last last’ cables, Lyons proceeded with an account of what he believed had primarily been responsible for the galvanization of Chamberlain─ the Australian contacts. Firstly, he informed the parliament of the ‘Mussolini’ cable of ‘yesterday afternoon’, which had been sent by the ‘Australian government’ and of its proposal for the mediation of Bruce ─ the very personal nature of the original was passed o ver in a misleading attempt to convey collegiality.2426 There was no explanation why Lyons had not mentioned these initiatives in his parliamentary statement of the previous night. Secondly, he revealed the telephone contact that had drawn Chamberlain from his bed and which had been followed by the appeal to Rome.2427 It must be noted that Lyons suggested in his description only that Chamberlain had been ‘considering’ action and he did not concede that action had already been taken, for it had not─ even Downing Street accepted that.2428 He then effectively claimed joint

2420 The Age editorial, 30 September 1938, 12, a, thought Lyons’s proposals of 28 September (DAFP, vol.1, 288) only ‘coincidental’ with those of Chamberlain. Andrews, Isolationism, 139, fuelled scepticism about Lyons’s claims. 2421 Drafts of parliamentary statement, 29 September 1938, A463 1957/1067, NAA, Canberra. There are two typed drafts and Lyons’s own handwritten summary, which differs little from the delivered speech; CPD, vol.157, 332-3, 29 September 1938; Current Notes, vol.5, no.7 (1938), 191-3. 2422 Lyons’s description of the Hitler ‘Wilson’ letter (DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1144) in his parliamentary statement, 11pm (AEST), 28 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.7, (1938), 167; vide above. 2423 Chamberlain, Parliamentary Debates, 28 September 1938, 5th series, vol.339, col.26. 2424 This was the recent offer to ensure Czech complicity; Halifax to Henderson, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1121, 1am (BST), 27 September 1938, vide above. 2425 Lyons statement, 11pm (AEST), 28 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.7, (1938), 167. 2426 DAFP, vol.1, 288, 28 September 1938; Lyons, CPD, 29 September 1938, vol.157, 332-3. 2427 Lyons, CPD, vol.157, 332-3, 29 September 1938, for his description of calling Chamberlain. vide above. 2428 ibid. I agree with Ovendale, “Appeasement,” 196, that Lyons thus ‘took credit’ for suggesting the association of Mussolini. 324 authorship of the Italian initiative, stating: ‘His Majesty’s Ambassador in Rome was in consequence instructed to communicate the following message from Mr. Chamberlain to Signor Mussolini’.2429 Lyons failed to give confidential details of the composition of this cable during the phone call itself ─ to have done so would have been an open contradiction of Chamberlain’s implications in the Commons of sole authorship. He was satisfied for the moment with a claim of ‘collaboration’, as he later specifically called it,2430 closing his 29 September statement with a very personal observation (unusual in his parliamentary statements):2431

I would like to assure honourable members that we have been in constant communication both by cable and by telephone, over the whole course of the last fortnight, with Mr. Chamberlain and with Mr. Bruce. We have been kept in hourly touch with the situation and with the many communications that have passed between the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Herr Hitler…We have made such suggestions as we believed would be helpful and which we believe have been helpful at various stages of the dispute.2432

The last sentence could more accurately have replaced ‘we’ with ‘I’, if it is taken as a reference to the events of the final day, even if Lyons preferred the more collective pronoun throughout.2433 The underlined emphasis on ‘have’, however, was his and constituted an assertion of a personal as well as official Australian contribution to imperial policy-making.2434 It was a personal assertion that Lyons and his wife never abandoned. Joseph Lyons did not claim that he was alone responsible for Chamberlain’s initiative or that his influence had been the decisive one; nor does this thesis make such a claim.2435 Nevertheless, the evidence, although fragmentary, strongly points to an important, but neglected,

2429 Lyons, CPD, vol.157, 332-3, 29 September 1938. Lyons learned of Perth’s approach to Mussolini with the Chamberlain cables through MacDonald to Lyons, 4.25pm (BST), 28 September 1938, A981 CZE PART 3, NAA, Canberra. Lord Perth was in fact responsible for the 24-hour postponement, which he had secured before receiving notice of Chamberlain’s appeal (DBFP 1159), in accordance with his own request to inquire about Mussolini’s intervention (DBFP 1125), a request granted by Halifax, (DBFP 1125, footnote 2). Few British historians seem aware of Perth’s role, even though Rotunda, 381, referred to it as ‘instrumental’. The best account is in Lamb, Mussolini and the British, 224ff. Lyons knew nothing of this, but Middlemas, 398, noted the coincidence of Perth’s approach and Lyons’s suggestion. For accounts of the two Perth-Ciano interviews on the morning of 28 September 1938, vide DGFP, series D, vol.2, 661, 28 September 1938; DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1161, 28 September; DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1187, 28 September 1938; DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1192, 28 September 1938; DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 1200, 28 September 1938. 2430 Lyons, CPD, vol.157, 1100-1110, 2 November 1938. vide Chapter 7. 2431 vide methodology in Introduction. 2432 Lyons, CPD, 29 September 1938, vol.157, 332-3; Current Notes, vol.5, no.7 (1938), 191-3; Herald, 29 September 1939, 1, d-f. The primary record confirms a very high level of communication between Whitehall and Canberra, pace A. Watt, “Assumptions…”: 24. The Argus, 29 September 1938, 1, e-f, noted the unprecedented use of the radio- telephone. Bruce later talked, in January 1939, of his knowledge of ‘hour-by-hour developments’; Cumpston, Bruce, 167. 2433 vide Holsti, 133, (in my Introduction) on models of language and ‘real’ meaning. 2434 The underlined emphasis is found in Lyons’s own handwritten draft of parliamentary statement, 29 September 1938, A463 1957/1067. 2435 Mansergh, Experience, 282, noted that dominion urging of a particular policy course does not indicate that it was followed in consequence. 325 Australian element in the whole episode.2436 This evidence seemed sufficient to justify Lyons’s personal belief that he had played a principal part in securing the Munich conference, irrespective of Chamberlain’s known claims and unknown motivation. Lyons’s belief, whatever its strengths and weaknesses, explained what today would be called his ‘sense of ownership’ of the Munich Pact, for he must now have been confident that he had realised his former ambition to have ‘played a part in such a critical period’.2437 Noting his enthusiasm does not entail accepting any suggestion that Lyons was responsible for the Munich agreement, in which he played no part at all, although he was keen to associate his government with its outcome.2438 Lyons certainly did not begrudge Chamberlain any praise for his ‘superhuman efforts’, indeed he was himself subsequently effusive, but one may speculate that Lyons felt he was due some of Curtin’s parliamentary praise (directed at Chamberlain) for ‘notable services to peace’.2439 Dame Enid Lyons certainly thought so in retrospect and later regretted her husband’s lack of the ‘gift of showmanship’, a quality in which Chamberlain had excelled on ‘X-day’.2440 Ω

In the course of 1938, the Lyons government had completed the transition from acquiescence to advanced consultation in the formation of any imperial foreign policy, a considerable, if transitory, achievement. Its counsel had consistently been to avoid any course that threatened war, which Lyons and his ‘faction’ believed was preventable through the granting of concessions.2441 Although the Munich conference brought some relief in a period of great international tension and seemed an example of successful peacemaking, the period January- September 1938 had constituted a very difficult one for Lyons personally and for his government’s policy of appeasement. Enid Lyons recalled: ‘For him it had been a long, bleak, unhappy year’ marked by ‘a constant fret of the spirit’.2442 The Prime Minister’s physical health, usually robust, was impaired and his nervous state, often fragile, had been severely tested. The considerable role in international affairs in 1938 that Lyons had sought to play had extracted a heavy toll and some in the UAP were beginning to notice. Nevertheless, he remained determined, despite these considerable personal and political costs, to pursue the logic of appeasement plus rearmament to its end, although the road to peace was proving rockier than Lyons had ever imagined when his prime ministerial peacemaking journey began in 1932.

2436 After Stanford, 59, on mutually supporting probabilities. 2437 J.A. Lyons interview, America: A Catholic Review of the Week, vol.53, no. 16 (27 July 1935): 397-9. This view was an echo of that of April 1934, when he had expressed the ambition ‘to have some mark, however tiny, in history’, draft article “On Politicians”, CP 103/19/8, cited in P. Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, 231. 2438 As warned by Mansergh, Experience, 279; ibid., Survey, 170. vide Chapter 7. 2439 Lyons and Curtin, CPD, vol.157, 333, 29 September 1938. vide Chapter 7 on Lyons’s view of Munich. vide Conclusion, where Lyons gave some indication in early 1939 of a desire for the recognition of peacemakers. 2440 Enid Lyons, Carrion Crows, 69; also her comments in Mister Prime Minister on his ‘modest estimate of himself’, repeated in Enid Lyons, audio interview with A. Clarke, c.1974-5, Tape 2. 2441 Mansergh, Experience, 282, noted that the options were to acquiesce or to press for such avoidance. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 279, on the faction of Lyons and Casey so believing. 2442 Enid Lyons, So We, 272, on 1938.

326 Chapter 7: ‘Parts of It Welcome’ − The Endgame of Appeasement, October 1938-April 1939

‘The incapacity of a weak and distracted government may often assume the appearance and produce the effects of a treasonable correspondence with the public enemy.’2443 Edward Gibbon, 1781.

‘They do not want to crush people, they want to paralyze them. They want stoppage and call it peace. Fundamentally, they are inspired by fear of life.’2444 H.G. Wells on the appeasers, in particular J.A. Lyons, January 1939.

‘Apparently the people who really value peace have to engage in a real fight to maintain the atmosphere of sweet reasonableness and tolerance which must prevail if world conflict is to be avoided.’2445 J.A. Lyons to Sir Norman Kater, 16 January 1939.

PART A: The aftermath of Munich – Kristallnacht and colonies – Abyssinian recognition – the Pact redux and diplomatic representation – the fifth rearmament program – conscription. PART B: the end of Mediterranean appeasement – the end of eastern appeasement – the debate on German appeasement – the Reichstag speech – the second Czech crisis – Singapore – the ‘new imperial policy’.

The four-power settlement at Munich, 29-30 September 1938, seemed to represent the ‘apogee’ of appeasement, but it contained the germ of that policy’s demise.2446 The Australian prime minister, who believed himself to have been closely associated with the process leading to Munich, was initially delighted and saw the outcome as a personal triumph─ yet even the major Australian advocate of conciliation (a term which could now be applied to Lyons) soon began to show doubt. Despite this, and the irreparable physical and psychological damage wrought upon him by those September weeks, it is maintained that the last months of 1938 saw further appeasement directed at the three aggressor nations, as Lyons encouraged, and made, final efforts to bring them back within the international fold.

It is argued that the erratic behaviour of Germany (including Kristallnacht) forced Lyons to back-pedal on one aspect of appeasement, the issue of colonial restitution, by November 1938 and to accept the prevailing view of his cabinet, but despite this one-step backwards for the appeasers, there still seemed hope of further Anglo-Italian détente ─ Lyons was pleased by the consummation of Mediterranean appeasement in the same month. In East Asia, he now also hoped to encourage a regional ‘Munich’ through a revival of his 1937 Pacific Pact2447 ─ the two means for this consummation of eastern appeasement were to be further personal diplomacy and the establishment of autonomous, formal Australian diplomatic representation at Washington and

2443 E. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London: Folio Society, 1986), vol.4, Chapter 31. 2444 Smith’s Weekly, 28 January 1939, 2, f, g. 2445 J.A. Lyons to Sir Norman Kater, Sydney, 16 January 1939, CP 167/1/11, NAA, Canberra. 2446 Hill, 7. 2447 Shen, 54, suggests that the 1934 pact proposal of ‘Chamberlain and Simon’ was such a proposal, seeking a ‘Munich-like resolution’ in the east, but he has put the cart before the horse. 327 Tokyo, long delayed by Lyons himself but now pursued with a new-found urgency. The pursuit of that representation in the last months of his life, against the wishes of some ministers, constituted the third Pacific initiative of his period in office. The ailing Lyons did not live long enough to bring the matter to fruition, but by the end of March 1939 he had presided over sufficient groundwork for his successor to do so.

If the respite of Munich was expected to yield any ‘peace dividend’, then that expectation was disappointed and Lyons announced a fifth rearmament program in the last months of 1938. It could be argued that this period marked the over-shadowing of European appeasement by rearmament (already the case in East Asia), something that Lyons admitted in public only weeks before his death.2448 He now appeared to regard war as probable, a war in which Australia would be under direct threat and probably be without the benefit of much imperial assistance, for there were further disappointments to come over Singapore. Consequently, the Lyons government strained the nation’s resources in readiness, and Lyons personally engineered a substantial increase in the size of the militia. The method of recruitment remained voluntary, following his decisive, but still unacknowledged, role in resisting the widespread urge for conscription.

The triumph of voluntaryism provided Lyons with his only success in the first four months of 1939. He saved his now beleaguered leadership, but was unable to save the policy with which he had so associated himself, for the tide of appeasement was receding as the disgruntled powers rejected conciliation. Anglo-Italian accord collapsed in those months and appeared to demonstrate the flawed premises of appeasement ─ nor was there to be any eastern ‘Munich’ for, by April 1939, bilateral relations with Japan were at a nadir. The renegade tendencies of Germany also endured into the new year and assumed an even more menacing form in March 1939, during another Czech crisis.2449 In the last weeks of his life, a reluctant Lyons was therefore forced to admit that the ‘Danegeld’ of appeasement had failed,2450 an admission made more bitter by Chamberlain’s apostasy and by a ‘new imperial policy’ of continental guarantees. It is suggested that these unwelcome changes were accompanied by the effective collapse of imperial consultation, something that rendered Australian diplomatic representation the more urgent. These developments were the more disturbing because they were accompanied by further British qualifications, in March 1939, about commitment to eastern defence, which offered an indication that the quest for defence co-ordination had also collapsed. Lyons the politician, if not the man,

2448 vide Chapter 6 on the over-shadowing of eastern appeasement by rearmament in March 1938. 2449 This second Czech crisis is treated as the final case-study of Lyons’s appeasement. 2450 The description is found in Leo Amery to Halifax, 10 March 1938, FO 371/800/328/LHP, PRO, London, later used by J. Phillips, “The Czechoslovakian Debacle.” Australian Quarterly, vol.10, no.4 (December 1938), 40. 328 was arguably fortunate in the timing of his death, on 7 April 1939, at a moment when his ‘credit’ was declining and when he was becoming increasingly isolated politically.2451

I

The conclusion of the ‘Peace Pact of Munich’ (as Lyons preferred to call it, perhaps in an attempt, to link it with his own eastern model of 1937),2452 on 30 September 1938, came as an immediate and ‘profound relief’ to the drained Australian prime minister, arguably the more so because of the pivotal role that he believed himself to have played in its conception.2453 His September prayers heeded, Lyons called for Sunday, 9 October, to be set aside as a national ‘Day of Thanksgiving’.2454 Lyons was physically and mentally exhausted by the tension of recent weeks (far more than was publicly realised at the time),2455 but he believed that his efforts had been made in order to avert an armed conflict that would ‘destroy much that is best in European civilization’.2456 Although dissipated, this apocalyptic fear had not been eradicated and it remained an important justification for appeasement in the coming six months of duress.2457 The immediate prospects of European appeasement being extended via London seemed promising and Lyons was gratified at the recent level of imperial consultation, communicating this through Bruce on 29 September.2458 His own, subsequent congratulatory cable to Chamberlain, on 30 September 1938, was a very personal one (‘My wife and I desire personally…’) extended to both Mr. and Mrs. Chamberlain, indicating the closeness of their partnership. It also acknowledged recent ‘stress and anxiety’, a description that applied as equally to Canberra, as to London.2459 Lyons was careful to separate this personal cable from the more formal, official, congratulatory

2451 Enid Lyons audio interview with Mel Pratt, Tape 1, 81; she also acknowledged that had he been a war-time leader, like Chamberlain, he would have received like criticism. Whiskard to Inskip, Dominions Secretary, 28 April 1939, DO 121/46, PRO, London, thought that Lyons would now be remembered as having died ‘in the service of his country’. 2452 Lyons statement, Herald, 1 October 1938, 1, g, h. Both the Prime Minister and Enid Lyons widely used the term ‘pact’, as in So We, 268-9, thereby drawing an analogy with Lyons’s Pacific Pact proposal. vide Chapter 5. 2453 Lyons press statement, 30 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.7 (1938), 194; Herald, 30 September 1938, 3, c; partly reproduced in Crowley, 587-8. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 275. Within days of Munich, he returned to Home Hill, where he recuperated for most of October, his Private Secretary, Temby, described him as ‘resting’; 13 October 1938, CP167/1/22, NAA, Canberra. Enid Lyons mentioned his ‘nervous exhaustion’; So We, 269; Age, 3 October 1938, 12, c, on his ‘stress’. 2454 Lyons statement, Herald, 1 October 1938, 1, g, h. vide Chapter 6 for the September ‘Day of Divine Guidance’. 2455 Hasluck, Government, 110 on his last illness; vide also Conclusion. The consequent state of ‘impaired working ability’ is referred to in Lasswell, 95-6. 2456 Lyons press statement, 30 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.7 (1938), 194. Similarly; Lyons statement, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 September 1938, 11, g. 2457 Bruce made similar references to the dreadful alternatives to Munich in his address to the Millions Club, Sydney, 24 January 1939; Bruce draft speech notes, M104/7/2, NAA, Canberra; Age, 25 January 1939, 14, g; repeated in an Australia Day address on 26 January 1939; Bruce draft, M104/7/2; Cumpston, Bruce, 167. He returned to the theme when addressing the Commercial Travellers’ Association, 2 February 1939, and in a public address at Canberra, 7 March 1939; Bruce draft, M104/7/2. He had told MacDonald and Chamberlain the same at the time of the crisis; Bruce record of conversation with Malcolm MacDonald, Dominions Secretary, 27 September 1938, M104/6/2, NAA, Canberra. 2458 Bruce at High Commissioners’ meeting, 29 September 1938, PREM 1/242/11, PRO, London. 2459 Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 294, 30 September 1938; DO 35/J54/F82/299, PRO, London, where the more formal responses of the other dominion PMs are also found; Rose, 192, on the general dominion relief. 329 cable of his government.2460 In a press statement, also on 30 September, Lyons graciously praised Chamberlain’s ‘untiring efforts…to preserve peace’ in what could be viewed as a further example of wistful self-description.2461 Chamberlain failed to return the compliment in his parliamentary review of 3 October.2462 The Australian prime minister’s responses to Munich in the following weeks were two- fold. The unpalatable details of territorial adjustments were ignored, as he firstly concentrated on its immediate prevention of a world war─ a persuasive argument for appeasement at a time of immense, almost universal, public and press relief.2463 In parallel, Lyons also employed a second, longer-term argument, suggesting that Munich was a positive sign that the negotiating methods inherent in appeasement could bear further fruit and that the preserved peace could be built upon, a view not immediately shared by Bruce.2464 Apparently complacent, Lyons made considerable efforts over the following months to set aside any doubts that Munich was not the beginning of extended conciliation, but rather had marked an end to the practice─ that it had been more ‘blackmail’ than appeasement.2465 The preservation of peace had been the over-riding concern of the predominant circle of Australian policy-makers throughout September 1938.2466 As late as 2 November 1938, with the details of the settlement already eroding, Lyons still immodestly boasted in parliament that his government’s ‘recent collaboration’ with London had ‘preserved the peace of the world’.2467 From the outset, however, Lyons had concentrated in his rhetoric on the general, longer-term aspect of the settlement ─ the hope that it had ushered in a period of greater stability, even if he avoided the spurious ex post facto justifications of other, longer-living Australian appeasers (such as Earle Page, Menzies and Dame Enid) and foreign apologists (such as Halifax and Mackenzie King) that the settlement had bought a vital year of rearmament and diplomatic consolidation.2468

2460 Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 295, 30 September 1938. Ovendale, Appeasement, 178, notes that these cables of support were sent at MacDonald’s request and in anticipation of parliamentary assaults on the Munich agreement. This can not be applied to the very personal cable DAFP 294. The reply was also very personal; Chamberlain to Lyons, n.d., DO 35/554, PRO, London, where he refers to ‘Mrs. Chamberlain and I’ and to ‘you and Mrs. Lyons’. 2461 Lyons press statement, 30 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.7 (1938), 194. He also praised Mussolini and Roosevelt. 2462 Chamberlain made no reference to Lyons in this parliamentary statement, but admitted that dominion reluctance to undertake military commitments had been a factor in conciliation; Ovendale, Appeasement, 180; Feiling, 362. 2463 The Australian daily press was generally relieved, e.g. Sydney Morning Herald, editorial, “Out of the Shadow”, 1 October 1938, 10, d; Herald editorial, “A New Era in Europe”, 30 September 1938, 6, c; Argus editorial, 1 October 1938, in Crowley, 587-8. Mansergh, Survey, 170, notes the concerns of the SMH about the likely consequences. vide Cockett, 83, on British press unanimity. Elsewhere, opinions were divided; Anon., “Australia and the Czech Crisis.” Round Table, vol.29 (December 1938): 182, summary-some saw a defeat for democracy, some a postponed war, such as Anon., “After the Crisis.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.2, no.4 (October-November 1938): 5-6. 2464 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 275. vide below for Bruce in 1939; McCarthy, “German Consuls-General”: 351, quoting Asmis, 10 February 1939; Bruce to Runciman, Foreign Office, 1 December 1938, FO800/396, PRO London. 2465 Roberts, Holy Fox, 103, on Munich. 2466 Mansergh, Experience, 282; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 279, on the Australian quest for peace. 2467 Lyons, CPD, vol.157, 1100-1110, 2 November 1938. 2468 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 280, notes that there was no documentary evidence to support such claims. Page’s claims in his memoirs, Truant Surgeon, 259, were a direct contradiction of his contemporary ‘new era’ assessments; CPD, vol.157, 368ff., 5 October 1938. Menzies made similar claims in October 1955, quoted in A. Watt, “Assumptions…”: 27; Enid Lyons, My Life, 34-5. vide Twomey, “Munich,” 32-3, on Bruce and the same claim. This attitude also characterised the British apologists, 1938-39, such as Halifax; Cabinet Minutes, 29 March 1939, CAB 330 There seemed to be some durable political capital to be gained in the last months of 1938 from stressing the particular perspective that Munich was the fruit of European appeasement, offering further promise. In his initial press statement, on 30 September (before the ink was dry at Munich), Lyons suggested that the four powers were ‘united in their desire for peace and are determined to spare the world the horrors of another war’, insisting that their concord gave the necessary promise of ‘constant co-operation between the nations of the world to remove those causes which today embitter international relations’ ─ a concert of the powers inspired by w ider appeasement.2469 The agreement was therefore the offspring of a process of ‘wider appeasement’ that Lyons had supported at the 1937 Imperial Conference and had then accepted as the common policy of the broader Commonwealth.2470 He concluded on a note that expressed his own sentiments as well as those of his government: ‘We sincerely hope that the present agreement may be the forerunner of a more general settlement which will ensure happiness and prosperity for all peoples.’2471 This was the first public hint that Lyons still hoped for a settlement in East Asia along the lines of his model 1937 Pacific Pact, long assumed by many to be buried. Lyons had never lost hope of the universal applicability of appeasement, despite the elusiveness of any eastern agreement and the still fragile nature of Anglo-Italian détente ─ within a week of the signatures at Munich he believed: ‘There now appears to be a real prospect of world settled peace being reached.’2472 At Glenbrook, on 3 September 1938, he had expressed his hope that ‘the period of stress through which we are now passing is but the forerunner of a happier era in human relations.’2473 He clearly felt that such an era was made more possible by Munich, for he told the parliament on 2 November 1938 that his government’s policy remained one intended to ‘make friends with the people of the world’ through the settling of international disputes ‘by conference, negotiation and consultation’.2474 Additionally, Lyons as an individual continued to believe that wider appeasement promised international concord, telling a Tasmanian elector in the same month:

One of the general consequences of the British policy of appeasement is the tendency for Great Britain, France, Italy and Germany to collaborate more closely in matters of mutual concern, a

23/98, PRO, London; Mansergh, Experience, 280-1. ibid., 282, on Mackenzie King in 1943 that the Empire would have been divided in 1938. Some contemporaries, such as Charles Webster of the RIIA, were later of the view that in fact little had been gained by this extra year; Webster, “Munich Reconsidered”: 152. 2469 Lyons press statement, 30 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.7 (1938), 194. vide below for similar views in November. 2470 vide Chapter 5 on ‘wider appeasement’ at the conference. 2471 Lyons press statement, 30 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.7 (1938), 194. This was similar to the view of Lord Londonderry, one of the more extreme British appeasers, when he referred to Munich as ‘merely a prelude’; M Gilbert, “Appeasement in Action”: 1576. 2472 Lyons statement, Age, 3 October 1938, 12, c. 2473 Lyons Glenbrook speech, 3 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.5 (1938), 110. Chamberlain, in his assessment of 3 October 1938, talked of ‘a new period’ and drew particular attention to the personal ‘peace-in-our- time’ assurances that he had received from Hitler after the conference; Current Notes, vol.6-7 (1939), 181; Kershaw, Hitler, vol.2, 122-3. Fuchser, 220, believed that this was the aspect of Munich which Chamberlain found the most gratifying. 2474 Lyons, CPD, vol.157, 1100-1110, 2 November 1938. 331 factor which cannot be but beneficial to international relations generally, and to the cause of world peace.2475

It was these conciliatory and collaborative principles behind Munich that especially pleased the man whose entire political thinking was based around consensus.2476 Lyons had expressed concern about Hitler’s ‘methods’ earlier in the year,2477 but now (after Chamberlain) interpreted the agreement as signalling a change in that dictator’s outlook.2478 This belief was the triumph of hope over experience. Nevertheless, Lyons expanded on a personal theme first voiced after the Godesberg talks, that ‘frank and friendly’ conversations provided an opportunity ‘to understand one another’s point of view’,2479 for he mistakenly believed that the Munich negotiations had been conducted in ‘an atmosphere of the greatest cordiality’.2480 The new methodology confirmed his old personal practices: ‘My experiences in the past as an Australian delegate to Imperial conferences have convinced me of the value of getting to learn something of the other fellow.’2481 Hitler, then, was supposed to be no different from the others with whom Lyons had negotiated throughout his political career, whether Labor conscriptionists, Tasmanian employers, Melbourne businessmen, British bureaucrats, Japanese diplomats and even an Italian dictator. This was an optimistic assessment that seemed difficult to challenge in the rosy weeks of October 1938, the so-called ‘golden age of appeasement’.2482 Even this month was not all smooth and it would be an error to assume that Lyons had swept away all doubts prior to the drama of Kristallnacht in November.2483 London’s doubts at least were nourished even before the end of October by evidence of German insincerity,2484 and Lyons in his turn appeared to recognise that the situation was still serious ─ at Shepparton, on 20 October, he confessed the necessary seriousness of the Australian people in the aftermath of the crisis.2485 In an address to the Loan Council at Canberra on the following day he similarly referred to ‘a new spirit’ that had arisen in Australia over the last few weeks, concluding that the

2475 Lyons to J. C. May, Ross, Tasmania, 30 November 1938, A981 AUS 39(1). 2476 He would have been hard-pressed to disagree with the British Peace Pledge Union, which noted that Munich was proof that the ‘method of negotiation [was] preferred to the method of mass murder’; Lukowitz, 122. 2477 Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 148, 21 March 1938. 2478 Chamberlain thought, post-Munich, that he had turned Hitler to peaceful methods; R. Parker, Churchill and Appeasement (London: Macmillan, 2000), 183. Yet Douglas, “Chamberlain and Appeasement”, 86, quotes a member of the family recalling, in January 1973, a lost letter after Munich in which Neville Chamberlain expressed the gravest doubts over the agreement. In his public statements, however, he was sanguine as late as March 1939; Rock, 19. 2479 Prime Minister’s Speech on International Situation, midnight, 28 September 1938, Episode no.245919 JAL. vide Chapter 6 on Godesberg. The journalist-propagandist, Ward Price, had nourished Chamberlain’s illusion that Hitler took him seriously; N. Crowson, ed., Fleet Street Press Barons and Politics: The Journals of Collin Brooks, 1932-1940 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1998), 215. 2480 Lyons press statement, 30 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.7 (1938), 194. 2481 Lyons statement, Age, 3 October 1938, 12, c. he had only attended two such conferences. Smuts had a similar view and was quoted on 1 October 1938, referring to the ‘value of personal contacts’; DO 35/554/F82/324, PRO, London. 2482 Rock, 15. 2483 vide below. 2484 Hitler soon felt cheated by Munich and Whitehall knew it; Kershaw, Hitler, vol.2, 122; Rock, 16; Halifax, Cabinet Minutes, 25 January 1939, CAB 23/97, PRO, London. Irving, 151, on Hitler’s personal contempt for Chamberlain. 2485 Lyons speech notes, Shepparton, 20 October 1938, Joseph Lyons Papers, MS 4851/2/15, NLA, Canberra. 332 ‘sobering experiences of September have bitten deeply into Australian life’.2486 The only consolation he could now draw was to admit that the present constituted ‘fortunately not a time of crisis, but certainly days marked by some degree of emergency’.2487 This was a fine distinction and it had become even finer by 2 November 1938, when he had provided a general defence of appeasement in the parliament without even referring directly to the Munich agreement.2488 Lyons chose to address such waxing doubts in a very personal way, when speaking in a national radio hook-up on the evening of 4 December 1938, which he began by rhetorically posing the question now on everybody’s lips after Kristallnacht (appeasers and opponents alike): ‘What of the Munich Agreement─ was it only to provide a breathing space?’ 2489 Although the text that followed evaded a specific response, Lyons had confidentially provided Bruce with his answer a fortnight before, when he indicated his belief that appeasement was not making ‘serious progress’.2490 He now publicly implied a similarly negative attitude, although refusing to abandon his characteristic optimism in so doing through stressing that there was ‘no cause for panic’, for war was not ‘inevitable’ ─ here he was speaking almost as a private individual, communicating directly man-to-man (and woman-to-woman, as Dame Enid also spoke) with his audience in the domestic atmosphere of a ‘fire-side chat’. This call for calm was, in part, self-directed, and Lyons soothed both himself and his listeners with an observation:

It [Munich] shows that even when war was most threatening, and threatening it was− I personally could hardly see in those hours how we were to be saved− that conflict on a world scale can be avoided.2491

If, he asked, war could be avoided for at least a generation, then ‘why not for longer?’2492 This was not to say that Lyons underestimated the task before the peacemakers, for he also admitted in the same broadcast: ‘Since Munich events have not taken us far, if any distance, along the road of peace,’ itself ‘a rocky trail’.2493 Yet to this appeaser, ‘Munich’ ultimately epitomised new methods of international discourse and provided some measure of longer-term optimism: ‘Surely it showed that for the first time in history such problems as were surveyed could be solved without recourse to war.’2494 This seemed more of a personal plea than a statement of assurance and the ambiguities of the language employed in this December broadcast indicated that Lyons

2486 Lyons Loan Council address, 21 October 1938, Cabinet Papers, CRS A6006/11, NAA, Canberra. 2487 ibid. Earle Page, Truant Surgeon, 263, later claimed that he and Casey wrote this speech, but that Menzies refused to participate. 2488 Lyons, CPD, vol.157, 1100-1110, 2 November 1938. 2489 Joseph and Enid Lyons joint broadcast, 4 December 1938, A5954/69/1949/4, NAA, Canberra. 2490 Bruce record of telephone conversation with Lyons, Casey and Street, 24 November 1938, M104/6/1. 2491 Joseph and Enid Lyons joint broadcast, 4 December 1938, A5954/69/1949/4. 2492 ibid. 2493 ibid. 2494 ibid. 333 was struggling to ensure that his hopes were not ‘the father of his utterances’.2495 He was certainly never able to convince himself that Munich represented a ‘new era’,2496 and his inner doubts (although not strong enough to bring about a change of policy direction) nevertheless were likely to have contributed to the fragility of his psychological and physical health during this period.2497 In this context, the 4 December broadcast seemed something of a rearguard action─ Lyons was too shamefaced to mention Munich at all in his New Year broadcast from Devonport,2498 although he spoke of Chamberlain’s Berchtesgaden visit and of the need for mutual international understanding.2499 In his prime ministerial review of the year, published in the Hobart Mercury on 11 January 1939, Lyons even avoided any mention of international affairs at all, something he had not done since his early days as the ‘economic manager’ before December 1933.2500 He failed to mention the Munich agreement again in public until his penultimate broadcast of 23 March 1939 and then only to concede its failure with gloom: ‘It should not have been a failure─ it was a symbol of protest by humanity against world conflict.’2501 This was an especially personal interpretation of a settlement, for very few had ever seen in such terms whatever their views of its merits─ in fact it had already become in the general imagination what it largely remains, a symbol of the failure of appeasement.2502 II The gradual shift in Lyons’s attitude to Munich that took place between 30 September 1938 and 1 January 1939 was in part a consequence of events in Germany. German-Australian relations in the last months of 1938 were strained by two issues─ continued signs of extremism within the Reich and a resurrected debate over the future of the former-German colonies. These issues combined to discredit the champions of détente in the eyes of many. Lyons’s response to these challenges was two-fold, for he evaded analysis of the first and appeared to bow to cabinet consensus on the second. Far from moderating Hitler, appeasement seemed only to have irritated him. Although his aggression momentarily seemed inwardly directed (as indicated by Kristallnacht, 9-10 November 1938), such extremism nevertheless damaged the prospects of Anglo-German conciliation,

2495 The acerbic observation made about Lyons by Whiskard, to MacDonald, 31 March 1937, DO 35/587/2. 2496 Earle Page statement, CPD, vol.157, 368ff., 5 October 1938; Current Notes, vol.5 (1938), 206ff., (contrary to Truant Surgeon, 259). King George VI agreed; Roberts, Eminent Churchillians, 22-3. Mackenzie King and Hertzog’s similar responses are in DO 35/554/F82299, PRO, London. Chamberlain, 3 October 1938, talked of ‘a new period’; Current Notes, vol.6-7 (1939), 181; Fuchser, 220. 2497 Lasswell, 91, on the consequences for health of the internal attrition of a doctrinal system; although conscious of Crick, 29-30, that it is ‘impossible’ to get into the mind of another. 2498 Lyons New Year broadcast, Sydney Morning Herald, 2 January 1939, 8, e; Age, 2 January 1939, 10, a-b, k. Hitler praised the ‘peaceful solution of urgent problems’ and Mussolini for his ‘historic role’; Speech, 1 January 1939, N. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939 (New York: Howard Fertig, 1969), 1560-1. 2499 Lyons New Year broadcast, Sydney Morning Herald, 2 January 1939, 8, e; Age, 2 January 1939, 10, a-b, k. 2500 Lyons article, “Mr. Lyons Confident”, Hobart Mercury, 11 January 1939, 8, e-g. 2501 Lyons broadcast, 23 March 1939, “The Commonwealth Government’s Views regarding the present European Situation”, Episode no.180775, ScreenSound, Canberra. 2502 As recently as 4 October 2001 the Israeli PM, Sharon, disparagingly suggested that the west was seeking to force a ‘Munich’ onto Israel; Tel Aviv press conference, BBC World report, 5 October 2001. 334 already seen by Hood, of External Affairs in London, as pointless.2503 Lyons appeared nonetheless keen to avoid any open contradiction of German policy that could be construed by Berlin as an excuse for terminating the grandly titled ‘Anglo-German Agreement’ of 30 September,2504 for (unlike Bruce) he did not accept that the events had yet made the application of appeasement impossible ─ the high commissioner too had been relieved by Munich, but he was not convinced that it had guaranteed peace in the longer-term.2505 Unlike Roosevelt, Lyons still preferred ‘peace by fear’ to ‘peace by the sword’.2506 This path of maximum inoffensiveness was a difficult one to follow and increasingly left the appeasers open to accusations of lack of principle, but Lyons insisted in the period after Kristallnacht that German internal affairs be separated from diplomatic concerns, a practice that he had followed since the days of Latham in accordance with the long-standing views of Casey.2507 In the light of increasing protests at this stance, the Prime Minister would only assure parliament, on 18 November 1938, that the government was giving ‘full consideration’ to supporting any British communication about the ill-treatment of minorities in Germany─ no such communication was forthcoming or eventuated.2508 Within the week, following wider parliamentary protests, he declined the invitation to express any sympathy for the Jews, or even for the persecuted Catholics of the Reich. There were, Lyons said, ‘more pressing’ subjects and promised a general statement later on such matters, but it had not come before the parliamentary recess of 9 December 1938 (Lyons’s final day in the House of Representatives).2509 The same urge for restraint was also felt at Downing Street, if not at the White House.2510 This was unsurprising, but there is no record of even private reservations by Lyons about Nazi domestic policy after Kristallnacht, such as those confided by Chamberlain to his family and others2511 ─ Lyons had confidentially admitted before Munich that he found Nazi policies ‘horrifying’, but he refused to do so after the signatures on the Munich Pact had dried.2512 Rather than coarse indifference, however, his taciturnity ought to be interpreted as an example of single-minded resolution that nothing (except Australian security)

2503 J. Hood, External Affairs, London, memorandum, DAFP, vol.1, 334, 1 November 1938. 2504 The Anglo-German Agreement of 30 September 1938 (‘peace in our time’) was also already arguably worthless; D. Watt, How War Came, 82. 2505 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 275. Bruce thought the application of appeasement now barely possible; Bruce to Runciman, Foreign Office, 1 December 1938, FO800/396, PRO, London, although he soon appeared to change his mind; Bruce draft speech notes, n.d. but early 1939, M104/7/2, NAA, Canberra. 2506 pace the view of Roosevelt; radio address, 26 October 1938, Documents on American Foreign Relations, 297-9. 2507 vide Chapter 3; Lyons and Latham on anti-Nazi protests of April-May 1933; Latham to Sydney Lord Mayor on behalf of Lyons, 20 April 1933, A981 GER 43 PART 2; Latham to D. Watkins MHR, 5 May 1933, ibid.; Lyons to Butler, SA Premier, 22 May 1933, ibid. On Casey; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 235-6, quoting radio broadcast of 16 November 1931; Casey, “At Home and Abroad,” (21 April 1933) in The World We Live In: A Series of Speeches on Current Events, 113. 2508 Lyons parliamentary reply, CPD, vol.158, 1757, 18 November 1938, in response to questions from W. Hutchinson, UAP back-bencher. Lyons also said that no advice had yet been tendered to Britain, ibid., 1756. 2509 Lyons, CPD, vol.158, 1911, 23 November 1938; 25 November 1938, 2125. pace Andrews, Isolationism, 154ff. 2510 FDR condemned Kristallnacht on 15 November 1938; Statement, Documents on American Foreign Relations, 450. 2511 ‘I am horrified by the German behaviour to the Jews.’; Neville Chamberlain to Ida Chamberlain, 10 November 1938, Neville Chamberlain Papers, NC 18/1/1076. He was said to have made similar comments in November 1938 to the South African minister, Pirow; D. Watt, “Pirow’s Mission to Berlin in November 1938.” Wiener Library Bulletin, vol.12, nos.5-6 (1958): 53. 2512 Lyons to Liesching, UK High Commissioner, DAFP, vol.1, 242, 31 August 1938. 335 must stand in the way of European appeasement─ Chamberlain too insisted that episodes such as those of November ought not to obstruct rapprochement.2513 There was a further obstacle to improved international relations resurrected in this period: the question of the return of the former-German colonies (especially of New Guinea) and it was this issue alone that loosened Lyons’s tongue in the period after Kristallnacht.2514 The opposition of Pearce to suggestions of colonial return had been strident and the minister’s abrasive statement of March 1936 remained the authoritative utterance of the government’s hard-line,2515 even though Lyons as prime minister had not given any indication of having altered his earlier attitude (when he had wished Australian resistance not to be overemphasized).2516 In the period up to Munich, the issue provided one instance of the views of cabinet opponents, like Hughes and Menzies, prevailing over those of Lyons, indicating that the prime ministerial dominance of external affairs was not without some qualification.2517 This difference between prime minister and, it seems, the bulk of his ministers remains unexplained, but one may speculate that it was owing in part to the former’s more detailed knowledge of Whitehall thinking on the matter, for Chamberlain had retained his enthusiasm for colonial restitution.2518 When, on 1 June 1937, he had asked the Imperial Conference delegates whether any of them cared to discuss the matter, Lyons was the first dominion leader to respond, offering a lengthy exposition of the need for ‘world appeasement and peace’.2519 Given the context, it is difficult not to conclude that he was indirectly advocating colonial return, an attitude of sympathy for German claims that was not unknown at home.2520 The issue remained unresolved at the London conference,2521 but when Hitler resurrected it (in October 1937),2522 that uncompromising champion of retention, Hughes,

2513 Chamberlain to Pirow, November 1938, D. Watt, “Pirow’s Mission”: 53. 2514 The issue pre-dated both Lyons and Hitler, Hudson, League, 166, but had returned to the boil given German consciousness of the raw materials contained therein; Crozier, 171, on Dr. Schacht’s (Minister of Economics) negotiations with Blum. The Dominion PMs were aware of these negotiations; Dominions Office memorandum, c.17 May 1937, DO 35/551/F25/44, PRO, London. Schacht also wrote in the American journal Foreign Affairs in January 1937 putting Germany’s case. 2515 Pearce statement, CPD, vol.149, 119ff., 13 March 1936; Heydon, 128. vide Chapter 4. 2516 Lyons response to External Affairs statement, 26 February 1936, A981 GER 22 PART 2. vide Chapter 4. 2517 Menzies opposed return in a London speech, 29 April 1936, A981 GER22 PART 2. A question intended to rebut the suggestion of a Queensland Labor MP, Hanlon, for return, was approved; Cabinet Minutes, 9 September 1936, A2694/15/2. Parkhill (not Lyons) had been authorised to talk on the issue at the Imperial Conference; Cabinet Minutes, 9 March 1937, A2694/17/1; vide Chapter 5. 2518 MacDonald referred to Australian and South African opposition in the Foreign Policy Committee, 10 March 1937, when Chamberlain expressed enthusiasm; Colvin, 39. He had earlier suggested colonial return; Record of Conversation between Neville Chamberlain and M. Flandin (on 15 March), DBFP, 2nd series, vol.16, 115, 16 March 1936. 2519 Imperial Conference, 1 June 1937, CP4/2/B, tenth meeting of delegates. Chamberlain’s comments are not contained in DAFP, vol.1, 34. Parkhill had been authorised to speak on this issue; vide above. Casey expressed ‘firm’ opposition the following day, in Lyons’s absence; Imperial Conference, DAFP, vol.1, 37, 2 June 1937, eleventh meeting of delegates; Crozier, 206-9; Ovendale, Appeasement, 48. He circulated Pearce’s March 1936 statement; Tamchina, 89. 2520 L. Reese, “The German Colonies. Should They Be Returned?” Australian National Review, vol.1, no.6 (June 1937): 26-33, presented a detailed and sympathetic case for return. Anon. (A Minor Seer), “New Guinea…Sometime Hence.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.1, no.5 (December 1937-January 1938): 20, discussed future possibilities, including Japanese administration. 2521 Casey thought it ‘had not been brought to a very fine point’; Crozier, 209. 2522 Hitler Bückeberg speech, 6 October 1937, Current Notes, vol.3 (December 1937), 385.He gained the sympathy of te Water, South African High Commissioner in London, noted by Smith’s Weekly, 16 October 1937, 7. 336 was galvanized into another crusade.2523 When Hughes spectacularly asserted at Rabaul (on 6 June 1938) that ‘what we have we shall hold’, Lyons, conscious of the complaints of Dr. Asmis the German consul, sought to soothe affairs by suggesting that his minister had been ‘misrepresented’.2524 It remains uncertain whether he sought to do so in the knowledge that Chamberlain had entered negotiations on colonial return through a substantial offer to Berlin on 3 March 19382525 ─ certainly Bruce was aware of this approach through Horace Wilson.2526 For his part, Lyons ignored all calls for a clarification of his government’s position.2527 Hitler renewed, but did not press, the colonial demand at Berchtesgaden and Godesberg (September 1938), but much heat seemed to have gone out of the issue, as he concentrated on continental acquisitions.2528 Consequently, there was no discussion of colonies at the Munich summit, 29-30 September, to the evident relief of all, other than the suspicious Hughes.2529 The issue seemed dormant, given the Munich ‘settlement’, and Lyons would possibly have been satisfied to leave it there, had Hughes not reignited it on 9 October 1938, during Lyons’s extended convalescence at Devonport. The minister referred to the New Guinea mandate as a ‘sacred trust’ and to any suggestions of return as ‘cowardly and unjust’.2530 This deliberate breach of the post-Munich calm damaged the prospects of German appeasement, but an ailing Lyons was apparently in no mood for confrontation and accepted Hodgson’s counsel, which urged a resurrection of Pearce’s March 1936 statement as government policy.2531 He maintained his deafening public silence,2532 but informed the minatory German consul on 29 October that Pearce’s former statement remained ‘an expression of government policy’, something that Earle Page (on behalf of the predominant circle of appeasers within government) had already expressed in the parliament on 14 October, when he endorsed Hughes’s description of the ninth.2533

2523 Hughes gave the Melbourne Herald an interview on the matter on 4 March 1938. Andrews, Isolationism, 156-8, provides a good summary of Hughes’s campaign; also ADB, vol.9, 399. 2524 Dr. Asmis complained to Lyons; McCarthy, “German Consuls-General”: 346. Liesching to Dominions Office, 15 June 1938, DO35/551, PRO, London. Fitzhardinge, 645, accepted the Rabaul comments were probably apocryphal, There was no official version of the speech, but an account exists in a Foreign Office collection, c.June 1938, DO 35/551/C14353/184/18, PRO, London. The quote was attributed to Hughes; Anon., “March of Events.” Australian National Review, vol.4, no.19 (July 1938): 6. Hughes made similar comments in 1913; Meaney, Search, 241. 2525 Crozier, 1, 258, quoting DGFP, series D, vol.1, 138 and Henderson to Halifax, 5 March 1938, PREM 1/247, PRO, London. The rejection of this offer came despite Hitler’s renewed demands of 20 February 1938 for raw materials; Current Notes, vol.4 (1938), 133. Chamberlain’s proposal had excluded New Guinea. 2526 Bruce record of “Interview with Sir Horace Wilson”, 21 March 1938, M104/6/1, NAA, Canberra, concerning an offer involving Togo and Cameroon. 2527 Herald, 4 March 1938, 3, c,d. 2528 It was not, he said, a ‘bellicose demand’; Chamberlain-Hitler conversation, Berchtesgaden, DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 896, 15 September 1938; Godesberg conversations, Kershaw, Hitler, vol.2, 113-5; Crozier, 265. Pirow, in November, noted Hitler’s lack of interest, satisfied to leave the issue for ‘five or six years’; Ovendale, Appeasement, 189. 2529 MacDonald informed the High Commissioners of this on 1 October 1938; DAFP, vol.1, 297; Ovendale, Appeasement, 178. On Hughes’s suspicion; Fitzhardinge, 648-9. 2530 Hughes interview, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 October 1938, quoted in Doherty, 214 from FO C13211/184/18, PRO, London and Sydney Morning Herald, 10 September 1938, 11, e; Andrews, Isolationism, 156-8. 2531 Hodgson to F. Strahan, Secretary of PM’s Department, DAFP, vol.1, 311, 28 October 1938, recommending a reiteration of Pearce’s 13 March 1936 statement. 2532 This was despite subsequent requests for a clarification of government policy; Sydney Morning Herald, 11 October 1938, editorial, 10, b. It also published the anti-return views of H. V. Hodson, editor of Round Table, ibid., 10, e. Dr. Asmis wrote to Lyons on 24 October 1938, McCarthy, “German Consuls-General”: 346; DAFP, vol.1, 303. 2533 Earle Page, acting Prime Minister, CPD, vol.157, 864, 14 October 1938; Mansergh, Survey, 160, quoting Page in The Times, 15 October 1938. 337 Nonetheless, this seemed to end the post-Munich debate from Lyons’s point of view and he declined any further comment before Kristallnacht, conscious that German-Australian relations could only be further marred.2534 He had nonetheless bowed to cabinet consensus over an issue that left Canberra at potential odds with Chamberlain. When the German government clarified its position on the issue in the weeks after Munich, stating that the whole question was one that needed to be put into the context of ‘equal rights’ within a general revision of Versailles, Lyons was further placed in an invidious position, for it was a revisionist view that he had long championed.2535 Hughes only exacerbated Lyons’s difficulties by attempting to debate the matter in parliament on 4 November and focusing on the strategic value of New Guinea,2536 but Kristallnacht at least provided Lyons with some solution to his dilemma, for Germany had demonstrated herself unfit to administer the affairs of minority peoples (colonial or otherwise).2537 Only now did the Prime Minister finally voice his acceptance as head of government of the Hughes-Pearce line, on 12 November 1938, stating: ‘The Australian Government has no intention of handing New Guinea to Germany or ‘anybody else’2538 ─ it remains unclear whether Lyons now personally shared that point of view. The ‘anybody else’ was presumably a reference to Japan, still the subject of ongoing appeasement but, as always, still the subject of strategic anxiety, for it was this consideration that appeared to be exercising Lyons’s mind given that German assertiveness seemed undimmed2539 ─ even Tokyo had made clear that she had no intention of returning her mandates to a resurgent Berlin.2540 From Canberra’s point of view (if not that of London and Chamberlain), the return of the Australian mandates was beyond the pale following Kristallnacht.2541 Even the pro-Nazi Publicist of P.R. Stephensen ceased its advocacy of the matter, which now became a stick used in the anti-appeasement press to beat both German aspirations and those Australians thought to retain some sympathy for them.2542 The subsequent parliamentary ‘debate’ of 22 November 1938 consisted of a ‘monologue’ by the opponents of return, untroubled by the slightest opposition from any appeaser, including the Prime Minister.2543 The issue of colonial return had provided a particular example of local strategic considerations overshadowing the perceived need for further European appeasement─

2534 Lyons to Asmis, DAFP, vol.1, 312, 29 October 1938. 2535 Current Notes, vol.5 (November 1938), 280. 2536 Hughes in parliament; 4 November 1938, quoted in DO 35/551, PRO, London. 2537 The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 December 1938, editorial, 16, d, approvingly quoted The Times on the reluctance to return any ‘backward race’ to the ‘subjection’ currently in favour in Germany. It also mentioned the strategic dangers. 2538 Quoted in Hodgson to Stirling, 13 January 1939, A981 EXTE 215, NAA, Canberra. 2539 External Affairs warned of ‘strategic dangers’ in material prepared for Imperial Conference, “Germany-Question of Colonies”, A5954 1045/5, NAA, Canberra. 2540 Mansergh, Survey, 161. 2541 Chamberlain continued to indicate to the Germans that there was still room for negotiation after 14 November 1938. Crozier, 264ff., on Ambassador von Dirksen’s impressions. This was contrary to his cabinet assurances that the issue was dead ‘in present circumstances’; Cabinet Minutes, 16 November 1938, CAB 23/96, PRO, London. vide Roberts, Holy Fox, 77, on British thoughts of colonial return in 1938. 2542 Andrews, Isolationism, 156-8, on Stephensen; vide below. For an example of anti-German propaganda; Smith’s Weekly, “Colonists of the Future are being Trained”, 14 January 1939, 7. 2543 CPD, vol.158, 1844ff., 22 November 1938. 338 eastern appeasement had already been so over-shadowed after Yampi and the process was about to become general over the coming months, as Canberra’s efforts to encourage European appeasement also became subordinated to considerations of defence. III The unexpected decline in relations with Germany after Munich arguably made more necessary the full implementation of the Anglo-Italian accord of April 1938.2544 Lyons, alone amongst the dominion leaders, remained an assiduous ‘British’ proponent of Anglo-Italian détente immediately after Munich, as he had been since 1935.2545 Mussolini’s intervention during the recent Czech crisis (and role of chairman at Munich) could arguably only have confirmed in Lyons’s mind the wisdom of that course2546 ─ if so, he was not alone in believing that the earlier process of détente was responsible for the eleventh-hour mediation of 28 September 1938, for Lord Perth, whose own intervention during the recent crisis had been vital, believed that there was a direct link.2547 Throughout October-November 1938 Mussolini continued to show signs of moderation and as late as January 1939 he was offering himself as a mediator between Germany and the western powers.2548 The possibility still therefore existed, at least in the view of some appeasers, of Rome redressing the balance of an errant Berlin.2549 It was certainly Lyons’s adamant desire in the period after Munich that Mussolini be rewarded for his reasonableness and the consummation of the imperfect Anglo-Italian Agreement of 16 April 1938, entailing the recognition of Italian East Africa, was to constitute that reward.2550 This de jure recognition remained unrealised at the time of Munich, owing to a perception that Italy had not sufficiently observed the terms of the April agreement, a view known to Lyons through Bruce and Page.2551 Lyons had nevertheless baulked at this delay for months and, given the instant recognitions accorded to the Anschluss and to the Sudetenland annexation in the course of 1938, there seemed to him no reason for further delay in the recognition of the older East African conquests─ to continue its denial seemed both ungrateful and unwise. Cabinet considered an External Affairs memorandum on the matter on 26 October 1938, reminded that Lyons had long urged the reopening of conversations and the immediate, full

2544 vide Chapter 6 on the Anglo-Italian Agreement of April 1938. 2545 Millar, 87. 2546 On Mussolini as chairman at Munich as a remarkable example of negotiation; Mack Smith, “Appeasement....” 258. 2547 Lord Perth, quoted in Lamb, Mussolini and the British, 226 and in Seton-Watson, “The Anglo-Italian Gentleman’s Agreement…”, 277-8. Lamb thought this thinking questionable, as the Agreement had not been fully implemented by September, but the level of détente was sufficient to justify Perth’s conclusion. 2548 Stirling noted moderate speeches by Mussolini on 28 October and 4 November 1938, although he also warned of undue optimism; Stirling to External Affairs, 9 November 1938, A981 EUR 6 PART 5, NAA, Canberra. On the offer of mediation over refugees; MacDonald to Lyons, 13 January 1939, CP290/2/1/0/1/15, NAA, Canberra. Chamberlain’s belief in a reformed Hitler after Munich better fitted Mussolini; Parker, Churchill and Appeasement, 183. 2549 Chamberlain thought on 21 December 1938 that Mussolini could be persuaded to restrain Hitler from ‘some mad dog act’; Colvin, 176. 2550 vide Chapter 6 on the Agreement and its conditions. 2551 Bruce warned Lyons of the continuing resistance in the British cabinet to recognition because of continued Italian involvement in Spain; Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 302, 21 October 1938. Page had earlier warned him of the Spanish stipulation in Page, London, to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 228, 7 July 1938. 339 implementation of the Anglo-Italian Agreement.2552 The ministers also had before them a recent cable from Bruce, counselling support for Chamberlain and Halifax’s suggestion of immediate recognition.2553 If this accumulated material was insufficient, Perth’s own assessment was attached, warning of the danger of Mussolini concluding that ‘the bad boy has secured a reward while the good one goes empty away’.2554 This selective documentary collection proved persuasive and Lyons subsequently cabled Whitehall on behalf of the ‘Commonwealth Government’ further urging an immediate recognition ‘as a contribution to peace’ and dismissing other considerations as ‘immaterial’.2555 Chamberlain replied on the following day, 27 October, noting with pleasure the accord of the two governments and relaying his decision to implement the agreement unilaterally forthwith.2556 This was four months after Lyons had last urged the same, but the news must nevertheless have been welcome.2557 Chamberlain sought permission, for his own purposes, to quote ‘the substance’ of the Australian message of 26 October, to which Lyons eagerly assented, although insisting on synchronized announcements, possibly to demonstrate that Australia was a partner in the making of imperial foreign policy, not just a follower.2558 Lyons spoke glowingly in parliament on 2 November 1938 of the rewards that his government believed would flow from a consummation of the accord, reiterating the importance to Australia of Mediterranean peace and security.2559 When cabinet considered the specific issue of de jure recognition, on 15 November 1938, it was noted that by Hughes that any Australian endorsement ought to come in ‘a separate statement’, through Perth in Rome.2560 The bulk of the cabinet, it seemed, was persuaded in this instance at least of the virtues of a separate Australian foreign policy, parallel to that of Britain (as was natural), but ‘separate’ nonetheless ─ only South Africa appeared to have reached the same state of constitutional development.2561 Australian recognition of Italian East Africa was finally accorded at this meeting.2562 In parliament on the following day, Lyons celebrated this consummation of Italian appeasement, and spoke glowingly of ‘amicable relations’ and of the ‘earnest hope’ for the revival of the ‘traditional friendship’.2563

2552 Cabinet Papers, 26 October 1938, CRS 6006/11, NAA, Canberra. The memorandum included Lyons’s earlier communications urging recognition, including the 2 February 1938 cable (DAFP, vol.1, 122) and that of 6 July 1938 (DAFP 227, vol.1). The memorandum, dated 25 October 1938, is reproduced in DAFP, vol.1, 306. 2553 Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 302, 21 October 1938. 2554 Attachment to Cabinet Papers, 26 October 1938, CRS 6006/11. Stirling recalled Cadogan urging recognition before ‘a parting of the ways’; Stirling, 85. 2555 Lyons to MacDonald, DAFP, vol.1, 307, 26 October 1938. 2556 Chamberlain to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 308, 27 October 1938. 2557 Lyons to Page, London, DAFP, vol.1, 227, 6 July 1938. 2558 Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 309, 28 October 1938. Chamberlain was anticipating opposition in the Commons and this was another example of his desire to quote dominion support for his measures. 2559 Lyons statement, CPD, vol.157, 1100-1110, 2 November 1938. 2560 Cabinet submission by Hughes, DAFP, vol.1, 317, 15 November 1938. External Affairs advised that Britain intended to recognise Abyssinia on 16 November 1938. 2561 Cabinet reviewed the responses of the other dominions; Cabinet Minutes, 15 November 1938, CRS 6006/12, NAA, Canberra. Only South Africa agreed with the proposal; New Zealand was opposed. 2562 Cabinet Minutes, 15 November 1938, CRS 6006/12; ‘Approved J.A. Lyons 15.11.38.’ pace Esthus, 63-4 and McIntyre, 138, who believe that recognition took place in April. 2563 Lyons statement, CPD, vol.158, 1520, 16 November 1938; Current Notes, vol.5 (1938), 289. 340 This provided some light amidst the gloom of Kristallnacht. Ciano responded warmly to Canberra’s separate recognition, but ultimately the appeasers’ hopes were to be disappointed, as the ‘good boy’ preferred to imitate the delinquent in early-1939.2564 This proved to be a bitter pill for the Australian prime minister, who had displayed especial confidence in the possibilities of Anglo-Italian accord since his first visit to Rome in 1935. Lyons had borne some responsibility for the loss of momentum in eastern appeasement, 1935-37, but the responsibility for the costly two-and-a-half year interregnum between the end of the Abyssinian war and the implantation of the Anglo-Italian Agreement lay elsewhere. IV If European appeasement remained in a state of flux in this period, the position in East Asia was little better. As a long-time champion of eastern appeasement, Lyons can only have been pleased with press speculation in the course of 1938 that there remained an instrument at hand to revive deteriorating relations with Japan─ a revival of his pet project, the Pacific Pact.2565 This instrument could now arguably use Munich as a precursor, as A.C.V. Melbourne observed in October, and perform in Asia the function that the Anglo-Italian Agreement was serving in the Mediterranean by late-1938 ─ Lyons had long seen the one as a model for the other.2566 Just as he expressed displeasure at the British diplomatic delays that had jeopardized Anglo-Italian détente, so too had Lyons expressed personal (and prime ministerial) regret over the lost opportunity of 1937 in East Asia,2567 where ‘information received’ suggested Tokyo’s willingness to accept the mediation of an unnamed ‘single power’.2568 Whatever the origins of this unsubstantiated claim of late-1937, it indicated that Lyons was not then prepared to accept the rebuff of British indifference to his old Pact proposal without some complaint.2569 He still remained optimistic in mid-1938 that an international conference was possible at the conclusion of the eastern conflict, at which the Pact could be resuscitated.2570 The success of Munich appeared to have nourished a desire for some sort of eastern equivalent and Lyons’s assessments of this settlement implied that he believed its principles more broadly applicable.2571 On 30 September 1938 he had referred to the promise of ‘constant co-operation between the nations of the world’,2572 and on 2 November 1938 he had looked forward to the settling of international

2564 DAFP, vol.1, 317, footnote 11, details Ciano’s response on 27 November 1938. vide below on Italy’s territorial claims after November 1938. 2565 The Murdoch press so speculated; “Pacific Pact?”, Herald, 4 March 1938, 7, e. 2566 A.C.V. Melbourne to Wakamatsu, 8 October 1938, C443 J45, NAA, Sydney. Even before he made his revived Pact proposal public, Lyons had seen the Italian accord as a model for one with Japan; Lyons to Bruce, DAFP, vol.1, 12, 6 March 1937. 2567 Lyons at Darlinghurst, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 October 1937; Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, 273; vide Chapter 5. 2568 Commonwealth government to MacDonald, DAFP, vol.1, 88, 28 October 1937. The origins of the claim are unknown. Chamberlain had already raised a similar suggestion in the British cabinet, vide Chapter 5. 2569 pace the suggestion of Beaumont, “The Evolution of Australian Foreign Policy…”, 16-17. 2570 Lyons debating notes, ‘What are the prospects for World Peace?’, n.d. but between April-September 1938, MS4851/2/15. Bruce proposed something similar in November 1937; Bruce, Geneva, to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 64, 22 September 1937; Ovendale, Appeasement, 75. 2571 Craigie, Chamberlain’s man in Tokyo, welcomed Munich, with some sort of similar eastern settlement in mind; Best, “Sir Robert Craigie…”, 242. 2572 Lyons press statement, 30 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.7 (1938), 194. 341 disputes ‘by conference, negotiation and consultation’2573 ─ both of these descriptions could as equally be applied to hopes for a Pacific Pact redux as to the supposed realities of the Munich one. Certainly, there were those regional specialists, like Dr. Melbourne, who believed in October 1938 that it was time to refocus Australian attention homewards, now that the Munich settlement appeared to have settled European affairs and at least the timing for a Pact revival seemed right.2574 These hopes were to be pursued through two means in late-1938, similar to the ones first employed in 1934 ─ personal diplomacy and Australian diplomatic initiative. The first avenue for pursuing an Asian ‘Munich’ was further personal diplomacy. While Lyons had been happy to engage in such diplomacy himself in Europe in 1937, he seemed less enthusiastic about personal contact with Asian politicians, preferring to use others more informed, quite aside from the issues of personal health that began to constrain his activities in the period following Munich.2575 In 1934, Latham the Japanophile had provided such a bridge; in 1938-39 the Prime Minister sought to employ Ambrose Pratt, the ‘Asianist’ as what Melbourne later called a ‘special representative’.2576 As an old Lyons associate, Pratt was a natural choice;2577 an appeaser, inclined to pacifism and accordingly a natural adherent of the Pact.2578 The two men had lunched together before Lyons’s departure for London, in March 1937, and remained close.2579 In late-1938 or early-1939, Lyons asked Pratt to pursue in ‘Southern Asia’ what the journalist sycophantically called ‘that splendid dream’ and ‘great inspiration’2580 ─ south-east Asia was a region of especial attachment for Pratt, particularly Siam, whose alignment with Tokyo was deepening.2581 The intermediary was very optimistic about the revised proposal for a ‘pact of eternal peace and friendship’, which he agreed to pursue on his next visit to the region in June 1939 ‘with your backing’, although his patron (along with the proposal) died before that trip

2573 Lyons, CPD, vol.157, 1100-1110, 2 November 1938. 2574 Melbourne to Wakamatsu, 8 October 1938, C443 J45, where he stated his fear that an unsettled Europe could have impacted on Australia-Japan relations. 2575 Lyons never showed the interest in Japanese culture found in some other politicians such as Latham. 2576 Melbourne urged a ‘special representative’ to Japan; A.C.V. Melbourne to Lyons, 24 January 1939, A981 JAP 102, NAA, Canberra. 2577 Hart, “Piper…,” 120, on the old Lyons-Pratt links in the 1931 “Group”. Pratt had drafted Lyons’s defection speech of 13 March 1931; “Speech by J.A. Lyons when he left the Labor Party, written for him by Ambrose Pratt,” n.d., Pratt Papers, MS 6536/327/5, La Trobe Library, Melbourne. Enid Lyons, Carrion Crows, 55, where she described Pratt and audio interview with Mel Pratt, Tape 1, as ‘very charming’. On his view of the diplomacy of appeasement; Pratt, “The Diplomacy of Democracy.”: 29ff., where he contrasted it with ‘jungle-loving’ power politics. 2578 R. Johnson, “Ambrose Pratt” in The Light and the Gate (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1964), 102-3 on his background and expertise; ibid., 121. On his Asian links, ADB, vol.11, 274-5. On his pacifism; A. Pratt, “War and Human Progress”, Pratt Papers, MS 6541/327/5, Australian Manuscripts Collection, La Trobe Library, Melbourne. 2579 Pratt to Dow, 17 March 1937, Dow Papers, U40/8 P-S, University of Melbourne Archives. Their correspondence was warm, the Prime Minister always addressing Pratt as “Dear Ambrose” and although there had been an interregnum in their relations, Pratt was able to secure an interview with Lyons at will; Pratt to Lyons, 11 May 1932, 5 July 1934, CP 103/1963 and miscellaneous Pratt-Lyons correspondence, ibid., NAA, Canberra; Hart, “Piper…,” 120. 2580 Pratt to Lyons, on Savage Club stationery, n.d. but July 1938-April 1939 (not pace Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, 273, ‘early 1938’), Joseph Lyons Papers, MS4851/2/12, NLA, Canberra. A date later than that suggested by Hart is probable given Pratt’s reference to his forthcoming visit to Asia in ‘June’, i.e. June 1939; Johnson, 103. 2581 Pratt had wide connections in Siam with ministers, businessmen, soldiers and the King; Pratt Papers, MS 6544/329/6, contains miscellaneous correspondence between Pratt and these connections. Siam eventually became an ally of Japan in the subsequent conflict. 342 eventuated and Menzies declined his services.2582 As late as March 1939 Lyons made a point of reminding consul Wakamatsu that he had ‘sponsored’ the Pact proposal in 1937 (in itself a modest downgrading of his role at the time) and implied that such processes of friendship were ongoing, although he did admit therein that any improvement in relations was unlikely while the Sino-Japanese conflict persisted.2583 Pratt’s outlined mission suggested that Lyons remained reluctant to abandon all hope for the project even as appeasement disintegrated around him ─ this time he was also prepared to supplement the personal variety of diplomacy so prized by the appeasers.

The second means employed for a revival of the Pact in the aftermath of Munich was through direct Australian diplomacy, when Lyons accelerated moves for the establishment of a diplomatic service, perhaps according to the counsel of the retired Sir George Pearce and certainly according to that of A.C.V. Melbourne. This constituted the third Pacific initiative of the Lyons years, however, ‘overdue’.2584 Both Lyons and his informal counsellor, Dr. Melbourne, linked the revival of the Pact with the establishment of formal Australian diplomacy, the former with less cynicism than the latter,2585 but they were not alone in seeing two concepts as related ─ the noted political scientist, Shepherd, also thought by 1939 that a revival of the Pact in ‘a more concrete and specific form’ could act as a starting point for further Pacific consultation and advocated Australian diplomatic representation as part of this process.2586 The self-reliance implied in these views was unsurprising, for there seemed little prospect of Britain joining in the further task of Japanese appeasement, given the frosty interview between Chamberlain and the new ambassador, Shigemitsu, on 22 November 1938.2587 Such continual London-Tokyo friction, usually over matters of China trade, was something that Lyons later referred to as ‘a constant source of anxiety’ to Canberra,2588 and by early-1939 he seemed prepared for an effort to improve bilateral relations by formal diplomatic means, in something of a reversal of his appeaser’s distrust of ‘old’ diplomacy. If Britain could be assumed to be hostile (or indifferent) to such developments, Lyons was the more anxious to gain some measure of the US position ─ as Bruce departed for Washington in mid-December, en route for home, Lyons instructed him to gain ‘some indication’ of the US attitude towards Japan.2589 Bruce now believed in remedies other

2582 Pratt to Lyons, n.d. but July 1938-April 1939, MS4851/2/12. Pratt to Menzies, 29 April 1939, A981 AUS 32, NAA, Canberra, where he offered himself as ‘an envoy of goodwill and cultural relations to countries north of Australia’. 2583 Lyons to Wakamatsu, Japanese consul, DAFP, vol.2, 34, 3 March 1939. 2584 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 398. 2585 Lyons to Inskip, Dominions Secretary, DAFP, vol.2, 63, 30 March 1939; vide Appendix IV. Melbourne employed the link in January 1939, vide below. 2586 Shepherd, 122, A981 AUS32, NAA, Canberra. 2587 Chamberlain’s account of meeting with Shigemitsu, Japanese ambassador, 22 November 1938, PREM 1/277, PRO, London. The sticking point was, as usual, British interests in China. Chamberlain terminated the interview abruptly. 2588 Lyons broadcast, 19 February 1939, quoted in Shepherd, 72, A981 AUS 32, also in Sydney Morning Herald, 20 February 1939. Britain sent a protest note to Japan about attempts to abrogate China’s ‘Open Door’ trade policy on 14 January 1939; External Affairs Survey of International Situation, 1 February 1939, submitted to cabinet, 28 February 1939, CRS A6006/12. 2589 Bruce to Runciman, Foreign Office, 1 December 1938, FO800/396. 343 than eastern appeasement, but to judge from Lyons’s enduring priorities, it was as if little had altered since his own visit to the White House in July 1935.2590 The Lyons government had long agonised over the formal appointment of Australian diplomats, relying in the meantime on various half-measures,2591 and although as recently as June 1937 the Prime Minister had admitted Australia’s ‘special interest’ in international affairs, he had simultaneously denied the need for a ‘formal Diplomatic Service’ given the ‘fundamental similarity’ of the Australian and British outlook.2592 By late-1938, that similarity no longer seemed to apply in East Asia (if it had ever done so). The post-1935 compromises of trade commissioners and de facto diplomatic representation through consuls had also proven unsatisfactory since the further step of Officer’s appointment to the UK embassy in Washington as a ‘counsellor’ in May 1937 ─ an experimental measure on the lines of Casey’s model of 1932 that had not proven very successful owing to a combination of personnel and British obstruction.2593 For its part Washington (through Moffat at State to Bruce) expressed its eagerness for the next step of full relations in December 1938.2594 Lyons now finally seemed inclined, post- Munich, to set aside his former prime ministerial reservations, both financial and principled, and to accept public and private advice that now was the time to establish full links with Washington and Tokyo, the two ‘Pacific’ capitals.2595 The days of the ‘make-shift arrangement’, once acceptable to Lyons as uncomplicated, cheap and practical, had passed.2596 Lyons had taken his time to arrive at this conclusion and he was pushed from behind in so doing. The first voice raised in favour of full diplomatic relations was one from the past, when the retired minister, Pearce, urged the appointment in the Murdoch press of an ‘ambassador’ to Washington, on 30 November 1938.2597 He admitted that he had thought the issue ‘premature’ in October 1934, when it was first proposed to him, a view with which he claimed Lyons had then

2590 Bruce believed that eastern appeasement could no longer be applied, showing interest in schemes to ‘rehabilitate’ China as a counter-weight to Japanese power. He believed that Germany could be brought to support such schemes in the interests of the white race in Asia; ibid. 2591 One trade commissioner (Lloyd in Tokyo) had since evolved into a ‘government commissioner’; DAFP, vol.1, 93, 1 November 1937; Edwards, Prime Ministers, 116ff. Officer in Washington also had an elevated status as a ‘counsellor’, vide below and DAFP vol.1, Appendix 2, “The Organisation of Australia’s External Relations”, 547. 2592 Lyons speech in London, 7 June 1937, “Mr. Lyons on Australian Proposal”, The Times, 8 June 1937, 13, b. 2593 Officer had been kept on a tight leash by the British ambassador and was soon regarded in Washington as too ‘British’; Megaw, “Undiplomatic Channels”: 626; Moffat Diary, 17 February 1937; Cordell Hull memorandum, FRUS, 1937, vol.2, 28-9, 13 May 1937. It was the British intention from the beginning to curb the Washington position; DAFP vol.1, Appendix 2, “The Organisation of Australia’s External Relations”, 547; Current Notes, vol.2 (1936-7), 343. A. Watt noted that Officer had been allotted a ‘cubby-hole’ in the embassy, quoted in Bridge, “Relations with The United States,” 182. Casey, “The Need for a United British Foreign Policy,” (17 October 1932) in The World We Live In: A Series of Speeches on Current Events, 71ff. 2594 Moffat had already reminded Officer of Washington’s readiness in June 1938; Officer to Hodgson, 28 June 1938, Officer Papers, MS2629/1/545, NLA, Canberra. Moffat told Bruce the same in December 1938; Esthus, 61. 2595 vide Chapter 3, where Lyons had continually declined any permanent appointment in Washington out of Tokyo’s insistence on inclusion. 2596 Lyons’s description to Moffat of his intention to leave Dow at New York; Moffat Diary, 6 February 1936. 2597 G. Pearce, “Ambassador in America. Appointment Urged”, Herald, 30 November 1938, 6, c-d. Megaw, “Undiplomatic Channels”: 627ff., suggests that the article was the product of a circle of ministers including Casey and Menzies, without mentioning Lyons or providing any detail. Casey’s interest, although not any involvement in this article, was shown by his December letter to Officer, vide below. Pearce had suggested on his retirement in November 1937 that the system of liaison officers was ready for further development; Current Notes, vol.3 (1937), 337. 344 been ‘in thorough agreement’.2598 An examination of the aftermath of the Moffat appointment (September 1935), however, suggests that the delay was more Pearce’s idea (as the appropriate minister) than that of Lyons (as prime minister), at least according to the accounts of the minister’s obstruction that Lyons gave the new US consul.2599 Whether Pearce or Lyons was chiefly responsible for the lost opportunity of 1934-35, or whether it was a collective choice, the fact was that the moment had been allowed to pass in favour of the de facto representation that Lyons suggested to Moffat at that time.2600 Pearce now, however, presented a persuasive case for a full diplomatic appointment to Washington in order to assist ‘the peace of the world’ and particularly ‘peace in the Pacific’, formulas guaranteed to be attractive to Lyons.2601 The Prime Minister wrote to Bruce, on the same day of Pearce’s article, suggesting that on his forthcoming trip to Washington he work for the ‘recognition of common interests and ideals’ amongst the ‘English-speaking countries of the Pacific basin’, something he hoped would produce ‘obvious and tremendous results’2602 ─ these were aspirations that he had nursed for some four years, but their resurrection now was a remarkable coincidence.2603 Such suggestions cannot be traced back to Pearce’s counsel, but at the very least they indicated that Lyons’s thinking was now similar to that of Pearce on this particular issue. Casey gave further evidence of this when he advised Officer on 5 December 1938 that diplomatic relations were in the air, although nothing was initiated until Lyons received a further, private stimulus from a source he respected.2604 A second voice certainly galvanized Lyons to cross the diplomatic Rubicon at this time. A.C.V. Melbourne wrote to the Prime Minister on 21 December 1938 stressing the importance of a ‘thoroughly practical idea’, that is, the immediate improvement of US-Australian relations by the appointment of a minister in Washington (as well one in Tokyo) in order to provide ‘more direct information’.2605 This letter was soon followed by one on Japan, in which Melbourne urged an Anglo-Japanese agreement and repeated his call for a minister at Tokyo2606 ─ this initiated a series of correspondence over the following weeks on related topics. None of the opinions

2598 Pearce, Herald, 30 November 1938, 6, c-d, suggesting that they had been concerned about a lack of trained personnel. Lyons told Moffat of a plan for diplomatic training; Lyons to Moffat, Moffat Diary, 6 February 1936. 2599 Lyons to Moffat, Moffat Diary, 5 October 1935. vide Chapters 3-4 on the 1935-36 Moffat-Lyons negotiations and Pearce’s opposition to any Washington appointment; Moffat Diary, 3 October 1935; 5 October 1935; 6 February 1936. It is arguably inappropriate to accord Pearce as minister much recognition for extending Australia’s diplomatic scope; Hudson, Australian Diplomacy, 46. External Affairs had suggested immediate appointments, cabinet submission of 19 November 1935, Cabinet Papers, CRS A6006, Roll 9. Lyons expressed his increasing attraction to the idea of direct representation, despite Pearce’s objections, Moffat Diary, 6 February 1936. 2600 Moffat Diary, 2 October 1935; vide Chapter 3. 2601 Pearce, Herald, 30 November 1938, 6, c-d. He remained opposed to any Tokyo appointment, due to ‘limited resources’. 2602 Lyons to Bruce, DAFP, vol.1, 321, 30 November 1938. 2603 vide Chapter 3, Lyons-Hull interview, FRUS, 1935, vol.3, 14, 9 July 1935. He later repeated similar views; Lyons article, Hobart Mercury, 11 January 1939, 8, e-g. 2604 Casey to Officer, Washington, 5 December 1938, Officer Papers, MS2629/1/631, NLA, Canberra. 2605 A.C.V. Melbourne to Lyons, 21 December 1938, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. It was their first written exchange since July 1938. 2606 A.C.V. Melbourne to Lyons, 28 December 1938, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. 345 expressed therein were new to Lyons or his circle (including Pratt),2607 but the urgency of the period after Munich was unheralded and Melbourne’s proposals were now regarded by the Prime Minister as worthy of extended consideration. Lyons replied by cable (on 31 December 1938) informing the correspondent that his ‘private’ proposal was being ‘placed before all ministers’ individually, for the cabinet was in recess while Lyons recuperated at Devonport.2608 This endorsement encouraged Melbourne in January 1939 to suggest in further confidence (‘Personal: Not to be placed on record’) that wisely-exerted ‘Australian influence’ could effect ‘reconciliation’ between Britain and Japan, again reinforcing Hodgson and Lyons’s earlier thinking about Australia as a regional mediator.2609 When ministers considered the 21 December Melbourne letter soon afterwards,2610 only Casey, close to Lyons in such matters, supported the idea of diplomatic representation and expressed his desire for the matter to be discussed with Bruce later in January, once he reached Australia.2611 Menzies, however, damned separate diplomacy as a blow to ‘British unity’, as he had done in the parliament in the previous October.2612 He preferred the continued use of old practices (as did Cameron, the Postmaster- General) ─ that Australia should make her voice heard at Whitehall before decisions were made.2613 Hughes, as the relevant minister in the process of being usurped by prime ministerial initiative, was especially indignant at the Melbourne proposal, believing it unworthy of an official response.2614 External Affairs itself was no more receptive than the majority of ministers. The department had unsuccessfully counselled full diplomatic representation to cabinet as an option as early as November 1935 (and would again do so in March 1939),2615 but on this occasion Hodgson was happy to align himself with his minister, suggesting that ‘no impression should be

2607 vide Chapter 2 on the publication of Melbourne’s “A Foreign Policy for Australia” in 1933-34, sent to Lyons; Melbourne to Lyons, 30 October 1934, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. He had made comments on the separate interests of Britain and Australia at the January 1938 summer school of the Australian Institute of Political Science, in Crawford, “Australia as a Pacific Power”, 113-5. In September 1938 he said the same in an address, “Australia’s Relations to other Pacific Countries”, Australian Institute of International Affairs, Australian Supplementary Papers E, no.2 (1938): 1, 7. Pratt held similar views; Pratt draft article, “A Foreign Office for Australia”, n.d, but after October 1942, Pratt Papers, MS6544/327/5, Australian Manuscripts Collection, La Trobe Library, Melbourne. 2608 Lyons, Devonport, cable to A.C.V. Melbourne, 31 December 1938, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. Lyons was referring to the 21 December letter only. Ministers received individual cables with a copy of the letter shortly thereafter; Lyons to Melbourne, 10 January 1939, A1608 B41/1/6, NAA, Canberra (this letter is missing from the Melbourne Papers). He sent Melbourne a cordial New Year cable on the same day; Lyons, Devonport, to A.C.V. Melbourne, Brisbane, 31 December 1938, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. 2609 A.C.V. Melbourne handwritten letter to Lyons, 1 January 1939, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. vide Chapter 5 on earlier suggestions of Australian mediation; DAFP, vol.1, 13, 8 March 1937; DAFP, vol.1, 88, 28 October 1937. 2610 Lyons to Melbourne, 10 January 1939, A1608 B41/1/6. Copies were also passed to the defence chiefs for their comments on its strategic observations; vide below. 2611 Casey to Lyons, DAFP, vol.2, 1, 3 January 1939, although he thought little of Melbourne, believing this an ‘attempt to teach one’s grandmother to suck eggs’ and an example of ‘a little knowledge of the Far East’ being ‘a dangerous thing’. 2612 Menzies to Lyons, DAFP, vol.2, 2, 5 January 1939; CPD, vol.157, 429-33, 5 October 1938; Andrews, Isolationism, 23. 2613 Menzies to Lyons, DAFP, vol.2, 2, 5 January 1939. Cameron, Postmaster-General, thought the present system adequate; Cameron to Lyons, DAFP, vol.2, 5, 12 January 1939. 2614 Hughes to Lyons, DAFP, vol.2, 6, 17 January 1939, where he contemptuously referred to its author as ‘Professor Meldrum’ [sic]. Perhaps Hughes had learned of Melbourne’s estimation of him as a ‘war monger’; Melbourne to Longfield Lloyd, Tokyo, 11 January 1937, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. 2615 Cabinet Papers, 19 November 1935, CRS A6006/9; Cabinet Minutes, 30 March 1939, A2694/19/2, NAA, Canberra. 346 given that we contemplate action only as a result of outside instigation’.2616 This was precisely the impression that Lyons was giving, in accordance with his long-standing tendency to listen to external advice alongside that of the public service and ministers. Ironically, the response of some in the Far Eastern Department of the Foreign Office was more accommodating than was that of External Affairs, with the exception of Officer at Washington.2617 Melbourne’s advice continued in late-January 1939, regardless of the unfavourable initial reaction of most ministers, which he believed probably due to the perception that he was ‘pro- Japanese’, although he admitted to Lyons in confidence (‘intended for your personal consideration’) that he possessed ‘connections in Japan which are not open to intelligence gatherers’.2618 Lyons remained his particular target ─ the Japanese, Melbourne reminded him, had a low opinion of ‘appeasement’ whilst Manchukuo remained illegitimate and in the event of an Anglo-Japanese conflict, Australia would be viewed as hostile.2619 Lyons would have needed little persuasion on these points (both of which are found in his thinking from 1933-34 onwards), but in order to concentrate his mind, he was reminded that they were the difference between ‘peace or war’.2620 Both men therefore agreed that clear distinctions now existed between Australian and British interests in the Far East, even if Lyons was more circumspect about saying so in public than Melbourne could be. Before the end of January, Melbourne further seasoned his proposals in a manner calculated to appeal to Lyons, when he suggested ‘a means by which Australia may intervene to secure a peaceful settlement’─ the consensus builder was asked to intervene in the Anglo-Japanese dispute as a go-between, assured that the Japanese would make concessions to an Australian that they would not make to a Briton.2621 This was a flattering proposition made the more attractive by the clever insinuation that as a ‘practical form’ of the Pact proposal, Australian mediation could lead to a revival of that mechanism.2622 The first step to exploit this ‘momentous opportunity’ must be the establishment of diplomatic representation, which would constitute an act of ‘real statesmanship’.2623 Lyons, by now a very unwell man whose wife was attending to some of his correspondence, proved receptive to this calculated

2616 Hodgson cable to Schneider, PM’s secretary, Devonport, 10 January 1939, A1608 B41/1/6, NAA, Canberra. 2617 Stirling reported that one member of that department had thought the proposal sound ‘in his heart of hearts’; Stirling, London, to Hodgson, 8 February 1939, A981 JAP 102, NAA, Canberra. Officer was warming to the idea of fuller representation at Washington; Officer to Casey, 25 January 1939, Officer Papers, MS2629/7, quoted in Megaw, “Undiplomatic Channels”: 627. 2618 A.C.V. Melbourne to Lyons, 24 January 1939, A981 JAP 102, NAA, Canberra. Perhaps attempting to counter this perception, he enclosed on 1 January 1939 a copy of an October 1938 letter to the Association of Far Eastern Affairs, where he criticized Japanese hegemony in China; A.C.V. Melbourne to I. Motoshilu and S. Asao, Association of Far Eastern Affairs, Sydney, 18 October 1938, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. Melbourne’s connection with the Japanese consul was certainly closer than anyone knew at that time, vide Chapters 2, 5 and the collected correspondence between Melbourne and the Japanese consulate at Sydney, C443/J45, NAA, NSW. External Affairs later regarded him as ‘not altogether unbiased or reliable’; Hodgson’s observation, 23 January 1940, A1608 B41/1/6, NAA, Canberra. 2619 Melbourne to Lyons, 24 January 1939, A981 JAP 102. 2620 ibid. The only aspect of the letter that with which Lyons must have disagreed would be Melbourne’s suggestion that Australia needed access to Japanese manufactured goods. 2621 ibid. He had already talked of ‘reconciliation’ in the 1 January letter; Melbourne handwritten letter to Lyons, 1 January 1939, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2; vide above. 2622 In fact, Melbourne regarded the Pact as the product of ignorance and doomed to failure; Melbourne in Crawford, “Australia as a Pacific Power”, 115. 2623 Melbourne to Lyons, 24 January 1939, A981 JAP 102. 347 flattery and promised to use his prime ministerial initiative and to bring these matters before the cabinet when it was scheduled to meet in Hobart on 7 February 19392624─ the negative reactions of most ministers in early January had obviously not discouraged him. Cabinet did indeed consider ‘A.C.V. Melbourne’ (and ‘the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes’) on that day, although without ‘full discussion’ and no decision was made.2625 Lyons’s prime ministerial influence appeared to be on the decline as his health deteriorated and there was further talk of retirement, with Bruce now being considered as a possible successor allegedly even by Lyons himself (following the decline of Menzies’s standing).2626 He therefore asked Bruce, on 28 February 1939, to meet Dr. Melbourne in Brisbane; a further indication of the seriousness he attached to the latter’s views.2627 Such an interview followed shortly thereafter, but Bruce, unlike Lyons, proved unenthusiastic about any suggestion of Australian mediation with Japan, believing it ‘too late’.2628 The only consolation Lyons could offer the disappointed Melbourne in March was that a decision on diplomatic representation would be made ‘soon’.2629 The Prime Minister was true to his word and on 28 March 1939 the matter of diplomatic representation was reconsidered by cabinet in the aftermath of Prague (which had brought with it a seeming collapse of both appeasement and imperial consultation).2630 It was further deferred despite the fact that Bruce was present, following his talks in the US, perhaps to offer his support to those seeking an appointment to Washington, amongst whose ranks were now numbered Lyons and Casey.2631 Whatever the reason for this deferral, itself a possible slight at declining prime ministerial authority, an External Affairs memorandum followed two days later which recommended full diplomatic relations.2632 The cabinet’s response to this memorandum was unrecorded, but in the absence of any contradictory evidence, the divisions that emerged in early-

2624 Lyons, Devonport, to A.C.V. Melbourne, Brisbane, 2 February 1939, A981/4 JAP 102, NAA, Canberra. The Prime Minister’s spidery signature indicated his poor health; vide Conclusion. Enid Lyons was attending to some of his correspondence at this time, as she had done in earlier instances of disability such as July 1926; Enid Lyons, My Life, 22. She even signed a prime ministerial letter; J.A. Lyons to Mrs. Withers, Northam, WA, 22 February 1939, CP167/1/22, NAA, Canberra, which argued against economic appeasement. 2625 List of files taken by Secretary to Hobart for cabinet meeting, 2 February 1939, CP103/19/7, NAA, Canberra; Cabinet Minutes, 7 February 1939, A2694/19/2. Lyons to Melbourne, 13 March 1939, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2, that cabinet had not yet fully discussed the matter. 2626 Bruce thought Dame Enid responsible for the retraction of Lyons’s offer of retirement in his favour on 27 January 1939; Martin, Menzies, 256ff.; C. Edwards, 261-3; Cumpston, Bruce, 168-9. She denied it; Enid Lyons audio interview with A. Clarke, Tape 2, where she suggested that the public of Australia were unlikely to accept such a transfer of power ‘for five minutes’. 2627 Lyons cable to Bruce, Brisbane, 28 February 1939, CP167/1/2, NAA, Canberra. 2628 Melbourne thought Bruce aloof, unenthusiastic, uninformed and ‘too European’ in outlook. Bruce was also opposed to any appearance of Australian ‘independence’; A.C.V. Melbourne to Lyons, 7 March 1939, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. He was not necessarily opposed to representation at Washington; P. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 116ff.; vide below. 2629 Lyons to A.C.V. Melbourne, 13 March 1939, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2; A1608 B41/1/6. 2630 vide below. A. Watt, “The Australian Diplomatic Service”, 139, suggested that the Prague episode forced Australia reluctantly into the diplomatic world. Prague certainly helped to trigger Lyons’s final initiative. 2631 P. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 116ff., suggests that Bruce (in Australia 23 January-31 March 1939) was lobbying for a US appointment at that time. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 398, suggested likewise. Bruce attended the cabinet meeting of 28 March 1939; Cabinet Minutes, A2694/19/2, NAA, Canberra. 2632 ibid. External Affairs memorandum, “Australian Representation Abroad”, Cabinet Papers, 30 March 1939, A6006/12, NAA, Canberra. The response of the cabinet is unrecorded, pace Murphy, 379. 348 January were presumably still in evidence.2633 On the same day, 30 March 1939, Lyons proceeded with the matter with or without cabinet’s endorsement, although careful to stress collegiality (‘we’) in a cable to Inskip, the new Dominions Secretary, informing him of the ‘imperative’ necessity of Australian representation at both Washington and Tokyo, the two ‘Pacific Ocean’ centres of his regional attention.2634 The author(s) of this cable, amongst whom it must be presumed was Lyons himself (for it significantly employed ‘I’ in part), utilised a draft cable pre-prepared by External Affairs in the event of cabinet approval, but reworked for further purpose; some indication that the matter had not passed through the cabinet smoothly, if it was in fact seen by that body at all.2635 Excluded from the finished product was the original departmental request for British ‘opinion’ on possible foreign perception of an impairment of ‘Imperial unity’, replaced with a paragraph asserting the view that the measure would in no way endanger a ‘common [British] diplomatic front’, the long-standing view of Menzies, now in a state of self- imposed exile after 14 March2636 ─ this replacement of a request with an assertion neatly captured the character of this cable and it was implied that the 1937 Imperial Conference had already accepted the principle of dominion diplomatic links with ‘neighbouring countries’.2637 Additionally, other paragraphs had been inserted into the departmental draft that expressed Lyons’s own particular concerns. Lyons added a personal touch by specifically linking the matter with his earlier proposal of a Pacific Pact, thus providing a link between the second and this third Pacific initiative of the Lyons years: ‘You will remember at the last Imperial Conference I raised the question of a Pacific Pact…’, now concluding that diplomatic relations were the next step in this process of ‘friendly collaboration and mutual understanding’.2638 In doing so, Lyons took the opportunity to scold Whitehall for allowing an opportunity to slip that he believed would have been ‘of advantage to Great Britain’, as well as something that might ‘materially help in the general cause of peace’.2639 Melbourne (and perhaps Pratt) were likely aware that Lyons still considered the project capable of resurrection and this cable implied that if British diplomats would not pursue it, then perhaps Australian ones would ─ this proved the last glimmer of Lyons’s hope for eastern conciliation in some form (at a time when he had reluctantly pronounced appeasement moribund).2640 That this proposal of 30 March was driven by chronic anxiety about the deterioration of relations with Japan was made evident in another insertion, where the cable expressed confidence that an Australian mission in Tokyo would counteract this

2633 Lyons’s subsequent actions were not in accordance with cabinet resolutions; pace Murphy, 379. 2634 Lyons to Inskip, Dominions Secretary, DAFP, vol.2, 63, 30 March 1939. The cable is reproduced in Appendix IV. Washington was suggested as the priority, but Tokyo occupied most of the discussion in the cable. 2635 Draft cable attached to External Affairs memorandum, “Australian Representation Abroad”, Cabinet Papers, 30 March 1939, A6006/12, NAA, Canberra. 2636 Menzies to Lyons, DAFP, vol.2, 2, 5 January 1939; also CPD, vol.157, 429-33, 5 October 1938. 2637 Lyons to Inskip, Dominions Secretary, DAFP, vol.2, 63, 30 March 1939. 2638 Lyons to Inskip, Dominions Secretary, DAFP, vol.2, 63, 30 March 1939. 2639 ibid. 2640 vide below on his broadcast of 23 March 1939. 349 trend, in what was elsewhere called ‘Australian national interests’.2641 What this communication now sought from Whitehall, it said in conclusion (‘in anticipation of your favourable reaction’) was merely advice on the best method of implementing the already- determined Australian diplomatic representation.2642 When taken as a whole, the cable of 30 March 1939 constituted an announcement, in the strongest terms, of Canberra’s intention to proceed regardless.2643 It was a formidable blast both to Whitehall and to any in cabinet still in favour of deferral. Whatever substance there is in the exaggerated charges of imperial subservience made against Lyons, this cable (one of his last) indicated an erosion of imperialist sentiment, not surprising given the blows to ‘imperial consultation’ that had taken place in the same month and rendered the establishment of an Australian diplomatic mechanism the more necessary.2644 Whitehall was displeased by the manner in which ‘protocol’ had been breached by the appearance of Canberra’s proposals in the press (against Lyons’s wish) and sought a deferment of the Tokyo appointment, but there was no going back despite Lyons’s death.2645 Lyons had not lived long enough to announce publicly the initiative mooted on 30 March, as he died in Sydney on 7 April 1939. Significantly, there were contemporary suggestions that he had sought a diplomatic position for himself, possibly even the Washington embassy, although his state of health would not have seemed fitted for such responsibility.2646 Nevertheless, such rumours indicated a belief that Lyons felt his role as a peacemaker was not over, even if his term at the Lodge was.2647 Ironically, the man who had consistently opposed the establishment of an Australian diplomatic service, Menzies, was the one who presided over its subsequent official establishment. The new prime minister announced his intention to appoint ministers at Washington and Tokyo in a radio broadcast, on 26 April 1939, although he was at pains to stress that he was still not in favour of dominion ‘independence and separatism’.2648 He made no mention of his predecessor’s role, only referring to him as ‘a simple and understanding man’.2649

2641 Lyons to Inskip, Dominions Secretary, DAFP, vol.2, 63, 30 March 1939. Ross, Armed and Ready, 126, suggests that Lyons had long thought that an Australian minister would monitor Japanese military action. vide below for defence considerations at this time which support this suggestion. He was specifically referring to the recent complaints of the consul, Wakamatsu; vide below. 2642 This conclusion was found in both the External Affairs draft and in the Lyons cable. 2643 vide Appendix IV. 2644 vide below on the impact on imperial consultation of policy changes at Whitehall after 17 March 1939. 2645 Inskip to Whiskard, DAFP, vol.2, 75, 29 April 1939; Inskip to Whiskard, DAFP, vol.2, 76, 29 April 1939; Whiskard to Dominions Office, DAFP, vol.2, 77, 3 May 1939. 2646 F. Green, Servant of the House (Melbourne: Heinemann, 1969), 116, thought he was expecting some British appointment in the last days; repeated in A. Henderson, 167. Whitington, House , 68, thought he wanted the Washington embassy. Heydon to Hart, 5 November 1964, Hart Papers, MS9410/2, NLA, Canberra, also recalled rumours of a Washington appointment. 2647 Lyons booked a suite on the Strathallen, due to leave Sydney for London on 18 March 1939. The purpose of the intended visit remains unknown; G. Lind, P&O, Sydney, wrote to Swanston, PM’s private secretary, on 13 January 1939 asking for confirmation, but subsequently granted a release at Lyons’s request, CP167/1/12, NAA, Canberra. 2648 Partly reproduced in DAFP, vol.2, 73, 26 April 1939; Menzies broadcast, 26 April 1939, A981 AUS 94, NAA, Canberra. Dr. Melbourne was recommended for the Tokyo appointment by the fellow academic Peter Russo; Torney- Parlicki: 359. Latham’s appointment was finally announced on 18 August 1940; ibid., 358; ADB, vol.10, 5. 2649 Menzies broadcast, 26 April 1939, A981 AUS 94. The relevant text of the broadcast is also found in N. Meaney, “Australia’s Foreign Policy: History and Myth.”, Australian Outlook, vol.23 (August 1969): 179. Megaw, “Undiplomatic Channels”: 628; Martin, Menzies, 293, recounts the establishment of the posts after the outbreak of war, when Menzies offered the US position to Casey. 350 Nor did he mention the precedent of Latham and the Eastern Mission, although he borrowed the former minister’s semantics, referring to the region as the ‘Near North’, a usage arguably less significant in 1939 than Latham’s term, ‘Near East’, had been in 1934.2650 Irrespective of these omissions, the new prime minister had directly taken the concept of Australian diplomatic representation in the Pacific from the recent initiative presided over by his predecessor, which he had himself opposed, although this did not stop Menzies from later laying claim to any due credit.2651 Thus it was Lyons as prime minister who had accelerated the establishment of an Australian diplomatic service, albeit after a considerable period in which he had retarded its full onset, for reasons that the cable of 30 March had sought to explain.2652 His conversion to the concept of full Australian diplomacy, however, had not been one made in solitude and others must be given their due for this important development. Pearce’s late conversion had played its part in the final steps towards an Australian diplomacy, even if he had left office without initiating the process. Bruce, as a former prime minister with an interest in matters of Australian diplomacy stretching back to the ‘twenties, also played a more covert role in the processes of 1938-39.2653 He had presided over the evolution of the High Commissioner’s office as an instrument of Anglo-Australian diplomacy after 1933 and while this had played an important part in the process of imperial consultation, it could do little to improve bilateral Australian relations with Washington or Tokyo. 2654 Bruce himself seemed aware of this and as early as 6 December 1938 he had discussed with Lord Halifax the proposal to send an Australian minister to Washington, although it is uncertain whether this was at Lyons’s request or in accord with the prime ministerial instructions to the high commissioner of 30 November.2655 If it is accepted that Bruce lobbied for representation at Washington during his sojourn in Australia, 23 January-31 March 1939, then this could only have added to Lyons’s conviction that the moment was right.2656 Similarly, Casey’s late conversion to the cause of full diplomatic representation, evident in January 1939, can only have exerted some influence on the course that was followed by Lyons,

2650 Latham first referred to the region as the ‘Near East’ on 6 July 1934, CPD, vol.144, 327ff. Later he borrowed Menzies’s expression and referred to the ‘Near North’; “Remembrance…”: 81. Murphy, 380, in his recognition of the ‘significance’ of the broadcast fails to mention Latham’s precedent. Meaney, “Australia’s Foreign Policy: History and Myth”: 179 attributed the coining of the phrase ‘Near North’ to the Menzies radio address of 26 April 1939, but it was commonplace in the late ‘thirties among those writing about foreign affairs, such as the contributors to the Austral- Asiatic Bulletin, including Russo, Melbourne, Garran, Eggleston and Clunies-Ross. 2651 Menzies, The Measure of the Years, 45. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 399, noted Menzies’s claims. Murphy, 409, gave the credit to Menzies; more significantly, so too did Attard, “Australia as a Dependent Dominion”, 25-6. 2652 Lyons to Inskip, Dominions Secretary, DAFP, vol.2, 63, 30 March 1939, explaining that the system of 1936 was no longer adequate. 2653 Bruce had laid a foundation in the ‘twenties; P. Edwards, “The Rise and Fall…”, 42. 2654 Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 333-4. 2655 Bruce record of interview with Halifax, 6 December 1938, M104/6/1, NAA, Canberra. Lyons to Bruce, DAFP, vol.1, 321, 30 November 1938. 2656 Suggestions of Bruce’s advocacy are found in P. Edwards, Prime Ministers, 116ff.; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 398. 351 given the status that he enjoyed with his prime minister on diplomatic affairs.2657 Like that of Pearce, it was striking, for Casey had long supported the present system of exerting influence within and through ‘British’ diplomacy, preferring that priority be given to closer inter-dominion links.2658 Finally, A.C.V. Melbourne was due, and privately sought, his share of the credit for full diplomatic relations with Tokyo, although conceding to the Japanese consul Lyons’s part ‘in all the results of the last few months’, an uncharacteristic concession by a man noted for his immodesty.2659 Whatever the contributions of others, Lyons has not received due recognition in the historiography for this groundwork, 1938-39, and for the important role that he had played as the presiding prime minister in the evolution of Australian diplomatic representation from trade and other commissioners to counsellors and finally to full ambassadors . When he came to office, Australia was the only major dominion without its own diplomatic representatives and even though Washington and Tokyo were the sole targets of the 1938-39 initiative, they proved to be well-focused ones.2660

V The ups and downs of appeasement policy in this period were not matched by similar movements in the government’s defence policy, which was steadily accelerated. That further measures of local defence were necessary had been made clear during the Czech crisis in September by the UK delegation at the Glenbrook conference, which had warned of British inability to dispatch overseas forces owing to ‘the threat to her heart’.2661 Lyons himself admitted at the same conference the failure of attempts to secure ‘universal disarmament’ and could see no immediate alternative other than further ‘defensive’ rearmament.2662 Accordingly, amidst that crisis, the government proceeded with its triennial program of rearmament, as signalled in the 1937/38 financial estimates and publicly announced in April 1938.2663 The 1938/39 budget, presented to a distracted parliament on 21 September 1938, provided for defence expenditure of ₤16,796,000, of which over ₤9.9 million was ‘new’, half of which was to be raised by loans, as financial stringency in the defence arena was loosened.2664 This envisaged expenditure proved timely, for on the night of 28 September 1938 the cabinet sub-committee on defence convened at

2657 Casey to Lyons, DAFP, vol.2, 1, 3 January 1939. 2658 Casey, “The Need for a United British Foreign Policy,” (17 October 1932) in The World We Live In: A Series of Speeches on Current Events, 71ff. Mansergh, Survey, 138, quoting Casey in January 1938 to the Australian Institute of Political Science. This was the model followed in Officer’s 1937 attachment to the British embassy in Washington. 2659 A.C.V. Melbourne to Wakamatsu, 28 April 1939, C443 J45, NAA, NSW. He was grateful that the new premier had proceeded with the matter. Menzies, however, declined to accept any correspondence from Melbourne and soon severed the links that had been established with Lyons; Menzies correspondence, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. 2660 Mansergh, Survey, 430, and Experience, 215, give the extent and history of post-war dominion diplomatic representation. By September 1939, Canada was represented in Washington, Paris, Brussels, the Hague and Tokyo; South Africa in Washington, Paris, Brussels, the Hague, Rome, Berlin, Stockholm, Lisbon and Cairo; Eire in Washington, Paris, Brussels, the Hague, Rome, Berlin, Lisbon and Madrid. New Zealand was without representation. 2661 Robbins, 299, quoting this delegation from the 1939 papers of the RIIA. 2662 Lyons speech, 3 September 1938, Second Unofficial Conference on British Commonwealth Relations, Glenbrook, NSW, Current Notes, vol.5, no.5 (September 1938). 2663 vide Chapter 6 on the fourth rearmament program. 2664 Hasluck, Government, 103. By the end of 1938/39, over ₤29 million had been raised by loans; Ross, Armed and Ready, 119. 352 the Lodge in anticipation of war on the morrow─ Lyons both in parliament and in his midnight broadcast later that night had seemed almost resigned to the sorrow and inevitability of armed conflict.2665 Although Munich averted war, Lyons remained cautious. It is true that at Glenbrook on 3 September 1938 he had anticipated ‘a happier era in human relations’, but he was not among those who believed that a new period of disarmament was possible in the immediate future.2666 This was unlike Chamberlain, whose own commitment to rearmament had been tardier and who was more eager to foresee an end to this expensive process and a return to progress ‘along the road to sanity’.2667 Mackenzie King too thought that Munich presaged a deceleration of rearmament, as did Curtin.2668 Lyons and his government, however, remained doggedly committed to rearmament and its post-Munich response was more akin to that of Roosevelt, who thought Munich worthless and increased defence spending accordingly.2669 The time of the ‘peace dividend’ had not yet arrived.2670 The close of 1938 saw only the acceleration, not deceleration, of Australian rearmament, for whatever the arguments over Munich, East Asia remained unpacified and this region had always been the chief centre of Lyons’s strategic concerns. Lyons personally made it immediately clear on his emergence from post-Munich recuperation that the putative triumph of political appeasement would not mean a relaxation of defence efforts. The bulk of his centennial speech at Shepparton, on 20 October 1938, dealt with defence. Australians, he said, were now a ‘serious people’ surrounded by a ‘girdle of peace’, by which he meant the ‘steel of the British navy’.2671 This was a serious, even belligerent, speech and the first of a series drafted by Lyons over the coming months, culminating with two radio addresses of March 1939, stern in their call for national readiness in the face of impending war.2672 Its sentiments were repeated in Canberra on 21 October to the Loan Council, convened to discuss the raising of defence funds and the utilisation of national resources, where the perpetual searcher for consensus called for ‘national unity’ and the ‘setting aside of partisanship’:2673

2665 This sub-committee had been formed in November 1937. At this meeting, it addressed the immediate and longer- term measures required ‘in the event of war’; Cabinet Papers, 28 September 1938, CRS A6006/11, NAA, Canberra. It discussed war organisation, including mobilisation, defence works and an increase in the size of the militia. 2666 Lyons Glenbrook speech, 3 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.5 (1938), 110. 2667 Rock, 15, quoting Chamberlain after Munich. On 3 October 1938 in the Commons, Chamberlain referred to ‘fresh opportunities of approaching the subject of disarmament’; Current Notes, vols.6-7 (1939), 181. He also insisted that further emphasis on rearmament would be ‘false’; Chamberlain to cabinet, 31 October 1938, quoted in Adams, 132. 2668 Mackenzie King believed an end to the ‘arms race’ now possible; undated response to Munich in DO 35/554/F82299. Curtin’s resistance to further defence expenditure after Munich was noted by Page, Truant Surgeon, 259. Curtin, CPD, vol.157, 1095ff., 2 November 1938. vide below. 2669 Roosevelt announced an increase in defence spending on 11 October 1938; Ovendale, Appeasement, 194-5. 2670 Enid Lyons had made much of this in 1937; Shedden to Enid Lyons, London, “The Relation of Cost of War and Armaments to Social Services”, 30 April 1937, A5954/1070/8; vide Chapter 5. The government had foreshadowed relief earlier in the year; Senator Foll, Ministerial Statement, 28 April 1938, Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, 1937-40, vol.2, no.40; vide Chapter 6. 2671 Lyons speech notes for Shepparton centennial speech, 20 October 1938, Joseph Lyons Papers, MS 4851/2/15. He used a similar analogy, with a significant distinction, on 23 March 1939, vide below. 2672 vide below. 2673 Earle Page, Truant Surgeon, 262-4, suggested that he had prepared this speech with Casey’s help in Lyons’s absence. If so, it was probably prepared after telephone consultation with Lyons, for it contained the Shepparton 353

It is apparent that a new spirit has arisen in Australia in the face of the last few weeks. The sobering experiences of September have bitten deeply into Australian life and there is an insistent call that Australia should leave no stone unturned in respect of our national security.2674

Lyons later described the result of this extraordinary gathering as ‘neither satisfactory nor encouraging’, but the government proceeded with a new program of rearmament regardless.2675 Cabinet discussed and approved further measures of military readiness on 26 October 1938,2676 and the re-equipping of the forces proceeded apace (including the ordering of fifty Lockheed bombers).2677 Lyons’s Labor critics in the parliament were finding it increasingly difficult to reconcile accelerated rearmament with the parallel prime ministerial boast that the Munich Pact had ‘preserved the peace of the world’.2678 When, in the parliament on 2 November, ‘General Joseph’ listed the acceleration of defence spending since 1933, it was to opposition derision.2679 Curtin failed to see the necessity for further spending given that war had been averted, describing any suggestions otherwise as ‘an utterly unjustifiable and hysterical piece of panic propaganda’.2680 Lyons in reply personally scoffed at Labor’s inability to identify any ‘enemy’:

I hope that there will never be an enemy to see, but we must prepare for the time when an enemy may arise. We cannot rest on a guess that an enemy will never come.2681

Despite the reiteration of his prime ministerial hope ‘that the engines of war and defence which we are providing ourselves may never have to be used’, it was clear that the peacemaker continued to scent hostility abroad and had personally concluded that the ‘horrors’ of war could be prevented only through further defensive measures2682 Dame Enid voiced similar thinking soon after, when she privately suggested that ‘the need for friendliness does not absolve us from the necessity of preparing ourselves for the defence of the country’.2683 These feelings of

sentiments. The cabinet considered and approved a final draft; Cabinet Minutes, 21 October 1938, A2694/19/1, NAA, Canberra. 2674 Lyons Loan Council speech, 21 October 1938, Cabinet Papers, CRS A6006/11, NAA, Canberra. 2675 Hasluck, Government, 128-9. The States bickered and were unprepared for the financial sacrifices involved. 2676 Cabinet Papers, 26 October 1938, CRS A6006/11, NAA, Canberra. 2677 Most recently made on 21 October; Loan Council speech, 21 October 1938, Cabinet Papers, CRS A6006/11; McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 25, 29; Lyons, CPD, vol.157, 1107, 2 November 1938. Lyons had travelled a long way since his support for the abolition of bombers in 1932; vide Chapter 1. 2678 Lyons, CPD, vol.157, 1100-1110, 2 November 1938. 2679 Brennan, CPD, vol.157, 1100-1110, 2 November 1938, suggested ‘General Joseph to the rescue’. 2680 Curtin, CPD, vol.157, 1095ff., 2 November 1938; A. Grenfell Price, Australia Comes of Age: A Study of the Growth to Nationhood and of External Relations (Melbourne: Georgian House, 1945), 101. pace Murphy, 410, that Curtin was responsible for the post-1936 rearmament and pace J. Camallieri, An Introduction to Australian Foreign Policy (Melbourne: Jacaranda Press, 1975), 16, that Labor in 1938 was urging ‘an increased military preparedness’. 2681 Lyons, CPD, vol.157, 1100-1110, 2 November 1938. 2682 Lyons, ibid., 1110. Private Secretary Temby, Devonport, on behalf of Lyons to J. Wardman, Bathurst, NSW, 13 January 1939, CP167/2 Defence Part 1, NAA, Canberra. 2683 Enid Lyons to Mrs. James, Kangaroo Point, 10 January 1939, CP167/2/9, NAA, Canberra. 354 insecurity were shared in this period by the well-informed A.C.V. Melbourne, whose fears of ‘invasion’ now seemed warranted,2684 for on the same day (2 November 1938) that F. Brennan, MHR, asserted ‘And no enemy in sight’, Japanese premier Konoye called for a ‘new order’ under Japanese hegemony that would ensure ‘the permanent stability of East Asia’.2685 Even though Kristallnacht indicated that Hitler’s aggression was momentarily directed inwards, Europe was still in a state of flux after Munich, despite Lyons’s observation that the settlement had set a pattern for the four powers to ‘collaborate more closely in matters of mutual concern’.2686 The threat to Australian security post-Munich continued therefore to be a two-fold one, ‘both east and west’ as Casey confidentially described it.2687 This did not mean that Lyons and his circle were yet ready to discard appeasement in any of its forms ─ even the impending, accelerated rearmament did not negate conciliation and on 2 November 1938 Lyons had also reiterated his government’s view that side by side with this defence policy stood the parallel aspiration of settling international disputes by ‘conference, negotiation and consultation’.2688 Nevertheless, he also personally maintained, in a manner similar to Chamberlain, that appeasement must continue to combine ‘strength with conciliation’.2689 In East Asia, the former element had predominated over the latter in Australian policy post-Yampi; it was now the turn of ‘European’ appeasement to be relegated in a similar fashion post-Munich.2690 It was becoming increasingly apparent towards the end of 1938 that ‘strength’ was outclassing ‘conciliation’, even if Lyons maintained public faith in a balance; confidentially, he admitted to Bruce in November that there seemed no ‘serious progress’ in appeasement and therefore not to expect any easing of armaments.2691 At some stage after Munich, the defence thinkers within the Lyons government decided that the fourth rearmament program of April was insufficient for its task and that a fifth rearmament program was required under a new defence minister. Thorby, arguably tainted in the Prime Minister’s estimation by his support for compulsion, surrendered the portfolio on 7 November 1938 in favour of Brigadier Street, politically inexperienced, but closer to Lyons.2692

2684 A.C.V. Melbourne to Forgan Smith, 18 October 1938, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2; A.C.V. Melbourne to Association of Far Eastern Affairs, 18 October 1938, ibid. 2685 Konoye, 2 November 1938, quoted in Tarling, 18-19; FRUS, 1938, vol.1, 478. Brennan, CPD, vol.157, 1100-1110, 2 November 1938. 2686 Lyons to J. May, Ross, Tasmania, 30 November 1938, A981 AUS 39(1). He had first expressed this view on 30 September, vide above. 2687 Casey to Officer, Washington, 5 December 1938, Officer Papers, MS2629/1/631, where he believed that security was threatened by darkening clouds ‘both east and west’. 2688 Lyons, CPD, vol.157, 1109ff., 2 November 1938. 2689 Lyons to J. May, Ross, Tasmania, 30 November 1938, A981 AUS 39(1). Chamberlain had used such language at Birmingham in April; Meyers, “International paradigms…”: 47. Chamberlain also referred to ‘conciliation and rearmament’ in January 1939; Ovendale, “Britain, the Dominions and the Coming of the Second World War”, 332; Niedhart, “British Attitudes and Policies towards the Soviet Union and International Communism, 1933-9”, 291. Berlin noted the two arms of appeasement; Weizsäcker, secretary, Memorandum, 26 April 1939, DGFP, series D, vol.6, 344. 2690 vide Chapter 6 on Yampi, mid-1938, and its defence implications.. 2691 Bruce record of telephone conversation with Lyons, Casey and Street, 24 November 1938, M104/6/1. 2692 Sawer, 102; McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 84. vide below on Thorby’s interest in conscription and the cabinet meeting of 7 November 1938. Street had been invited by Lyons to become a parliamentary secretary to the Defence Department in July 1938; ADB, vol.12, 117. 355 The appointment was in time for the new minister to present a supplementary program to cabinet on 15 November.2693 It was of stunning magnitude in the context of the modest Australian economy, increasing the earlier anticipated triennial sum of ₤43 million to £62.5 million (a rise of over forty-six per cent).2694 Some thought they knew the reason for this swingeing measure─ Lyons, observed Whiskard on 28 November, had worked himself into ‘some kind of desperate anxiety about the defence of Australia against Japan’, an anxiety notably shared across the Tasman by Savage.2695 Bruce, when he returned home in the new year after a considerable absence from Australia, was struck by the depth of this ‘anxiety’;2696 its profundity was indicated by Lyons’s additional admission to the UK high commissioner that he was pessimistic about the prospects of any British assistance in a subsequent war, despite the apparent settlement in Europe.2697 Nor could the US be depended upon in Bruce’s estimation, at least according to the negative response he gave to Lyons’s suggestion of possible US assistance during an emergency (likely to have had its origins in his Washington talks of July 1935), advice provided by the high commissioner before his own visits to Washington in December 1938 and May 1939.2698 Bruce had told Lyons, Casey and Street in a telephone conversation on 24 November that it was ‘unwise’ to factor any US input into local defence considerations,2699 and even though his fears were ameliorated to some degree (and Lyons’s confidence thus confirmed) by unofficial assurances subsequently offered to him by Roosevelt in person, Lyons did not live long enough to share this relief.2700 A rather despondent prime minister appeared to feel in late-1938 that Australia had little option other than to rely on its own defence ‘pillar’ with little prospect of external assistance, the course that he had long feared and one that Bruce assured him was not capable of assuring Australian security, however much was spent.2701

2693 Horner, Defence Supremo, 65. 2694 Thorby, “Mastering Our Military Destiny”: 7; Horner, Defence Supremo, 65-6. 2695 Whiskard to Harding, 28 November 1938, AIR 9/56, quoted in McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 144; Horner, Defence Supremo, 66; Hamill, 300. Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, 262, 285, accepts that Lyons was motivated to rearm by fear of German aggression, without addressing his greater anxiety about Japan. Savage, the NZ PM, was making his own proposals for a Pacific Islands conference, which Lyons suggested should also discuss strategic matters; Savage to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 335, 22 December 1938; Savage to Lyons, DAFP, vol.2, 9, 24 January 1939. 2696 Bruce to Roosevelt in conversation on 4 May 1939; Bruce to Menzies, DAFP, vol.2, 82, 8 May 1939, Attachment III, Bruce Conversation with Sumner Welles, Under-Secretary of State, 6 May 1939; original Bruce notes of his US conversations in M104/7/4, NAA, Canberra. 2697 Whiskard to Harding, 28 November 1938, AIR 9/56, quoted in Andrews, Writing, 191; also Cumpston, Bruce, 140. If Australian foreign policy was often what the Prime Minister told the UK high commissioner, as Edwards suggested, then so too, on this occasion, was defence policy; P. Edwards, “Australian Foreign Policy…”: 336. This pessimism paralleled that of Melbourne and Curtin; A.C.V. Melbourne to Lyons, 21 December 1938, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2; McIntyre, 140. 2698 Bruce record of telephone conversation with Lyons, Casey and Street, 24 November 1938, M104/6/1. Cumpston, Bruce, 139. vide Chapter 3 on Lyons in Washington. 2699 Bruce record of telephone conversation with Lyons, Casey and Street, 24 November 1938, M104/6/1; also in Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 328. 2700 Bruce record of US conversations: The President USA, 4 May 1939, M104/7/4; vide Chapter 3. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 285, 397-8, on Bruce in Washington. 2701 Nothing could be further from this than the suggestion of Primrose, 166, that Lyons reacted to criticism in late- 1938 by becoming more intransigent in his faith in the mother country. Bruce record of telephone conversation, 24 November 1938, M104/6/1; also in Attard, “High Commissioner’s Office”, 328. 356 Self-defence was the order of the day when Lyons and his wife broadcast to the nation on 4 December 1938 with the intention of preparing Australians for Street’s announcement of further rearmament in the following days. This unprecedented broadcast brought together many strands of Lyons’s thinking over recent years and its ambiguous assessment of the fruit of European appeasement has been noted.2702 At the same time that Lyons spoke with intense, personal prolixity about ‘peace’, an important theme of the broadcast was the grim necessity of preparation for war, which he called ‘vicious’ and a ‘puzzling paradox’: ‘We do not want war, but the last few years have clearly shown us that we must be prepared to go to war, if we hope to avoid it.’2703 Lyons was now close to admitting that some leaders of the disgruntled powers seemed to prefer armed force to negotiation, an admission that would have cast a shadow over appeasement. He certainly admitted that weakness invited attack and his immediate, very personal remedy, as put forward in this broadcast, was an appeal for militia volunteers─ it was left to Street to announce longer-term remedies in the following days.2704 The 4 December broadcast was the first made jointly by a prime minister and his wife and it has not been imitated since. Lyons had asked Dame Enid to speak to the women of Australia, ‘whom you understand and who trust you’, a request to which she readily agreed according to her belief that women were especially averse to war.2705 Her task was to prepare the women of Australia for the foreshadowed massive expenditure increases in defence. She did so by arguing that armed strength led to ‘diplomatic strength’ (presumably a reference to the ‘new’ diplomacy of appeasement), which was the ‘only’ instrument that would lead to ‘a lasting peace’.2706 The millions of pounds about to be expended were not therefore a waste and she concluded: ‘We must steel our hearts and minds to the task before us.’2707 This statement alone, with its personal overtones, disproves any suggestion that Joseph and Enid Lyons were ‘pacifists’ even if, in the acute assessment of the Australian National Review, the country was still ‘being prepared for war’ amidst a barrage of ‘pacific’ rhetoric.2708 The enormous nature of ‘the task’ became evident in the parliament on 6 December 1938 when Street presented details of the new program. Although the minister included something of an apologia for appeasement by stating his ‘instinctive hope’ that the processes of the ‘Munich Pact’ could still succeed, thereby limiting or reducing the scale of rearmament, his general comments made it apparent that this was not expected in the near future, for he referred to

2702 vide above; Joseph and Enid Lyons joint broadcast, 4 December 1938, A5954/69/1949/4. 2703 After Vegetius, Epitoma Rei Militaris; vide Introduction. 2704 Joseph and Enid Lyons joint broadcast, 4 December 1938, A5954/69/1949/4. 2705 She later admitted the great resentment this had caused amongst ministers; Enid Lyons, So We, 268; My Life, 34. The broadcast was followed by a public meeting at the Melbourne Town Hall. Enid Lyons believed that women were averse to war as ‘the bearers of life and its protectors’; 1943 ABC “Guest of Honour” broadcast, quoted in Sells, 123, 182 and similarly in her address; “Women: The Shock-Absorbers of the World”, Argus, 19 February 1935. 2706 Joseph and Enid Lyons joint broadcast, 4 December 1938, A5954/69/1949/4. 2707 Enid Lyons joint broadcast, 4 December 1938, A5954/69/1949/4. 2708 Anon., “March of Events.” Australian National Review, vol.5, no.1 (1 February 1939): 1. 357 Lyons’s conclusions of 4 December on the limitations of that agreement as ‘the bitter truth’.2709 Whilst at pains to suggest that ‘our own defence measures must ever be related to the wider pattern of Empire defence’ and candid in his admission of Australian naval weakness, the extensive program of supplementary measures the minister then announced must be set in the context of Lyons’s stated belief that Britain could not, or would not, provide much assistance to a beleaguered Australia.2710 This was, however, one ‘bitter truth’ that could not be admitted publicly, so Street suggested that this new program was intended to ‘provide local defence until support is forthcoming’2711 ─ the details of the program made it clear that there was no longer any ambiguity about which of the various defence pillars was the most important. An armed Australia was even to was to have its own mini-Singapores, as Darwin and Port Moresby were to be developed as autonomous naval bases in a RAN expansion from₤15.9 to ₤20.5 million.2712 As for Singapore itself, the minister assured that the government had ‘sound grounds’ for assuming its security, although the very announcement of home-grown, northern bases seemed to contradict this assurance and to confirm press rumours that Singapore would remain an empty base.2713 There was no new Australian commitment to the defence of that city to the chagrin of those lobbying for a strategy of forward commitment,2714 and despite the habitual, rhetorical priority extended to the RAN, larger proportional increases were in fact allocated to the other services.2715 The RAAF, for example, was to be expanded from₤12.5 to ₤16.4 million, a larger proportional increase than that of the senior service;2716 and the depth of the anxiety about home security was indicated by the funds allocated to land defence─ the long -aggrieved Army was finally to come into its own and to receive a striking boost from₤11.6 to ₤19.7 million, for the expansion of ‘permanent personnel’ and the militia. This expanded arm was to be concentrated in ‘vital areas’ of the continent, in order to deter ‘large-scale’ enemy operations in those regions. Clearly, the Lyons administration was now close to shifting its strategic vision of defence against ‘light raids’ definitively towards one against ‘invasion’ and to ending the state of flux of recent years, in which the two scenarios had shuffled for priority from one crisis to the

2709 Street parliamentary statement, CPD, vol.158, 2754-61, 6 December 1938; also in Meaney, 441-4. 2710 Street’s admission that ‘we cannot provide naval forces sufficient for our security’ is contrary to Andrews’s suggestion, “The Australian Government…”, 79, that Lyons failed at this time to admit Australia’s weakness. 2711 Street, CPD, vol.158, 2754-61, 6 December 1938. 2712 Darwin was also intended to be a base for two RAAF squadrons; Sydney Morning Herald, 1 February 1939, 15, f., something that the government had refused to concede to Singapore. In the third rearmament program of 1937, Darwin had been referred to as only a ‘sub-base’; Anon., “The Defence of Australia”: 133 2713 There had been press reports that the European crisis had shown Britain’s inability to send a sufficient fleet in time; vide below on Singapore and the reassurances of March 1939. 2714 J. Fairbairn, “Australia’s Defence.” Australian National Review, vol.4, no.23 (November 1938): 16, was also critical of the government’s failure to meet imperial commitments, as was Keith Murdoch vide below. 2715 McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 81-2, suggests that stress was laid on the importance of sea-power, with the announcement of the acquisition of 2 destroyers, but the figures speak for themselves. 2716 Lyons referred to the growth and importance of ‘air power’ in a speech at Adelaide on 14 December 1938, Sydney Morning Herald, 15 December 1938, 11, h. The RAAF was to be boosted from 17 to 18 squadrons, with 212 front-line aircraft (higher than the Salmond recommendations); McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 81-2. This required an additional 2,700 recruits over 3 years; Argus, 18 March 1939, 1, d. 358 next. The advocacy of Lavarack and others for a plan which presumed ‘a higher scale of attack’ (that is, ‘heavy raids’) now seemed close to being government policy.2717 Lyons came personally and politically close to admitting as much in Adelaide on 14 December, when he warned: ‘For the first time in its history, Australia might be the war zone.’2718 At the very least ‘heavy raids’ were now anticipated, although Street preferred on 6 December merely to warn ambiguously of ‘an attack’.2719 Within a fortnight, however, the minister refined the new role of the services as ‘the defeat…of any power which is threatening the independence of the country’2720 ─ ‘invasion’ in all but name. This official thinking was now very close to that of A.C.V. Melbourne, who had brought to Lyons’s attention in December the possibility of a Japanese attack on north-eastern Australia.2721 The reaction of the military to that particular suggestion, once Lyons had brought it to their attention, provided some indication of their private thoughts about the prime minister’s similar fears─ the Melbourne scenario was variously dismissed as ‘defeatist’, ‘impracticable’ and beyond the scope of the present ‘raids’ assessments.2722 The overall defence program of December 1938 was a ‘stunner’, in Casey’s description, but one demanding that Australians ‘pawn our shirts to try to ensure our security’, an understandable observation given that, as Treasurer, he was the minister responsible for funding it.2723 Street had told the cabinet in November that the proposed expenditure amounted to just under ₤63 million over three years according to Defence Department estimates,2724 (₤18.1 million in 1938/39 alone), at a time when the entire national budget constituted only ₤98.6 million in that fiscal year.2725 The amount to be spent on the services per se (in excess of ₤56 million), was to bring them to a state of ‘war readiness’ by 1940/41.2726 These were unprecedented figures in peacetime and ‘more than the utmost the country could afford’ according to Lyons in private.2727

2717 Lavarack’s suggestion to Lyons in May 1938; Lodge, 72. 2718 Lyons, Adelaide speech, 14 December 1938, quoted in Shepherd, 72. Much of the speech is found in Sydney Morning Herald, 15 December 1938, 11, h. 2719 Street, CPD, vol.158, 2754-61, 6 December 1938. Lavarack was unimpressed and continued to press for preparation against ‘invasion’. McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 81-2, suggests that the government failed to satisfy the needs of either the Singapore advocates or of those in favour of local defence. 2720 This was in response to questions on strategy from the RAAF; Street memorandum, 19 December 1938, AA63/39/37/301/360, NAA, Canberra, quoted in McCarthy, “Singapore and Australian Defence”: 170. Street repeated similar views following the 25 January 1939 Council of Defence meeting; The Times, 27 January 1939, 11, c. 2721 Melbourne to Lyons, 21 December 1938, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. 2722 Responses to Melbourne letter of 21 December 1938; Naval Board, 3 January 1939; Air Board, 6 January 1939; Military Board, 10 January 1939, A816 19/304/214, NAA, Canberra. Street later suggested that Melbourne’s concerns had been ‘exaggerated’; Street memorandum, 1 April 1939, A816 19/304/214, NAA, Canberra. This was also the view at the Admiralty; Downing Street to Whiskard, 14 January 1939, DO 126/3/35, PRO, London. 2723 Casey to Officer, Washington, 5 December 1938, Officer Papers, MS2629/1/631. The Central Bank and Treasury were both pessimistic about the government’s ability to fund such a program; Ross, Armed and Ready, 120. 2724 Defence Programme, n.d. but December 1938, A5954/69/1287/13, NAA, Canberra; Thorby, “Mastering Our Military Destiny”: 7; Horner, Defence Supremo, 65-6. Other surveys are found in Millar, 87; Ovendale, Appeasement, 212; Ovendale, “Appeasement”, 198 and in an Age review, “Defending a Nation”, 17 January 1939, 14, f-g. 2725 Ross, Armed and Ready, Table 4-2, 115. The Australian rate of expenditure equalled almost 18.5% of all government spending; British rearmament in 1938 consumed 7%, ₤358 million, (Germany spent some 25%); Mowat, table, 628 2726 Ross, Armed and Ready, 118-20. He calculates the figure of proposed “new” expenditure 1934/35-1940/41 as ₤54.3 million. Age review, “Defending a Nation”, 17 January 1939, 14, f-g. 2727 Whiskard to Harding, 28 November 1938, AIR 9/56, in McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 81-2. 359 As well as financial costs, there were political expenses, for this overt concentration on home defence led some critics within the UAP, such as James Fairbairn, to suggest that the government had ‘shirked’ its imperial duty, there being no mention of any overseas expeditionary force in the new rearmament program.2728 Although, Lyons promised ‘100%’ support to Britain in her defence efforts in his Adelaide speech on 14 December, this imperial rhetoric could not withstand a detailed examination of the latest, introverted defence program of his government.2729 Throughout the remaining months of his life, the Prime Minister remained confident that Australia was doing all it could to secure its own defence. His two final radio broadcasts, 23 and 28 March 1939, even indicated that the peacemaker had been over-shadowed in the final weeks by the rearmer, for they were stern in their delivery and in their personal foreshadowing of war. On 23 March, Lyons stressed that defence must become the ‘extreme concern of nation and people’.2730 He prematurely, if not misleadingly, boasted in this penultimate broadcast that the Army was ‘unequalled by any Dominion’; that the RAN stood ‘second only to the Royal Navy’; that the Wirraway was shortly to be under ‘local manufacture’ at Fishermen’s Bend and that Australia was self-sufficient in munitions.2731 He even foreshadowed a sixth rearmament program of some additional ₤26 million, all intended to make Australia the ‘great and powerful nation of the south’ within two years.2732 Defence, he concluded, must now ‘subordinate’ all other aspects of political life.2733 Lyons’s personal fear of war had now arguably come close to expunging his political hopes for conciliation. The prime ministerial mood had not lightened by the time of his final radio broadcast, on 28 March 1939. He now concluded that the international situation ‘looms like a huge, black cloud, hiding what otherwise might be blue, Australian skies’ and that, this time, there was ‘no sign of its lifting’.2734 The only alternative to national oblivion was a ‘regrettable’ but necessary ‘strong girdle of armaments’ that would at least provide further industrial development (in the style of trade diversion), for which he believed Australia possessed extensive capacity.2735 In October, Lyons had referred to a ‘girdle of peace’ and this alteration of his rhetoric indicated the

2728 Fairbairn, “Australia’s Defence”: 16. The ‘flying member’, later Minister of Air and Civil Aviation, was one of those killed in the Canberra air crash of 13 August 1940. Street and Gullett were also victims; ADB, vol.8, 458ff. 2729 Sydney Morning Herald, 15 December 1938, 11, h, reporting his Adelaide speech, 14 December 1938. 2730 Lyons broadcast, 23 March 1939, Episode no. 180775. vide below also for his comments on appeasement. 2731 ibid. The Wirraway (vide Chapter 5) was still little more than a CAC specification; Ross, Armed and Ready, 308ff., but its first test-flight followed on 27 March 1939; Sydney Morning Herald, 28 March 1939, in Crowley, 594-5. Street had earlier boasted of the transformation of Fishermen’s Bend from a ‘sand heap’ into the CAC aircraft factory; The Times, 27 January 1939, 11, c. It had been first mooted in 1937; Anon., “The Defence of Australia”: 134. 2732 Lyons broadcast, 23 March 1939, Episode no.180788 Part 2, ScreenSound, Canberra. This program was to include the provision of 950 new RAAF aircraft per annum up to June 1941; Mansergh, Survey165-6. 2733 Lyons broadcast, 23 March 1939, Episode no. 180775, Part 2. He reminded his listeners of the warning provided by the fate of ‘weak nations’, without conceding the role of the appeasers in their downfall. 2734 Lyons broadcast, 28 March 1939, “Australia’s Future Development”, Episode no.180769, ScreenSound, Canberra. He had earlier hoped that gathering clouds would disperse; Lyons statement, CPD, vol.157, 306-12, 28 September 1938; repeated in the midnight broadcast, vide Chapter 6. Hughes suggested on 5 October that they would ‘gather again’, CPD, vol.157, 400. 2735 Lyons broadcast, 28 March 1939, Episode no.180769. He had already referred to the pleasing increase in manufacturing industry in the same breath as defence in his Mercury article, 11 January 1939, 8, e-g. 360 psychological shift to an acceptance of the probability of war.2736 He promised further broadcasts on the topic of ‘Australia’s Future Development’, but was dead within the fortnight. What such broadcasts could have contained was indicated by his comments at his last Premiers’ Conference on 31 March 1939, where Lyons talked of ‘grave misgivings’ about the future and about ‘a sense of insecurity’, having promised the orderly expansion of primary and secondary industry in preparation for war.2737 These grim observations proved to be his final personal and prime ministerial words to the Australian people and their representatives on defence matters. VI Defence policy had been intertwined, against Lyons’s will, with the issue of conscription, particularly since the October 1937 election.2738 Although the term had been associated since 1916-17 with compulsion for overseas service and these associations endured, in the period 1937- 39 it was focused around the concept of compulsory service in the home militia (voluntary since Scullin’s reforms).2739 Lyons had very personally attempted, without much success, to put the issue to bed in the election campaign and in the aftermath of his 1937 victory, for he felt that his commitment against compulsion was irrevocable: ‘That was one of the things about which he was always adamant, he would not depart from anything he had promised in an election.’2740 ─ ‘Deloraining’. This assertion was not ex post facto rhetoric; Lyons demonstrated in 1938-39 that he would not countenance compulsory military/militia service (especially overseas service) under any circumstances and he successfully obstructed its introduction against supporters in the military and his own party. The issue even became something of a personal crusade and his passion for the cause of voluntaryism may explain his ultimate rejection of the many temptations of retirement ─ Hodgson noted in late-1938 that Lyons ‘refused’ to retire (even if Bruce was given the opposite impression in the following January).2741 The evidence suggests that Lyons’s personal and prime ministerial opposition to conscription, 1938-39, formed the decisive obstacle to its adoption as government policy. This episode therefore provides an example of idiosyncratic personality forming an important influence on policy (as outlined in the Introduction).2742 It has not received the attention of historians that it warrants.2743

2736 Lyons speech notes for Shepparton, 20 October 1938, MS 4851/2/15; vide above. vide Holsti, 133, (in my Introduction) on models of language and ‘real’ meaning. 2737 Premiers’ Conference, 31 March 1939; Hasluck, Government, 132-3. 2738 vide Chapter 5. 2739 Whiskard noted that ‘conscription’ in the Australian lexicon generally denoted ‘compulsory enlistment for service outside Australia’; Whiskard to Dominions Office, 17 March 1938, DO35/576/F706/491, PRO, London, but this was not entirely accurate in the late-‘thirties. 2740 Enid Lyons audio interview with Mel Pratt, Tape 1, 68. ‘Deloraining’ was his old 1920s concept, vide Chapters 1 and 5. 2741 Hodgson to Stirling, London, 24 October 1938, A981 EXTE 215, NAA, Canberra. Martin, Menzies, 256ff.; C. Edwards, 261-3; Cumpston, Bruce, 168-9. 2742 After Rosenau in Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 16; similarly Meyers, “International paradigms…”: 56; Holsti, 122, 138. 2743 Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, 213, 256, drew attention to its importance by citing conscription as the ‘only issue’ on which Lyons attempted to impose his will on cabinet. Wilcox’s otherwise comprehensive account of the militia does not examine Lyons’s pivotal role in 1938-39. 361 There seemed little doubt about Lyons’s personal position on conscription by 1938, but suspicion remained amongst hardened sceptics about the trend of government policy. The Australian Peace Pledge Union, for instance, implied a hidden agenda for conscription in an early-1938 pamphlet.2744 In fact, Lyons had just made his first post-poll, public reference to the issue, on 16 March 1938, where he specifically ruled out any change to the voluntary system of militia service ─ it was, he said, his desi re to increase the militia to some 45,000 personnel by voluntary means alone.2745 He reiterated this personal and prime ministerial view in a national broadcast on 24 March 1938, where he rejected the advice of the Council of Defence for a re- examination of the system of recruitment.2746 In the aftermath of the Anschluss, however, many on both sides of politics and in the military now thought that voluntaryism had run its course.2747 The Chief of the General Staff, Lavarack, was among them and urged the adoption of ‘National Service’ in May 1938.2748 This call excited some interest from the minister, Thorby, who issued a minute on 11 May 1938, asking the Military Board for details on the mechanics of compulsion.2749 This interest did not, however, extend from Victoria Barracks into the Lodge, for Lyons continued to rule out this option in June.2750 While the cabinet defence sub-committee had suggested, on the eve of Munich, that any ‘war footing’ must include a militia increase to 50,000,2751 the cabinet proper did not first consider the matter of ‘universal training’ until early-October 1938 and then only when Page was serving vice Lyons (‘resting in Tasmania’).2752 The evidence suggests that some in cabinet, in particular the defence minister, took advantage of this extended absence to push for the acceptance of conscription, in order that the returning prime minister would find himself faced with a cabinet resolution. Thorby asked the Military Board for additional details on 7 October, and presented its positive findings to cabinet on 11 October.2753 Questions seeking clarification on costing and asking for further ‘military arguments’ (perhaps considered the more effective as a means of convincing a sceptical Lyons) were subsequently dispatched to the Military Board on

2744 The pamphlet provided an unconfirmed prime ministerial quote to the effect that Lyons was prepared to be guided by the ‘force of [public] demand’; Australian Peace Pledge Union pamphlet, n.d., after 16 March 1938, A1608/1/45/1/12/2, NAA, Canberra. 2745 As reported in Whiskard to Dominions Office, 17 March 1938, DO35/576/F706/491. The current strength of the militia was c.35,000. 2746 Hodgson to Stirling, 25 March 1938, A981 EXTE 215, NAA, Canberra. Hasluck, Government, 103; Anon., “Foreign Affairs and Defence.” Round Table, vol.28 (June 1938), in Robson, Australian Commentaries, 128. 2747 Whiskard to Dominions Office, 17 March 1938, DO35/576/F706/491, reported the recent calls of the Tasmanian premier, Ogilvie, for ‘compulsory training’. This was not a widespread view within Labor; Andrews, “Australian Labour and Foreign Policy,” 28. A.C.V. Melbourne too had urged conscription in September 1938; “Australia’s Relations to other Pacific Countries”, Australian Institute of International Affairs, Australian Supplementary Papers E, no.2 (1938), 1, 17; A.C.V. Melbourne to Forgan Smith, 18 October 1938, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. 2748 Lodge, 72. 2749 The Board replied in a memorandum which set out the alternatives of a ‘partial’ or ‘gradual’ system; Military Board memorandum, 6-7 July 1938, A5954/895/10, NAA, Canberra. 2750 Age, 9 June 1938, in Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, 250. 2751 Cabinet Papers, 28 September 1938, CRS A6006/11, NAA, Canberra. 2752 Private Secretary Temby, Devonport, 13 October 1938, CP167/1/22. 2753 It considered that 70,000 youths could be compelled into service within 4 years, each serving for 1 year; Cabinet Papers, Military Board, “Reintroduction of Universal Training”, 10 October 1938, CRS A6006/11, NAA, Canberra. Cabinet Papers, 11 October 1938, CRS A6006/11. Cabinet was concerned about the expense of extending the size of the militia by compulsion. 362 the same day.2754 When the Board speedily provided its answers on 12 October, it considered that the voluntary system was incapable of providing the necessary numbers of militia recruits ─ some 55-60,000.2755 Thorby then matched the clear preference of the services for compulsion with a conclusive ministerial memorandum on the matter, also drafted on 12 October 1938, where he accepted that the voluntary system ought to be given a ‘further trial’ in an attempt to raise the militia to 60,000, but ‘only’ provided that universal training be introduced if this method was not successful ‘within a reasonable time’.2756 Given the advice of the Military Board, this proviso seemed unlikely to be fulfilled and the days of voluntaryism seemed numbered: Thorby had thus set the opponents of conscription, and Lyons was the chief amongst them, a task that he and the services thought impossible. In making this estimation, they underestimated Lyons’s determination on this matter of personal principle. Once the Prime Minister returned to active political life, on 21 October 1938, the whole issue was re-examined by the cabinet. Thorby’s pointed memorandum of 12 October, formed the basis of discussion on 25, 26 and 27 October, where it was resolved to make an ‘intensive effort to increase Militia to 60,000’.2757 For unknown reasons, Lyons declined the immediate opportunity to over-rule the developments and implications of recent weeks, which, as prime minister, he could have done (and effectively did in November) ─ one may speculate that he was conscious that on this issue he was very much against the trend of opinion in an increasingly divided and fractious cabinet. Instead, he happily accepted the challenge of this ‘further trial’ and would have none of the suggestions of the Board or minister, stated or implied, that voluntaryism could not reach the figure of 60,000. He was even confident that he could go beyond it; a secretarial note attached beneath the cabinet’s recommendation referred to an even greater increase ─ an ‘alteration indicated by PM’s influence to 70,000 as ultimate objective of voluntary system’.2758 Lyons had seen the Thorby’s bluff on 27 October and raised the stakes by a further 10,000. Inspector-General Squires later admitted that some (presumably including Thorby) thought Lyons’s proposed figure of 70,000 volunteers a wildly optimistic and unattainable one.2759 The Prime Minister, however, later expressed his personal confidence in public, confident that this figure was within reach, given that over 400,000 had volunteered for the First AIF.2760

2754 Memorandum by Lt. Gen. Squires, Inspector-General, AMF, 12 October 1938, A463/1957/1074, NAA, Canberra, where it is mentioned that the minister posed questions on costs and on whether the militia could be increased to 60,000 without compulsion; Cabinet Papers, 11 October 1938, CRS A6006/11. Paper by Lt. Gen. Squires, Inspector-General, AMF, submitted to Minister of Defence, 29 May 1939, MP729/6 50/401/80, NAA, Melbourne, where it mentions a response sent to the minister on 12 October 1938 ‘at his request’, setting out ‘military arguments’. 2755 Memorandum by Lt. Gen. Squires, 12 October 1938, A463/1957/1074. 2756 Ministerial memorandum M.131, 12 October 1938, Earle Page Papers, MS1633/633, NLA, Canberra. 2757 Cabinet Minutes, 25, 26 and 27 October 1938, A2694/19/1, NAA, Canberra; Cabinet Papers, 27 October 1938, CRS A6006/11. It was also resolved to establish Rifle Clubs and to ready the armed services for expansion. 2758 Handwritten note in an unknown hand.; Cabinet Papers, 27 October 1938, CRS A6006/11. 2759 Lt. Gen. Squires, Inspector-General, AMF, paper to Defence Minister Street, 29 May 1939, MP729/6 50/401/80, NAA, Melbourne, where he referred to the results of the recruitment campaign as ‘better than was expected by even the most optimistic supporters of the voluntary system’, although he admitted that there had been differences of opinion within the military. 2760 Lyons radio broadcast, 4 December 1938, A5954/69/1949/4. 363 After only a few days of reflection, Lyons appeared to regret his initial generosity and appeared no longer satisfied with the compromise of 27 October ─ a tetchy cabinet meeting in Melbourne, on 1 November 1938, brought the issue back to the boil. Generals Lavarack and Squires and Admiral Colvin were admitted as observers and witnessed the most extraordinary cabinet meeting of the Lyons years.2761 When the Prime Minister announced that his conscience could not allow him to support compulsory military training, the Minister of Trade and Customs, White, stormed from the room and subsequently resigned, despite Page and Casey’s efforts to soothe him.2762 The extent of cabinet support for Lyons’s veto, for that is what it constituted, remains unclear, but Dame Enid suggested that her husband was politically isolated, a view supported by the surrounding evidence: ‘Joe would not hear of conscription. He stuck out against the cabinet about that, absolutely.’2763 She clearly recalled his motives: ‘He had such a strong belief in the sanctity of human life and the sanctity of individual conscience.’─ that is, his own conscience.2764 To indicate that there was no going back, Lyons made his personal position very public in the parliament on 2 November (the same day that his leadership was re-endorsed within the UAP),2765 stating his personal, outright opposition to compulsion in any form, including suggestions of an amendment to the Defence Act to allow overseas militia service2766 ─ such personal expressions were rare in his parliamentary statements as prime minister and this exception gave some indication of his depth of feeling on the matter. He also announced his own, enhanced figure of militia recruitment for ‘home defence only’, as if it were government policy.2767 This set the parameters for the debates that followed─ there would be no overseas service by the Militia, which was intended, as Hughes later put it ‘to fight for Australia in Australia’.2768 Not until 7 November did the Lyons line prevail in a cabinet that contained a new defence minister and Lyons’s figures went unendorsed until 23 November, by which time the Prime Minister had been behaving for weeks as if the commitment to voluntaryism was already irrevocable, an indication of his disregard for cabinet opinion on this issue.2769 Through this

2761 Cabinet Minutes, 1 November 1938, A2694/19/1. 2762 White, Love Story, 200. Martin, Menzies, 248ff., gives some indication of White’s hostility to those who had not served in the AIF. Menzies, however, appeared sympathetic to White; Ovendale, Appeasement, 212. 2763 Enid Lyons audio interview with A. Clarke, Tape 2 2764 Enid Lyons audio interview with Mel Pratt, Tape 1, 27-8. Whenever the conscience of another conflicted with his own, Lyons suggested that this must be modified in ‘the common good’; Private Secretary Temby, Devonport, to J. Wardman, Bathurst, NSW, 13 January 1939, CP167/2 Defence Part 1. 2765 Martin, Menzies, 246, referring to this meeting, quoting Age, 3 November 1938. 2766 Lyons, CPD, vol.157, 1106-7, 2 November 1938. His comment on the Defence Act was related to the advice of the Military Board that conscription could be introduced without any major amendment to this Act; Cabinet Papers, Military Board, “Reintroduction of Universal Training”, 10 October 1938, CRS A6006/11. Such personal observations were rare in his parliamentary statements; vide Introduction. 2767 Lyons, CPD, vol.157, 1106, 2 November 1938. He repeated this assurance in his radio broadcast, 4 December 1938, A5954/69/1949/4. For Home Defence Only was later used by the DAL, vide below; Wilcox, 104. 2768 Hughes radio broadcast, 2GB, 14 March 1939, Hughes Papers, MS1538/42/5, NLA, Canberra.. These parameters had not prevented one minister, the Minister of Territories, Harrison, further calling for militia conscription; Sydney Morning Herald, 6 January 1939, 9, g. Hughes, in response, reiterated that the policy was ‘voluntary recruiting’ only; Sydney Morning Herald, 7 January 1939, 17, h. 2769 Although cabinet did not formally endorse the figure of 70,000 until 23 November; Cabinet Minutes, 23 November 1938, A2694/19/1, Lyons had already announced this figure; CPD, vol.157, 1106, 2 November 1938. Shedden to 364 stance and his commitment to the figure of 70,000, Lyons had set himself and his collaborators a Herculean task and an enormous political challenge, unsuited to a man whose health was now fragile. Indicating his intense personal identification with what he perceived to be the national interest, Lyons noted on 18 November 1938, that ‘failure cannot be permitted’ and would constitute a national ‘disaster’, but failure was now widely expected in political circles, let alone in the military.2770 Lyons’s self-imposed personal and political challenge after November was to demonstrate through a recruitment campaign that voluntaryism could provide the inflated numbers that he had set. He was chiefly aided in this task by two collaborators; his wife and Hughes ─ together, this triumvirate shouldered the burden of propagandising on behalf of voluntaryism in the following months. The co-operation of the former was natural, whatever her own belief about compulsion, for her husband’s political survival depended on its success (as Hodgson noted).2771 The co-operation of Hughes, however, was extraordinary given the role that conscription had played in his political life. As Minister of External Affairs, Hughes and his prime minister were often at odds on the efficacy of appeasement and the minister would not normally have been expected to trespass into the territory of the new defence minister, but on the issue of enhanced militia readiness, the two men were at one. Lyons flatteringly offered him (not Street) the chairmanship of a cabinet sub-committee intended to construct a ‘Volunteer Defence Scheme’ around 9 November and he accepted2772 ─ this provided another example of the Lyons- Hughes collaboration that endured despite their differences over many issues.2773 Hughes, as the ‘public face’ of the campaign was joined by R.B. Orchard, his former director of recruiting in the Great War, in a secretariat of which Blamey was accepted as Controller-General, according to Shedden’s suggestion and after Lyons persuaded a reluctant Hughes to work with his old DAL colleague.2774 It was one of the ironies of appeasement/rearmament politics that the great conscriptionist of 1916-17 now threw himself into the task of voluntaryism with such alacrity, breathing new life into the moribund ‘Defence of Australia League’, now endorsed by Lyons and

Lavarack, n.d. but after 7 November 1938, Military Board, A5954/800/20, NAA, Canberra, suggested that 7 November marked the date of cabinet acceptance. 2770 Lyons, CPD, vol.158, 1746, 18 November 1938. On 19 December, he suggested ‘disaster’; Age, 20 December 1938, 11, f., further indication of his personal identification with the national interest. Hodgson noted political scepticism about such an optimistic target; Hodgson to Stirling, London, 11 November 1938, A981 EXTE 215, NAA, Canberra. vide above on military scepticism. 2771 Enid Lyons audio interview with Mel Pratt, Tape 1, 27-8, where she suggested that she had been in favour of compulsory militia training. Hodgson to Stirling and Officer, 13 January 1939, A981 EXTE 215, NAA, Canberra, where he recognised that the bulk of UAP opinion remained pro-conscription. 2772 The sub-committee consisted of Hughes, the Defence Minister and the Minister of Defence Works; Cabinet Minutes, 9 November 1938, vol.19/1, NAA, Canberra. The committee first reported on 16 November and then undertook the task of recruiting; Cabinet Minutes, 16 November 1938, vol.19/1; Martin, Menzies, 246. 2773 vide earlier chapters for indications of Lyons’s desire for Hughes’s collaboration in 1932 at Geneva, 1933 over defence and 1936 over Japan. 2774 Wilcox, 104. Fitzhardinge, 649. The structure of recruiting was approved by cabinet; Cabinet Papers, 24 November 1938, CRS A6006/12. They were assisted by a Manpower Committee under Maj.-Gen. Jess; Hasluck, Government, 146ff; Horner, Defence Supremo, 65. Orchard was a former Liberal MHR and unsuccessful Nationalist candidate in the ‘twenties; ADB, vol.11, 89. D. Horner, Blamey: The Commander-in-Chief (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1998), 122, where Lyons overcame Hughes’s unwillingness to work with Blamey in 1938. vide Chapter 1 on Blamey and the DAL. 365 the Defence Department as an appropriate ‘citizens’ organization’.2775 Hughes had been a prominent advocate of compulsory militia service and a chronic critic of the low level of voluntary militia recruitment ─ this campaign offered him the best remedy other than a return to compulsion.2776 The task eminently suited Hughes’s populist temperament and demagogic abilities; administering a department of state now seemed to bore him, but he still relished the public platform.2777 The selection of the former wartime leader was another indication of Lyons’s political shrewdness, for it proved a popular choice in the press and one that was to galvanize a high level of patriotic sentiment that supplemented that aroused by the more restrained prime ministerial efforts.2778 The following four months witnessed an unprecedented, slick nationwide advertising push and a recruiting campaign the like of which had not been seen since the Great War.2779 Lyons took as much a part in this scheme of his own construction as his health would allow, assisted by his wife in joint public meetings that bore a similarity to their loan-conversion campaign of late-1930 in both scale and in the appeals for sacrifice in the national interest at a time of peril.2780 Lyons repeated his early successful use of the radio as a means of direct communication (including the first joint broadcast of 4 December 1938),2781 tapping into themes that he had previously found profitable, such as ‘Keep Australia Safe’.2782 Whereas in 1930-31 the enemies had been the economic wreckers, now they were nameless forces which, Lyons insisted, were placing Australia under imminent threat of attack.2783 ─ Japan, or Germany, was never mentioned by name. He also utilised the peace rhetoric that had always accompanied his rearmament, expressed ad absurdum by Dame Enid in Melbourne on 19 December 1938, where

2775 Hughes’s organisation played a prominent part in the campaign under the aegis “Australia Calls”, Hughes Papers, MS1538/32/1/2, NLA, Canberra. Its publications (published by the Government Printer) included For Home Defence Only; Wilcox, 104. Lyons statement, Devonport, Age, 3 February 1939, 11, a. The Defence Department used this slogan in its own literature; Recruiting Secretariat, early 1939 pamphlet, CP167/2 Defence Part 1, NAA, Canberra. Lyons also attended the inaugural meeting of the Tasmanian executive of the DAL in Hobart, 18 January 1939, CP167/2 Defence Part 1, NAA, Canberra. 2776 Meaney, Search, 46, on Hughes’s advocacy of compulsory service in 1901, 1903 and 1906. He had criticised Scullin’s abolition and low recruitment levels in Australia and War Today, 120-1. 2777 On Hughes’s role; Fitzhardinge, 649. 2778 Hughes seemed to have been pardoned for his wartime sins; Sydney Morning Herald, 22 December 1938, 11, c-f, on a Sydney rally, highlighting his oration. Similarly, Sydney Morning Herald, 29 December 1938, where a revival of the Light Horse was suggested. One editor, Baume, of the Sydney Sun, even wrote to Lyons to offer his services; Lyons to Street, 7 December 1938, CP167/2 Defence Part 1, NAA, Canberra. 2779 Blamey employed Paton’s Advertising Agency in Sydney; Wilcox, 104. A typical example of the campaign was the meeting at Hawthorn, Victoria, on 26 January 1939; Age, 27 January 1939, 11, b. The press reports of recruitment at workplaces and amongst families are resonant of the Great War; e.g. Age, 20 December 1938, 11, g., giving the number of increasing enlistments; Sydney Morning Herald, 21 December 1938, 15, h, “Good Progress. 6000 APPLY”. 2780 vide Chapter 1 on the period in which popular enthusiasm encouraged Lyons’s defection from the ALP. As in 1930-31, there were triumphant meetings in Melbourne, on 4 December 1938 (after the broadcast) and on 19 December, as well as in Adelaide, on 14 December 1938. He interrupted his recuperation in January 1939 to attend another meeting at the Melbourne Town Hall on Australia Day; Age, 27 January 1939, 11, c. 2781 Joseph and Enid Lyons joint broadcast, 4 December 1938, A5954/69/1949/4, vide above. Another broadcast followed on 19 February 1939, following Lyons’s return from Tasmania. He explored the possibility of a series of regular radio talks from radio 7BU, Burnie; A, Towner, 7BU, to Lyons, Devonport, n.d. but early 1939, CP 167/2/6, NAA, Canberra. Hughes made his own regular broadcasts on 2GB; Hughes Papers, MS1538/42/5, NLA, Canberra. 2782 Recruiting pamphlets, Hughes Papers, MS1538/32/1/8. Lyons had already promised ‘safe, sound government’ in October 1937; Martin, “The Politics of Depression”, 115. 2783 For example the reference in Adelaide on 14 December 1938 to the fact that ‘for the first time in its history, Australia might be in the war zone”, in Shepherd, 72 (vide above); Mansergh, Survey, 163. 366 she observed that recruitment was not only in defence of peace, but also ‘a gesture of love to this world of ours’.2784

The feverish recruitment campaign of November 1938-March 1939 was fruitful beyond anybody’s expectations, despite the fact that Labor had declined Lyons’s early offer to participate.2785 Instead, Lyons sought political and social consensus through the ‘citizens’ committees’ that became a prominent feature at the grass-roots.2786 By late-February, the militia had reached 61,259 personnel; by 30 March the talisman of 70,000 had been surpassed (a record figure beyond the last year of compulsion, 1929).2787 Although Lyons and Hughes had failed to convince a core of opponents, their achievement was nonetheless a notable one.2788 Both of these men warranted recognition for their considerable recruiting efforts, but Lyons alone had obstructed the path to conscription in October-November 1938 and provided the impetus for 70,000 volunteers.2789 The military was rudely surprised at what Inspector-General Squires called these ‘embarrassingly good’ results and a little disconcerted that its jeremiads had proved groundless.2790 It apparently consoled itself with the establishment of a compulsory National Register of Manpower, in late March 1939, and with further planning for a future transition to ‘universal training’.2791 Nor was the cause of conscription dead politically, as evidenced by the existence of a National Service Group within cabinet (that included Gullett and Menzies) and of organisations such as the ‘Protect Australia League’, but its voice had been stilled.2792 There

2784 Enid Lyons, Age, 20 December 1938, 11, g. On 10 January 1939 she talked of her ‘deep love of peace’ alongside the need to rearm; Enid Lyons to Mrs. James, Kangaroo Point, CP 167/2/9. 2785 Lyons offer to Curtin, CPD, vol.157, 1106, 2 November 1938. He also declined an offer later in the month; Cabinet Minutes, 24 November 1938, A2694/19/1; Age, 26 November 1938, 31, c; Andrews, Isolationism, 154-5. Lyons irritated Curtin by comments in the radio broadcast, 4 December 1938, A5954/69/1949/4, suggesting that Labor supported the figure of 70,000. 2786 These committees were an important part of the structure approved by cabinet; Cabinet Papers, 24 November 1938, CRS A6006/12. Lyons had urged their establishment and included appeals for employer co-operation; CPD, vol.157, 1106, 2 November 1938; radio broadcast; radio broadcast, 4 December 1938, A5954/69/1949/4. 2787 Street statement, 21 February 1939, Current Notes, vols.6-7 (March 1939), 69; Current Notes, vols.6-7 (March 1939), 146. The 1929 figure was 58,000; Inglis,: 49. 2788 A group of unemployed men were opposed and noted: ‘It wouldn’t matter to us if we were invaded. The invaders may give us a job, we would not be worse off. You might lose your job, but there is always relief work.’; J. Wardman, S. Bedford and a third unnamed, Bathurst, NSW, to Lyons, Devonport, n.d. but January 1939, CP 167/2 Defence Part 1, NAA, Canberra. Those who were supportive included a 10-year old; Max Ellison to Lyons, 16 January 1939, CP167/2 Defence Part 1, NAA, Canberra. 2789 Lyons did not receive much recognition at the time; Smith’s Weekly, 25 February 1939 cartoon, uncharitably suggested that Lyons slept while Hughes alone built a ‘defence wall’. By mid-1939 the figures had reached 77,000; Wilcox 104. 2790 The Squires memorandum, 12 October 1938, A463/1957/1074, had expressed doubt, vide above. He confessed his surprise to Street, 29 May 1939, MP729/6 50/401/80. In the face of the success of the campaign, the Military Board suggested that it could only be considered a ‘success’ if the government provided sufficient equipment for the extra 35,000; Inspector-General’s report, Cabinet Papers, 10 February 1939, CRS A6006/12, NAA, Canberra. 2791 Lyons had announced a voluntary register in his broadcast of 19 February 1939, CP 167/1/6, NAA, Canberra, but cabinet preferred a compulsory one on 29 March 1939; Cabinet Minutes, A2694/19/2, NAA, Canberra; Hasluck, Government, 146-7. It was hoped that the registration of women would be voluntary; Street memorandum, Cabinet Minutes, 27 February 1939, CRS A6006. Street asked the Military Board on 1 April 1939 for a report on the mechanism of a changeover to ‘Universal Training’, MP729/6 50/401/80, NAA, Melbourne. The Board replied soon after; C. Laffan, Secretary, Military Board, 12 April 1939, Cabinet Papers, CRS A6006/11. 2792 The Defence of Australia League drew Lyons’s attention to the PAL; DAL chairman, Melbourne, to Lyons, Devonport, 17 January 1939, CP 167/2 Defence Part 1, NAA, Canberra. Similar organisations, such as the Citizens’ Defence Movement, also continued to advocate conscription; Martin, Menzies, 258. The National Service Group continued to conspire against Lyons. It had links to Keith Murdoch; White, Love Story, 200; Enid Lyons, So We, 272; Enid Lyons audio interview with A. Clarke, Tape 2. 367 would be no compulsion whilst Lyons remained at the Lodge; only after his death, on 7 April 1939, did both the frustrated military and an anxious Labor recognise that this avenue had been reopened as a ‘long term’ alternative.2793 Joseph and Enid Lyons regarded the success of the militia recruitment campaign in the same light as their earlier triumphs of conscience, 1916-17 and late-1930; as personal and political vindication that indicated their political indispensability. In private, on 10 February 1939 (with the figure already pushing 60,000), the Prime Minister stated that he personally found it ‘heartening’ that ‘our people…are so anxious to do whatever they can for the defence of our country’.2794 Publicly, later in the same month, he talked in a way reminiscent of 1916-17, referring to this achievement as ‘a vindication of our freedom and a triumph for democracy’ in that Australians did not need ‘the spur of compulsion’.2795 His subsequent sense of a ‘virile Australian manhood’ perhaps owed something to the enthusiastic response of Australian men to his patriotic appeals during the campaign.2796 This was certainly the suggestion he made in a March letter, where he indicated his obsession of the moment, suggesting that the ‘splendid response…is an indication of our virility and resource as a nation’.2797 It was also a vindication of the personal and political risks he had recently undertaken. While the battle against conscription was successful, there had been one important casualty: consensus. Lyons was of the firm personal belief in his last months that ‘our country has a great destiny, but that we will not realise that destiny in our time unless we are prepared to sink minor differences and pursue a vigorous national policy’.2798 This subordination was what now constituted ‘consensus’ in his mind and presumably the ‘vigorous’ policy remained appeasement- cum-rearmament. He failed to acknowledge that his militaristic language and outlook had alienated many on the left in recent months and effectively soured any prospect of the ‘national unity’ for which he had called on 21 October 1938 at the Loan Council.2799 Given too the derogatory references that Lyons had made about Curtin as a ‘political magician’ and about Labor’s refusal to abandon ‘party political differences’ in early February (when he had questioned their commitment to national security), the prospects of bi-partisanship seemed remote.2800 It was not therefore surprising that when Lyons approached Curtin in March 1939 to

2793 Inspector-General Squires to Street, 29 May 1939, A5954 896/3, NAA, Canberra. In the subsequent Wilmot by- election, Labor accused its opponents of advocating the ‘conscription of human life’; Labor pamphlet, 27 May 1939, CP 167/1/5, NAA, Canberra; Fairbanks, 159. 2794 Lyons to W. Abell, Union Bank of Australasia, Brisbane, 10 February 1939, CP167/2 Defence Part 1, NAA, Canberra. He was especially pleased with the response of the young. Hughes too was pleasantly surprised; broadcast, 2GB, 2 January 1939, MS1538/42/5. 2795 Lyons radio broadcast from 3AR, 19 February 1939, Age, 20 February 1939, 11, a-b. 2796 Lyons to H. Cambell, editor of the Age, 21 February 1939, CP167/2/22, NAA, Canberra. 2797 Lyons to B. Jones, Basel, Switzerland, 16 March 1939, CP167/1/10, NAA, Canberra. This was a response to Jones’s earlier letter on birth-control. 2798 Lyons to A. Dalwood, Adelaide, 31 March 1939, CP167/2/22, NAA, Canberra. 2799 Lyons to Loan Council, Cabinet Papers, 21 October 1938, CRS A6006/11. 2800 Lyons refused to recall parliament from its summer recess; Lyons statement, “Mr. Lyons Issues Challenge”, Age, 3 February 1939, 11, a, c. Curtin, he said, was constantly repeating the words ‘Summon Parliament’ (he had also refused to do so in late-January 1939; Age, 27 January 1939, 11, a-b, following Curtin’s cabled request on 26 January 1939, CP 167/1/3, NAA, Canberra). 368 sound out the possibility of a ‘national government’ (an offer last made by Latham in December 1930), the proposal was rebuffed as a ‘kite’ intended only to preserve incumbency.2801 Lyons had left his call for unity ‘in the face of common danger’ too late and his search for political consensus remained as unfulfilled as his search for peace.2802 It could be argued that his rejection of the role of the parliament and of the opposition in these last months was the product of his poor state of psychological and physical health but, whatever the cause, by the last months of his life Lyons seemed on the verge of jettisoning consensus as he had once interpreted it, in favour of a new, ever-narrowing interpretation, which was more akin to unanimity. In so doing, he was abandoning the centre and drawing himself into a political orbit that seemed perilous even to his own staff.2803

VII

Enid Lyons assessed 1938 as having been a ‘long, bleak, unhappy year’ for her husband;2804 its successor brought no relief and the Prime Minister was able to offer little in his 1939 New Year broadcast other than further hope of conciliation: ‘We want these nations to understand us and our problems. We, in our turn, will try to understand them.’2805 When he put pen to paper during his Tasmanian otium (in mid-January), suggesting that ‘Australia Weathered 1938 Well/In Good Position to Face 1939’, he was referring only to the financial position; international relations were not mentioned.2806 Even such low expectations for the new year were to be unfulfilled ─ appeasement, including the modest Australian variety, was at a standstill in both Europe and East Asia, now universally over-shadowed by rearmament. The most acute disappointment of all for Lyons appeared to be the failure of Mediterranean appeasement, for of the aggrieved powers, Italy was the one that held his sympathy. Here, appeasement had arguably been applied in close to full measure and Italy had almost been offered a ‘free hand’ under the November 1938 accord.2807 Now, in the new year, this addressing of her grievances no longer seemed enough and Lyons, as a pioneer of appeasement, was reluctantly forced to draw his own conclusions about the overall efficacy of the approach. It was a bitter pill and one swallowed by a ‘sterner’ patient, although without much grace.2808

2801 Day, Curtin, 367, quoting the Daily News, 23 March 1939; Hasluck, Government, 113; Page, Truant Surgeon, 271. Labor had, of course, always been suspicious of such proposals, last made by Opposition Leader Latham in December 1930; ADB, vol.10, 186; Hart, “Labour Minister”, 42; Weller, Caucus Minutes, 10 December 1930, 46. 2802 Lyons broadcast, 23 March 1939, Episode no.180788, Part 2. He repeated the call on 28 March 1939; Episode no. 180769. 2803 vide below on the intercepted correspondence with P.R. Stephensen. 2804 Enid Lyons, So We, 272. 2805 Lyons broadcast, Age, 2 January 1939, 10, a-b. 2806 He discussed trade relationships only, concentrating on the domestic economy; Lyons article, Mercury, 11 January 1939, 8, e-g. He still felt comfortable with the mantle of economic manager. 2807 vide above on the Anglo-Italian accord in November 1938. On appeasement failing to offer a ‘free hand’; vide Introduction; Newman, 217-8; Skidelsky, 423-5. 2808 Hodgson’s observation on Lyons since Munich; Hodgson to Stirling, 13 January 1939, A981 EXTE 215. 369 There were early indications from the watchful Lord Perth that Mussolini was unhappy with Munich, for Italy had gained nothing whilst the ‘bad boy’ had been rewarded.2809 Shunning the mediating role assumed at that conference, Mussolini soon returned to unilateralism by February 1939, demanding that Italy be represented on the board of the private Suez Canal Company.2810 Despite all his sympathy for Rome accrued since at least June 1935, Lyons opposed this in his capacity as prime minister, a consideration due to his long-standing concern about the canal as a conduit of Australian trade and ‘Imperial communications’, as described in a section of a cable to Chamberlain on 14 February 1939, even though the appropriate paragraph was deleted at the request of Menzies and Hughes.2811 Their intervention is unexplained, although Lyons seemed happy enough to approve this deletion. That Lyons was personally still of the view that Italian demands were excessive was made clear when he broadcast to the nation on 19 February and was critical of recent Italian territorial claims on French possessions (in contrast to Chamberlain’s nonchalance), the first time he had voiced such complaints in public.2812 These claims, he said, had only ‘increased the gravity’ of an international situation in which there had been recently ‘a slight improvement’.2813 Certainly Hughes and his department believed that Mediterranean appeasement had reached a dead-end ─ Lyons now appeared to be drifting towards the same conclusion in February 1939.2814 Mussolini put paid to any further speculation about future alignments on 26 March 1939, when he publicly affirmed his faith in Axis solidarity.2815 This effectively represented the end of the process of Anglo-Italian accord that Lyons had so encouraged and attempted to stimulate in his own modest way since 1935─ the final nail was hammered into that coffin when Italian troops invaded Albania on Good Friday, 7 April 1939, coincidentally the same day that a dispirited Lyons died.2816 Despite the dimming prospects of Mediterranean appeasement in these last months, neither Lyons nor his wife abandoned their personal admiration for Mussolini, first voiced in

2809 vide above Perth’s observation that Mussolini saw the ‘bad boy’ rewarded; Attachment to Cabinet Papers, 26 October 1938, CRS 6006/11. Mack Smith, “Appeasement...,” 263, on Italy gaining nothing, hence her later claims. 2810 Current Notes, vols.6-7 (March 1939), 72. Its claim was based on its acquisitions in East Africa. The board was currently constituted of 19 Frenchmen, 10 Britons, 1 Dutchman and 2 Egyptians. The claim was widely supported in the Italian and German press. 2811 vide earlier chapters on his strategic concern; Ovendale, Appeasement, 184-5. Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.2, 23, footnote 2, 14 February 1939; PREM 1/353, PRO, London. The cable was chiefly concerned with his opposition to further Jewish emigration to Palestine and its potential for alienating Arab opinion; Ovendale, Appeasement, 210. 2812 Lyons broadcast from 3AR, 19 February 1939; Age, 20 February 1939, 11, a, b. The claims (on Nice, Corsica, Tunisia and Djibouti) had been first made in November 1938; Hughes parliamentary statement, 20 April 1939, Current Notes, vols.6-7 (May 1939), 189-90. Chamberlain thought they need not be taken seriously; Cabinet Minutes, 21 December 1938, CAB 23/96, PRO, London, confident of Franco-Italian détente; Crozier, 270, quoting Chamberlain to Henderson, 19 February 1939, FO 800/3145/LHP. 2813 Lyons broadcast, 19 February 1939; Age, 20 February 1939, 11, a, b. vide below on the so-called ‘improvement’ following Hitler’s Reichstag speech of 30 January 1939. 2814 External Affairs “Survey of the International Situation”, 1 February 1939, presented in Cabinet Papers, 28 February 1939, CRS A6006/12, NAA, Canberra. 2815 Hughes submission, Cabinet Papers, 28 March 1939, CRS A6006/12, NAA, Canberra. 2816 Stirling, 96, was wrong to suggest that the invasion had been the cause of Lyons’s second heart attack, as he had been semi-unconscious through the night of 6-7 April; Argus, 8 April 1939, 1, a-c; White, Joseph Lyons, 195. The invasion was reported at the same time as his death; Argus, ibid., g-h. Even this invasion did not formally terminate the Anglo-Italian Agreement in the view of Chamberlain, statement, 13 April 1939, quoted in Hughes “Statement on the International Situation”, 20 April 1939, Current Notes, vols.6-7 (May 1939), 189-90. 370 1935 and most recently expressed at the time of Munich.2817 In the weeks before Lyons expressed private and public concern about Franco-Italian tension, he had still vigorously defended Mussolini against the abuse of H.G. Wells, who had referred to the Italian leader, at Melbourne on 4 January 1939 as ‘a fantastic, vain renegade from the Socialist movement’.2818 Lyons responded:

It happens that the nations, whose leaders are the subjects of the wit of Mr. Wells, have systems of government which differ from our own. While different systems of government may offer the occasion for differences of opinion, serious argument, deep conviction, and even clever phrase- making. I consider that personal insults offered to the leaders of one nation by the citizens of another nation are to be deplored.2819

Chamberlain later agreed about the counter-productivity of ‘personal attacks’,2820 and it had been accepted by the Imperial Conference of 1937, and recently restated by Lyons at Glenbrook, that different systems need not impede international understanding ─ peaceful co-existence.2821 Lyons (along with other appeasers) never conceded Wells’s simultaneous point, that the political systems of Italy, Germany and Japan were intrinsically evil, for he believed that democracy was inherent to the ‘British’ world.2822

Dame Enid allowed another (Burns via the poet Mary Gilmore) to voice in February 1939 what remained their attitude to Mussolini: ‘ “A man’s a man for a´ that” is my doctrine, whether he be a Hitler or a Mussolini.’2823 Even a quarter-century later she gave further indication of her continued inability to understand the mentality of totalitarianism, expressing her enduring annoyance with those who denied their contemporaneous recognition of the legitimate achievements of Mussolini’s ‘dynamic leadership’ and its ‘domestic miracles’.2824 It was this

2817 vide Chapters 3 and 6. For Lyons old interest in a ‘third way’, vide Chapter 1; World, 14 March 1921, 4, also quoted in Hart, “Labour Leader”: 37. 2818 Wells, Melbourne press conference, 4 January 1939, Age, 5 January 1939, 8, f-g, where he also made comments about Hitler, vide below. Wells was in Australia for the ANZAAS conference in Canberra in January 1939. 2819 Sydney Morning Herald, 6 January 1939, 9, f, reporting a statement issued on 5 January 1939. 2820 Chamberlain; Cabinet Minutes, 29 March 1939, CAB 23/98, PRO, London. Foreign Minister Downer was widely criticised more recently for speaking impolitely about the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein; Australian, 25 July 2002, 11,a. 2821 Imperial Conference, Statement, 9 June 1937, CP4/2; Lyons, Glenbrook speech, 3 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.5 (1938). Lyons was in the company of G.M. Trevelyan, who concluded in 1937 that ‘dictatorship and democracy must live side by side in peace, or civilization is doomed.’; M. Gilbert, “Appeasement in Action”: 1576. 2822 It was erroneous, in his world-view, to seek democratic systems outside of that ‘British’ world; Lyons, Glenbrook speech, 3 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.5 (1938). 2823 Mary Gilmore (quoting Burns), to Enid Lyons, 6 January 1939, Enid Lyons Papers, MS 4852/6, NLA, Canberra. Dame Enid described her as an ‘old socialist’ friend; Enid Lyons, So We, 265-6, assessing her as ‘not strong on political science, but sound for the most part in political sentiment’. Gilmore had remained an adherent of Lyons, despite March 1931, vide F. Moorhouse, ed., in White, Joseph Lyons, 13. 2824 Enid Lyons, audio interview with Mel Pratt, Tape 1, 73, referring to Menzies. On Mussolini, she admitted that ‘power corrupts’; Enid Lyons, So We, 270, and she still nursed reservations about his exclusion of women from the political process; Enid Lyons wartime broadcast, n.d. c.1940, Enid Lyons Papers, MS 4852/25, NLA, Canberra, similarly in 1943; Sells, 123. 371 admiration that had sustained the Lyons-brand of appeasement into 1939 and it was thus appropriate that Mussolini was the first foreign leader to cable sympathy to the widow, after 7 April.2825 This cordial cable, when set against the unfriendly events of the first months of 1939, highlighted one of the flawed premises found in the thinking of appeasers such as Lyons and Casey ─ that better personal relations between statesmen could be transformed into better international relations, irrespective of ideology.2826 VIII

Tokyo joined Rome by spurning conciliation in favour of further unilateral aggression in the period after Munich. There seemed to be two explanations for this endgame of eastern appeasement: either Tokyo (like Mussolini) saw that Hitler had reaped the harvest of aggression and wished to imitate this success, and/or the Japanese militarists were (like Lyons and Melbourne) spurred by the belief that Munich was the precursor of some similar settlement in East Asia, thereby wishing to enhance their territorial acquisitions beforehand.2827 Whatever their motivation, the unstable Japanese administration showed little indication of any willingness to negotiate with anybody over anything in the post-Munich period, October 1938-April 1939, preferring to add more strategic islands to its sprawling maritime empire.2828 This belligerence was likely fuelled, however, by Tokyo’s resentment that ‘appeasement’ had been applied to more recent German and Italian acquisitions, but still not to the older Japanese ones, especially the seven-year-old Manchukuo.2829 Lyons continued his own search for regional consensus in this difficult period via Pratt and through his efforts for diplomatic connections, but the process of Anglo-Japanese détente, to which he had modestly contributed in late-1933, had come to nought. This was despite the arguably real prospects of success that eastern appeasement had enjoyed, if London had pursued the matter with as much vigour as Canberra wished. In the months before Lyons’s death, however, the relations between Tokyo and the Anglo-Saxon powers had never been so sour. The Prime Minister feared, as he told his Adelaide audience in December, that Australia was likely to pay the chief penalty were this situation to lead to war.2830 He did not need the transient H.G. Wells to remind him in January 1939 that Japan represented an ‘aggressive reality’ to Australia.2831

While Lyons contemplated the remedies of formal diplomatic representation and further personal diplomacy, he reiterated to Whitehall (on 10 January 1939) the importance that

2825 Stirling, 96. It must be assumed that Bruce told this to the author, from Enid Lyons’s report. 2826 For example; Casey, Australia’s Place in the World, 57. 2827 A.C.V. Melbourne to Wakamatsu, 8 October 1938, C443 J45. 2828 Half-hearted talks with Britain had ceased in September 1938 with the resignation of premier Ugaki; Tarling, 18. This period was one of great instability in Japanese politics and of increasing military control; Beasley, 251ff. Tarling, 19, on territorial expansion which included Hainan. 2829 This point was made in A.C.V. Melbourne to Lyons, 24 January 1939, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2. 2830 Lyons, Adelaide speech, 14 December 1938, in Shepherd, 72; Sydney Morning Herald, 15 December 1938, 11, h. 2831 Age, 27 January 1939, 10, b. Wells, ignorant of Lyons’s thinking, thought Australians ‘not sufficiently interested’ in this reality. D. Dow (former Australian Commissioner in New York City), unpublished article, “H.G Wells in Australia, A Provocative Visitor.”, David Dow Papers, Papers and Lectures 23, University of Melbourne Archives. 372 ‘Australia’ attached to good Anglo-Japanese relations and the concomitant necessity for continued consultation.2832 Whitehall had other ideas, the likes of which were made clear in cabinet on 18 January 1939 by Halifax, whose attitude against appeasement was hardening, when he referred to the benefits of a ‘stiffer attitude’ towards Japan.2833 Such an attitude was directly contrary to Australian interests, at least as interpreted by Lyons, who still preferred flexibility. That continued flexibility was needed was illustrated by the habitual call of Japanese Foreign Minister Arita for a ‘new order’ on 21 January 1939,2834 in itself nothing extraordinary except that Arita had supplemented earlier Japanese ambitions by suggesting that even a status quo de jure in Manchukuo would not be in accordance with ‘justice’─ the Japanese vision of China’s futu re now seemed somewhat broader than it had been in 1932.2835

The Sydney consul, Wakamatsu, made this post-Munich, Japanese belligerence evident to Canberra through a querulous list sent to Lyons on 17 February 1939, in which he ominously likened the deteriorating bilateral relations to those that had prevailed in China prior to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese hostilities.2836 This implied threat must have contributed to the ‘constant source of anxiety’ referred to by Lyons’s in his broadcast two days later.2837 A reply to the consular letter was thus carefully considered and even drafted by a cabinet sub-committee, consisting of Lyons, Page, Menzies and Casey (the full circle of appeasers within cabinet), although not the appropriate minister, Hughes, whose anti-Japanese sentiment, always intense, was becoming more manifest ─ soon he publicly spoke of her as an ‘invader’.2838 In the considered official reply to Wakamatsu’s complaints, on 3 March 1939, Lyons mixed his own views (‘I’) with those of his ministerial circle on behalf of the ‘Commonwealth Government’ in what proved to be one of the last collegial documents of Australian eastern appeasement. He initially reminded Wakamatsu of his own conciliatory credentials, recalling the 1934 Eastern Mission, the 1937 Pact and his government’s recent opposition to trade embargoes.2839 He suggested that mutual interest was the best basis for continued ‘peace in the Pacific’ (an apparent recognition that Japan failed to value principles, only self-interest), an interest that stood to suffer

2832 Hodgson was instructed to draft a cable to this effect; Strahan, private secretary, Devonport, to Hodgson, 10 January 1939, A981 JAP 102, NAA, Canberra. This was the same day that he wrote to Dr. Melbourne thanking him for his recent correspondence; Lyons to A.C.V. Melbourne, 10 January 1939, A1608 B41/1/6; vide above. 2833 Halifax in cabinet, 18 January 1939, CAB 23/97, PRO, London, re a British protest note to Japan about the abrogation of the ‘Open Door’ trade policy on 14 January 1939; External Affairs Survey of International Situation, 1 February 1939, submitted to cabinet, 28 February 1939, CRS A6006/12, NAA, Canberra. 2834 Arita speech, 21 January 1939, Earle Page Papers, MS1633/655, NLA, Canberra; A981 JAP 185 PART 2, NAA, Canberra. This call repeated that of Konoye, 2 November 1938, quoted in Tarling, 18-19; vide above. 2835 External Affairs “Survey of International Situation”, 1 February 1939, submitted to cabinet, 28 February 1939, CRS A6006/12, noted the expansion of Japanese ambitions in China. 2836 Wakamatsu to Lyons, DAFP, vol.2, 27, 17 February 1939; A981 101 PART 2, NAA, Canberra. He complained of a series of unflattering recent press and broadcast portrayals of Japan. 2837 Lyons broadcast, 19 February 1939, in Shepherd, 72; A981 AUS 32; Sydney Morning Herald, 20 February 1939. 2838 Cabinet Minutes, 2 March 1939, vol.19/2, NAA, Canberra. Hughes, radio broadcast, 14 March 1939, MS 1538/42/5. He reminded Australians of the proximity of the newly-acquired Japanese possession of Hainan to Wau, New Guinea [1,000 miles!]; Hughes broadcast, 19 March 1939; The Times, 20 March 1939, 9, a; Doherty, 218-9. 2839 He was referring to the union-inspired pig-iron dispute, but failed to mention trade diversion or Yampi; Lyons to Wakamatsu, DAFP, vol.2, 34, 3 March 1939; Hughes Papers, MS 1538/42/5, NLA, Canberra. 373 in any regional war: ‘Interest therefore marches with sentiment in the direction of continued peace.’2840 This letter illustrated the adjustments occurring in Lyons’s thinking at this time and/or the moderating influence of the sub-committee which had drafted it ─ gone was the old outright sympathy for Japanese grievances, replaced by the realistic acceptance that whatever distance now existed between Tokyo and Canberra (considerable to judge from these letters), there still existed a body of mutual interest considered sufficient to warrant their co-operation. Thus the final, distilled form of Australian eastern appeasement, as outlined by the predominant circle of ministers, contained more Realpolitik and less idealism, and was arguably without many of the illusions of its prototypes, even if Lyons himself retained some hope for a revived Pact.

Wakamatsu initially refused to be mollified, further warning of the ‘consequences’ of antipathy on 15 March,2841 but he allowed himself a more conciliatory letter of farewell two days later, in which he expressed confidence that mutual problems could still be solved with ‘good will’ ─ Lyons had suggested as much on 3 March.2842 This final consular gesture was received by Lyons with good grace (‘I have noted with gratification…’) on 3 April 1939 when, in one of his last letters, he expressed his personal (and prime ministerial) confidence that ‘most cordial relations’ could be maintained.2843 That the future of eastern appeasement was questionable, however, must now have been obvious to all but the most optimistic. When Wakamatsu still felt compelled as late as May 1939 to deny before an Australian audience that Manchukuo was a Japanese ‘puppet’,2844 he indicated that the terms of the debate had shifted little since Latham had first attempted to address this very issue over five years earlier.

IX

The final moves in the endgame of Australian appeasement were made in the first months of 1939 by Lyons, and by Hitler. With Italy’s new demands and Japan’s hyper-sensitivity, only German appeasement offered any immediate hope for the conciliators, but its arguably dim prospects only worsened after 1 January 1939. Regardless, Lyons engaged in these months in some tortuous attempts to sustain and justify appeasement policy in the face of domestic and German hostility, until he conceded defeat in late-March 1939 following the latest outrage in central Europe. It was a period of great psychological tension for him, as he watched the

2840 ibid. 2841 Wakamatsu to Lyons, DAFP, vol.2, 39, 15 March 1939. 2842 Wakamatsu to Lyons, 17 March 1939, CP 167/2/4, NAA, Canberra. He had been transferred to Calcutta. Lyons to Wakamatsu, DAFP, vol.2, 34, 3 March 1939. Shortly after, Longfield Lloyd provided an assessment suggesting that Wakamatsu’s claims of anti-Australian feeling in Japan were groundless; Lloyd, Tokyo, to R. Craigie, British ambassador, 25 March 1939, A981 JAP 181 PART 2, NAA, Canberra. 2843 Lyons to Wakamatsu, DAFP, vol.2, 68, 3 April 1939. 2844 T. Wakamatsu, “Japan and Australia.” Australian National Review, vol.5, no.29 (May 1939): 7-19. Such denials also extended to the Chinese region governed by its clients, which Tokyo insisted must also recognize Manchukuo; “Survey of International Situation”, 1 February 1939, CRS A6006/12. 374 aggressors reap their harvest and the tide of press opinion slipping away from appeasement and with it what he regarded as the prospects of peace.2845

From their New Year broadcasts alone, it was not immediately apparent that Lyons and Hitler were operating in different moral spheres. The Australian leader reminded his listeners from Devonport: ‘We want peace and we mean peace’;2846 Hitler too spoke of Germany’s desire to ‘contribute to the general pacification of the world’.2847 Lyons was still apparently prepared to give such comments due credit. Accordingly, he was keen to correct any unfavourable impression made by H.G. Wells in Melbourne, on 4 January 1939, when he referred to Hitler as ‘a certifiable lunatic’, alongside similarly unflattering observations on Mussolini.2848 Lyons’s response on the following day from Devonport was a very personal one, like those that followed at intervals through the month, for there is no evidence that the issue was discussed with ministers, many of whom (like Menzies) appeared to find the whole episode embarrassing.2849 Lyons issued a press statement in which he noted the offensiveness of ‘personal insults offered to the leaders of one nation by the citizens of another nation’, likening such attacks to any offence that would be caused by foreign insults to the ‘Royal Family’.2850 In the view of many Australians, this suggestion was risible, as the Prime Minister would subsequently discover in the press and public debate that ensued, and he was generally made a figure of jest for advancing it.2851

Unaware that he had begun to roll a snowball of more general debate on appeasement, Lyons expanded his comments on 6 January, seeking to expand the basis for his observations by speaking on behalf of his government, making it clear in this second statement that ‘the Federal Government is not to be associated with remarks which have been made by our visitor’.2852 It was the impact of Wells’s comments ‘across the world’ that especially worried him and led to a third statement (on 9 January), where spoke from the heart, without any sense that it was a strange form of peacemaking that sought to muzzle free speech. The statement was accurately described

2845 Twomey, “Munich,” 33, refers to the fierce debate in the press in the period after Munich and the hostility of the Sydney Daily Telegraph and the Melbourne Herald. The Herald editorial, “Hitler Means War on the Democracies”, 17 March 1939, 6, c, was typical of Murdoch’s new outlook. 2846 Lyons New Year broadcast; Age, 2 January 1939, 10, a-b. Lyons remained in Tasmania from 21 December 1938 until mid-February 1939 recuperating, although he made some fleeting visits to Melbourne for recruiting and Council of Defence meetings in late-January; Ovendale, Appeasement, 212-3; Council of Defence minutes, 25 January 1939, CP 167/1/20, NAA, Canberra. Even cabinet was called to Hobart, 7 February 1939, Cabinet Minutes, A2694/19/2 (not A2694/16, pace DAFP, vol.2, 10, footnote 13), after which Lyons returned to the mainland. 2847 Hitler New Year speech, 1 January 1939; Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, 1560-1. Both men spoke of military increases for defensive purposes. 2848 Wells, Melbourne press conference, 4 January 1939, Age, 5 January 1939, 8, f-g. On comments about Mussolini, vide above. Wells was responding to criticisms of himself and his visit that had appeared recently in the German press. He had already made similar comments in the London News Chronicle on 2-3 January 1939. 2849 Menzies, at a PEN club literary dinner for Wells, Melbourne, 7 January 1939, merely defended Lyons’s right to make such comments; Martin, Menzies, 254ff.; Age, 9 January 1939, 12, b; Argus, 9 January 1939, 9, d-e; Dow, “Wells”: 2; Mercury, 9 January 1939, 7, a-b. 2850 Lyons, 5 January 1939, Sydney Morning Herald, 6 January 1939, 9, f. 2851 Smith’s Weekly, “SOMNAMBULISTIC Sir”, 14 January 1939, 6, d, thought it ‘unpardonable, even though uttered in sleep’. 2852 Lyons press statement; Age, 7 January 1939, 25, a, reporting the statement issued on 6 January. He telephoned the mainland press from Devonport. 375 in the press as a ‘plea’, an apparent recognition of its personal nature, and it revealed the desperation that Lyons himself now felt about his peace policy:

I am sincerely desirous of creating conditions which will make for peace in the world. Modern war, with its attendant horrors, is not a matter for neat controversy. It is a question of life and death to millions of people. Any action or statement which brings the possibility of war nearer must come under the most careful scrutiny. We must distinguish between desirable firmness in upholding the principles of democracy and the giving of needless offence to peoples who do not accept our system of government.

If, as members of a democracy, we indicate unmistakably that we are prepared to defend to the utmost our democratic institutions and way of life, I believe that in the present state of world affairs we assist the cause of peace. There are some statements which do not serve such a purpose. They give needless affront to other nations and those people responsible for them are not assisting to maintain peace in the world.2853

These sentiments were similar to a message Lyons had recently addressed to the International Peace Campaign in London, also reflective of his continuing obsession with ‘peace’ through restraint: ‘The trend of recent events emphasises the necessity for intensive efforts on the part of all people to maintain and secure peace.’2854 Freedom of Australian political debate was now acceptable to Lyons only under certain conditions. This view of the need for verbal self-restraint was one long-espoused by Enid Lyons, but not one accepted by some other ministers such as that prime ministerial aspirant, the Attorney-General.2855 The view that free speech, particularly discussions on international affairs, ought to be restrained in the interests of appeasement, whilst not without its precedents in Lyons’s earlier theory and practice, or in other dominions,2856 excited great hostility in the Australian press─ 1938 had been an especially censorious year and many now appeared to have had enough in the belief that appeasement had run its course.2857 Even the generally sympathetic Hobart Mercury uncharacteristically branded Lyons’s suggestions ‘utterly ridiculous’, although complimentary

2853 Lyons press statement; Age, 10 January 1939, 10, h; Sydney Morning Herald, 10 January 1939, 13, g. 2854 Lyons to International Peace Conference, London; Sydney Morning Herald, 7 January 1939, 17, d. 2855 On 29 July 1935, Enid Lyons called for the voluntary restriction of free speech: ‘Often we become incensed by somebody saying something which was derogatory to the Empire, but we should remember that we said things which were derogatory to other countries’; Enid Lyons speech at Melbourne, Age, 30 July 1937, Piesse Papers, MS882/9/9/ 952. Menzies at a PEN club literary dinner for Wells, Melbourne, 7 January 1939, where he spoke in favour of free speech; Martin, Menzies, 254ff.; Age, 9 January 1939, 12, b; Argus, 9 January 1939, 9, d-e; Dow, “Wells”: 2; Mercury, 9 January 1939, 7, a-b. 2856 Mansergh, Survey, 429, refers to Mackenzie King’s ‘golden silence’ in this period. 2857 Earlier chapters provide examples of Lyons’s attempts to muzzle or contain debate on issues from trade diversion to Abyssinia to the Anschluss; Andrews, Isolationism, 107, 132. In the course of 1938, the federal government had insisted on the prior submission to the censors of any radio broadcast discussing international affairs; Macintyre, History, 310. On the censorship of 2KY; Sydney Morning Herald, 22 December 1938, 11, h. and 12; Smith’s Weekly, 7 January 1939, 10. 376 about his personal qualities of ‘kindliness, honesty and homliness’.2858 Where the Prime Minister had sought to pacify and to ameliorate, he had only provoked. Editorial letter columns were filled in the following days with correspondents keen either to voice their support for appeasement, or to vent their spleen about what they now clearly considered a discredited policy.2859 Although now keen to still the debate, Lyons was equally as keen to impress upon editors that many letters of support had been sent to Devonport and he emerged from the episode with both a damaged regard for the mainstream Australian press and with an enhanced sense of his own righteousness.2860

Lyons’s wish for a restoration of calm and for a stilling of the criticism that his comments had excited (something Wells contemptuously referred to as a ‘stoppage’),2861 was further evidence of censoriousness in the view of the anti-appeasers,2862 but their analysis excluded one important motive overwhelming all others in Lyons’s mind at this time, almost paralyzing his critical faculties ─ his haunting fear of war. In seeking to censor Wells, the Prime Minister had not chiefly been responding to events in Melbourne, but to those in London and Berlin.2863 Whatever conclusions one draws on Lyons’s censoriousness at this time, he was on strong ground in his belief that comments such as those of Wells offered ‘needless offence’ to foreign leaders. In London, the German ambassador, Dirksen, had spoken to Halifax personally on 5 January about Wells’s remarks and reiterated earlier protests about insults to the dignity of the Head-of- State.2864 Lyons’s first response, on 5 January, where he used the ‘Royal Family’ analogy, indicated either direct knowledge of these German objections or, at the very least, an ability to

2858 Mercury, editorial, 9 January 1939, 6, c. It recanted its criticisms on the following day, in an editorial entitled “The Prime Minister”, where it complimented Lyons for showing courage amidst recent emergencies and lauded his personal qualitites; Mercury, 10 January 1939, 8, b. For a more even-handed assessment; Sydney Morning Herald, editorial, 7 January 1939, 16, d. 2859 The Argus placed this correspondence in columns designated “Mr. Wells and Mr. Lyons”. About 70% of it was hostile to Lyons. Other newspapers published a sprinkling of letters on the topic and opinion seemed more evenly divided in these examples. The editor of the Argus closed correspondence on 10 January; E. Bonney to J. McEacharn, Melbourne Club, 10 January 1939, CP 167/1/14, NAA, Canberra. One of Lyons’s former political associates, Kingsley Henderson, was a director of the Argus; ADB, vol. 11, 258. Although the friendship was not as strong in 1939 as it had earlier been, when Enid Lyons, So We, 275, recalled Henderson as one of his two closest friends. 2860 R. Dawson, Commonwealth Publicity Officer, Devonport, to editor, Sydney Morning Herald, n.d. but January 1939, CP 167/2/22, NAA, Canberra. The correspondence files of the period contain many such letters and replies, such as those from Dr. Moffatt in Adelaide, 12 January 1939, and from P. Mayer, Warburton, 7 January 1939, CP 167/1/13, NAA, Canberra. The Gilmore letter was among them, vide above. 2861 Wells, Smith’s Weekly, 28 January 1939, 2, f-g. The full quote is found above in the introductory quotes and is consciously based on Tacitus, Agricola 30, where Roman policy was referred to as the creation of desolation, then called peace: ‘ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant’. 2862 Wells referred to Australia as ‘a half-Fascist nation’; Wells to Fellowship of Australian Writers dinner, Sydney, 25 January 1939; Dow, “Wells”: 4. 2863 Chamberlain was following the same path; MacDonald to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 133, 10 February 1938, informing that the Prime Minister intended to urge the media to avoid offending Germany and Italy. Lyons’s reply promised similar procedures; Lyons to MacDonald, DAFP, vol.1, 135, 12 March 1938. An early casualty was ‘The Watchman’, E.A. Mann of the ABC; Andrews, Isolationism, 132. Peters 147, on post-Munich British censorship, quoting A. Adamthwaite, “The British Government and the Media.” Journal of Contemporary History, vol.18 (1983): 281-97; also Cockett, 111. 2864 Dirksen-Halifax interview, London, DGFP, series D, vol.4, 290, 5 January 1939. Cockett, 40-1, discusses the complaints of Hitler himself to Halifax in Berlin in November 1937; similarly in Roberts, Holy Fox, 77-8. Sydney Morning Herald , 6 January 1939, 9, f. 377 assess what the likely reaction from Berlin would be.2865 The former alternative seems the more likely, for he was in constant telephone communication in this period with London and an examination of his second response on 6 January (which dealt solely with inter-governmental relations), suggests knowledge of the nature of those German objections, as does later correspondence.2866

Lyons was never one for excessive reflection. Throughout his political career he had prided himself on his earthy, common sense and one may speculate that this was why he refused to take the opportunity now to reassess the difficult political position in which he had placed himself through an injudicious defence of unabated appeasement.2867 The debate of January 1939, however, gave him no cause to alter course; rather it reinforced his determination to proceed regardless. In the face of public excoriation, he sought consolation in private correspondence. Two private letters in particular in this period provide an instructive insight into Lyons’s psyche at the end and indicate the persistence of the world-view that he had constructed before and during his period as prime minister. The first was to the political stalwart Sir Norman Kater on 16 January 1939, and the second to the editor P.R. Stephensen on 9 March 1939.

Kater, businessman, wool-grower, company director and sometime conservative parliamentarian had advised Lyons during the trade diversion episode.2868 He wrote to express his support in early January and Lyons, in his reply of the sixteenth, offered a frank account of his thinking at a time of widespread pressure to abandon his search for peace. In Kater, he had found a sympathetic ear and he wrote with personal candour:

The nations of the world are so delicately poised on the brink of war at the moment that responsible men must be more than ordinarily careful that they do not provoke ill-feeling.

As you so admirably point out, it is not fair to abuse foreign leaders personally when the law of libel gives them no chance of vindication whereas it would protect our citizens. I felt it is incumbent upon me to protest against such remarks. It is useless for us to speak of peace and the maintenance of peace if we are to imperil international relations by inflammatory words. The controversy which has ensued surely tells us very plainly that there are many people in the community who, if given a chance, would provoke war tomorrow by hot-headed and jingoistic utterances. Apparently the people who really value peace have to engage in a real fight to maintain the atmosphere of sweet reasonableness and tolerance which must prevail if world conflict is to be avoided.

2865 Lyons statement 5 January 1939, Sydney Morning Herald, 6 January 1939, 9, f, quoted in part above. 2866 Dirksen had suggested a libel suit against Wells (DGFP, Series D, vol.4, no.290, 5 January 1939), a view known to Lyons by 16 January; vide also the Kater letter below. 2867 Although conscious of Crick, 29-30, that it is ‘impossible’ to get into the mind of another. 2868 Kater, ADB, vol.9, 534-5; Moffat described him as ‘very Old Guard in his outlook and unsympathetic with the arriviste’, for Kater still boasted of his role in smashing a shearers’ strike in 1922; Moffat Diary, 4 December 1935. Tsokhas, “The Wool Industry”: 456 and Chapter 5 on their collaboration in 1936. In 1937, Kater invited Wakamatsu to his country estate, but he was unavailable; Kater to Wakamatsu, Sydney, 29 May 1937, C443 J89, NAA, Sydney. 378 Let me say how helpful it is to have such a letter as yours, which confirms my belief that I acted rightly, even if I have been subjected to considerable criticism for what I did.2869

Similar points had been made in the first paragraph of Lyons’s public statement of 9 January 1939, where he had referred to his desire to create ‘conditions which will make for peace in the world’ and to war as ‘a question of life and death to millions of people’.2870 The expansion of these themes in this private letter revealed what one biographer referred to as ‘identity’ (the tension between the subject’s perception of self and reality).2871 Lyons was never able to resolve the tension between his desire for peacemaking and the reality of international relations in the age of the dictators. He now seemed to view himself as an increasingly isolated prophet of peace without honour in his own country. The Kater letter was especially notable for its sense of self- righteousness and for its dogged, abusive defiance of anti-appeasement opinion, quite contrary to the cultivated image of a man of conciliatory disposition. The extraordinary observation on the libel laws perhaps owed something to Dirksen’s earlier complaints to Halifax,2872 assuming Lyons’s knowledge of them, but its mention here was arguably a further reflection of the writer’s state of mind amidst the stress of recent months, implying that he too felt himself unfairly penalized by being denied his ‘chance of vindication’.2873 Fortunately for Lyons, this observation was never made in public, for it is interesting to speculate on what the Australian press would have made of this view, however personal and unofficial it was, that Hitler and Mussolini were unfairly disadvantaged by their inability to take civil action against Australian-based slanderers, although the Mercury had offered some clue when it earlier asked: ‘Why…should Mr. Lyons be so solicitous of the tender feelings of these gentlemen?’2874

Other conclusions in the Kater letter are also worthy of attention. The call for continued ‘sweet reasonableness and tolerance’ at a time when Kristallnacht was fresh in public memory and when the European refugee problem was becoming acute, seemed partisan and purblind, as did the terminology used to describe the arguments of his opponents. When considered alongside Lyons’s assertions of December 1938 that Australian democracy was under threat from sinister forces ‘within’, a picture may be sketched of a man displaying symptoms of political (and personal) paranoia.2875 Such a state of mind can only have been nourished through the support of his wife, who remained deeply committed to her own vision of peacemaking and had thus

2869 Lyons to Kater, Sydney, 16 January 1939, CP 167/1/11, NAA, Canberra; Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, 253. 2870 Lyons statement of 9 January, Age, 10 January 1939, 10, h. Sydney Morning Herald, 10 January 1939, 13, g. 2871 Martin, “Elements…,” 15, earmarked ‘identity’ as one of the biographer’s four foci; vide Introduction. 2872 DGFP, series D, vol.4, 290, 5 January 1939; vide above. 2873 Holsti, 120-1, on the rational fragility of decision-making made under extreme stress, during which the subject often resorts to ‘psychologic’, as opposed to ‘logic’. 2874 Hobart Mercury, editorial, 9 January 1939, 6, c, where it also observed that one looked in vain for any apology from Hitler or Mussolini for the abusive comments found in their press. 2875 Age, 20 December 1938, 11, f-g. vide also Sydney Morning Herald, 28 December 1938, 8, e; Age, 28 December 1938, 8, c. 379 become an important target of Murdoch’s anti-appeasement campaign in this period: ‘When he speaks, she speaks.’2876 That she was closely involved with the affair is suggested by her apparent recall of the sentiments of the Kater letter in a later justification of her husband’s behaviour, remembering that he had been incensed at Wells’s abusive language and was averse to rudeness in any form.2877 More importantly, she claimed, he was conscious that peace was ‘on a tightrope’ or, as Lyons himself put it both publicly and privately at the time, hanging by a ‘slender thread’.2878 It was a view that both husband and wife had long held, fearful of the possibility of an ‘accidental’ war like that of 1914.2879 This sense of a precarious peace helped to explain the poor judgement that Lyons displayed, in March 1939, in drafted private correspondence to the ultra-nationalist, quasi-fascist writer P.R. Stephensen, where he provided a further example of the psyche of an appeaser (albeit an extremely ill one suffering from a condition that may affect mental processes) during the endgame.2880 The editor of the extreme Publicist had written to the beleaguered Prime Minister on 3 March, complimenting him on a recent radio address (about the responsibilities of the press) and enclosing the text of a talk that he intended to give ‘in appreciation and support of your National Broadcast’.2881 Support of any kind from any source was undoubtedly welcome at this time and Lyons apparently found the proffered text to his liking, as he made very clear in his drafted reply of 9 March 1939. He thought it full of ‘sound judgements’ that were worthy of ‘a wide circle of thinking people’, taking the opportunity to congratulate the founder of Australia First and author of The Foundations of Culture in Australia (which he had clearly read with sympathy) on his ‘many admirable statements…on the need for developing in this country a national outlook and culture as a contribution to world welfare’.2882

Had this private (not prime ministerial) letter been dispatched and its contents made public, some would have endorsed Wells’s hyperbolic suggestion that Australia was drifting towards ‘semi-fascism’.2883 Exaggerated though that claim was, the stress of these last months seemed to be warping Lyons’s hitherto steady political equilibrium and steering him towards some strange company. It seems that this course seemed questionable to someone on Lyons’s

2876 Keith Murdoch saw the wife behind the husband’s ‘pacifism’ at this time; Murdoch to Clive Bailieu, 4 January 1939, MS 2823/27; Martin, Menzies, 258; White, Love Story, 208. 2877 Enid Lyons, So We, 265-6. It was becoming increasingly common for Dame Enid to answer correspondence on her husband’s behalf at this time, some indication of his ailing health. 2878 Enid Lyons, So We, 265-6. Lyons speech, Adelaide, 14 December 1938; Shepherd, 72; Mansergh, Survey, 163; Lyons quoted in Hodgson to Stirling, 13 January 1939, A981 EXTE 215, NAA, Canberra. The similarity of their expressions is some guide to the general reliability of Enid Lyons’s later recall of her husband’s attitudes. 2879 Enid Lyons at Fremantle, Herald, 20 July 1937, 2, b-c. Chamberlain held similar views and expressed this point to Hitler on 15 September 1938; DBFP, 3rd series, vol.2, 896. 2880 Lyons’s poor health could have clouded his judgement; vide Conclusion. 2881 P.R. Stephensen, Sydney, to Lyons, 3 March 1939, CP 167/2/22, NAA, Canberra. On Stephensen; ADB, vol.12, 70; also Hasluck, Light, essay on Stephensen. He gave regular Monday night radio broadcasts over the Catholic station 2SM; C. Munro, Inky Stephensen Wild Man of Letters (St.Lucia: UofQ Press, 1992), 177 and 195-6, on his inclination towards fascism through the Australia First movement. 2882 Lyons to P.R. Stephensen, Publicist, Sydney, 9 March 1939, CP 167/2/22. Stephensen’s magnum opus (1936) had called for a ‘distinctively Australian culture’; Macintyre, History, 313. 2883 Wells to Fellowship of Australian Writers dinner, Sydney, 25 January 1939, Dow, “Wells”, 4. 380 staff, through whose hands it passed despite its private capacity, for the letter was marked ‘Cancelled’ and ‘NOT SENT’ by a hand other than that of its author2884 ─ Stephensen (the closest thing to a home-grown fascist) was thus deprived of what would have been claimed to be a prime ministerial imprimatur, one that he would have found difficult not to disseminate or to produce at his subsequent wartime trial. It was to the benefit of Lyons’s posthumous reputation as a man of the centre that the letter remained forgotten in the correspondence files, for the drift of his political thinking towards the end was becoming like his overall appeasement policy ─ difficult to defend and a source of discomfort to many on both sides of Australian politics.

X

One of the factors pressing on Lyons’s ‘psychologic’ throughout January 1939 was Hitler’s impending Reichstag speech, due on the thirtieth.2885 Given his conviction that peace was already on a ‘slender thread’,2886 the indications from London through Duncan (vice Bruce) and the Dominions Office, that the speech was expected to be belligerent, were unsettling.2887 These warnings so disturbed the Prime Minister that he circulated the DO cable to Curtin and the premiers (an unprecedented step), owing to Hodgson’s advice that ‘this is the most disquieting communication we have received for a considerable time [indicating that] we may be faced with grave developments at any moment especially after 30th January’.2888 This anxiety was in contrast to Chamberlain’s nonchalance over the same matter.2889 The putative threat to peace recently posed by Wells (according to Lyons’s testimony) seemed about to be replaced by a real one.

This ‘long-awaited’ speech was a masterpiece of ambiguity and illustrated that Chamberlain’s prior analysis seemed to be better based than Lyons’s unrestrained anxiety.2890 On the credit side, Hitler acknowledged the good work of Mussolini and Chamberlain at the time of Munich,2891 moderating his earlier suggestions that Germany was relentlessly pursuing autarchy and concluding that she must ‘export food for goods or die’ ─ this seemed an endorsement of the ‘economic appeasement’ he had earlier rejected but with which Chamberlain had persisted.2892

2884 ‘Cancelled’ was written across the whole typed text, Lyons to P.R. Stephensen, 9 March 1939, CP 167/2/22. Perhaps Lyons himself or Dame Enid reconsidered the wisdom of the letter. 2885 Holsti, 120-1, on ‘psychologic’, the rational fragility of decision-making made under extreme stress. This important date in the Nazi calendar was frequently used for notable announcements. It is hard to find another example to match this one of an Australian leader’s obsessive concern about the contents of a foreign declamation. 2886 Hodgson to Stirling, 13 January 1939, A981 EXTE 215. 2887 The acting High Commissioner cabled warning that the speech was likely to demand reparations or the return of colonies and to be threatening; Duncan to External Affairs, 23 January 1939, Hughes Papers, MS 1538/42/5, NLA, Canberra; Twomey, “Munich,” 34. A similar warning followed from the Dominions Secretary; Malcolm MacDonald to Lyons, DAFP, vol.2, 10, 25 January 1939. 2888 Hodgson to Hughes, attached to MacDonald to Lyons, DAFP, vol.2, 10, footnote 13, 25 January 1939. Lyons did not accept Hodgson’s advice to shift the scheduled cabinet meeting of 7 February 1939 from Hobart. 2889 Chamberlain suggested that not too much notice be taken of the speech, recalling how much unnecessary anxiety had been expended over the Nuremberg speech of 12 September 1938 (vide Chapter 6); Cabinet Minutes, 25 January 1939, CAB 23/97, PRO, London. He was right. 2890 Age, 1 February 1939, p,13. 2891 He had already done so; Hitler New Year speech, 1 January 1939, Baynes, The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, 1560-1. 2892 Hitler Reichstag speech, 30 January 1939, Baynes, The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, 1568ff. He had denounced economic appeasement as ‘a joke of history’ on 20 February 1938 and announced that Germany’s aim was autarchy, in 381 This was more welcome to the ‘economic’ appeasers (like Bruce), than to those more committed to the primacy of the ‘political’ version (like Lyons and Page), despite the temptations of further trade with a more open Germany.2893 On the debit side, however, Hitler dismissed one aspect (albeit a now largely symbolic one) of the appeasing agenda, the revision of the League Covenant, as of only ‘Platonic significance’.2894 He also resurrected the issue of the ‘stolen’ German colonies and, although he denied a casus belli, his listeners were warned that without a just redistribution of the world’s resources, it was necessary ‘from time to time [for] a correction by force’:2895 ‘Violence or Justice’.2896 There was sufficient scope in the speech for those of opposing views to cite it selectively for their own purposes (as Lyons did), in that it was free from any ‘specific menace’, but also free from any specific concession.2897 Lyons was especially keen to manage the local aftermath and to ensure prime ministerial control over the official Australian reaction by cabling all ministers from Devonport, including the appropriate minister (Hughes) and forbidding them to make any comment. He reserved that right for himself alone (‘One Voice’)2898 ─ an example of how fine the prime ministerial management of foreign policy under Lyons could be when the man at the top was so disposed, even if that dominance was not always consistently applied, as it had not been, for example, over the simultaneous issue of diplomatic representation. Menzies and the new ‘inner cabinet’ were thus clumsily muzzled during this episode in what seemed to the hostile press, like Smith’s Weekly, to be an internal exercise matching the external censoriousness of an intolerant government;2899 only two days before this muzzle had been applied, Wells had made his wry observation on ‘stoppage’ in the same journal.2900 The frustrated external affairs minister waspishly observed: ‘We must all say the same thing.’2901 ─ Hughes was able to circumvent the prime ministerial ban by making observations on contrast to the economic appeasement suggested in the League report of the Belgian PM, van Zeeland, in January 1938; Crozier, 258. On 28 January 1939 Britain and Germany struck an economic deal on coal; ibid., 269-70, in line with Treasury and Foreign Office desire for ‘Anglo-German economic co-operation’; M. Gilbert, “Appeasement in Action”: 1573. Halifax thought that the economic aspect the most significant part of the speech; Cabinet Minutes, 1 February 1939, CAB 23/97, PRO, London. Despite 30 January 1939, Hitler remained a believer in autarchy; C.Leitz, “ ‘Export or Die’; Foreign Trade in the Third Reich.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.48, no.1 (March 2002), passim and 58. 2893 Lyons met van Zeeland on 22 June 1937, but he rarely advocated economic appeasement; vide Chapter 5. Like Page, he believed that the political form must come first; DAFP, vol.1, 209, 25 May 1938. Lyons was accordingly reluctant to discuss publicly suggestions of improved trade with Germany; R. Douglas, private secretary, to W. Skelsey, editor, Queensland Country Life, 22 August 1938 (in reply to letter of 15 July 1938), CP167/2/22, seeking Lyons’s response to an article (“Germany Wants Wool”) critical of the government’s refusal to allow a wool deal. 2894 Hitler, 30 January 1939, Baynes, The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, 1568. Although the constitution of the League was a declining aspect of appeasement, this dismissal indicated an unwillingness to accept conciliation. 2895 External Affairs Summary of Hitler speech, 30 January 1939, Current Notes, vols.6-7 (January 1939), 56-8. Stirling also provided Neville Henderson’s mixed assessment from Berlin; Stirling to External Affairs, 1 February 1939, A981 GER 22 PART 3, NAA, Canberra. 2896 Sydney Morning Herald, 1 February 1939, 15, a, b. The speech was widely reproduced in the press, including the prescient part of it which threatened ‘Jewry’ with ‘annihilation’; Age, 1 February 1939, 13, a, b. 2897 External Affairs Summary, 30 January 1939, Current Notes, vols.6-7 (January 1939), 64. Debate in the press continued on whether the speech was ‘conciliatory’; Age, 1 February 1939, 13, d; Age, 2 February 1939, 9, a, b. 2898 Age, 1 February 1939, 13, c; Sydney Morning Herald, 1 February 1939, 15, e; Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, 293. 2899 Menzies was in the middle of a statement when Lyons’s telegram arrived, leading Smith’s Weekly, 11 February 1939, p.16, to portray Lyons as catching his ministers in a giant mouse-trap, whilst he alone made broadcast comments. 2900 Wells, Smith’s Weekly, 28 January 1939, 2, f, g. 2901 Age, 1 February 1939, 13, c; Fitzhardinge, 650; E. Andrews, “Public Opinion in Australia on Foreign Policy, 1919- 39,” in Towards a Foreign Policy, 110. 382 New Guinea and on Hitler’s mendacity in a ‘recruiting’ broadcast over the following days, but it was not until Lyons’s death that he was confident enough to release a full departmental analysis of elements of the 30 January speech.2902

The sole immediate ‘official’, prime ministerial response to the Reichstag address, on 1 February 1939, was thus cautiously welcoming─ a nd Lyons’s observations were editorially summarised as ‘Parts of It Welcome’, which serves as a suitable epithet for the appeasers’ perspective of the period from Munich to Prague, October 1938-April 1939.2903 As a ‘political’ appeaser, Lyons failed to address the trade aspects of the speech, particularly relevant to the wool trade, and in accordance with the prevailing view in cabinet, he ignored the related unwelcome and regressive resurrection of the colonial issue (an issue still alive at Whitehall).2904 As a rearmer, however, he did express his unhappiness with Germany’s implied ‘intention to rely on force’, suggesting that it justified the state of ‘British’ rearmament and reiterated his view of the futility of war as a method of resolving differences.2905 These were the unwelcome components. Lyons then gave an account of the few parts that had been welcome to him, demonstrating in so doing that it was really only the absence of ‘specific menace’ that could be so classified.2906 He firstly acknowledged that further (territorial) ‘changes are necessary’, a belief predicated on the old, controversial belief that ‘there are iniquities and injustices in the peace treaties which must be remedied’.2907 This faith that Germany could still be appeased by the rectification of the errors of 1919 was now unsound and Lyons refused to address any suggestion that Hitler’s aspirations had long edged beyond a revision of Versailles, something that would not support his thesis that the address offered grounds for optimism. The policy of the Empire, he concluded, remained one of ‘peaceful readjustment’ (appeasement) and Lyons maintained that optimism by agreeing with Hitler’s observation that ‘a long period of peace’ was possible.2908 It was, then, to be business as usual, despite the fact that the Reichstag address had conceded little and implied much. It had not, however, noticeably escalated tension in the way that MacDonald, Duncan and Hodgson had

2902 Hughes recruiting broadcast; Age, 2 February 1939, 9, g. “Review of the International Situation”, 20 April 1939, Current Notes, vols.6-7 (May 1939), 178ff. 2903 Sydney Morning Herald, 1 February 1939, 15, e. 2904 Canberra continued to be unhappy with the German attitude to the wool trade on economic grounds alone, when it rejected a ‘barter’ system; Lyons statement, Herald, 17 March 1939, 3, g, h; Argus, 18 March 1939, 9, e. “Mr. Lyons Puts Our Position”, Age, 1 February 1939, p,13, c. Stirling to External Affairs, 8 February 1939, A981 GER 22 PART 4, NAA, Canberra, reported ongoing support in the German press for the colonial claim. Cabinet soon disposed of any possible return by accepting the proposed amalgamation of Papua and New Guinea; Cabinet Minutes, 15 March 1939, A2694/19/2, which Shepherd, 72, thought a defence measure. Whitehall still thought colonial return possible; Chamberlain to Henderson, 19 February 1939, FO 800/3145/LHP, in Crozier, 270. Duncan expected British pressure on Canberra over the issue; Duncan, London, to Bruce, DAFP, vol.2, 40, 16 March 1939. 2905 Lyons statement, Age, 1 February 1939, 13, c. 2906 External Affairs Summary, 30 January 1939, Current Notes, vols.6-7 (January 1939), 64. 2907 Lyons statement, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 February 1939, 15, e. This was probably a reference to the Polish Corridor. 2908 ibid; Age, 1 February 1939, 11, a, b. This was reminiscent of his comments in the 4 December 1938 radio broadcast; vide above. 383 feared it would and it was the consequent sense of relief that explained Lyons’s reaction.2909 Such responses were not unprecedented: Bruce had similarly observed earlier Hitler speeches as ‘not relieving the tension’ but not very greatly accentuating it and as ‘more moderate than had been expected’ (although he declined to apply such descriptions to this one).2910

The Prime Minister wished the speech to be judged by ‘cool heads’ free of ‘passion or prejudice’,2911 but remained characteristically unwilling to allow the parliament to do so, declining Curtin’s further request for a recall as being likely to ‘create undue anxiety’ given that ‘a critical position has not arisen’2912 ─ clearly Lyons was relieved that his expectations in this regard had been disappointed and he said so on 19 February 1939 in a national broadcast, where he welcomed the end of a period of ‘extreme tension’.2913 Lyons had been able to muzzle his ministers in the service of calm, but he was not able to silence the man in whose favour he had declined to resign only days before─ Bruce. 2914 While Bruce agreed on the diffusing of immediate tension, he was not so sanguine in the longer-term and declined to repeat the similarly soothing estimates he had made of Hitler’s orations of late-1938, when he gave his unfavourable reaction to this speech, at Dandenong on 31 January 1939.2915 With faltering faith in ‘political’ appeasement, he also refused to engage in any Lyons-like forced optimism.2916 Bruce found no part of Hitler’s address welcome, even the elements that had suggested German responsiveness to economic liberalisation ─ instead, he suggested that it would overall ‘cause anger’ and be ‘bitterly challenged’.2917 This was the first open sign of dissidence within the inner circle since the re-affirmation of Lyons’s leadership in the previous November (Hughes’s chronic grumbling aside) and the subsequent press attention to differences within the government gave an indication of why the Prime Minister had been so keen to silence his ministers.2918 Whilst Bruce agreed that the ‘adjustment of grievances’ remained necessary (political appeasement), he stressed his own long-standing agenda of ‘economic’ appeasement by adding the solution of ‘economic problems’ to any mooted desiderata, apparently unsatisfied with Hitler’s recent trade references.2919 The only positive expression in Bruce’s assessment came in his admission of relief at the end of a

2909 Duncan, acting High Commissioner, to External Affairs, 23 January 1939, Hughes Papers, MS 1538/42/5; Twomey, “Munich,” 34; Malcolm MacDonald to Lyons, DAFP, vol.2, 10, 25 January 1939. Hodgson to Hughes, attached to MacDonald to Lyons, DAFP, vol.2, 10, footnote 13, 25 January 1939. 2910 Bruce Diary, 12 September 1938, M104/6/2, NAA, Canberra; Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 304, 7 October 1938, re the 26 September speech. 2911 Lyons statement, Age, 1 February 1939, 13, c. 2912 Curtin had requested a recall; Age, 1 February 1939, 13, c. Lyons instead offered Bruce as a parliamentary intermediary, another indication of his disregard for parliament. Curtin declined the offer, Age, 2 February 1939, 9, f. 2913 Lyons broadcast of 19 February 1939; Age, 20 February 1939, 11, a, b; the comment was preceded by Bruce’s similar observation in his assessment of the Reichstag speech; vide below. 2914 vide above; Martin, Menzies, 256ff.; C. Edwards, 261-3; Cumpston, Bruce, 168-9. 2915 “Mr. Bruce’s Comment”, Age, 1 February 1939, 13, g; Sydney Morning Herald, 1 February 1939, 15, c. 2916 The German consul thought Bruce had lost faith in political appeasement; McCarthy, “German Consuls-General”: 351, quoting Asmis, 10 February 1939. Bruce had already suggested that Kristallnacht had damaged its prospects; Bruce to Runciman, Foreign Office, 1 December 1938, FO800/396. Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 275. 2917 “Mr. Bruce’s Comment”, Age, 1 February 1939, 13, g; Sydney Morning Herald, 1 February 1939, 15, c. 2918 Age, 2 February 1939, 9, f, reported ministerial unrest. 2919 Age, 1 February 1939, 13, g. vide Chapter 5 on Bruce and economic appeasement. 384 period of tension, something that Lyons was happy to repeat later in February.2920 That general relief was short-lived and a further crisis in March indicated that Bruce’s post-30 January anxiety had been better founded than Lyons’s forced optimism. The ‘slight improvement’ in international relations that Lyons conceded to the aftermath of the Reichstag address was to prove more fleeting than anyone had imagined.2921

XI

In the wider debate that followed the Reichstag speech, the Manchester Guardian presciently speculated that it signalled another European crisis in the near future,2922 a fear shared by the more cautious appeasers (like Halifax)2923 ─ this was in contrast to the confidence of External Affairs in the ‘closeness’ of Czech-German relations.2924 A second Czech crisis in mid- March 1939, more sudden than its predecessor, revealed the error of the last assessment and finally forced the unwilling Australian prime minister to acknowledge that German appeasement, in particular, and wider appeasement, in general, was no longer possible. This was a profoundly difficult admission for Lyons to make, for it represented the failure of his peacemaking ─ it was accordingly extracted only with great pains.

The so-called Prague crisis was a shock. Although Lyons had never indulged in Chamberlain and Hoare’s belief in the dawn of a ‘golden age’ post-Munich, he had clearly hoped that events would prove Hughes’s jeremiad about that settlement to be false2925 ─ none had expected the absorption of rump Czechoslovakia into Greater Germany as a consequence of Munich.2926 The rapid occupation of Prague by German forces, on 15 March 1939, shattered all surviving hope for the endurance of Munich (already weakened by Kristallnacht and its aftermath), although it was almost over-shadowed in the Australian press by the ‘seismic’ cabinet resignation of Menzies on the previous day.2927 It seemed that the disintegration of the Lyons government was occurring alongside that of the Czech polity.2928 While Lyons was privately

2920 Bruce speech; Sydney Morning Herald, 1 February 1939, 15, e. Lyons’s comment came in his broadcast of 19 February 1939; Age, 20 February 1939, 11, a, b. 2921 Lyons broadcast, 19 February 1939; Age, 20 February 1939, 11, a, b. 2922 Quoted in Age, 2 February 1939, 9, b. The Guardian thought the speech ‘most menacing’. 2923 Halifax insisted that Britain’s ‘precautions’ must continue; Cabinet Minutes, 1 February 1939, CAB 23/97, PRO London 2924 External Affairs “Survey of International Situation”, 1 February 1939, submitted to cabinet, 28 February 1939, CRS A6006/12. 2925 Rock, 19, quoting Hoare at Chelsea and Chamberlain to the press on 10 March 1939. vide above for Page’s similar view; CPD, vol.157, 368ff., 5 October 1938 and Hughes’s pessimism, CPD, vol.157, 400, 5 October 1938. 2926 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 278. 2927 Argus, 15 March 1939, reported the cabinet resignation on its front page. On the following day it shared the cabinet reshuffle with the Czech crisis on this page, whilst restricting its editorial comment to Menzies alone; Argus, 16 March 1939, 1, 10. Only on 17 March did it editorialise “Hitler Marches On”, Argus, 17 March 1939, 10, c. The Age, 16 March 1939, 10, 12, reported and editorialised on both on the same pages: “Hitler Strikes Again”. Heydon thought this resignation the most ‘politically seismic’ he had seen in his long career; Heydon to Hart, 5 November 1964, Hart Papers, MS9410/2. Also Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, 308; White, Love Story, 210-11; Ovendale, Appeasement, 233. 2928 Smith’s Weekly, 25 March 1939, 10, cartoon, “The Mutiny”, showed Page and Lyons attempting to hold back a mutinous crew on board the “Good Ship UAP”. 385 nonchalant about the resignation: ‘We can get on without him.’2929 ─ it cannot have been a surprise following some five months of leadership tension between the two men2930 ─ the occupation activated what he had called in the previous September the ‘definite moral issue’ of the integrity of the new borders agreed upon at Munich.2931 Morality was exerting some pressure also at Downing Street; although Chamberlain’s initial reaction to the occupation of Bohemia- Moravia was calm (unlike that of Halifax),2932 he was only able to resist mounting press and parliamentary opposition until his watershed Birmingham speech on the night of 17 March 1939 (GMT), which publicly indicated the demise of appeasement.2933 Lyons too remained conspicuously silent from 15 March, until he offered his own statement a short time earlier, on 17 March (AEST), in which he referred to ‘official messages’ received from Britain.2934 Through these channels and others, such as ‘our telephone conversations’, he was making his usual effort to be well-informed of developments at Whitehall.2935

Lyons was certainly personally dispirited after mid-March and while he admitted in this statement that appeasement was in its endgame, he did not yet concede checkmate. The 17 March statement seemed to agree with the Sydney Morning Herald that Prague represented an ‘Epilogue of Munich’, but not yet with Murdoch’s Herald that ‘Hitler Means War on the Democracies’.2936 After referring to his personal ‘profound disappointment and alarm’, Lyons explained that recent events were breaches of the ‘Munich Agreement’ and they also concerned him due to their military nature and to the absorption of people ‘who are not of the German race’.2937 Both Chamberlain’s government and that of Lyons had accepted Hitler’s earlier assurances that it was not his intention to do so.2938 Consequently, Lyons now admitted: ‘We look to the future with deep misgiving’, the pronoun presumably referring to the circle of appeasers who had put so much faith in conciliation:

2929 Lyons to his son Kevin, at Goulburn, early April 1939 after the Menzies’s resignation, in Kevin Lyons MHA, Hobart, to Hart, 15 September 1965, Hart Papers, MS9410/3, NLA, Canberra. 2930 The two had been estranged since Menzies’s assault on Lyons’s leadership in October 1938; Martin, Menzies, 241- 4, provides a summary of the speech and its aftermath, including the reaction of Enid Lyons, taken from Carrion Crows, 62-3; White, Love Story, 197-9; Earle Page to Mrs. Page, 9 November 1938, Earle Page Papers, MS1633/ 2787/3, NLA, Canberra. 2931 Bruce quoting Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 279, 26 September 1938; vide Chapter 6 for a fuller reference. 2932 Halifax’s drift away from appeasement is documented in Roberts, Holy Fox, 143ff. 2933 Rock, 18-19, details Chamberlain’s evasive parliamentary responses of 15-16 March 1939. Chamberlain Birmingham speech, 17 March 1939, Current Notes, vol.6-7, (1939), 128-30; vide below. D. Watt, How War Came, 168-9, gives a good analysis of this speech. 2934 Lyons statement, 17 March 1939, Current Notes, vol.6-7, (1939), 127; Argus, 18 March 1939, 1, c, d. 2935 Lyons and Chamberlain were again in regular telephone contact; Chamberlain to Lyons, DAFP, vol.2, 46, 20 March 1939. They had spoken by 18 March; The Times, 20 March 1939, 9, a; Doherty, 218-9. Stirling also maintained his comprehensive dispatches from London throughout the crisis; A981 CZE 18(4), NAA, Canberra. 2936 Sydney Morning Herald, editorial, 16 March 1939, 10, c; Herald editorial, 17 March 1939, 6, c. vide Twomey, “Munich,” 33 on Murdoch’s views in early 1939. 2937 Lyons statement, 17 March 1939, Current Notes, vol.6-7, (1939), 127. Lyons thus agreed with the Argus editorial, 17 March 1939, that the episode represented a ‘breach’ of the 1938 assurances. Smith’s Weekly, 25 March 1939, 10, “Hitler Pledges Spoken and Broken”, listed Hitler’s recent broken promises. 2938 This assurance had been accepted in Britain and Australia; Cabinet Foreign Policy sub-committee, 18 March 1938, Colvin, 108; External Affairs memo, c.10 March 1937, CP 4/2 46. vide Chapter 6. 386 The hopes that had been felt in the last few months that perhaps the way was now opening to a renewed effort to regulate the relations of the Powers by methods of consultation and conciliation have received one more setback.2939

The matter was therefore desperate but not what Lyons the optimist called ‘as yet irreparable in its effects’, for he concluded with the hope that peacemaking could continue ‘given the earnest desire of the mass of the people in every country for peace’.2940 These qualified admissions suggest that either Lyons was not given a complete indication of Chamberlain’s impending Birmingham apostasy or, if he was warned, that he was stubbornly resisting a similar course. The Australian prime minister, at least, was not yet for turning and this leaving of the door slightly ajar provoked anger from a candid Hughes, who called it ‘servile acquiescence’, an expression that the anti-appeasers could have applied to the overall policy, post-Prague.2941 Hughes was happy in this period to refer to Germany as ‘implacable and…unappeasable’, an extreme view that Lyons was edging towards, but still reluctant to admit.2942

Chamberlain was not so reluctant and in his Damascene conversion, at Birmingham on the night of 17 March (GMT), he unambiguously rejected Hitler’s lawlessness.2943 He told his cabinet on the following day that the speech was an admission that ‘it was impossible to continue to negotiate on the old basis’ with the Nazis and was likely to have told Lyons as much in their ‘telephone conversations’.2944 This outright, unilateral British abandonment of the Munich settlement in particular and of European appeasement in general slammed the door left ajar by his Australian counterpart and seemed to defy dominion opinion, a sign of things to come over the following weeks.2945 The manager of Australian appeasement, however, seemed to have no choice but to follow Chamberlain ─ Lyons had never buckled to internal criticism of appeasement but, without the support of Chamberlain, the ‘wider appeasement’ of 1937 was unsustainable. The British initiative evident in the Birmingham apostasy left the Australian prime

2939 Lyons statement, 17 March 1939, Current Notes, vol.6-7, (1939), 127; Argus, 18 March 1939, 1, c, d. 2940 This was a repetition of his Glenbrook sentiments; Lyons Glenbrook speech, 3 September 1938, Current Notes, vol.5, no.5 (1938), 107ff. vide Chapter 6. 2941 Hughes’s broadcast comments, on 19 March 1939, reported in The Times, 20 March 1939, 9, a, and in his “Review of International Situation”, 20 April 1939, Current Notes, vols.6-7 (May 1939), 181. 2942 Hughes; The Times, 20 March 1939, 9, a; Doherty, 218-9. 2943 Chamberlain Birmingham speech, 17 March 1939, Current Notes, vol.6-7, (1939), 128-30, where he speculated about Hitler’s desire for ‘world domination’. The speech was made in the early hours of 18 March 1939 (AEST), after Lyons’s own statement. It was seen by some as an attempt by Chamberlain to save his leadership, having recognised that German appeasement was now discredited; Griffiths, 349-50, quoting Ward Price and Harold Nicolson. 2944 Chamberlain; Cabinet Minutes, 18 March 1939, CAB 23/98, 50, PRO, London. Chamberlain to Lyons, DAFP, vol.2, 46, 20 March 1939. 2945 D. Watt, Personality and Policies, 157, quotes Feiling, 400, that dominion opinion was a factor in Chamberlain’s Birmingham change. This cannot apply to Lyons and there is more evidence of dominion opinion being ignored; Carlton, “Gathering Storm”: 173, quoting Halifax on dominion reluctance to abandon Munich. 387 minister stranded at the low tide of appeasement.2946 The issue now at stake was what would follow this abandonment.

Any Australian prime ministerial metamorphosis in the mode of Chamberlain was not immediate. Lyons refused to accept that the endgame of appeasement was over and remained reluctant to abandon conciliation for a further week. He offered Chamberlain his encouragement on 18 March by telephone, but also suggested in a press statement that while the situation was ‘grave’, there was no need for (the Birmingham) ‘panic’, an attitude reminiscent of his personal clinging to Munich in December 1938.2947 It remains unclear whether Lyons was involved in the further suggestion of the use of Mussolini as an intermediary at this time, an avenue that the British pursued after 20 March,2948 but by 21 March, after ‘careful consideration’, he had moved closer to the Birmingham position and offered, via Bruce, ‘wholehearted support’ to London in its efforts to resist ‘further encroachments by force’ on behalf of the ‘Commonwealth Government’2949 ─ the collective language was a possible indication that the Australian cabinet was more inclined to readily admit the failure of appeasement than was Lyons himself at this juncture. At the very least, it was a generous offer given the nature of the exchanges on Singapore in the preceding days.2950 Not until 23 March 1939 did Lyons’s penultimate radio broadcast and accompanying press statement make it clear that the views of the two prime ministers had converged and that Lyons was now of the same view as the ‘Commonwealth Government’. In this watershed broadcast, arguably the Australian equivalent of the Birmingham speech, Lyons again referred to his disappointment about the failure of Munich and the process it had represented, but now offered only pessimistic conclusions: ‘Such hope [of conciliation] has been beaten to the ground by the German occupation of Czechoslovakia [sic].’2951 There was no further mention of the possible repair work referred to on 17 March: ‘The time for making further concessions in the hope of preserving peace has passed.’ The conclusion must have been especially difficult for him: ‘We cannot place reliance now upon negotiation and conciliation as a method of adjusting international disputes.’2952 The press statement similarly indicated the surrender of the conciliators, for here too Lyons accepted that conciliatory efforts had ‘failed’ (although ambiguously adding ‘for the time being’): ‘That meant that the time for making further

2946 Andrews, “The Australian Government…”, 80, noted that after Birmingham, the Australian cabinet was left without much choice but to support Chamberlain. Mansergh, Experience, 282, noted the British initiative in the abandonment of appeasement. 2947 The Times, 20 March 1939, 9, a; Doherty, 218-9. Joseph and Enid Lyons joint broadcast, 4 December 1938, A5954/69/1949/4. 2948 The British cabinet discussed such a proposition; Cabinet Minutes, 20 March 1939, CAB 23/98. Mussolini rejected the approach on 1 April; Newman, 125-6, vide above. 2949 Bruce conveyed Australian support on 21 March 1939; Ovendale, Appeasement, 221-2, “Appeasement,” 198; Hasluck, Government, 100. Lyons statement, 21 March 1939, “Review of International Situation”, 20 April 1939, Current Notes, vols.6-7 (May 1939), 181. 2950 When war threatened, only Australia and New Zealand offered Britain unqualified support; Lyons statement, 21 March 1939, “Review of International Situation”, 20 April 1939, Current Notes, vols.6-7 (May 1939), 191-2; Newman, 127-8. vide below on Singapore, March-April 1939. 2951 Lyons broadcast, The Commonwealth Government’s Views regarding the present European Situation, 23 March 1939, Episode no.180775, ScreenSound, Canberra. Slovakia had declared its independence of the Czech lands. 2952 ibid. 388 concessions in the hope of preserving peace had passed.’2953 It was the eulogy of appeasement, appropriately delivered by its fiercest and most enduring Australian proponent.

Lyons therefore conceded the failure of his peacemaking only a fortnight before his demise. Disconsolate, he preferred to concentrate on defence and on the imminence of war in his last broadcast, on 28 March 1939, briefly referring to appeasement for one last time only to remind his listeners that they ‘cannot place reliance now on consultation as a method of adjusting international disputes’.2954 It should be noted that at no time did he concede that the policy had been misconceived.2955 Although he still clearly retained hope that Australian diplomatic representation could fill some of the vacuum left by the collapse of appeasement, it was his misfortune to witness the demise of the policy with which he had become so closely associated. The Lyons of early 1939 was a beleaguered man beset with anxiety, especially in these March weeks, and certain frameworks explain his consequent physical, psychological, even political, demise in this period.2956 The final illness was, amongst other things, the culmination of an ‘identity’ crisis that had been brewing for some time and drove him to desperation towards the end.2957 Given that Lyons was unfortunate enough to witness the ruin of much of his work, it is easy to accept Page’s suggestion (made in an obituary broadcast) that the Prague episode was an element in his lamented, premature demise.2958 Chamberlain’s creeping reversion in April 1939 to the view that the worst was over (similar to Lyons’s rearguard line of 17 March) came too late for the ailing Australian prime minister and Lyons died without any consolation.2959

XII

A familiar, but unwelcome, issue reappeared amidst the Prague crisis, giving an indication that it was not only the Manchurian debate that had gone full circle and not only the German debate that seemed fated to repeat itself without end. Events in March-April 1939 illustrated a similar trajectory over Singapore. The weak link in Australian security remained the chronic uncertainty about British commitment in the Far East and the Singapore debate (ongoing since Latham’s inquiries at London in June 1932) was unaltered by the opening of the completed base in February 1938.2960 The Lyons-Chamberlain exchanges of March 1938 had been the most recent manifestation of this discourse, the nature of which was always more acute during periods

2953 Lyons statement, 23 March 1939, Current Notes, vol.6-7, (1939), 127. 2954 Lyons broadcast, 28 March 1939, Episode no. 180769, vide above on its defence aspects. 2955 As noted by Mansergh, Experience, 282, in a general observation. 2956 Lasswell, 91ff., on the tensions caused by conflict between ‘Political Reality and the Unconscious’. These tensions may result in illness, both physical and mental. Lyons was extremely ill after September 1938 and Dollard’s second criterion (‘Give the body its due share in the story’) was never more relevant; Dollard in Davies, “Tasks…,” 110. 2957 vide above Martin “Elements…,” 15. 2958 Andrews, “The Australian Government…”, 80. 2959 Chamberlain assured MPs in the first week of April that the worst was over. Vansittart noted: ‘The appeasers are at it again.’; Cockett, 109. He also urged a renewal of ‘patience’; 14 April 1939, quoted by Hughes, “Review of International Situation”, 20 April 1939, Current Notes, vols.6-7 (May 1939), 189-90. On Chamberlain’s second thoughts; R. Parker, Churchill and Appeasement (London: Macmillan, 2000), 223. 2960 vide earlier chapters on Singapore, especially Chapters 1 and 6. 389 of strained Anglo-Japanese relations. This was especially so in the period after Munich, when the matter came to a climax shortly before Lyons’s death. By March 1939, the Lyons government had been seeking various British assurances on Singapore for nearly seven years. In their absence, Australian defence planning had increasingly concentrated on matters of ‘local defence’ and any firm Australian commitment to Singapore had been avoided to the point of ‘shirking’ in the eyes of some critics, like Fairbairn.2961 Lyons’s private Singapore scepticism had been indirectly criticised within the cabinet and outside it ─ the armed forces Boards referred to ‘defeatism’ in January 1939 and the defence minister, Street, added in April that he thought any suggestions of British unreliability ‘exaggerated’.2962 One of Murdoch’s growing list of complaints about Lyons in early 1939 was the Prime Minister’s refusal to allow local forces to take a share in the defence of Singapore.2963 The Melbourne Herald had accordingly urged naval co-operation with Britain in January according to its interpretation of the ‘Blue Water’ concept (of forward naval deployment), including contribution to an ‘imperial’ capital ship, but there was no response from Lyons.2964 He showed no indication of a desire to pursue the related Singapore issue any further until events were taken out his hands in London in March 1939.

Stirling, the Whitehall liaison officer, lit the fuse on 16 March 1939 by pointing out to Duncan (the acting High Commissioner vice Bruce) that a CID meeting of 24 January last had suggested that, in the event of a war with Germany and Italy, the size of any fleet dispatched to Singapore would ‘depend on the situation at the moment’.2965 A subsequent interview between ‘a very much perturbed’ Duncan and General Ismay, the CID secretary, offered the old assurance that such a fleet would be ‘adequate’─ Duncan was r eminded that this did not constitute any change from the ‘undertaking’ given at the Imperial Conference.2966 This was a half-truth; Lyons and Parkhill had returned from London fully cognizant of the grim fact that ‘adequate’ described only the slimmest of defensive margins.2967 Nonetheless, they had been given a commitment in 1937 of a ‘Z’ force of between eight-to-ten capital ships applicable up to early-1940, even if the

2961 On shirking; Fairbairn, “Australia’s Defence”: 16. Lyons never admitted Australia’s selfishness in insisting on British commitment, whilst generally avoiding its own. 2962 vide above on the Board responses to A.C.V.Melbourne letter of 21 December 1938; Naval Board, 3 January 1939; Air Board, 6 January 1939; Military Board, 10 January 1939, A816 19/304/214; Street memorandum, 1 April 1939, A816 19/304/214. 2963 Keith Murdoch to Clive Bailieu, London, 4 January 1939, Murdoch Papers, MS 2823/27; Zwar, 89-90. He was also critical of the failure to contribute to an ‘imperial’ battleship, an old idea of Pearce’s; vide earlier chapters. 2964 As reported in The Times, “Australian Defence Programme”, 27 January 1939, 11, c. Lyons’s Singapore scepticism did not preclude a ‘Blue Water’ forward naval deployment, given British adequate commitment. Keith Murdoch to Clive Bailieu, London, 4 January 1939, Murdoch Papers, MS 2823/27. Contribution to an ‘imperial’ battleship was an old idea of Pearce’s; vide earlier chapters. 2965 Note by Duncan, acting High Commissioner, London, of conversation with Maj. Gen. Ismay, CID secretary, DAFP, vol.2, 42, 17 March 1939; Hamill, 299. The original Duncan note of the episode is found in the Bruce Papers, M104/7/1, NAA, Canberra. 2966 Note by Duncan of conversation with Maj.Gen. Ismay, DAFP, vol.2, 42, 17 March 1939; Attachment, Ismay to Lord Chatfield, Minister for Co-ordination of Defence, reporting conversation with Duncan, London 18 March 1939. vide Chapter 5 on the Imperial Conference assurances. 2967 Neidpath, 139. 390 motivations behind it were unrealistic and a cynical attempt to steer dominion attention away from US assistance, as Lord Chatfield suggested in March 1939.2968 In the meantime, however, there had been considerable evidence of British elasticity, of which the January CID estimates were the most recent manifestation. Chamberlain himself had been far from specific in his most recent prime ministerial reassurances (on 11-12 March 1938),2969 and the commitment had been down-graded to ‘seven capital ships’ (only two modernised) during November 1938 talks with Bruce, whose ‘channel of advice’ within the services was now indispensable.2970 These pared commitments were barely capable of sustaining the envisaged defensive strategy, as ‘Z force’ would be easily outclassed by the Japanese,2971 at least in the published view of one British admiral and the private view of the Chiefs of Staff,2972 even if Chatfield, the Minister of Defence Co-ordination, maintained faith in ‘superior efficiency’ to counteract ‘numerical weakness’.2973 Despite Duncan’s alarm in London, and it remains unclear how informed he was of this recent paring, there could have been few illusions in Canberra by March 1939 about the weakness of the British eastern naval commitment─ if there were, they were not owing to any lack of consultation with Whitehall.

Nevertheless, in the aftermath of another crisis in Europe after 15 March, the Duncan- Ismay conversations attracted Lyons’s prime ministerial attention and he turned to his usual emergency instrument, the telephone, to seek further clarification directly from Chamberlain.2974 In reply, by cable on 20 March 1939, he was assured that even if a state of war existed with Germany, Italy and Japan, a fleet would be dispatched to Singapore, but its size was dependent on the moment of Japanese entry and on the level of losses hitherto sustained ─ there was no mention of timetables or of numerical specifications.2975 Bruce (in Australia until 31 March), later suggested to a British audience that such qualifications and changes of disposition were ‘never envisaged in our earlier plans’ and struck the Australian government as a ‘bombshell’ (upgraded

2968 vide Chapter 5. CID report, DAFP, vol.1, 42, 9 June 1937, Table “Heavy Ships”, point 20. Neidpath, 140, quoting Chatfield, Minister for Defence Co-ordination, in the Strategical Appreciation sub-committee, 13 March 1939. 2969 vide Chapter 6; Chamberlain to Lyons, 11 March 1938, DAFP, vol.1, 134, and 12 March 1938, CP290/5/2. 2970 Record of Meeting at Dominions Office, London DAFP, vol.2, 118, 11 July 1939, where Bruce recalled a meeting at the Admiralty in November 1938, DAFP, vol.1, 315, 1 November 1938; Bruce to Lyons, DAFP, vol.1, 316, 2 November 1938; Hamill, 287-9. On Bruce’s very good ‘channel of advice’; P. Edwards, “The Rise and Fall…”, 46. Bruce became a frequent visitor to the Admiralty at this time; McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 144ff., quoting Backhouse, First Sea Lord to Ismay, CIGS, 29 December 1938, AIR 9/56, PRO, London. With only two modernised vessels, Record of Meeting on The Situation in the Far East, London, DAFP, vol.2, 112, 28 June 1939, the RN would be easily outclassed by the modern Japanese navy, in accordance with the Japanese ambition to have a naval force superior to that of any other Pacific power; Current Notes, vols.6-7 (March 1939), 87. 2971 Record of Meeting on The Situation in the Far East, London, DAFP, vol.2, 112, 28 June 1939. The Japanese ambition was to have a naval force superior to that of any Pacific power; Current Notes, vols.6-7 (March 1939), 87. 2972 Admiral Domville, quoted in Anon., (A Correspondent), “Australia’s Defence Policy”: 11. He concluded that only the entire British fleet could provide an offensive strategy against the Japanese navy. By June 1939, the Chiefs of Staff admitted to the Foreign Policy Committee at Whitehall that it was probable that only two capital ships could be sent to the East and then only in the event of war; Shen, 49. This was to be the size of the real ‘Z’ force in 1941; Bell, 604ff. 2973 Lord Chatfield in Strategical Appreciation sub-committee, 1 March 1939; Neidpath, 146. 2974 Mentioned in Chamberlain to Lyons, DAFP, vol.2, 46, 20 March 1939 and CID to Chamberlain, General Question of the Despatch of a Fleet to the Far East, May-June 1939, PREM 1/309/3, PRO, London. Neidpath, 149-50, suggests Bruce’s involvement in gaining an inclination of strategic changes at Whitehall, February-March 1939, apparently unaware that he was not in London at that time. 2975 Chamberlain to Lyons, DAFP, vol.2, 46, 20 March 1939; DO 126/3, PRO, London; Tarling, 59-60; Neidpath, 150. 391 from ‘surprising’).2976 His comments have been seized upon by some historians to suggest that the adherents of the Singapore strategy were left strategically stranded from March 1939, but neither observation was strictly accurate.2977 This is to exaggerate the case: it has been shown that Lyons had never accepted the Singapore gospel and that this further example of elasticity was not a surprise but the latest in a series, disturbing enough, but not a bombshell.2978 However annoyed Lyons might have been with the British prevarication of earlier years, there is little evidence of much alarm in March 1939, other than Bruce’s later observations. Lyons did not insist on any further clarification from March 1939 (as he had done a year earlier with insistence), which suggested a satisfaction with the thrust of Chamberlain’s message and an understanding of the new strategic imperatives, perhaps even of a resignation that little better could be expected from the Admiralty.2979 Stirling was permitted to make his own further inquiries at London (and gained further assurances),2980 but Lyons’s expectations about British commitment were now apparently lower than even Bruce appeared to realise, although Whiskard had been made aware of them2981 ─ one may speculate that they were now as low as inferring that the Royal Navy could offer only the minimalist position of security for Indian Ocean communications and the deterrence of any thrust against the Pacific dominions.2982 Whatever Lyons’s concealed thoughts about the matter, at the end he offered no critique of the views of Hughes, whose cabinet submission of 28 March 1939 concluded that it was ‘now too late’ to deter Japan through any Singapore fleet2983 ─ this silence was not necessarily a sign of assent to such a melancholy conclusion, but one may speculate that it indicated a certain weariness of the debate about the Singapore strategy.

In the last weeks of his life, Lyons even appeared unwilling to discuss the issue any further with the other interested dominion (New Zealand), refusing Savage’s invitation to send an Australian minister to the Wellington Pacific Defence Conference, where Singapore was expected to be a chief agenda item ─ Admiral Colvin, a ‘Blue Water’ sceptic, was sent instead.2984 The matter of Singapore rested where it had stood since 1932, more totem than military reality: a fleet of unspecified size would supposedly be dispatched at an unspecified time, subject to a series of

2976 Record of Meeting at Dominions Office, London, DAFP, vol.2, 118, 11 July 1939. Earlier, he had described the impact as ‘surprising’; Bruce at Record of Meeting on The Situation in the Far East, London, DAFP, vol.2, 112, 28 June 1939; Hamill, 300 quoting Admiral Colvin on Bruce, 14 March 1939. 2977 Lodge, 75, accepted the ‘bombshell’ suggestion. Bruce’s biographer, Cumpston, Bruce, 140, implied as much. 2978 Hamill, 300, thought a ‘bombshell’ effect unlikely. 2979 Lyons’s immediate response was to cable support for Chamberlain’s handling of the current Czech crisis; Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.2, 47, 23 March 1939. 2980 Stirling received a confirmation of Chamberlain’s assurance from the First Sea Lord, 4 April 1939, PREM 1/309/16, PRO, London (also in Hughes Papers, MS 1538/42/5) and from Horace Wilson on 8 April 1939; DO 126/3/23, PRO, London. 2981 Whiskard to Harding, 28 November 1938, AIR 9/56, quoted in Andrews, Writing, 191; Cumpston, Bruce, 140. 2982 Suggested as an appropriate inference after March 1939 by Haggie, 145. 2983 Hughes submission, Cabinet Papers, CRS A6006/12, NAA, Canberra. This matched Bruce’s view on mediation with Japan; A.C.V. Melbourne to Lyons, 7 March 1939, Melbourne Papers, Reel 2; vide above. 2984 Lyons to Savage, DAFP, vol.2, 67, 1 April 1939; Ovendale, “Britain, the Dominions and the Coming of the Second World War, 1933-9,” 334. Colvin had recently shown his caution about the ‘Blue Water’ approach; External Affairs to Stirling, 29 March 1939, Hughes Papers, MS 1538/42/5; McCarthy, Imperial Defence, 145; Hamill, 300. The other delegates were of middle rank; DAFP, vol.2, 67, 1 April 1939. 392 qualifications. This was arguably not a ‘bombshell’, but the end result of a lengthy process of prevarication and attrition, as this thesis has argued. It was, however, a clear indication that the quest for defence co-ordination that the Lyons government had pursued in its defence planning for some years, notably at the Imperial Conference of 1937, had failed (at a time when imperial consultation in external policy was also collapsing). Nevertheless, any ‘bombshell’ came later ─ it was not until after the death of his Australian counterpart that Chamberlain ventured to suggest that a further ‘modification’ was necessary, precluding the dispatch of any force at all and that Bruce must understand this ‘modification’.2985 The end of the Lyons-Chamberlain collaboration apparently also qualified the latter’s sense of ‘good faith’ with the dominions, which he had earlier cited as the chief reason for completing the base.2986 Despite this construction, the Singapore strategy ultimately remained as much a ‘matter of bluff’, to use Cadogan’s description, in March 1939 as it had ever been.2987 Any detailed examination of the defence planning of the Lyons administration, 1932-39, however, indicates that the Australian prime minister ought not to be counted among those deceived by it.2988 The search for reassurance had been the only responsible course for any Australian government to follow and it was renewed by Menzies from mid-1939, but it had never entailed gullible acceptance.2989 In the final measure, Lyons had been wise to retain his scepticism and to seek some US assurances as early as 1935 ─ even if he failed to see much substance, by June 1939 the Americans were prepared to promise the dispatch of a fleet to Hawaii to act as ‘deterrent’ and even one to Singapore itself, at a time when the British refused to specify either the size or timing of any ‘Z force’.2990

XIII

Through most of 1938, Lyons had opposed any Czech ‘guarantee’ with its attendant military risks, although he had eventually accepted Bruce’s insistence on the need for ‘adequate assurances’ for the rump Czech state, post-Munich.2991 His unwilling abandonment of appeasement and the collegial offer of ‘wholehearted support’ to Chamberlain in March 1939 did not, however, make him any more amenable to the proposition that Britain should court war by offering military ‘guarantees’ to those now under the German shadow, post-Prague. Lyons could

2985 In April 1939, the Naval Staff suggested that Mediterranean considerations could preclude the dispatch of any force to Singapore; Lodge, 75. Lord Chatfield, Minister of Defence Co-ordination, thought the same; Tarling, 19. Chamberlain also suggested that the priority must now be defeating the enemy, wherever he was; CID meeting, 2 May 1939, PREM 1/309/3, PRO, London. 2986 Neidpath, 131, quoting Chamberlain in the Disarmament Conference committee, 24 July 1934. 2987 Cadogan, 27 July 1940, FO 371/24708, PRO, London, suggested a bluff directed against foreign powers and the dominions, quoted in Tarling, 59; Louis, “The Road to Singapore,” 385. 2988 Professor Peter Dennis (Australian Defence Force Academy) referred to ‘some politicians’ as having been ‘fooled’ by the strategy; ABC Video, No Prisoners, 2002. 2989 Menzies, as prime minister, renewed the search for reassurance in June 1939; DAFP, vol.2, 113. By September 1939, Chamberlain had raised the ‘period before relief’ to 180 days; Murfett, “Keystone…”, 166. 2990 G. Kennedy, Anglo-American Strategic Relations, 39-40, quoting Admiral Leahy, USN operations, to Commander Hampton, RN, in secret Washington talks, June 1939, where the Singapore offer was contingent on the dispatch of some British ‘token force’; also in Haggie, 143-4. 2991 Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 278, 26 September 1938. vide Chapter 6 on the debate about Czech guarantees after March 1938. 393 not prevent the death of European conciliation and had no desire (unlike Hertzog of South Africa) to assert ‘neutrality’, but he still hoped to avoid unnecessary commitment to imperial military adventures.2992 The matter was taken out of his hands in March-April 1939 by a unilateralist Chamberlain in the form of the ‘landmark’ guarantee initially offered to Poland and later extended to Rumania and Greece.2993

This would prove to be a difficult task, made harder by the cabinet decision of 28 March 1939 to await British ‘action’ on European developments.2994 This retrograde resort to cunctation, given the apparent collapse of appeasement, suggested that the ailing Prime Minister was losing some of his authority in cabinet,2995 although the decision did not seem immediately perilous for External Affairs (incorrectly) was confident that such ‘action’ would be limited to efforts to form a ‘consultative bloc’ with France, Poland and the USSR.2996 When Chamberlain, however, contemplated the possibility of a military guarantee to Poland, this could only have come as a shock to Lyons, for it represented everything against which he had counselled since at least March 1936 (with his criticisms of Locarno and its military aspects).2997 He had responded to unspecified indications of a new British policy at this time by abruptly terminating any cabinet tilt at cunctation and telephoning the Foreign Secretary directly on 30 March (for Halifax seemed the prime mover of the shift from appeasement).2998 Here, Lyons ‘intimated’ (not guaranteed) participation in any subsequent conflict, but expressed his prime ministerial anxiety that London ‘appeared to be taking on [unnecessary] commitments in regard to certain rather weak countries’.2999 This reference included Poland, who External Affairs had warned (on 28 March) was in Berlin’s sights, but might also have included Yugoslavia and Rumania, whom Bruce had earlier identified as countries in need of confidence-boosting3000 ─ Lyons’s reservations were thus at odds with those of his absent high commissioner. Halifax noted the Australian prime minister’s particular anxiety about contacts with the USSR, of which he had ‘no very high opinion’ (despite Soviet support for the Pacific Pact and his own professions that ‘political creed’ was no obstacle to international co-operation).3001 One may speculate that Lyons’s concern about a connection

2992 Hertzog said on 13 April 1939 that South Africa ‘had the right to be neutral in war time’; “Review of International Situation”, 20 April 1939, Current Notes, vols.6-7 (May 1939), 191; Mansergh, Experience, 283. 2993 Mansergh, Experience, 274, refers to this as the last of the three landmarks in the shaping of Commonwealth policies, 1936-39 (the others being the Imperial Conference and the Czech crisis of September 1938). On the guarantees, extended to Rumania and Greece, on 13 April 1939.; Rock, 19-20. Lloyd George called them ‘demented pledges’; Lentin, 110. 2994 Cabinet Minutes, 28 March 1939, A2694/19/2. 2995 This was the same meeting that deferred the establishment of diplomatic representation, vide above. 2996 External Affairs memorandum, Cabinet Minutes, 28 March 1939, CRS A6006/12. 2997 vide Chapter 4 on his objection to Britain’s Locarno commitments. 2998 Roberts, Holy Fox, 143-8. D. Watt, How War Came, 169. 2999 Halifax, Cabinet Minutes, 30 March 1939, CAB 23/98, 173 PRO, London; Doherty, 229-30, inaccurately quoted CAB 16(39). pace Rock, 48, that Australia was the only dominion to approve the Polish guarantee of 31 March 1939. pace Mansergh, Survey, 442, that the dominions did not question the need for guarantees. 3000 External Affairs memorandum, Cabinet Minutes, 28 March 1939, CRS A6006/12. Bruce had advocated that Britain seek the confidence of Rumania and Yugoslavia when urging a Czech guarantee on 17 September 1938, PREM 1/242/55; MacDonald, Cabinet Minutes, 19 September 1938, CAB 23/95. 3001 Halifax, Cabinet Minutes, 30 March 1939, CAB 23/98, 173. Doherty’s account, 229-30, of this section of the conversation is unreliable. On the Pact and political creed; vide Chapter 5. 394 with the Soviets recalled Latham’s 1934 warning about Japanese fear of the USSR.3002 He was equally unenthusiastic about the Foreign Secretary’s suggestion that it was best to face the threat of war at once.3003 The demise of appeasement was barely a fortnight old and Britain now seemed to be readying herself for the military confrontation that Lyons and others had long worked to prevent. When a British guarantee was formally offered to Warsaw, on 31 March, the Australian prime minister reserved his comment, but he can only have sympathized with the view of the less circumspect Smuts, who gasped ‘from the Commonwealth point of view’ and was ‘aghast’ at the ‘great dangers’ of this ‘new imperial policy’3004 ─ these were the natural reactions of any dominion appeaser viewing a policy shift that had occurred without consultation, not of ‘crypto- and philo-Fascists’.3005 It was an abrupt, revolutionary policy change that had occurred within days of Lyons’s reluctant abandonment of conciliation and barely a fortnight after the Birmingham speech.3006 Chamberlain denied in parliament on 3 April 1939 that the guarantee to Poland constituted what he had formerly denounced as ‘indefinite, unspecified commitments operating under conditions which could not be foreseen’, but this was what it appeared to be and was very likely to have constituted Lyons’s perspective of such unilateral offers to judge from his earlier views of similar structures.3007

As unwelcome as the nature of the Polish guarantee and the ‘new imperial policy’ was to Lyons (and other dominion leaders), the unilateral manner in which it had been implemented was worse and caused resentment in the dominions.3008 Since the Birmingham speech of 17 March a new drift had been evident at Whitehall, but few could have expected such a sudden policy shift to have occurred without dominion consultation. The Birmingham speech had referred to ongoing consultation with the dominions,3009 but there had been little of that, for the Dominions Secretary had only gathered the high commissioners on the following afternoon and ‘explained the situation’ to them3010 ─ Inskip was not the consummate manager of dominion opinion that MacDonald had been. Although all, aside from Jordan of New Zealand, had approved of the Birmingham sentiments, there was apparently some restlessness about method for, on 22 March, Inskip reported to the cabinet that some of the dominions (notably New Zealand and Canada), were ‘beginning to think in terms of specific consultation’ ─ an apparent rejection of the

3002 Latham on the Japanese fear of the USSR; Latham, “Secret Report”, 3 July 1934, 23-4; vide Chapter 2. 3003 Halifax, Cabinet Minutes, 30 March 1939, CAB 23/98, 173; Doherty, 229-30. 3004 Doherty, 230; Stirling, 85; Mansergh, Experience, 283. Smuts recalled the shock of Chanak in this statement. 3005 D. Watt, How War Came, 180, suggests that the Canadians and South Africans who objected were ‘crypto- and philo-Fascists’, although he does not mention Lyons. Hill, 13, 18ff., in his case-study of the ‘Polish Guarantee’ gives no account of dominion opinion. 3006 Mansergh, Survey, 173, on the change of policy. 3007 Chamberlain in parliament, 3 April 1939, quoted in Chamberlain, Struggle, 432-3. D. Watt, How War Came, 185, likened the guarantee to a Californian game of ‘Chicken’. 3008 Mansergh, Survey, 173. 3009 Chamberlain Birmingham speech, 17 March 1939, Current Notes, vol.6-7, (1939), 128-30. 3010 Inskip, Cabinet Minutes, 18 March 1939, CAB 23/98, PRO, London. Aside from Jordan of NZ, they expressed approval of the Birmingham sentiments. 395 informal, but so far effective, processes in place since the Imperial Conference.3011 Chamberlain, however, immediately dismissed any expectation of ‘some new form of consultation’;3012 he clarified the position on 30 March 1939, in response to a Canadian query, by suggesting that communications on the international situation ought now to be ‘informatory’ rather than ‘consultative’, a significantly regressive step.3013 Inskip illuminated the new procedures on the same day, when the high commissioners (minus the absent Bruce still in Sydney) were recalled and told that a Polish guarantee was a fait accompli. He excused the lack of even a façade of consultation on the spurious grounds that the UK government knew that the dominions ‘would not have wanted to have been invited to share such responsibility’ (an echo of Locarno).3014 These attitudes were more like those of Baldwin in 1936 and less like the Chamberlain-MacDonald process of extensive consultation promised in May-June 1937 and implemented in the course of 1938.3015 They were the more difficult to swallow, being announced as they were by a Minister of Commonwealth Relations, one of Inskip’s new titles.3016

Regardless of any other dominion’s supposed reluctance to share responsibility, Australia at least had long shown an eagerness to be first consulted and then to bear some responsibility: the ‘new imperial policy’ appeared to have dispensed with these procedures and to have turned the clock back to the days of Federation. Lyons made no public comment on the ‘new imperial policy’, but his confidential discussion with Halifax gave some indication of his disapproval and the fact that the new course ran counter to one of the chief patterns of Australian external policy over the last three decades was presumably of concern to him─ if so, a concern at such retrograde measures would help to explain the insistence of his cable on diplomatic representation, also on 30 March, for not only was appeasement apparently moribund, but so too was the process of imperial consultation.3017 Diplomatic representation, at the very least, would give Canberra a voice at a time when Britain seemed no longer seriously to accept the claims of the dominions to be consulted in imperial policy-making as equal partners. Given Lyons’s private reservations, it was not therefore surprising that his government failed to endorse publicly the new direction unilaterally undertaken by Chamberlain; this approval did not come until Menzies’s first prime ministerial broadcast of 26 April 1939.3018

3011 Inskip, Dominions Secretary, Cabinet Minutes, 22 March 1939, CAB 23/98/96, PRO, London. On the informal nature of imperial consultation agreed upon at the conference; vide Chapter 5. 3012 Chamberlain, Cabinet Minutes, 22 March 1939, CAB 23/98/96. 3013 Chamberlain, Cabinet Minutes, 30 March 1939, CAB/98, 174. Cabinet resolved to send subsequent telegrams for the ‘information’ of the dominions; ibid., 175. 3014 Ovendale, “Britain, the Dominions and the Coming of the Second World War, 1933-9,” 332. Bruce left Sydney for Los Angeles on the Mariposa on 31 March 1939; Bruce to Duncan, 28 March 1939, A2908 V10, NAA, Canberra. 3015 vide Chapter 4 on Baldwin’s practices. vide Chapter 6 on the extensive consultations over a Czech guarantee. This development was another example of the circular trajectory of many policy developments; vide above. 3016 D. Watt, How War Came, 80. He had held this title since December 1938. 3017 Lyons to Inskip, DAFP, vol.2, 63, 30 March 1939, vide above. Even though this was probably dispatched before British clarification of the new policy on 30 March, it was prepared in this tense, regressive atmosphere. 3018 Mansergh, Survey, 173, where he fails to account for the Lyons-Halifax conversation when assessing whether Australia would have supported the guarantees if it had been consulted. 396 Ω

Even though some parts of the period after Munich were welcome to Lyons, his last six months were chiefly marked by the failure of the peace policy that he had followed, with varying levels of intensity, since late-1933. He was not ultimately able to convince even himself that a period of international calm had arrived after Munich, let alone the critics of appeasement, but he continued the search for peace out of a fear of the alternative, only conceding defeat at a minute- before-twelve and then under duress.3019 The last External Affairs memorandum considered by this prime minister, on 28 March 1939, gave a final indication of the failure of his personal and official search. It candidly discussed the possibility of future German aggression in eastern Europe and noted that Italian ambitions too remained unsatisfied, Mussolini having recently rejected his erstwhile mediating role.3020 The tendency of Japanese policy too remained in a state of ‘some uncertainty’.3021 All of these factors militated against Lyons’s particular policy of conciliation, or what remained of it, and for his government’s policy of armed readiness. Accordingly, when Hughes, as Minister of External Affairs, addressed the parliament on 20 April 1939, he was able to refer to appeasement as having ‘failed’ (his candour now uninhibited following Lyons’s death), concluding that ‘a policy founded on the principle of the orderly settlement of disputes must now give way to the only methods effective against the threat of force’.3022 These words were the last rites of the Lyons government’s attempt to establish appeasement as a pattern in Australian external policy. The principles that had formed Lyons’s individual world-view had played their part in policy formulation, but that policy had failed to prevail on the international stage.

3019 Observations made while conscious of Crick, 29-30, that it is ‘impossible’ to get into the mind of another. 3020 External Affairs memorandum, Cabinet Minutes, 28 March 1939, CRS A6006/12. Mussolini said (on 28 March 1939) that Italy would not take the initiative to ‘protect peace’ until her rights were ‘acknowledged and satisfied’, although the memorandum detected signs of an Italian desire to maintain a policy independent of Germany. 3021 ibid. The department could not agree on the effect that the dispatch of a fleet to Singapore may have on such policy. 3022 Hughes, “Review of the International Situation”, 20 April 1939, Current Notes, vols.6-7 (May 1939), 178ff.; CPD, vol.157, 1031ff; Fitzhardinge, 651. 397

Conclusion ‘We have made our mistakes, everyone of us, else we would not be human, but I trust that in the balance of things, it will be found that the good we have done, or striven to do, has outweighed the errors.’3023 J.A. Lyons, New Year broadcast, 31 December 1934.

‘If a British statesman thinks today that all problems can and must be settled by frank discussions and negotiations, I would only like to say that there was ample opportunity to do this for fifteen years before our time.’3024 Hitler, speech at Wilhelmshaven, 1 April 1939.

Estimates of Lyons – critical assessment of Lyons and external policy – critical assessment of Lyons and defence policy – future research.

I

Before making a final critical commentary on Australian external and defence policy under J.A. Lyons, 1932-39, something needs to be said about the demise of Lyons ‘the man and politician’ and some brief estimate provided of his character, in keeping with the biographical focus of this study. This personal and political demise neatly accompanied that of the appeasement policy with which Lyons had so eagerly associated himself in the years since 1933. Lyons had denied himself the temptations of a Tasmanian retirement for many years, perhaps even from as early as 1933;3025 by late-1937 he was citing ‘duty’ as the reason for the self-denial of this ‘haven’ and ‘place of happiness’, 3026 but whatever his motivation, the choice to remain in office was made at the expense of his physical and psychological health. That condition declined markedly from late- 1938 onwards, until his premature death in April 1939. The shock of the Czech crisis had necessitated a period of recuperation at Home Hill (‘more to me than all the world’),3027 which lasted through most of October 1938. By the time Lyons returned to Devonport on 21 December 1938 for a further extended stay, he was seriously ill, as suggested by the uncharacteristic, spidery signature of the time.3028 Photographs of the period also indicate a physically drawn man quite unlike the beaming and robust figure that he normally presented.3029 Although attempts had been

3023 Lyons, Mister Prime Minister, ABC video. 3024 Hitler Wilhelmshaven speech, 1 April 1939, A981 CZE 18(4), NAA, Canberra, when launching the battleship Tirpitz. 3025 vide Chapter 1 on 1933 speculation about his political demise. 3026 Lyons election speech at Perth, Tasmania, Sydney Morning Herald & Argus, 22 October 1937; vide Chapter 5. 3027 Lyons to Dame Enid, n.d. but July-October 1937, Enid Lyons Papers, MS4852/28, NLA, Canberra. 3028 He remained in Tasmania until early-February 1939, aside from a fleeting trip to Melbourne in late-January. On his signature, vide Lyons to A.C.V. Melbourne, 2 February 1939, A981 JAP 102, NAA, Canberra. Enid Lyons was also attending to some of his correspondence at this time, as she had done in earlier instances of disability such as July 1926; Enid Lyons, My Life, 22. She even signed a prime ministerial letter; J.A. Lyons to Mrs. Withers, Northam, WA, 22 February 1939, CP167/1/22, NAA, Canberra, which argued against economic appeasement. 3029 For example, in Enid Lyons, Carrion Crows, facing 128, taken on 7 February 1939 in Hobart & in Mister Prime Minister, various shots of this period. On Lyons’s former physical robustness; ADB, vol.10, 188. 398 made to conceal the extent of his debilitation from the public, parliamentary colleagues (like Stewart and Fadden) and other observers (like the journalist, Reid) noted prime ministerial exhaustion.3030 Lyons himself seemed aware of his imminent demise, for he steadfastly refused to address the issue of attaining the record prime ministerial term-of-office, due on 22 April 1939.3031 In March, he told the warden of Devonport that celebration was not ‘appropriate’, as the present political situation was ‘obscure’, some indication that he had subordinated personal to political demands.3032 Enid Lyons later admitted: ‘I knew how sick he was’.3033 So apparently did the man himself, for only days before his death, an extremely tense and ‘almost hysterical’ Lyons told an old associate, Frank Green, at Parliament House: ‘I should never have left Tasmania: I had real mates there, and was happy; this set-up is killing me.’3034 This fragile physical and mental state must be factored into any considerations of policy formulation and implementation, for in the last months Lyons displayed ‘impaired working ability’, ‘neurotic incapacity’ and ‘psychologic’.3035 As well as affecting his capacity for work and clarity of thought, the decision to endure after January 1939 killed him.3036 Whilst the death of an individual did not terminate Australian government support for appeasement, any more than an individual had been responsible for its conception, Lyons could only have died under the impression that the policy he had so nourished was moribund.3037 He had even written (whether unconsciously or not) his own personal and political epilogue in the last months, providing what could be interpreted as a self-assessment of his leadership and giving an indication of the goals that he had pursued ─ a t a time when his peace policy was failing, Lyons’s self-righteousness of 1930-31 reasserted itself. On 5 January 1939, he had lauded Dr. T. Baty (the British legal adviser to the Japanese Foreign Ministry), noting his love of ‘humanity’ and his absence of any distinctions of ‘colour, creed and caste’:

3030 Hasluck, Government, 110 on his last illness. F. Stewart to Lyons, 17 November 1938, MP2270/1/24, NAA, Canberra. A. Fadden, They called me Artie: the Memoirs of Sir Arthur Fadden (Melbourne: Jacaranda Press, 1969), 40. A. Reid, 359, on his first sight of Lyons, in early-1939. 3031 He would then have surpassed Hughes’s record - when Lyons died, on 7 April 1939, he had completed 7 years, 3 months and 1 day in office. 3032 Lyons to Ingledew, Warden of Devonport, 8 March 1939, CP 167/1/4, NAA, Canberra. Ingledew appeared to know the real reason for Lyons’s refusal, expressing his hope in reply that Lyons’s health was ‘standing up to it’, given that ‘the Prime Minister is having a strenuous time just now’; Ingledew to Lyons, 16 March 1939, CP 167/1/4, NAA, Canberra. Enid Lyons audio interview with A. Clarke, Tape 2, on Ingledew. 3033 Enid Lyons audio interview with Mel Pratt, Tape 1, 19-20. 3034 Quoted in F. Green, “Parade of Prime Ministers”, Part 5, Sun-Herald, 24 May 1959. Green, who had known Lyons well since his time in the Tasmanian parliament, suggested that his restlessness was symptomatic of a nervous breakdown; ibid., Servant, 115-6. 3035 Lasswell, 95-6, on the ‘neurotic incapacity’ brought about by the incompatibility between the power role and unconscious drives within the political personality. Holsti, 120-1, on the rational fragility of decision-making made under extreme stress and ‘psychologic’. Dollard’s criterion 2, listed in Davies, 110-11, suggests that the biographer take account of the subject’s physical functioning. Coronary occlusion, listed as the cause of his death, ADB, vol.10, 188, is usually accompanied by the occlusion of other arteries & often brings about mental disability; Personal conversation with Dr. J. Harkness, medical specialist, Malvern, Victoria (great-nephew of J. Latham), 23 March 2001. Lasswell, ibid., on cardiovascular disturbance as a symptom of political duress, where he also suggests that impairment includes the inability to concentrate or arrive at conclusions. 3036 On the retirement episode of January 1939; Martin, Menzies, 256ff.; C. Edwards, 261-3; Cumpston, Bruce, 168-9 3037 Australian appeasement remained active even beyond 3 September 1939; P. Edwards, “S.M. Bruce, R.G. Menzies and Australia’s War Aims and Peace Aims, 1939-40.” Historical Studies, vol.17, no.66 (April 1976): 1-14; A. Clarke, “Menzies and Hitler”, Australian Financial Review, 19 April 2001, 57. 399

It is fitting that such a man should receive honour and recognition. Men of wide sympathies and understanding are greatly needed in the world today, for they can do much to promote friendships between the nations.3038

Lyons reinforced this possible self-description in February, when describing the leadership qualities of the recently-deceased Pope Pius XI (whom he had met in June 1935):3039

His efforts for peace…his deep concern for the weak and downtrodden - no matter what nationality or creed - his insistence on carrying out his onerous duties whilst his strength permitted were all characteristics of a great and illustrious leader.3040

This too was arguably self-description that could be taken as his own estimate of the role he had sought to fulfill since 1932. That Lyons finally thought himself worthy of some recognition for his peacemaking efforts seems likely ─ his parliamentary statements immediately after the climax of the Czech crisis in late-1938 implied as much.3041 Such recognition was not forthcoming in his lifetime;3042 Lyons himself could find consolation only in the fact that he had not assisted in the commission of evil, as he confessed to his wife in his last weeks:

Neither you nor I can put everything right and we saved Australia from ruin. Think of the homes that are happy because of what we did, and realise that no home is unhappy because of anything we did.3043

Although Lyons was thinking primarily of his domestic achievements, this apologia pro vita sua, it is argued, equally applies to his efforts in international relations. If it is so applied, it serves as

3038 Lyons to Sakai Katayama, Japanese Foreign Ministry, Tokyo, 5 January 1939 (in reply to Katayama to Lyons, 16 November 1938 seeking a message for Baty’s 70th birthday), CP 167/1/19, NAA, Canberra. Normally a prime minister would ignore such a request, but perhaps Lyons recalled Baty’s pro-appeasement sentiments of 1932; Dr. Baty, Japanese Foreign Ministry, to Foreign Office & passed to External Affairs, 22 September 1932; original sent through Lindley to Sir John Simon 19 August 1932, A981/4 CHIN 165 pt.2, NAA, Canberra. 3039 vide Chapter 3. 3040 Lyons draft telegram to British Vatican envoy, 2 February 1939, CP 167/1/17, NAA, Canberra. He defended his praises of the late Pope in Lyons to the ‘Protestant Truth Society’, Sydney, 1 April 1939, CP167/1/19 (in reply to an insulting letter sent to him by that society on 23 March 1939). 3041 vide Chapter 6 on the statement of 29 September 1938; Lyons, CPD, 29 September 1938, vol.157, 332-3. 3042 He received some faint, posthumous recognition; The Times, 8 April 1939, 14, c, assessed him as ‘essentially a man of peace’. 3043 Lyons to Enid Lyons, n.d. but March-April 1939, Enid Lyons Papers, MS 4852/28, NLA, Canberra. The quote from this letter on the back cover of White, Joseph Lyons, is incorrect, as is the quote in ADB, vol.10, 188; it is correctly quoted in Souter, Acts, 317. 400 an instance of the self-delusion that Lyons was enduring at the end, for there were many homes unhappy because of appeasement, even if in ‘far away’ countries ‘…of whom we know nothing’3044 ─ none of them, however, were in Australia and Lyons had persistently pursued a course that he perceived was in Australia’s national interest. He can only have been supported in this delusion by his wife, whom he now privately contemplated as a potential successor: ‘You may yet have to lead this nation’;3045 a striking, final example of their formidable political partnership.

This is not to say that Lyons as an appeaser was a foolish and insensitive man (or that appeasement itself was misguided). He clearly was not and he remained a remarkably generous individual even as prime minister,3046 but those traits (gentleness, moderation, humanity, consensus) that made appeasement a natural policy option for Lyons on the international stage were not easily transferable from the domestic environment. Lyons’s commitment to the peace policy of the period was deep, but in the final measure it was a matter of character ─ he was probably too ‘liberal’ (in the Gladstonian sense of his youth) and insufficiently Machiavellian to cope with the diplomatic demands of the ‘devil’s decade’─ ‘loving kindness’, to use Menzies’s description, did not serve him well in external policy in the period after 1937.3047 The international circumstances of the ‘twenties would have been more conducive to his temperament and more receptive towards the policies of post-1919 reconciliation that he and his circle promoted.3048 As it was, with greatness thrust upon him in the ‘thirties, Lyons struggled to come to terms with international problems many of which did not have their origins in the supposed injustices of the Versailles system, as he and others, like his close and loyal associate Casey (perhaps his nominated successor), seemed to think.3049

II The external policy pursued by Lyons as prime minister and by his government had several aims─ to effect international conciliation, especially in the region in line with its particular perspective; to improve the process of imperial consultation and thus to play some part in the formulation of imperial policy-making. Ultimately, the Lyons government failed to achieve

3044 Chamberlain radio broadcast, 27 September 1938; Circular Telegram, DO to Prime Ministers, 27 September 1938, A2937/85/B304, where he referred to ‘a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing’. 3045 Lyons to Enid Lyons, n.d., but March-April 1939, MS 4852/28, where he referred to the suggestions of such in the journal New Era. She later believed that the UAP saw her as leadership material in 1943 and that Menzies had seen her, post-1949, as a leadership rival; Enid Lyons, audio interview with Mel Pratt, March 1972, 27. 3046 Lyons told his family in the ‘twenties: ‘God has been good to us. We must be generous.’; Enid Lyons, So We, 113ff., where she recounts many acts of charity, at a time when the family was struggling financially; also ibid., 270ff. on the public recognition of his generous nature. He matches the definition of ‘Democratic Leadership’, where the democrat identifies himself with mankind as a whole; Lasswell, 108. The prime ministerial correspondence, NAA, Canberra, passim, contains many examples of Lyons’s individual acts of philanthropy to struggling appellants. 3047 Menzies on Lyons, CPD, vol.159, 8, 19 April 1939. 3048 Lyons stood unsuccessfully for the federal seat of Darwin (Tasmania) in 1919; ADB, vol.10, 185. 3049 Hudson, Casey, 106, 108, cites the gossip to that effect from April 1939, although unconvinced that it was the case. On Casey, Enid Lyons, Carrion Crows, 61-2. It is alleged that Casey had been approached by Menzies seeking support for a leadership challenge towards the end of 1938, but that he would have none of it; D. Langmore, Glittering Surfaces. A Life of Maie Casey (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1999), 61-2. 401 these goals, despite the considerable efforts of Lyons and the other leading, sometime appeasers of the period, notably Latham, Casey, Bruce, Pearce, Page, Menzies and Hughes. Nevertheless, their efforts indicated that the period 1932-39 adhered to the patterns that had emerged in Australian external policy in the years since Federation (those of disappointed expectation; the search for improved imperial consultation and the evolution of different regional perspectives).3050 Despite its ultimate failure to stamp the new pattern of appeasement permanently on Australian policy, the Lyons years had continued the evolution of those patterns evident before 1932 and in some areas accelerated them ─ the disintegration and discrediting of appeasement should not be allowed to overshadow this achievement, nor should the regression of the process of imperial consultation that the ‘new imperial policy’ of 1939 represented. All of the ministers and ex-ministers listed above contributed to varying degrees at different times to the continuation of those earlier patterns of external policy and the near consummation of a full Australian diplomacy in March 1939 even gave some indication that Canberra was in a state of transition towards a less dependent external policy ─ the regional initiatives of the Lyons years had already suggested as much in 1934 and 1937, through the Eastern Mission and the Pacific Pact. The Lyons years should thus be seen as a part of the evolution of Australian external policy from dependency towards autonomy, still a far from complete process in April 1939, but one considerably advanced since 1932, even if there were few concrete achievements by which this progress could be measured. It is perhaps the continuation/acceleration of this process of transition for which Lyons as prime minister ought to be best remembered, although that seems unlikely in the short-term given the continuing, derogatory associations of the term ‘appeasement’.3051 By early-1939, Lyons as prime minister and the external policy of his government was associated with only one aspect to most observers─ the practice of appeasement ─ an understandable link given the considerable efforts of the appeasers to stamp their characteristics on an external policy that had constituted several other, equally important elements. It is this aspect, however, that must be first assessed, mindful that had Lyons and the other appeasers succeeded in their peacemaking (as some still thought possible in April 1939),3052 his reputation would have been secure ─ failure led to damnation and what his wife later euphemistically called a ‘lack of understanding’.3053 Lyons had publicly indicated in 1935 that ‘Australian foreign policy’ was aiming for ‘international co-operation leading to political and economic stability’.3054 By his own admission in March 1939, appeasement had failed, but the appeasers had nevertheless constructed what may be argued was a rational, considered response to the circumstances of their

3050 vide Introduction on the ‘patterns’ that had developed 1901-31. 3051 At the time of writing, April 2004, both prime minister and opposition leader, Howard and Latham, had recently employed ‘appeasement’ as a term of parliamentary abuse. 3052 Argus obituary “Vale: Joseph Lyons”, 8 April 1939, 10, e. 3053 Enid Lyons, audio interview with Mel Pratt, March 1972, 79-80, on the appeasers. 3054 Lyons speech, 4 September 1935, Hodgson Papers, M1516. vide Chapter 3. 402 decade. Casey for example, whose counsel sustained Lyons throughout in his considerations of external affairs, had been a consistent and persuasive adherent of the notion of ‘Versailles guilt’ and had championed the view that the removal of the obstacles of 1919 would substantially contribute to international stability.3055 Such views were similarly espoused by Lyons himself and by Page, as prime minister and his deputy, and remained predominant until Lyons’s demise, despite the doubts of Pearce (after 1936) and of Hughes. The predominant circle, initially backed by Hodgson and his revived department, thus viewed appeasement policy as having the potential to preserve the peace, perhaps even, as Lyons suggested in December 1938, for at least a generation and, if so, ‘why not for longer?’3056 Such views were only reluctantly abandoned. It remains a separate question of morality as to whether peace was worth the cost demanded, but certainly Lyons thought it was, at least until March 1939, as in a similar manner Menzies and Bruce thought likewise in the following September.3057 The chief question, however, relates to whether peace through appeasement was ever possible, or were men like Lyons, Casey, Page, Bruce and the others pursuing unattainable goals. In the case of Nazi Germany it seems likely that they were and some (like Bruce) realised this earlier than others─ in retrospect it seems that Hitler could not have been restrained through appeasement.3058 This was not as obvious at the time as later, of course, and such observations did not necessarily apply to Italy and Japan in the same measure. Italy was an altogether different case. The thesis has shown that Lyons was not alone in his conviction that the Mussolini’s desire for Anglo-Italian friendship was real (something widely shared by the likes of Hankey, Vansittart, Perth and ultimately Chamberlain), nor was he alone in his view of Italy’s strategic importance to Australian security (a long-standing observation shared by Pearce, Casey and others). There was very little, of course, that any Australian could do to enhance Anglo-Italian friendship (as with Anglo-German relations) other than to lobby at Whitehall, but Lyons made his modest contribution to the process and he was sensible to do so ─ there were sufficient grounds for believing that, although Mussolini was playing his usual double game, the early and consistent application of Mediterranean appeasement by London could have maintained Italy’s disposition towards the old Entente and helped to prevent the shift towards the Axis by early-1939. This could have been secured by even a limited British acknowledgement in 1935 of Italian ambitions in East Africa, admittedly an extremely perilous political task for any British government, as the Hoare-Laval episode illustrated ─ at the very least, after that time and under Chamberlain’s premiership, some earlier attempt at the healing of differences through the de jure recognition of Abyssinia could still have been effective. Granting Italy carte blanche in

3055 Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 255, 259 and 411, on Versailles guilt, including that of Casey, Eggleston, Giblin and C.E.W. Bean. 3056 Joseph Lyons joint broadcast, 4 December 1938, A5954/69/1949/4. 3057 P. Edwards, “S.M. Bruce, R.G. Menzies and Australia’s War Aims…”: 1-14; Menzies to Bruce, DAFP, vol.2, 218, 11 September 1939. 3058 The introductory Hitler quote above is relevant to this debate & may be taken as support for appeasement’s prospects in an early period or as the rejection of the approach altogether. 403 Abyssinia might have been a risky strategy for London from 1935, but it was not an option that was beyond consideration or impossible, just as Australian ministers were thought to have signalled much the same to Debuchi, mutatis mutandis, in the same year.3059 When that recognition finally came, it was too little, too late for Rome, although not before Lyons had helped to secure some evidence, through Munich, of Mussolini’s earnest desire for peace. From the perspective of the Australian appeasers, the possibilities of Anglo-Italian accord seemed to have been squandered for little gain and at the cost of ongoing peril to imperial communications. From Lyons’s particular perspective, the greatest opportunities for appeasement were lost in the Pacific and here he could not hold British statecraft chiefly responsible for failure in the same way as he appeared to do in Mediterranean or central European policy, always keen as he was to assign blame elsewhere. Japan had remained the central focus of Australian policy- makers throughout the ‘thirties and the initiatives of the Lyons years offered the prospect of progress towards Anglo-Japanese accord or, at the very least, of improved relations between Tokyo and Canberra. This thesis has avoided detailed analysis of British policy as being beyond its scope and it remains a matter of contention as to whether improved Anglo-Japanese relations were possible in the ‘thirties ─ there were certainly major factors militating against such an improvement that have been mentioned in passing, not the least of which were British financial interests in China and the attitude of the Foreign Office,3060 but British ‘strategic foreign policy’ as it has been called was not determined by these factors alone. More importantly, Australian appeasers like Lyons were optimistic that efforts could be made to improve Anglo-Japanese relations and convinced that any resulting accord would militate against the Japanese option of ‘southward’ expansion, as well as against any European war becoming global. It was these assumptions that have been important in a study of individual world-view and broader policy- making. They were not fanciful and they were widespread in Australia, as foreign observers like Hankey, Crutchley, Whiskard and Moffat noted, sometimes to their surprise. The view that a Japan preoccupied in Manchuria would not strike southwards (although ultimately mistaken by 1941-42) seemed well-grounded in the ‘thirties and was certainly the rational assessment of regional developments made by the bulk of Australian policy-makers (as this study has shown), Lyons, Pearce, Hughes and Latham included. Japanese aggression, if restricted to the Asian mainland or at least kept north of the Equator, was something that Canberra thought it could live with. The attempts of the Lyons government to improve bilateral relations with Tokyo were thus sensible, realistic and in any case unavoidable, as Pearce informed Moffat, although there were trade hiccoughs for which Canberra bore the chief responsibility and which could have been handled with greater sensitivity ─ Lyons certainly possessed many political skills, but he showed

3059 pace Medlicott, 123, on the ‘impossibility’ of a British government abandoning collective security to give Mussolini the free hand he sought. Sissons, “Manchester vs. Japan”: 482, quoting Japanese Foreign Ministry files.L.3.3.0.14 on ministerial talks, 4-5 September 1935; Twomey, “Australia and the Search…”, 372. 3060 These issues have been most recently discussed in Neilson, 681ff. 404 himself to be a very poor manager of both the trade diversion dispute in 1936 and of the Yampi episode in 1938. Once the moral and economic questions were set aside, the problems for eastern appeasement were those of intensity and timing─ Latham had played an important part in identifying the criteria of regional appeasement, but the new diplomacy did not fulfill its early promise under Lyons’s direction. Latham’s Eastern Mission was innovative and provided Lyons with an example to follow, but even though he pursued its logic of a ‘formula’ through to its conclusion by 1937, he did not do so with much haste or consistency and he had allowed the momentum of the process to lapse after mid-1935. Once it had become apparent at the 1935 London summit that current British interest in eastern appeasement was limited, Chamberlain’s obstructed proposals aside, Lyons ought to have followed the counsel he so freely offered in London and pursued the matter directly─ it is true that he raised the question of a pact with Roosevelt and Debuchi in the period after the summit, something reinforced by Hughes and Pearce in their ministerial talks with the latter, but that appeared to be the limit of his government’s initiative at the time. Had Lyons set aside his individual reservations about consummate Australian diplomacy in late-1935/early-1936, as he appeared to contemplate doing, it is possible that eastern appeasement could have been pursued with some consistency and greater application by Canberra than it ever was by London, even if one ought not to over- estimate the likely impact of modest Australian diplomacy on a power like Japan. It is unclear why Lyons failed to do so, but some of the inhibiting factors appeared to be his desire to maintain consensus in cabinet, his respect for (or fear of) Pearce’s opposition and parsimony. Even though the obstacles to Australian diplomacy were still considered too great, there remained the option of the ‘personal’ diplomacy, through men such as Pratt, contemplated by Lyons at a later time. As neither of these options was pursued, nearly two years were wasted, during which time Tokyo’s frustration grew, aggravated by the trade disputes that Lyons seemed unable or unwilling to prevent. In the meantime, Manchukuo remained illegitimate and the thorn-in-the-flesh of Anglo- Japanese accord that Latham had warned it was in July 1934─ it was during this period that t he unlikely alignment of Berlin and Tokyo had crystallised.3061 By the time the Pacific Pact proposal, with which Lyons so associated himself, came to fruition in mid-1937, the Manchurian question was beginning to seem stale and had been overtaken by other more pressing international issues, although he pressed on with a new-found enthusiasm. Quite aside from the questions of whether the Pact proposal was tardy and ever capable of realisation, the whole was chiefly impeded by two obstacles, one of which was entirely of Lyons’s own making─ firstly by the vagueness surrounding its proposed mechanisms (apparent in its inadequate drafting and only partially set aside after conference deliberations) and

3061 Germany was the first power to recognise Manchukuo, at Hitler’s personal insistence; Lammers, Reichskanzlei, to Ribbentrop, 17 February 1938, DGFP, series D, vol.1, 839; pace Iriye, “Asian Factor,” 238, where the decision is stated to have been in January. 405 secondly by the obstructive attitude of British diplomacy, to which Lyons entrusted his model without much critical reflection on the likely consequences. The first obstacle had been entirely avoidable, especially given the time that had elapsed since Lyons initially raised the issue in London in May 1935 ─ a better constructed draft might not necessarily have been accepted by the conference, but vagueness only fuelled the hostility and scepticism of the proposal’s opponents. As it was, the proposal received a certain level of endorsement in June 1937 only because it was capable of being subjected to such diverse interpretation. The second obstacle was the more important and through it Lyons paid a further penalty for the secrecy of his modus operandi and for his government’s reluctance to establish an Australian diplomatic service, which had it existed might not have been able to prevent the burial of the Pact by British diplomacy, but could possibly have kept its hopes alive for some period. When the Lyons government finally set aside its diplomatic reservations in late-1938/early-1939, annoyed by the demise of imperial consultation, it was probably too late to resurrect eastern appeasement by any means, informal or otherwise. Although Lyons personally appeared to hold Whitehall responsible for this grim state of affairs,3062 he ought to have reserved some of the culpability for himself and for the ad hoc, inconsistent and poorly coordinated manner in which his government had pursued eastern appeasement in the post-Latham period ─ Lyons had proved very receptive to the in novative proposals of others, but had not personally managed their subsequent application with great skill. The theory of Australian eastern appeasement had arguably been sound and defensible; its practice had been severely flawed. Nevertheless, in following this path, Lyons had presided over an external policy that matched the patterns established before 1932 (as suggested above), including that which acknowledged the different regional perspectives emerging between London and Canberra. Despite the failure to consummate eastern appeasement, the Lyons government had not allowed itself to be diverted from the regional outlook that had resulted in the first act of quasi-diplomacy under Latham.3063 Lyons had first indicated publicly his personal and prime ministerial interest in external affairs in December 1933 with a statement that stressed a regional perspective and he had reminded a foreign audience in 1937 that the ‘fundamental similarity’ of Australian and British outlook did not preclude Australia’s own ‘special interest’.3064 He maintained such a perspective until the end ─ Hughes acknowledged this ‘ Australian outlook’ as the driving impulse of the man and his policy in his parliamentary valedictory of April 1939.3065 It was this outlook that had stimulated Lyons to turn some attention towards the greatest Pacific power in 1935, the US, in an attempt to contain the most aggressive, Japan. Even though this had not been of much material assistance to him in his advocacy of the Pacific Pact, it was no

3062 Lyons at Darlinghurst, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 October 1937; Hart, “J.A. Lyons”, 273. vide Chapter 5. 3063 Latham failed to acknowledge Lyons’s contribution to the AEM in his obituary; Argus, 8 April 1939, 2, d. 3064 Lyons speech to Foreign Press Association, Savoy Hotel, London, 7 June 1937; “Mr. Lyons on Australian Proposal”, The Times, 8 June 1937, 13, b. 3065 Hughes on Lyons, CPD, vol.159, 7, 19 April 1939: ‘A firm believer in Empire, he was, first and foremost, an Australian, and retained throughout his public career an Australian outlook.’ 406 accident that the first diplomatic positions that the Lyons government sought to fill in 1939 were in Washington and Tokyo. This diplomatic initiative was to be the only one of the Lyons years that endured, but it was Lyons’s misfortune that it remained the least known and one for which his successor accrued credit. Nevertheless, it was Lyons as prime minister who presided over the final evolution of Australian diplomacy to the condition of maturity, even if the delay in doing so seemed protracted and unnecessary after 1935, and the accumulated evidence points to a stronger sense of differing regional perspectives at the end of the Lyons years than had existed at the beginning. The initiatives of the Lyons years, to which Lyons himself had contributed as an individual and as prime minister to the varying degrees outlined in this thesis, pointed towards a transition in external policy away from dependency and towards a more acute perception of those regional differences. The Lyons government also followed the pattern established by its predecessors in the quest for improved London-Canberra consultation, including the related pattern of disappointed expectation. Lyons’s prime ministerial efforts to enhance imperial communications were considerable, as this thesis has indicated, although such efforts were often ad hoc and uncoordinated, without the formality and design of the proposals of Deakin, or even the practical stamp of Hughes, who had suggested in August 1938 that an Australian representative be posted to the Foreign Office (a return to Bruce’s system of liaison in the ‘twenties).3066 Nevertheless, the desire to streamline the consultative process was a consistent theme of these years and constituted an important element of the Imperial Conference of 1937. It had even included the innovative offers of ad hoc participation in British policy making and diplomacy during times of crisis (in 1936 through Menzies and in 1938 through Bruce), suggestions which seemed to have originated with Lyons himself. Ultimately, like appeasement, these efforts failed, in part because Lyons had failed to offer a structured model of consultation to be followed and had been too trusting in the strength of personal links. The collapse of imperial consultation in March-April 1939 made it clear that London’s ability to listen to dominion opinion was as limited under Chamberlain as it had ever been and the personal connections proved of disappointing worth. Despite his intervention during the 1938 Czech crisis (and the importance attached to it by Lyons himself), the extensive consultative process of September 1938 had not materialised into a pattern ─ the pre-Munich level of consultation that had been so enhanced by the Lyons-Chamberlain exchanges and by the work of men such as MacDonald and Bruce ultimately proved an exception rather than a new rule. Lyons as prime minister was ultimately unable to effect any lasting improvement in the process of consultation, even given his innovative use of the telephone. In this endeavour he had been no more successful than any of his prime ministerial predecessors. It remains a separate matter of contention whether London was ever serious in its various offers of consultation and in

3066 Lyons rejected the idea. Hughes: Sydney Morning Herald, 9 August 1938, 11, d; Age, 10 August 1938, 13, d. Lyons’s response; Age, 13 August 1938, 15, f, g. vide Introduction. 407 its periodic promises of some dominion involvement in imperial policy-making. Nevertheless, the particular pattern of seeking consultation established by some earlier prime ministers, notably Deakin and Bruce, had continued unabated under Lyons and the period 1932- 39 remains notable for Canberra’s efforts to make its voice heard at Whitehall, both in the period of cunctation and particularly during the period in which appeasement was emerging as an option for British policy-makers.

Lyons’s particular contribution to external policy, 1932-39, was in the manner, style and periodic intensity of his advocacy of a policy of conciliation. His prime ministerial evolution towards ‘dominance’ in the management of external affairs was in itself nothing extraordinary and adhered to the pattern of a number of his predecessors, such as Deakin, Hughes and Bruce. It has been noted that the process of prime ministerial dominance was encouraged by Whitehall and shown that in Lyons’s case there continued to be some acknowledgement of collegiality even towards the end (such as in the protracted instance of initiating diplomatic representation, 1938- 39) ─ Lyons could be as authoritarian as any previous prime minister when it suited him to be so, but he did seem personally reluctant to abandon the practice of consensus. What was extraordinary about his period as prime minister, however, was the link that he established in his own mind, and in the mind of others, between himself and the policy of conciliation. Lyons remained the chief public advocate of eastern appeasement throughout those years and was unsurpassed in his private advocacy of it in the post-Latham period. Latham had planted the seeds of eastern appeasement, but departed the scene in mid-1934 and was to play no further role until 1940-41, when he became the first Australian minister at Tokyo.3067 Lyons had been left to manage the legacy of the Australian Eastern Mission, in which Latham’s ministerial successor, Pearce, showed little interest, and he carried its suggestions forward as prime minister, even if not with the immediate speed and force that Latham had advocated in 1934. Although the elder statesmen Pearce and Hughes remained resigned to the appeasement of Japan and played their part in the process that led to the acceptance of the concept of regional pacts in 1936, the Pacific Pact proposal of 1937 was shouldered chiefly by Lyons himself in London and pressed as his own particular model. It has also been shown that Lyons played the prominent, although not sole, part in preparing diplomatic connections with Tokyo in 1938-39 through finally bringing the matter to the boil in cabinet at a time when many ministers still seemed to prefer the prevailing system of half-measures. Throughout those years Lyons had used his prime ministerial speeches and broadcasts to champion friendly bilateral relations with Tokyo and he never publicly abandoned the hope that a regional war could be avoided (even when he arguably ought to have done), making great mental efforts to divorce trade considerations and evidence of continued Japanese aggression from considerations of conciliation. Lyons was never the sole advocate of eastern appeasement and had not himself conceived the approach, but from 1933-34 he had made the

3067 Latham’s appointment was announced on 18 August 1940; ADB, vol.10, 5. 408 cause his own and been happy to act as the chief Australian spokesman for regional détente both at home and when abroad.

A similar process had operated in his advocacy of wider appeasement. Having accepted the concept of European conciliation, Lyons advocated it with an intensity from 1935 that was publicly unmatched in Canberra, even though shared and sustained by his circle here and by Bruce in London. Once it was clear, from 1936, that Hughes and Pearce preferred to restrict appeasement to the region, if to continue its application at all, Lyons was the unquestioned Australian mouthpiece of European/Mediterranean appeasement, although supported by Page and Casey in cabinet and by Bruce in his diplomatic capacity. The prime ministerial broadcasts of 1938-39 could only have strengthened the link in the public perception between the man and the policy of wider appeasement. In this respect, at least, Lyons was the ‘leading’ Australian appeaser and it was not surprising that he was the chief target of the criticism of anti-appeasers such as H.G. Wells in 1939 and the subject of the highest regard by those of the opposite persuasion, like P.R. Stephensen. This association of the man and the policy magnified the personal and political difficulties faced by Lyons when seeking to explain the demise of appeasement in the period December 1938-March 1939. Lyons, rightly or wrongly, had come to represent Australian appeasement by 1939, as the prime minister who had presided over the policy and as a man who had supported it personally with such enthusiasm, however misleading it was to associate a single individual with the broad sweep of policy and with complex historical processes. It was this factor of association which first drew my attention to the need for a closer study of the individual as well as of the policy and even if my chiefly biographical focus has produced a ‘lop-sided’ account of reality,3068 as such focuses tend to do, then that lop-sidedness is arguably understandable given the strength of the contemporaneous association between Lyons and appeasement ─ hopefully it still provides a window looking onto a larger picture and has provided some acknowledgement of the role of others, despite its necessary preoccupation with Lyons.3069 So close was the association of man and policy by 1938-39, that his prime ministerial admission of the failure of appeasement in March 1939 was also an admission of personal failure and something that negated the political course of consensus that Lyons had followed for decades. It is thus difficult to imagine how Lyons could have politically survived the collapse of appeasement, although there were certainly those in the UAP who believed he could.3070 It was, however, politically fitting that his personal demise was in tandem with that of the external policy that he had so prominently advocated and helped to sustain since 1933-34. III

3068 Aitkin, 85, on the dangers of biography. 3069 Hamilton, 166, as quoted and discussed in the Introduction. 3070 Wills & Knox of the UAP had persuaded him to stay on in April 1939 until the next federal poll, due to ‘his immense popularity among the public’; Enid Lyons audio interview with A. Clarke, Tape 2; So We, 274; Hart, “Piper…”, 132-3. 409 Just as Japan had been the central factor in the conception of Australian appeasement, so too was ‘possible [Japanese] aggression’, as Lyons candidly described it, a significant factor in defence policy in the ‘thirties.3071 Lyons the ‘pacificist’ had accepted at a very early stage of his prime ministerial career the ancient maxim that ‘the desire for quiet is not effective as a safeguard’,3072 and whatever failures Lyons the appeaser had endured, Lyons the rearmer could take a grim satisfaction in his success, even if his prime ministerial input into defence policy was considerably less substantial (conscription aside) than its counterpart in external policy. The five rearmament programs, 1932-39, were extensive and impressive in their range, especially when the size of the Australian economy in the ‘thirties is considered.3073 They ought not to be diminished because they were a continuation of any outlined by earlier governments, most notably those of Bruce in the ‘twenties when the Salmond designs for the RAAF were outlined and when the RAN cruiser program was first mooted. The financial planning and sacrifices involved in renewing rearmament at a time of severe, post-Depression stringency were considerable and a testament to the economic management of the two Treasurers of the period, Lyons and Casey.3074

Whereas Lyons was happy to interfere in diplomatic concerns as an ‘amateur diplomat’, he acknowledged his ignorance of the technical aspects of rearmament and was entirely reliant on others in this respect─ he was thus easily swayed by expert technical opinion, such as that provided by the Woolnough report of 1938 on iron-ore, and more open to the suggestions of Shedden at Defence than, for example, to those of Hodgson at External Affairs. In presiding over the formulation of an aggressive program of rearmament, he had appeared to rely on the expertise and experience of Pearce and Hughes, and later on the energy of Parkhill, who all had their differences with their prime minister over aspects of appeasement but were of a similar mind over defence. Hughes remained a bellicose advocate of rearmament throughout, with a credibility amongst the hawkish that Lyons could not hope to match, had he ever desired to do so. Parkhill too had fulfilled the role of an aggressive public advocate of defence, 1935-37, in a manner that Lyons was either unwilling or unable to do, although he added his own voice to calls for improved readiness when required in those years and became a substantial advocate of defence preparations in the period 1938-39, although always careful to stress non-aggressive motives and to use conciliatory language (unlike the irrepressible Hughes).

3071 Lyons to Forbes, NZ prime minister, 3 October 1933, in Andrews, “The Great Temptation…”: 357; Andrews, Writing, 113. 3072 Dio Cassius, Fragments, Book II, on the seventh century BC Roman king, Ancus Marcius. vide Introduction on ‘pacifists’ and ‘pacificists’. 3073 pace Day, The Politics of War, 6ff., where percentages of national income appear to downgrade the level of defence expenditure as a percentage of the federal budget, as outlined in this thesis. Ross, Armed and Ready, does not appear in the Select Bibliography of this book. 3074 It was acknowledged that these ‘unprecedented’ measures were straining the Australian economy; ‘Austra’, “The March of Events.” Australian National Review, vol.5, no.29 (May 1939): 1. 410 Lyons never pretended to be a strategist in the same way that he had assumed the status of imperial statesman for himself. The government had adopted defence against ‘light raids’, rather than ‘invasion’ in February 1932 and Lyons faithfully adhered to this throughout with its various implications for each of the services, despite his fears about the prospect of the latter in the last years.3075 His Singapore scepticism, whatever was said publicly, was marked and consistent but was neither unprecedented nor unshared. Latham had provided early evidence of its necessity and Hughes had always seemed to fuel any doubts entertained by his prime minister about British commitment to eastern defence ─ Bruce provided the on-the-spot observations and inside information that allowed those doubts to persist through 1937 and beyond. That Singapore scepticism was found in Lyons, Latham, Hughes and Parkhill in particular seems unsurprising given the scale of the evidence about British lassitude with which they were faced. Their response was the only prudent one that could have been taken in the circumstances─ there seemed little that a country of Australia’s size and minimal international influence (outside of Empire) could do but rearm in its own economically modest way while hoping (and lobbying) for British rearmament, although Lyons was also personally prepared to seek assurances from the US in a way that, for example, the anti-American Pearce would not do in the ‘thirties, even if the assurances given were far from concrete. That Australian defence policy-makers were faced with such insecurity in this period provided an indication that their attempts to gain co-ordination of defence policy planning at an imperial level, an especially prominent feature of the Imperial Conference of 1937, had failed. By March 1939, that failure had seemed underlined by inferences that were drawn following Chamberlain’s comments of eastern defence in that month, even if soon allayed on the surface. Lyons was clearly among those who recognised the seriousness of the collapse of imperial consultation in external policy at this time, but it remains unclear whether he also detected the symptoms of a similar collapse in defence co-ordination ─ if so, then the future must have seemed doubly uncertain to him.

When war came, however, the evidence suggests that the local defence measures undertaken by the Lyons government since 1933 proved effective, even if Casey did not later recall that this was the case3076 ─ the armed services (including the Lyons-Hughes augmented Militia of over 80,000) were in a considerable state of readiness for the scenarios delineated at that earlier time ─ the forward naval defence of any ‘Blue Water’ commitment (not necessarily based at Singapore) and continental defence against the anticipated ‘raids’. There was no standing army to speak of in September 1939, but such a force was uncalled for in the government’s strategic planning, which had consistently precluded an overseas expeditionary force3077 ─ as it was, Lyons’s and Parkhill’s almost fanciful references to a ‘nucleus’ of seven Army divisions

3075 Pearce to Lyons, 13 February 1932, CP103/19/30; McCarthy, “Australia and Imperial Defence…”: 26; Gow: 170. 3076 Ross, Armed and Ready, Chapter 7, particularly 202-3. Casey to Earle Page, 19 July 1957, Earle Page Papers, MS 1633/173, NLA, Canberra, quoted in Day, The Politics of War, 7. 3077 Something unmentioned in ibid., 6. 411 were not too wide of the mark by mid-1941.3078 Especially impressive had been the resurrection of the RAAF and the establishment of munitions and other secondary industries with defence ramifications, such as aircraft and motor manufacturing. This state of the readiness allowed a smooth and effective transition to a wartime economy and greater military preparedness in the following months and even years before the threat from Japan, so long feared, became a reality after December 1941.3079 None of this would have been possible without the Lyons government’s policies of ‘strength with conciliation’ and little of it without the economic management provided by Treasurers Lyons and Casey, not to mention the unrelenting advocacy of the hawkish Hughes. Lyons himself warrants some recognition for this achievement, particularly as rearmament was utterly contrary to his personal inclinations and gentle nature. He consoled himself with the belief that these forces would only be used for ‘defensive’ purposes (which was the case, at least in Australia’s own region) and would also serve to strengthen Australia’s diplomatic clout, such as it was. Lyons did not live to see either result. When in April 1939, Hughes triumphantly signalled the removal of appeasement in favour of ‘the only methods effective against the threat of force’,3080 he failed to acknowledge that the Lyons government had bequeathed to the more militaristically inclined the very instruments with which to implement their alternative strategy of strength-in-place-of-conciliation. This was certainly not the terminus that the ‘Tame Tasmanian’, as a self-designated man of consensus and a peacemaker, would have wanted for his own policy-making efforts since 1932, but his final broadcasts of March 1939 clearly indicated that he died aware of the likely outcome of events.3081

Lyons’s particular contribution to defence policy was the manner in which he had publicly sought to explain and to smooth the reluctant move towards rearmament, paralleling his consistent advocacy of appeasement. He continually explained the need for the process in a reasoned and personal way in his broadcasts and speeches, avoiding bellicosity and any hint of aggressive intentions (elements left to speakers such as Parkhill and Hughes) and although it is difficult to measure his impact, that such arguments emanated from an acknowledged man of peace must have offered some food for thought to those inclined against rearmament. Lyons’s pleas on defence seemed to conform to the political pattern he had established in 1930-31 ─ that of a man of conscience taking the path of self-sacrifice in the ‘national interest’.3082 It remains a matter of speculation as to how long the electorate would have tolerated this approach without the final delivery of the promised ‘peace dividend’, but it had reaped its political rewards up to the time of Lyons’s death, as the militia recruitment campaigns, 1938-39, illustrated.

3078 Lyons statement, CPD, 24 August 1937, vol.154, 22-31; vide Chapter 5; Parkhill speech, 15 June 1936, MP 1587/1 218AO, vide Chapter 4. Ross, Armed and Ready, Chapter 14, 408ff. 3079 Ross, Armed and Ready, Chapter 7, particularly 202-3. 3080 Hughes, “Review of the International Situation”, 20 April 1939, Current Notes, vols.6-7 (May 1939), 178ff; CPD, vol.157, 1031ff; Fitzhardinge, 651. 3081 vide Chapter 7. 3082 Argus, 8 May 1931, 7, g; “Hope in Unity,” 6, f, where Lyons expressed his belief that ‘personal and party ends must be subordinated to the national welfare’. 412 Lyons’s opposition to conscription, 1938-39, was also a particular contribution to the defence debate, even though it was considered by his opponents to be against the national interest and seemed contrary to his calls of the last months for maximum defence readiness. This was a matter of personal conscience that Lyons had elevated into a matter of national policy in a manner unseen for over two decades, perhaps the last political remnant of his Labour origins, but which was soon immersed in the larger issues of a full-scale war. Lyons remained especially proud of the role he had played in the struggle against conscription in 1916-17 and it seems likely that he would have preferred to have been remembered for his opposition to compulsion, rather than as the man who had presided over the greatest level of military spending in Australian peace-time history.3083

IV

In the process of researching Lyons’s individual world-view and the track of Australian policy in the 1930s, I have been attempting to fill certain gaps in the historiography, but I have also become aware of others that exist and that offer promise for future researchers.

The role of J.G. Latham as Minister of External Affairs, 1932-34, warrants further investigation. Latham had a long-standing interest in international relations and was a natural choice for the portfolio in the first Lyons government. The origins of the Australian Eastern Mission of 1934 have proved elusive, but clearly Latham was a prime mover of the whole exercise with his profound interest in regional affairs. The Latham Papers in the National Library of Australia contain much material on his ministerial service under Lyons and on the AEM in particular and could serve as a starting point for any deeper examination of Latham’s quasi- diplomatic activities than this thesis has been able to provide. An account of the Japanese response to the mission would also be appropriate, perhaps in the context of a broader study of Japanese attitudes towards Australia and Australian appeasement during the 1930s.

Since the evolution of Australian diplomacy would be a subject under consideration in such a study, some attention could be paid to the activities that followed in the wake of the mission, such as the appointment of Longfield Lloyd to Tokyo as a commissioner in 1935. His observations were to prove important in the following years and such a study could then be extended to examine Latham’s service as the first Australian minister to Tokyo, 1940-41, at a time when he maintained the quest for good bilateral relations that he had initiated in 1934. Latham returned to Tokyo in 1940 with some optimism and perhaps even with intentions of reviving ‘Mr. Lyons’ proposal’ of a Pacific Pact.3084 The study could conclude with an

3083 Lyons at Daylesford, Sydney Morning Herald, 8, a,b. vide Chapter 1 on his anti-conscriptionism of 1916-17. 3084 External Affairs assessment and outline of the Pact prepared for Latham at his request, 23 September 1940, Pacific Pact, A981/4/PAC 23, NAA, Canberra 413 assessment of Latham’s own account of his role in turning Australian attention northwards, something he reflected upon in his long retirement.3085

Related to such an exercise would be an enhanced study of the Department of External Affairs and/or of the departmental secretary of the Lyons years, W. Hodgson. There have been excellent studies in recent years of the broad history of the Department of Defence and of the departmental secretary, Shedden3086 ─ parallel studies of external affairs could be equally as profitable. Any examination of Australian attempts to administer such affairs could stretch from Federation onwards, or commence at 1935 with the administrative revival of the department as a separate entity under the Lyons government and thus offer due attention to Hodgson’s role in the 1930s and 1940s as bureaucrat and diplomat. His transition from appeaser to retrospective critic of the policy of the Lyons years would be instructive, for Hodgson became especially keen to disassociate himself from a failed appeasement policy during and after the war years.

It proved impossible to research about Lyons’s individual world-view and eastern policy- making activity without coming across the correspondence of, and references to, the Asianist, Dr. A.C.V. Melbourne of the University of Queensland, whose archives contain his voluminous papers. Melbourne was not the most effective, or even the most thoughtful, lobbyist for Asian connections in this decade (where Clunies-Ross and Russo have some claim), but he was certainly one of the more vocal, querulous, prominent and persistent. He sought to involve himself in more than academic debates about policy and proved keen to influence ministers such as Lyons, Page, Stewart and even the more resistant Bruce in a direction that he believed conducive to a more-Asian oriented outlook amongst Australian policy-makers. Although unsuccessful in his bids to gain an official position in Tokyo in 1935 and 1939, despite Lyons’s endorsement in the first instance, Melbourne maintained strong informal links with Japanese officialdom both in Australia and abroad, some of which brought him to the attention of the NSW Special Branch after Pearl Harbour. As his informal links with Lyons were persistent and, in the case of diplomatic representation in 1938-39, apparently effective in influencing policy, Melbourne and his activities are worthy of a larger study that would shed a great deal of light on Australian relations with Japan in the 1930s.

When viewing wider appeasement through Australian eyes, several gaps became apparent that would need to be filled by extensive work amongst British and other sources. Munich proved to be something of a morass in which it was difficult to isolate the many influences bearing down simultaneously on Chamberlain in favour of a peaceful settlement ─ this thesis sought to isolate and assess the role of Lyons in particular and of the Australian government in general in that process, but it was evident that despite the extensive historiography

3085 Latham, “Remembrance…”: 81ff. 3086 E. Andrews, The Department of Defence: The Australian Centenary History of Defence, vol. 5. (Melbourne: OUP, 2001). Horner, Defence Supremo. 414 of this episode that the role of two others, at least, needed to be subjected to greater scrutiny. The two complementary ambassadors─ the Italian, Grandi, in London and the Briton, Lord Perth, in Rome ─ were not insignificant players in the drama of the 1938 Czech crisis. Further study is needed to assess the claims of some that Grandi’s intervention arguably constituted the decisive influence upon Chamberlain in the last days. Lamb has done so in passing and his argument has been recently restated, 3087 but there exists scope for a further examination of the issue, perhaps in a broader study of the London embassy under Grandi which would complement the 1972 Rotunda thesis on Drummond-Perth’s embassy at Rome. Similarly, the activities of Lord Perth at the time of Munich and the role he played in the securing of Mussolini’s intervention, which prima facie seem instrumental, are worthy of a closer study. Finally, the limited exposure that this thesis has had to Italian and German documentary material has indicated that continental concern about dominion attitudes were not inconsiderable, not so much because of any inflated view of the importance of a dominion like Australia, but out of the view that the dominions could have some influence at Whitehall and/or out of a related concern to determine the dominion attitude in the event of the outbreak of war. It could prove profitable for a multilingual researcher to examine the Italian and/or German archival material in some detail in order to establish precisely what these two powers expected of the British dominions in this period, or perhaps of one dominion in particular, Australia, thereby making some contribution to the Australian historiography of the inter-war years and certainly one to the broader field of appeasement studies. In so doing, some light could also be cast on Lyons’s 1938 belief that ‘as Prime Minister of Australia, am on good personal terms with Signor Mussolini’, an important example of one of the tenets of appeasement ─ that cordial, individual relations between statesmen would lead to better international understanding.3088 This was one aspect of appeasement that survived to the period of post-war détente and which persists to the present day.

3087 Lamb, Mussolini and the British, 224ff.; restated by Farrell, 299. 3088 Lyons to Chamberlain, DAFP, vol.1, 288, 28 September 1938. 415

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I: PRIMARY SOURCES A: Archival Collections B: Manuscripts C: Official Documentary Publications D: Memoirs and other contemporary accounts. E: Video and Sound Recordings/ Interviews. F: Newspapers/Magazines.

A: Archival Collections Australian Joint Copying Project, National Library of Australia, Part 10: London and Canberra. Dominions Office material including the series: DO 35, 114.

National Archives of Australia (NAA): Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne. Material including the series: A1, A461, A463, A518, A601, A816, A981, A1421, A1606, A1608, A1928, A2694, A2908, A2937, A2938, A3257, A3258, A4085, A4604, A5954, A6006, A8911, A11857, AA1970, AA1972, B41, B197, B597, B741, B1535, B1536, C443, C446, C576, CP4, CP12, CP30, CP103, CP167, CP290, CP450, CP576, M104, M1516, M2270, MP124, MP218, MP282, MP341, MP404, MP1049, MP1587, SP 1489, SP 1714.

Public Record Office (PRO): Kew, UK. Material including the series: CAB 23, 24, 32, 63; DO 35, 114, 121; FO 371, 954 (=Avon Papers); PREM 1.

ScreenSound (National Screen and Sound Archives): Canberra, Melbourne.

University of Birmingham Archives: Birmingham, UK.

University of Melbourne Archives: Melbourne.

University of Queensland Archives: Brisbane.

B: Manuscript Collections Avon Papers (Anthony Eden), AP 13/1/(39), 13/16/(62), 20/6/(28-9), copies at PRO (FO 954): University of Birmingham Archives.

Bruce, S.M., Papers, AA1970/555-9, M104, NAA: Canberra.

Casey, R.G., Papers, MS 6150, NLA: Canberra; NAA: Melbourne.

Chamberlain, N., Diaries and Papers, Diaries NC 2/20-24, Notebooks 25, Pocket Diaries 29, Printed Items: University of Birmingham Archives.

Dow, David McKenzie, Papers: University of Melbourne Archives.

Hart, Philip, Papers on J.A.Lyons, MS 9410: NLA, Canberra.

Hughes, W.M., Papers, MS 1538, NLA: Canberra.

Latham, J., Papers, MS 1009, NLA: Canberra.

Lyons, E.M., Papers, MS 4852, NLA: Canberra (including her travel diaries).

416 Lyons, J.A., Papers, MS 4851, NLA: Canberra.

Melbourne, A.C.V., Papers 1930-40, University of Queensland Archives: St. Lucia.

Menzies, R.G., Papers, MS 4936, NLA: Canberra.

Moffat, J.P., Papers and Diaries, microfilm, NLA: Canberra. Published selection in: The Moffat Papers: Selections from the Diplomatic Journals of Jay Pierrepont Moffat 1919-43, edited by N. Hooker. Cambridge, Mass: HUP, 1956.

Murdoch, Keith, Papers, MS 2823, NLA: Canberra.

Officer, K., Papers, MS 2629, NLA: Canberra.

Page, Earle, Papers, MS 1663, NLA: Canberra.

Pearce, G.F., Papers, MS 1927, NLA: Canberra.

Piesse, E., Papers, MS 882, NLA: Canberra.

Pratt, A., Papers, Australian Manuscripts Collection, MS 6532, 6536, 6541, 6544, 6575, 6594; La Trobe Library: Melbourne.

Shedden, F., Papers, A5954, NAA: Canberra.

C: Official Documentary Publications Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates. Canberra: Government Printer, 1931-39.

Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers. Canberra: Government Printer, 1932-39.

Crowley, F.K., (ed.). Modern Australia in Documents 1901-1939. Melbourne: Wren, 1973.

Department of External Affairs, Annual Report, 1936-39, Australian Parliamentary Papers. Canberra: AGPS, 1936-39.

Documents and Speeches on British Commonwealth Affairs 1931-1952, vol.1, edited by N. Mansergh. London: OUP, 1953.

Documents on American Foreign Relations January 1938-June 1939, edited by S. Jones and D. Myers. Boston: World Peace Foundation, 1939.

Documents on Australian Foreign Policy, vols.1-2, 1937-39, edited by R. Neale. Canberra: Foreign Affairs Department, AGPS, 1975.

Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-39, 2nd-3rd series, edited by E. Woodward and R. Butler. London: HMSO, 1949.

Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918-1945, series C-D. London: HMSO, 1949.

Documents on International Affairs, edited by S. Heald and J. Wheeler-Bennett. London: OUP for Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), London, 1931ff.

417 Edwards, P., (ed.). Australia Through American Eyes 1935-1945, Observations by American Diplomats. St.Lucia: UofQ Press, 1979.

Foreign Relations of the United States. Diplomatic Papers, 1933-39. Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1950.

Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs, volume II, March 1934-August 1935,edited by E. Nixon. New York: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Belknap Press of HUP, 1969.

I Documenti Diplomatici Italiani, 1935-1939, 8th series. Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1998.

Lasker, B. and W. Holland, (eds.). Problems of the Pacific, 1933. Economic Conflict and Control. Proceedings of the Fifth Conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations, Banff, Canada, 14-26 August 1933. London: OUP, 1934.

Meaney, N., (ed.). Australia and the World. A Documentary History from the 1870s to the 1970s. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1985.

Papers prepared for the British Commonwealth Relations Conference, Glenbrook, NSW, 3-17 September 1938. Sydney: Australian Institute of International Affairs, 1938.

Parliamentary Debates. London: HMSO, 1932-39.

Weller, P., (ed.). Caucus Minutes 1901-1949, Minutes of the Meetings of the Parliamentary Labor Party, vol.2, 1917-31. Melbourne: MUP, 1975.

D: Memoirs and other contemporary accounts Aarons, F. “What the League of Nations means to Australia,” Australian Supplementary Papers, Series E, prepared for the British Commonwealth Relations Conference, Glenbrook, NSW, Australian Institute of International Affairs, no.4 (September 1938).

Anon. (P.D.P.). “After the Crisis.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.2, no.4 (October-November 1938): 5-6.

Anon. “Appeasement and Security.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.1, no.6 (February-March 1938): 1.

Anon. “Australia and the Czech Crisis.” Round Table, vol.29. (December 1938): 44-9.

Anon. “Australia and Japan.” Round Table, vol.24, no.93 (December 1933): 85-100.

Anon. (Observer). “Australian Defence Policy.” Australian Quarterly, no.26 (June 1935): 65-74.

Anon. (A Correspondent). “Australia’s Defence Policy.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.2, no.2 (June-July 1938): 10-11.

Anon. (Libra). “Commentary.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.2, no.4 (October-November 1938): 6.

Anon. “The Defence of Australia.” Round Table, vol.27, no.109 (December 1937): 125-34.

Anon. “External Policy and the Elections.” Round Table, vol.28, no.110 (March 1938): 387-91.

Anon. “Foreign Affairs and Defence.” Round Table, vol.28 (June 1938): 604-8.

Anon. “The Imperial Conference.” Round Table, vol.27, no.108 (September 1937): 695-708. 418

Anon. “The League and Sanctions.” Round Table, vol.26, no.102 (March 1936): 393-401.

Anon. “Mr. Lyons Returns.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.1, no.3 (August September 1937): 1.

Anon. (A Minor Seer), “New Guinea…Sometime Hence.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.1, no.5 (December 1937-January 1938): 20.

Anon. “Our Infant ‘Foreign Office’.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.1, no.1 (April 1937): 6.

Anon. “Overseas Reactions to the Crisis.” Round Table, vol.29 (December1938): 28-57.

Anon. “The Pacific Regional Pact.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.1, no.2 (June 1937): 4ff.

Anon. “The Strain on Japan.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.1, no.4 (October-November 1937): 4ff.

Anon. “The Trade Diversion Policy.” Round Table, vol.28 (September 1938): 843-8.

‘Austra’ “The March of Events.” Australian National Review, vol.1, no.3 (March 1937): 83.

‘Austra’ “The March of Events.” Australian National Review, vol.1, no.4 (April 1937): 86-9.

‘Austra’ “The March of Events.” Australian National Review, vol.1, no.6 (June 1937): 86-9.

‘Austra’ “The March of Events.” Australian National Review, vol.2, no.7 (July 1937): 86-9.

‘Austra’ “The March of Events.” Australian National Review, vol.2, no.8 (August 1937): 76-8.

‘Austra’ “The March of Events.” Australian National Review, vol.2, no.10 (October 1937): 80-3.

‘Austra’ “The March of Events.” Australian National Review, vol.2, no.11 (November 1937): 72- 5.

‘Austra’ “The March of Events.” Australian National Review, vol.2, no.12 (December 1937): 74- 5.

‘Austra’ “The March of Events.” Australian National Review, vol.4, no.19 (July 1938): 6.

‘Austra’ “The March of Events.” Australian National Review, vol.4, no.22 (October 1938): 2-3.

‘Austra’ “The March of Events.” Australian National Review, vol.5, no.26 (February 1939): 1.

‘Austra’ “The March of Events.” Australian National Review, vol.5, no.29 (May 1939): 1.

Ball, W. MacMahon. Possible Peace. Melbourne: MUP, 1936.

Baynes, N., (ed.). The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939. New York: Howard Fertig, 1969.

Burgmann, E. “Australian in World Politics.” Australian National Review, vol.1, no.6 (June 1937): 2-5.

Campbell, D. “A Foreign Policy for Australia.” In Australia’s Foreign Policy, edited by W. Duncan, 163-210. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1938.

419 Casey, R.G. “Australia in World Affairs.” Australian National Review, vol.2, no.7 (July 1937): 2-12.

Casey, R.G. Australia’s Place in the World: Being a Series of Addresses. Melbourne: Robertson and Mullens, 1931.

Casey, R.G. “Australia’s Voice in Imperial Affairs.” In Australia’s Foreign Policy, edited by W. Duncan, 36-68. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1938.

Casey, R.G. The World We Live In: A Series of Speeches on Current Events (Foreword by J.A. Lyons). Melbourne: Specialty Press, 1933.

Chamberlain, N. The Struggle for Peace. London: Hutchinson, n.d.

Clunies-Ross, I., (ed.). Australia and the Far East. Diplomatic and Trade Relations. Sydney: Angus and Robertson for Australian Institute of International Affairs, 1935.

Clunies-Ross, I. “Australian Representation in Japan.” Australian Quarterly, no.22 (June 1934): 61-8.

Clunies-Ross, I., (intro. and ed.). “Factors Influencing the Development of Australia’s Trade with Japan.” In Australia and the Far East. Diplomatic and Trade Relations, 153-201. Sydney: Angus and Robertson for Australian Institute of International Affairs, 1935.

Colley, A. “Australia, Great Britain, and the League.” Australian Quarterly, vol.10, no.2 (June 1938): 49-56.

Colvin, I. The Chamberlain Cabinet. London: Gollancz, 1971.

Cooper, Duff (Lord Norwich). Old Men Forget: The Autobiography of Duff Cooper. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954.

Copland, D. “Imperial Economic Policy.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.1, no.2 (June 1937): 5.

Craigie, R. Behind the Japanese Mask. London: Hutchinson, 1945.

Crawford, J. “Australia as a Pacific Power.” In Australia’s Foreign Policy, edited by W. Duncan, 69-121. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1938.

Crawford, R.M. “Men and Debates of the Hour.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.2, no.3 (August- September 1938): 21-2.

Crowson, N.J., (ed.). Fleet Street Press Barons and Politics: The Journals of Collin Brooks, 1932-1940. London: Camden Fifth Series for the Royal Historical Society, vol.2, 1998.

Cutlack, F. The Manchurian Arena. An Australian View of the Far Eastern Conflict. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1934.

Dilks, D., (ed.). The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan 1938-45. London: Cassell, 1971.

Dinning, H. and J. Holmes, (eds.). Australian Foreign Policy, 1934. Melbourne: MUP, 1935.

Dow, D. “H.G. Wells in Australia, A Provocative Visitor.” David Dow Papers, Papers and Lectures 23, University of Melbourne Archives.

Duhig, J. Crowded Years. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1947. 420

Duncan, W.G.K., (ed.). Australia’s Foreign Policy. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1938.

Eden, Anthony (Lord Avon). The Eden Memoirs. Facing the Dictators, vol.1. London: Cassell, 1962-5.

Eggleston, F. Reflections on Australian Foreign Policy, edited by N. Harper with a biographical sketch by T. Buesst. Melbourne: F.W. Cheshire, 1957.

Eggleston, F. “The Virtues of Regionalism.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.1, no.2 (June 1937): 5- 6.

Fadden, A. They called me Artie: the Memoirs of Sir Arthur Fadden. Melbourne: Jacaranda Press, 1969.

Fairbairn, J. “Australia’s Defence.” Australian National Review, vol.4, no.23 (November 1938): 12-16.

Ferguson, E., T. Fry, J. Holmes and A. Murray Smith, “Australian Foreign Policy-Formation and Expression of Australian Opinion.” Australian Supplementary Papers, Series D, prepared for the British Commonwealth Relations Conference, Glenbrook, NSW, Australian Institute of International Affairs, no.2 (September 1938).

Friedman, I. “Australia and Japan: Conflict in the South Pacific.” Political Science Quarterly, vol.52 (1937): 392-406.

Garran, R. “Diplomatic Relations in the Pacific.” In Australia and the Far East. Diplomatic and Trade Relations, edited by I. Clunies-Ross, 67-97. Sydney: Angus and Robertson for Australian Institute of International Affairs, 1935.

Green, F. Servant of the House. Melbourne: Heinemann, 1969.

Green, F. “Parade of Prime Ministers,” Part 5, Sun-Herald, 24 May 1959, Hart Papers, MS9410/6, NLA, Canberra.

Harris, H.L. Australia’s National Interest and National Policy. Melbourne: MUP for Australian Institute of International Affairs, British Commonwealth Relations Conference (Lapstone, NSW), 1938.

Hawker, C. “The Japan-Australia Trade Dispute.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.1, no.1 (April 1937): 6-8.

Heydon, P. Quiet Decision. Melbourne: MUP, 1965.

Hooker, N., (ed.). The Moffat Papers: Selections from the Diplomatic Journals of Jay Pierrepont Moffat 1919-43. Cambridge, Mass: HUP, 1956.

Hughes, W.M.H. Australia and War Today: The Price of Peace. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1935.

Hull, Cordell. The Memoirs of Cordell Hull. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1948.

Irvine, P. “Empire Defence in the Pacific.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.1, no.4 (October- November 1937): 13.

421 Irvine, P. “The Defence of Australia.” Australian Supplementary Papers, Series D, prepared for the British Commonwealth Relations Conference, Glenbrook, NSW, Australian Institute of International Affairs, no.3 (September 1938).

Kent Hughes, W. “The Old Machine and the New Age.” Australian Quarterly, no.22 (June 1934): 40-50.

Latham, J. Australia and the British Commonwealth (1928 Macrossan Lectures). London: Macmillan, 1929

Latham, J. “Remembrance of Things Past, Mainly Political.” Meanjin Quarterly, vol.21, no.88 (1962).

Latham, J. Some Recent International Problems, address to Australia and New Zealand Society for International Law. Melbourne: MUP, 1935.

Lyons, E. Among the Carrion Crows. Adelaide: Rigby, 1972.

Lyons, E. My Life, Melbourne: Woman’s Day Publications, Herald and Weekly Times, c.1949.

Lyons, E. So We Take Comfort. London: Heinemann, 1965.

Mant, J. “An Australian Battalion for Singapore.” Australian Quarterly, vol.10, no.2 (June 1938): 73-6.

Marks, E.G. Pacific Peril: Or The menace of Japan’s Mandated Islands. Sydney: Wynyard Book Arcade, 1933.

Massey, V. What’s Past is Prologue, The memoirs of the Right Honourable Vincent Massey, C.H. London: Macmillan, 1963.

Melbourne, A.C.V. “Australia’s Relations to other Pacific Countries.” Australian Supplementary Papers, Series E, prepared for the British Commonwealth Relations Conference, Glenbrook, NSW, Australian Institute of International Affairs, no.2 (September 1938).

Menzies, R. Afternoon Light: Some Memories of Men and Events. Melbourne: Cassell, 1967.

Menzies, R. The George Adlington Syme Oration. Melbourne, 28 May 1963, in NLA MS 4852/25.

Menzies, R. The Measure of the Years. Melbourne: Cassell, 1970.

Moffat, J.P. Diary, 1935-37. Canberra: Microfilm Collection, NLA.

Page, Earle. Truant Surgeon. The Inside Story of Forty Years of Australian Political Life. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1963.

Pearce, G. Carpenter to Cabinet. Thirty-Seven Years of Parliament. London: Hutchinson, 1951.

Phillips, J. “The Czechoslovakian Debacle.” Australian Quarterly, vol.10, no.4 (December 1938): 31-40.

Piesse, E. “Australia and Imperial Defence.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.1, no.1 (April 1937): 8- 9.

Piesse, E. “Australia’s Duty to Herself.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.1, no.2 (June 1937): 6. 422

Piesse, E. (Albatross). Japan and the Defence of Australia. Melbourne: Robertson and Mullens, 1935.

Pratt, A. “The Diplomacy of Democracy.” Australian National Review, vol.1, no.3 (March 1937): 29-31.

Pratt, J. “Britain’s Policy in the Far East.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.2, no.4 (October- November 1938): 17-18.

Price, Grenfell A. Australia Comes of Age: A Study of the Growth to Nationhood and of External Relations. Melbourne: Georgian House, 1945.

Reese, L. “The German Colonies. Should They Be Returned?” Australian National Review, vol.1, no.6 (June 1937): 26-33.

Reid, A. “Prime Ministers I have known.” Bulletin, vol.101, no.5196 (29 January 1980): 359-371.

Robson, L., (intro. and ed.). Australian Commentaries, Select Articles from the Round Table 1911-1942. Melbourne: MUP, 1975.

Robson, W.A., (ed.). Political Quarterly in the thirties. London: Allen Lane, 1971.

Sandes, J. “The Defence of Australia.” Australian Quarterly, no.20 (December 1933): 11-27.

Shepherd, J. Australia’s Interests and Policies in the Far East. New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1939 (NAA, A981 AUS 32). Also in Towards a Foreign Policy: 1914-1941, edited by W. Hudson, 98-106. Melbourne: Cassell, 1967.

Simon, Sir John. Retrospect: The Memoirs of Viscount Simon. London: Hutchinson, 1952.

Spender, P. Politics and a Man. Sydney: Collins, 1972.

Stevens, B.S. “J.A. Lyons.” Australian Quarterly, vol.11, no.2 (June 1939): 5-8.

Stevens, B.S. “Sir Bertram Stevens on Joseph Aloysius Lyons.” Lectures for Everyman, Australian Church Record, vol.15, no.3 (February 1950).

Stirling, A. Lord Bruce: The London Years. Melbourne: Hawthorn Press, 1974.

Thorby, H. “Mastering Our Military Destiny.” Australian National Review, vol.4, no.20 (August 1938): 7-14.

Toomey, J. “J.A. Lyons-interview.” America: A Catholic Review of the Week, vol.53, no.16 (27 July 1935): 397-9.

Tsurumi, Y. “Japan Speaks to Australia.” Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, vol.1, no.4 (October- November 1937): 10.

Wakamatsu, T. “Japan and Australia.” Australian National Review, vol.5, no.29 (May 1939): 7- 19.

Watt, A. Australian Diplomat. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1972.

423 Woolf, L. “Meditation on Abyssinia,” (January 1936). In Political Quarterly in the thirties, edited by W. Robson, 158-74. London: Allen Lane, 1971.

Yoshida, Shigeru. The Yoshida Memoirs. The Story of Japan in Crisis. London: Heinemann, 1961.

E: Video and Sound Recordings/Interviews ABC Video (P. Hart, historical adviser), Mister Prime Minister: Joseph Aloysius Lyons, 1966.

ABC Video, No Prisoners, (Four Corners), 2002.

National Library of Australia (Canberra), Oral History Collection; A.Clarke interview with Enid Lyons, TRC 1148/1-3, n.d, c.1974-5.

National Library of Australia (Canberra), Oral History Collection; Mel Pratt interview with Enid Lyons, TRC 121/30, 1972.

Personal Interview with Peter Lyons (son of J.A. Lyons), Devonport, Tasmania, 21 December 1999.

Personal Interview with Dr. James Harkness, (great-nephew of J.G.Latham), medical specialist, Malvern, Victoria, 22 March 2001.

ScreenSound (Canberra and Melbourne), Lyons Collection of audio and visual recordings; including Episode Title nos., 12272, 136347, 137992, 180752, 180752, 180769, 180775, 180788, 28139, 29652, 245919, 53957, 69864, 70087, 78935.

F: Newspapers/Magazines Advocate (Burnie) 1916-1939, Age (Melbourne) 1929-39, America (New York) 1935, Argus (Melbourne) 1929-39, Austral-Asiatic Bulletin 1931-39, Australian (Sydney) 2000-02, Australian Church Record (Sydney) 1953, Australian National Review 1931-39, Australian Quarterly 1931- 39, Bairnsdale Advertiser 1937-38, Bulletin (Sydney) 1929-39, 1980, Canberra Times 1929-39, Christian Science Monitor (Boston) 1933, 1935, Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 1931-39, Current Notes on International Affairs (Canberra) 1936-39, Daily Post (Hobart) 1916-29, Daily Telegraph (Sydney) 1931-39, Der Mittag (Berlin) 1937, Examiner (Launceston) 1923-39, Foreign Affairs 1931-39, 40ºSouth Tasmania (Hobart) 2001, Herald (Melbourne) 1931-39, Herald Sun (Melbourne) 2000-02, Irish Times (Dublin) 1935, Mercury (Hobart) 1916-39, New York Times 1935, News Chronicle (London) 1939, Political Quarterly (London) 1935, Smith's Weekly (Sydney) 1931-39, Star (Melbourne) 1933-34, Sun-Herald (Sydney) 1959, Sun News-Pictorial (Melbourne) 1931-39, Sydney Mail, Sydney Morning Herald 1929-39, Table Talk (Sydney) 1927, Time (New York) 1935, 1937, The Times (London) 1931-39, World (Hobart) 1916-19.

II: SECONDARY SOURCES A: Books, Chapters and Essays B: Articles and Papers C: Unpublished Theses D: Websites E: Methodology

A: Books, Chapters and Essays Adams, R. British Politics and Foreign Policy in the Age of Appeasement, 1935-39. London: Macmillan, 1993.

424 Addison, P. “Patriotism and Pressure: Lord Rothermere and British Foreign Policy.” In The Politics of Reappraisal 1918-1939, edited by G. Peele and C. Cook, 189-208. London: Macmillan, 1975.

Alexander, F. “Australia and the United States.” In Towards a Foreign Policy: 1914-1941, edited by W. Hudson, 91-106, London: Cassell, 1967.

Andrews E.M. “The Australian Government and Appeasement.” In Towards a Foreign Policy: 1914-1941, edited by W. Hudson, 73-90. Melbourne: Cassell, 1967.

Andrews E.M. “Australian Labour and Foreign Policy 1935-39.” In Towards a Foreign Policy: 1914-1941, edited by W. Hudson, 124-39. Melbourne: Cassell, 1967.

Andrews, E.M. “Civil-Military Relations in the Twentieth Century.” In Australia Two Centuries of War and Peace, edited by M. McKernan and M. Browne. Canberra: Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1988.

Andrews, E.M. The Department of Defence: The Australian Centenary History of Defence, vol. 5. Melbourne: OUP, 2001.

Andrews, E.M. A History of Australian Foreign Policy. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1988.

Andrews, E.M. Isolationism and Appeasement in Australia. Reactions to the European Crises, 1935-1939. Canberra: ANU Press, 1970.

Andrews, E.M. “Patterns in Australian Foreign Policy.” In Selected Readings in Australian Foreign Policy, edited by M. Pettit, 95-113. Melbourne: Sorrett Publishing, 1973.

Andrews, E.M. “Public Opinion in Australia on Foreign Policy.” In Towards a Foreign Policy: 1914-1941, edited by W. Hudson, 107-113. Melbourne: Cassell, 1967.

Andrews, E.M. The Writing on the Wall: The British Commonwealth and Aggression in the Far East 1931-1935. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1987.

Beasley, W. The Modern History of Japan. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1963.

Beaumont, J. The Evolution of Australian Foreign Policy, 1901-1945, Occasional Paper No.1. Sydney: Australian Institute of International Affairs, 1989.

Bell, C. Dependent Ally: A Study in Australian Foreign Policy. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1998.

Bell, P. Chamberlain, Germany and Japan, 1933-4. London: Macmillan, 1996.

Beloff, M. “The Whitehall Factor: The Role of the Higher Civil Service 1919-1939.” In The Politics of Reappraisal 1918-1939, edited by G. Peele and C. Cook, 209-231. London: Macmillan, 1975.

Beloff, M. “Was There a Soviet Appeasement Policy?” In The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, edited by L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen, 284-5. London: Allen and Unwin, 1983.

Bentley, M. The Climax of Liberal Politics: British Liberalism in Theory and Practice 1868- 1918. London: Edward Arnold, 1987.

Best, A. “Sir Robert Craigie as Ambassador to Japan, 1937-41.” In Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits, edited by I. Nish, 238-51. Folkestone: Japan Library, 1994. 425

Blainey, G. The Steel Master: A Life of Essington Lewis. Melbourne: Macmillan, 1971.

Boland, T.P. James Duhig. St.Lucia: UofQ Press, 1986.

Bolton, G. “A.C.V. Melbourne: Prophet Without Honour.” In The Discovery of Australian History 1890-1939, edited by S. Macintyre and J. Thomas. Melbourne: MUP, 1995.

Bolton, G. “William Morris Hughes.” In Australian Prime Ministers, edited by M. Grattan, 100- 25. Sydney: New Holland, 2000.

Borton, H. Japan’s Modern Century. New York: Ronald Press, 1955.

Bosworth, R. Mussolini. London: Arnold, 2002.

Bourne, K. The Foreign Policy of Victorian England 1830-1902. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970.

Bourne, K. and D.C. Watt, (eds.). Studies in International History. London: Longmans, 1967.

Brett, J. “Stanley Melbourne Bruce.” In Australian Prime Ministers, edited by M. Grattan, 126- 39. Sydney: New Holland, 2000.

Bridge, C. and B. Attard, (eds.). Between Empire and Nation: Australia’s External Relations from Federation to the Second World War. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2000.

Bridge, C., (ed.). Munich to Vietnam. Australia's Relations with Britain and the United States since the 1930s. Melbourne: MUP, 1991.

Bridge, C. “Relations with the United States.” In Between Empire and Nation: Australia’s External Relations from Federation to the Second World War, edited by C. Bridge and B. Attard, 172-84. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2000.

Burgwyn, H. Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period, 1918-1940. London: Praeger, 1997.

Camallieri, J. An Introduction to Australian Foreign Policy. Melbourne: Jacaranda Press, 1975.

Carter, G. The British Commonwealth and International Security: The Role of the Dominions 1919-1939. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1947.

Charmley, J. Chamberlain and the Lost Peace. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1989.

Clark, C.M.H. A History of Australia, vol.6. Melbourne: MUP, 1992.

Cockett, R. Twilight of Truth: Chamberlain, Appeasement and the Manipulation of the Press. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989.

Cooksey, R., (ed.). The Great Depression in Australia. Canberra: Australian Society for the Study of Labour, 1970.

Crawford, J. “The Pacific Pact 1937.” In Towards a Foreign Policy: 1914-1941, edited by W. Hudson, 107-113. Melbourne: Cassell, 1967.

Crozier, A. Appeasement and Germany’s Last Bid for Colonies. London: Macmillan, 1988.

Cumpston, I. History of Australian Foreign Policy 1901-1991, vol.1. Canberra: self-published, 1995. 426

Cumpston, I. Lord Bruce of Melbourne. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1989.

Dallek, R. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945. New York, OUP, 1979.

Davis, R. Eighty Years Labor: the ALP in Tasmania 1903-83. Hobart: Sassafras Books and the History Department, University of Tasmania, 1983.

Davis, R. “Tasmania.” In Labor in Politics: The State Labor Parties in Australia 1880-1920, edited by D. Murphy. St.Lucia: UofQ Press, 1975.

Day, D. Chifley. Sydney: Harper Collins, 2001.

Day, D. John Curtin, a life. Sydney: Harper Collins, 1999.

Day, D. “John Joseph Curtin.” In Australian Prime Ministers, edited by M. Grattan, 216-237. Sydney: New Holland, 2000.

Day, D. The Politics of War. Sydney: Harper Collins, 2003.

Denning, W., (intro. by F. Moorhouse). James Scullin. Melbourne: Black Inc., 2000.

Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Annual Report 1978-9, “History of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.” Australian Parliamentary Papers, vol.11, no.196 (1979). Canberra: Australian Government Printing Service, 29ff.

Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Annual Report 1984, “The Development of Cabinet Procedures.” Australian Parliamentary Papers, vol.17, no.209 (1984). Canberra: Australian Government Printing Service, 47-93.

Dilks, D. “Appeasement and ‘Intelligence’.” In Retreat from Power: Studies in British Foreign Policy of the twentieth century, edited by D. Dilks, 139-71. London: Macmillan, 1981.

Dilks, D., (ed.). Retreat from Power: Studies in British Foreign Policy of the twentieth century. London: Macmillan, 1981.

Douglas, R. “Chamberlain and Appeasement.” In The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, edited by L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen, 79-88. London: Allen and Unwin, 1983.

Edwards, C. Bruce of Melbourne, Man of Two Worlds. London: Heinemann, 1965.

Edwards, P., (intro. and ed.). Australia Through American Eyes 1935-1945; Observations by American Diplomats. St. Lucia: UofQ Press, 1979.

Edwards, P. Prime Ministers and Diplomats: The Making of Australian Foreign Policy 1901- 1949. Melbourne: OUP, 1983.

Edwards, P. “The Rise and Fall of the High Commissioner: S.M. Bruce in London.” In Australia and Britain: Studies in a Changing Relationship, edited by A. Madden and W. Morris-Jones, 39- 56. London: Frank Cass, 1980.

Esthus, R. From Enmity to Alliance, U.S.-Australian Relations, 1931-1941. Melbourne: MUP, 1965. 427

Farrell, N. Mussolini: A New Life. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2003.

Faulkner, J. “Splits: Consequences and lessons.” In True Believers, edited by J. Faulkner and S. Macintyre, 203-18. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2001.

Faulkner, J. and S. Macintyre, (eds.). True Believers. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2001.

Feiling, K. The Life of Neville Chamberlain. London: Macmillan, 1946.

Fitzhardinge, L. The Little Digger 1914-52. William Morris Hughes: A Political Biography, vol.2. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1979.

Forward, R. and B. Reece, (eds.). Conscription in Australia. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1968.

Frei, H. Japan’s Southward Advance and Australia. From the Sixteenth Century to World War II. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991.

Fricke, G. Profiles of Power. The Prime Ministers of Australia. Sydney: Houghton Mifflin, 1990.

Fuchser, L. Neville Chamberlain and Appeasement. A Study in the Politics of History. New York: Norton, 1982.

Gilbert, M. and Gott, R. The Appeasers. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967.

Goldsworthy, D., (ed.). Facing North: A Century of Australian Engagement with Asia, vol.1. Melbourne: MUP, 2001.

Grant, B. The Crisis of Loyalty: A Study of Australian Foreign Policy. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1972.

Grattan, M., (ed.). Australian Prime Ministers. Sydney: New Holland, 2000.

Greewood, G. and N. Harper, (eds.). Australia and World Affairs, 1961-65. Melbourne: F.W.Cheshire, 1968.

Griffiths, R. Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany 1933-9. London: Constable, 1980.

Haggie, P. Britannia at Bay: The Defence of the British Empire against Japan, 1931-1941. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981.

Hamann, B. Hitler’s Vienna. A Dictator’s Apprenticeship. Oxford: OUP, 1999.

Hamill, I. The Strategic Illusion. The Singapore Strategy and the Defence of Australia and New Zealand. Singapore: Singapore UP, 1981.

Hart, P. “Lyons: Labour Minister-Leader of the UAP.” In The Great Depression in Australia, edited by R. Cooksey, 37-52. Canberra: Australian Society for the Study of Labour, 1970.

Hart, P. “The Piper and the Tune.” In Australian Conservatism. Essays in Twentieth Century Political History, edited by C. Hazlehurst. Canberra: ANU Press, 1979.

Hazlehurst, C., (ed.). Australian Conservatism. Essays in Twentieth Century Political History. Canberra: ANU Press, 1979. 428

Hasluck, P. The Chance of Politics. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 1997.

Hasluck, P. Diplomatic Witness. Australian Foreign Affairs 1941-1947. Melbourne: MUP, 1980.

Hasluck, P. The Government and the People 1939-41. Canbera: Australian War Memorial, 1952.

Hasluck, P. Light That Time Has Made. Canberra: Goanna Print, 1980.

Hasluck, P. Mucking About. An Autobiography. Perth: UofWA Press, 1994.

Henderson, A. “Joseph Aloysius Lyons” in Australian Prime Ministers, edited by M. Grattan, 152-67. Sydney: New Holland, 2000.

Henderson, G. Menzies’ Child: The Liberal Party of Australia. Sydney: Harper Collins, 1998.

Hiery, J. The Neglected War. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995.

Hill, C. Cabinet decisions on foreign policy: The British experience, October 1938-June 1941. Cambridge: CUP, 1991.

Holland, R. Britain and the Commonwealth Alliance 1918-1939. London: Macmillan, 1981.

Horner, D. Blamey: The Commander-in-Chief. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1998.

Horner, D. Defence Supremo. Sir Frederick Shedden and the Making of Australian Defence Policy. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2000.

Howard, F. Kent Hughes. A Biography. Melbourne: Macmillan, 1972.

Howard, M. “British Military Preparations for the Second World War.” In Retreat from Power: Studies in British Foreign Policy of the twentieth century, edited by D. Dilks, 102-17. London: Macmillan, 1981.

Howard, M. and R. Louis, (eds.). The Oxford History of the Twentieth Century. Oxford: OUP, 1998.

Hsu, I. The Rise of Modern China. London: OUP, 1970.

Hudson, W.J. Australia and the League of Nations. Sydney: SUP, 1980.

Hudson, W.J. Australian Diplomacy. Melbourne: Macmillan, 1970.

Hudson, W.J. Casey. Melbourne: OUP, 1986.

Hudson, W.J. “Strategy for Survival.” In Australia Two Centuries of War and Peace, edited by M. McKernan and M. Browne, 25-42. Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1988.

Hudson, W.J., (intro. and ed.). Towards a Foreign Policy: 1914-1941, in the series Problems in Australian History. Melbourne: Cassell, 1967.

Hudson, W.J. and M. Sharp. Australian Independence. Colony to Reluctant Kingdom. Melbourne: MUP, 1988.

Hughes, C. Mr. Prime Minister. Australian Prime Ministers, 1901-1972. Melbourne: OUP, 1976.

429 Hughes, C and B. Graham. A Handbook of Australian Government and Politics 1890-1964. Canberra: ANU Press, 1968.

Inglis, K. “Conscription in Peace and War, 1911-1939.” In Conscription in Australia, edited by R. Forward and B. Reece, 22-65. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1968.

Iremonger, J. “Rats” In True Believers, edited by J. Faulkner and S. Macintyre, 265-83. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2001.

Iriye, A. “The Asian Factor.” In ‘The Origins of the Second World War’ Reconsidered: The A.J.P. Taylor debate after twenty-five years, edited by G. Martel, 227-43. Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1986.

Iriye, A. “East Asia and the Emergence of Japan, 1900-1945.” In The Oxford History of the Twentieth Century, edited by M. Howard and R. Louis, 139-50. Oxford: OUP, 1998.

Irving, D. Churchill's War: The Struggle for Power, vol.1. Bullsbrook, WA: Veritas, 1987.

Irving, D. The War Path: Hitler's Germany 1933-39. London: Macmillan, 1978.

Jenkins, R. Baldwin. London: Collins, 1987.

Jenkins, R. Gladstone. London: Macmillan, 1995.

Johnson, R. “Ambrose Pratt.” In The Light and the Gate, 71-160. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1964.

Jones, P. and V. Mackie, (eds.). Relationships: Japan and Australia, 1870s-1950s. Melbourne: History Department, University of Melbourne, 2001.

Jones, P. “Trading in a ‘Fool’s Paradise’? White Australia and the Trade Diversion Dispute of 1936.” In Relationships: Japan and Australia, 1870s-1950s, edited by P. Jones and V. Mackie, 133-62. Melbourne: History Department, University of Melbourne, 2001.

Kennedy, G. Anglo-American Strategic Relations and the Far East 1933-1939. Imperial Crossroads. London: Frank Cass, 2002.

Kennedy, G. “1935: A Snapshot of British Imperial Defence in the Far East.” In Far-Flung Lines: Essays on Imperial Defence in Honour of Donald Mackenzie Schurman, edited by G. Kennedy and K. Neilson, 190-216. London: Frank Cass, 1997.

Kennedy, P. “Appeasement.” In ‘The Origins of the Second World War’ Reconsidered: The A.J.P. Taylor debate after twenty-five years, edited by G, Martel, 140-61. Boston: Allen and Unwin, Boston, 1986.

Kershaw, I. Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris, vol.1. London: Allen Lane, 1998.

Kershaw, I. Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesis, vol.2. London: Allen Lane, 2000.

Kettenacker, L. and W. Mommsen, (eds.). The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement. London: Allen and Unwin, 1983

La Nauze, J. Alfred Deakin: A Biography, vol.2. Melbourne: MUP, 1965.

Lake, M. A Divided Society: Tasmania during World War 1. Melbourne: MUP, 1975.

430 Lamb, R. The Drift to War, 1922-1939. London: W.H. Allen, 1987.

Lamb, R. The Ghosts of Peace. London: Michael Russell, 1987.

Lamb, R. Mussolini and the British. London: John Murray, 1997.

Lampe, J. “Introduction.” In Reappraising the Munich Pact. Continental Perspective, edited by M. Latynski, 1-4. Washington D.C: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1992.

Langmore, D. Glittering Surfaces: A Life of Maie Casey. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1999.

Langmore, D. Prime Ministers' Wives. The public and private lives of ten Australian women. Melbourne: McPhee Gribble, 1992.

Latynski, M., (ed.). Reappraising the Munich Pact. Continental Perspectives. Washington D.C: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1992.

Lentin, A. Lloyd George and the Lost Peace: From Versailles to Hitler, 1919-1940. New York: Palgrave, 2001.

Lewis, G. and Osborne G. Communication Traditions in 20th-century Australia. Melbourne: OUP, 1995.

Lloyd, C. Parliament and the Press. Melbourne, MUP, 1988.

Lloyd, C. “Reporting Caucus: The press and Labor crises.” In True Believers, edited by J. Faulkner and S. Macintyre, 184-202. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2001.

Lloyd, C. “The Rise and Fall of the United Australia Party.” In Liberalism and the Australian Federation, edited by J. Nethercote, 134-62. Sydney: Federation Press, 2001.

Lodge B. Lavarack, Rival General. St.Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1998.

Louis, W. British Strategy in the Far East, 1919-1939. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.

Louis, W. “The Road to Singapore: British Imperialism in the Far East, 1932-42.” In The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, edited by L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen, 352-88. London: Allen and Unwin, 1983.

Lowe, P. Great Britain and the Origins of the Pacific War: A Study of British Policy in East Asia 1937-1941. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.

Luscombe, T. “Two Prime Ministers: James Scullin and Joseph Lyons.” In Builders and Crusaders, 156-74. Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1967.

Lyons, E. The Role of the Christian Moralist in Present Day Australia. Hobart: Adult Education Board of Tasmania, 1973.

McCarthy, J. Australia and Imperial Defence 1918-39: A Study in Air and Sea Power. St.Lucia: UofQ Press, 1976.

MacDonald, C.A. “The United States, Appeasement and the Open Door.” In The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, edited by L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen, 400-12. London: Allen and Unwin, 1983.

431 McDonough, F. Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement and the British Road to War. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1998.

McIntyre, D. The Rise and Fall of the Singapore Naval Base, 1919-1942. London: Archon, 1979.

Macintyre, S. and J. Thomas, (eds.). The Discovery of Australian History 1890-1939. Melbourne: MUP, 1995.

Macintyre, S. The Oxford History of Australia: 1901-1942, The Succeeding Age, vol.4. Melbourne: OUP, 1986.

Mack Smith, D. “Appeasement as a Factor in Mussolini’s Foreign Policy.” In The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, edited by L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen, 258-66. London: Allen and Unwin, 1983.

Mack Smith, D. Mussolini. London: Granada, 1983.

McKernan, M. and M. Browne, (eds.). Australia Two Centuries of War and Peace. Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1988.

Macleod, I. Neville Chamberlain. London: Frederick Muller Ltd., 1961.

MacMillan, M. Peacemakers: the Paris Conference of 1919 and its attempt to end war. London: J. Murray, 2001.

McMullin, R. The Light on the Hill. Melbourne: OUP, 1991.

Madden, A. and W. Morris-Jones, (eds.). Australia and Britain: Studies in a Changing Relationship. London: Frank Cass, 1980.

Manne, R., (intro. and ed.). The Australian Century. Political Struggle in the Building of a Nation. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 1999.

Mansergh, N. The Commonwealth Experience. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969.

Mansergh, N. Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs. Problems of External Policy 1931-1939. London: OUP, 1952.

Martel, G., (ed.). ‘The Origins of the Second World War’ Reconsidered: The A.J.P. Taylor debate after twenty-five years. Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1986.

Martin, A.W. “The Politics of the Depression.” In The Australian Century. Political Struggle in the Building of a Nation, edited by R. Manne, 80-118. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 1999.

Martin, A.W. “Robert Gordon Menzies.” In Australian Prime Ministers, edited by M. Grattan, 174-205. Sydney: New Holland, 2000.

Martin, A.W. Robert Menzies, A Life, 1894-1943, vol.1. Melbourne: MUP, 1993.

May, A. “Fortress Australia.” In Between Empire and Nation: Australia’s External Relations from Federation to the Second World War, edited by C. Bridge and B. Attard, 205-20. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2000.

432 Meaney, N. “E.L. Piesse and the Problem of Japan.” In Between Empire and Nation: Australia’s External Relations from Federation to the Second World War, edited by C. Bridge and B. Attard, 73-92. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2000.

Meaney, N. The Japanese Connection. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1998.

Meaney, N. The Search for Security in the Pacific, 1901-14. A History of Australian Defence and Foreign Policy, 1901-23, vol.1. Sydney: SUP, 1976.

Meaney, N. Towards a new Vision: Australia and Japan through 100 Years. Sydney: Kangaroo Press, 1999.

Medlicott, N. “Britain and Germany: the Search for Agreement, 1930-37.” In Retreat from Power: Studies in British Foreign Policy of the twentieth century, edited by D. Dilks, 78-101. London: Macmillan, 1981.

Medlicott, N. “The Hoare-Laval Pact Reconsidered.” In Retreat from Power: Studies in British Foreign Policy of the twentieth century, edited by D. Dilks, 118-38. London: Macmillan, 1981.

Meyers, R. “British Imperial Interests and the Policy of Appeasement.” In The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, edited by L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen, 339-51. London: Allen and Unwin, 1983.

Middlemas, K. Diplomacy of Illusion: The British Government and Germany, 1937-39. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972.

Millar, T.B. Australia in Peace and War, External Relations 1788-1977. Canberra: ANU Press, 1978.

Molony, J. “James Henry Scullin.” In Australian Prime Ministers, edited by M. Grattan, 140-51. Sydney: New Holland, 2000.

Mowat, C. Britain Between the Wars. London: Methuen, 1961.

Munro, C. Inky Stephensen: Wild Man of Letters. St.Lucia: UofQ Press, 1992.

Murfett, M. “A Keystone of Imperial Defence or a Millstone Around Britain’s Neck? Singapore 1919-1941.” In Between Two Oceans, joint authorship of M. Murfett, J. Miksic, B. Farrell and C.M. Shun, 145-74. Oxford: OUP, 1999.

Murfett, M. “The Singapore Strategy.” In Between Empire and Nation: Australia’s External Relations from Federation to the Second World War, edited by C. Bridge and B. Attard, 230-50. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2000.

Neidpath, J. The Singapore Naval Base and the Defence of Britain’s Eastern Empire, 1919-1941. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981.

Nethercote, J., (ed.). Liberalism and the Australian Federation. Sydney: Federation Press, 2001.

Newman, S. March 1939: The British Guarantee to Poland. Oxford, OUP, 1976.

Niedhart, G. “British Attitudes and Policies towards the Soviet Union and International Communism, 1933-9.” In The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, edited by L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen, 286-96. London: Allen and Unwin, 1983.

433 Nish, I. Japanese Foreign Policy 1869-1942, Kasumigaseki to Miyakezaka. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977.

Nish, I. “Relations with Japan.” In Between Empire and Nation: Australia’s External Relations from Federation to the Second World War, edited by C. Bridge and B. Attard, 158-71. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2000.

Offner, A. “The United States and National Socialist Germany.” In The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, edited by L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen, 413-27. London: Allen and Unwin, 1983.

Ovendale, R. “Appeasement.” In Between Empire and Nation: Australia’s External Relations from Federation to the Second World War, edited by C. Bridge and B. Attard, 185-204. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2000.

Ovendale, R. 'Appeasement' and the English Speaking World. Britain, the United States, the Dominions, and the Policy of 'Appeasement', 1937-1939. Cardiff: UofWales Press, 1975.

Ovendale, R. “Britain, the Dominions and the Coming of the Second World War, 1933-9.” In The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, edited by L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen, 323-8. London: Allen and Unwin, 1983.

Pakenham, T. The Boer War. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997.

Parker, R.A.C. Chamberlain and Appeasement: British Policy and the Coming of the Second World War. London: Macmillan, 1993.

Parker, R.A.C. Churchill and Appeasement. London: Macmillan, 2000.

Parker, R.A.C. “The Failure of Collective Security in British Appeasement.” In The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, edited by L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen, 22-30. London: Allen and Unwin, 1983.

Peden, G.C., “Keynes, the Economics of Rearmament and Appeasement.” In The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, edited by L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen, 142-56. London: Allen and Unwin, 1983.

Peele, G. and C. Cook, (eds.). The Politics of Reappraisal 1918-1939. London: Macmillan, 1975.

Pelling, H. Winston Churchill. London: Book Club Associates, 1974.

Perkins, K. Menzies: Last of the Queen’s Men. Adelaide: Rigby, 1968.

Peters, A. Anthony Eden at the Foreign Office 1931-1938. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983.

Pettit, M., (ed.). Selected Readings in Australian Foreign Policy. Melbourne: Sorrett Publishing, 1973.

Phillips, D. Making More Adequate Provision: State Education in Tasmania, 1839-1985. Hobart: Education Department of Tasmania, 1985.

Pink, K. And Wealth for Toil, A History of North-West and Western Tasmania, 1825-1900. Burnie, Advocate, 1990.

Reid, G. and M. Forrest. Australia’s Commonwealth Parliament, 1901-1988. Ten Perspectives. Melbourne: MUP, 1989. 434

Reynolds, J. “Premiers and Political Leaders.” In A Century of Responsible Government, edited by F. Green, 115-240. Hobart: Government Printer, 1956.

Ritchie, J. and G. Serle, (eds.). Australian Dictionary of Biography, vols. 7-13. Melbourne: MUP, 1967, 1993. Selected articles on S.M. Bruce, R.G. Casey, J. Fairbairn, R.R. Garran, L.F. Giblin, K. Henderson, W.R. Hodgson, W.M. Hughes, N. Kater, J.G. Latham, J.A. Lyons, F. McDougall, A.C.V. Melbourne, R.B. Orchard, A. Parkhill, E. Page, G.F. Pearce, A. Pratt, J. Smith, P.R. Stephensen, G. Street, H.V. Thorby.

Roberts, A. Eminent Churchillians. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1994.

Roberts, A. ‘The Holy Fox.’ The Life of Lord Halifax. London: Phoenix Giant, 1997.

Robbins, K. Munich 1938. London: Cassell, 1968.

Robertson, J. “The Distant War: Australia and Imperial Defence, 1919-41.” In Australia Two Centuries of War and Peace, edited by M. McKernan and M. Browne, 223-44. Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1988.

Robertson, J. J.H. Scullin, A Political Biography. Perth: UofWA Press, 1974.

Robson, L. A History of Tasmania, vol.2. Melbourne: OUP, 1991.

Rock, W. British Appeasement in the 1930s. London: Edward Arnold, 1977.

Rose, N. The Cliveden Set. Portrait of an Exclusive Fraternity. London: Jonathan Cape, 2000.

Roskill, S. Hankey, Man of Secrets, vol. 3. London: Collins, 1974.

Ross, A.T. Armed and Ready: The Industrial Development and Defence of Australia, 1900-1945. Wahroonga, NSW: Turton and Armstrong, 1995.

Sawer, G. Australian Federal Politics and Law 1929-1949. Melbourne: MUP, 1974.

Schmidt, G. “The Domestic Background to British Appeasement Policy.” In The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, edited by L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen, 101-24. London: Allen and Unwin, 1983.

Schröder, H. “The Ambiguities of Appeasement: Great Britain, the United States and Germany, 1937-9.” In The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, edited by L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen, 390-99. London: Allen and Unwin, 1983.

Seton-Watson, C. “The Anglo-Italian Gentleman’s Agreement of January 1937 and its Aftermath.” In The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, edited by L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen, 267-85. London: Allen and Unwin, 1983.

Shen, P. The Age of Appeasement: The Evolution of British Foreign Policy in the 1930s. Trowbridge: Sutton, 1999.

Skidelsky, R. Oswald Mosley. London: Macmillan, 1975.

Smelser, R. “Nazi Dynamics, German Foreign Policy and Appeasement.” In The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, edited by L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen, 31-47. London: Allen and Unwin, 1983.

435 Smith, S. “Towards Diplomatic Representation.” In Facing North: A Century of Australian Engagement with Asia, vol.1, edited by D. Goldsworthy, 61-96. Melbourne: MUP, 2001.

Snowden, D. “1921-1941.” In Labor in Lyons: the Wilmot-Lyons Story to Celebrate the Labor Centenary 1891-1991. Hobart: Lyons ALP Electoral Council, 1991.

Souter, G. Acts of Parliament. Melbourne: MUP, 1988.

Souter, G. Lion and Kangaroo. The Initiation of Australia 19101-1919. Sydney: Book Club Associates, 1976.

Spartalis, P. The Diplomatic Battles of Billy Hughes. Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1983.

Starke, J. The ANZUS Treaty Alliance. Melbourne: MUP, 1965.

Tarling, N. Britain, Southeast Asia and the Onset of the Pacific War. Melbourne: CUP, 1996.

Taylor, A.J.P. English History 1914-45. Oxford: OUP, 1965.

Taylor, A.J.P. The Origins of the Second World War. London: Folio, 1998.

Thompson, R. “First Steps in Diplomacy.” In Between Empire and Nation: Australia’s External Relations from Federation to the Second World War, edited by C. Bridge and B. Attard, 6-19. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2000.

Thorne, C. The Limits of Foreign Policy: the West, the League and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1931-1933. London: Hamilton, 1972.

Thorpe, D. Eden. The Life and Times of Anthony Eden, First Earl of Avon, 1897-1977. London: Chatto & Windus, 2003.

Trotter, A. Britain and East Asia, 1933-1937. Cambridge: CUP, 1975.

Tsokhas, K. Markets, Money and Empire. The Political Economy of the Australian Wool Industry. Melbourne: MUP, 1990.

Twomey, P. “Munich.” In Munich to Vietnam. Australia's Relations with Britain and the United States since the 1930s, edited by C. Bridge, 12-37. Melbourne: MUP, 1991.

Twomey, P. “Versailles and the 1920s.” In Between Empire and Nation: Australia’s External Relations from Federation to the Second World War, edited by C. Bridge and B. Attard, 55-72. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2000.

Walker, D. Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia 1850-1939. St.Lucia: UofQ Press, 1999.

Walker, R.B. Yesterday’s News. A History of the Newspaper Press in New South Wales from 1920-1945. Sydney: SUP, 1980.

Watt, A. “The Australian Diplomatic Service 1935-1965.” In Australia and World Affairs, 1961- 65, edited by G. Greenwood and N. Harper, 134-81. Melbourne: F.W.Cheshire, Melbourne, 1968.

Watt, A. The Evolution of Australian Foreign Policy 1938-1965. Cambridge: CUP, 1967.

Watt, D.C. How War Came. The immediate origins of the Second World War, 1938-1939. London: Heinemann, 1989. 436

Watt, D.C. Personalities and Policies, Studies in the Formulation of British Foreign Policy in the Twentieth Century. London: Longmans, 1965.

Watt, D.C. “South African Attempts to Mediate between Britain and Germany.” In Studies in International History, edited by K. Bourne and D. Watt. London: Longmans, 1967.

Watt, D.C. Succeeding John Bull: America in Britain’s Place 1900-1975. Cambridge: CUP, 1984.

Way, W. “F. L. McDougall and Commodity Diplomacy.” In Between Empire and Nation, edited by C. Bridge and B. Attard, 93-110. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2000.

Weinberg, G. “Germany and Munich.” In Reappraising the Munich Pact. Continental Perspectives, edited by M. Latynski, 9-20. Washington D.C: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1992.

Wendt, B.J., “ ‘Economic Appeasement’─a Crisis Strategy.” In The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, edited by L. Kettenacker and W. Mommsen, 157-73. London: Allen and Unwin, 1983.

Weitz, J. Hitler's Diplomat: The Life and Times of Joachim von Ribbentrop. New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1992.

Weller, P. First Amongst Equals: Prime Ministers in Westminster Systems. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1985.

White, K., (intro. by F. Moorhouse). Joseph Lyons. Melbourne: Black Inc, 2000.

White, K. A Political Love Story, Joe and Enid Lyons. Ringwood: Penguin, 1987.

Whitington, D. The House Will Divide. A Review of Australian Federal Politics. Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1969.

Whitington, D. Twelfth Man. Melbourne: Jacaranda Press, 1972.

Wilcox, C. For Hearths and Homes. Citizen soldiering in Australia 1854-1945. St. Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1998.

Wildavsky, A. and A. Carboch, Studies in Australian Politics. Melbourne: Cheshire, 1958.

Williams, J. The Quarantined Culture: Australian Reactions to Modernism 1913-1939. Melbourne: CUP, 1995.

Wolfsohn, H. “The Evolution of Australia in World Affairs.” In Towards a Foreign Policy: 1914- 1941, edited by W. Hudson, 91-106. Melbourne: Cassell, 1967.

Zwar, D. In Search of Keith Murdoch. Melbourne: Macmillan, 1980.

B: Articles and Papers Adamthwaite, A. “The British Government and the Media, 1937-8.” Journal of Contemporary History, vol.18 (1983): 281-97.

Agbi, S.O. “The British Foreign Office and the Roosevelt-Hugessen Bid to Stabilize Asia and the Pacific in 1937.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.26, no.1 (1980): 85-95.

437 Andrews E.M. “The Australian Government and Appeasement.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.13 (April 1967): 34-46.

Andrews, E.M. “The Australian Government and the Manchurian Crisis.” Australian Outlook, vol.35, no.3 (December 1981): 307-16.

Andrews, E.M. “Australian Labour and Foreign Policy 1935-39. The Retreat from Isolationism.” Labour History, no.9, (November 1965): 22-32.

Andrews, E.M. “The Broken Promise-Britain's Failure to Consult the Commonwealth on Defence in 1934 and the Implications for Australian Foreign and Defence Policy.” Australian Journal of Defence Studies, vol.2, no.2 (November 1978): 102-113.

Andrews E.M. “The Great Temptation: The Australian Government and the Sale of Arms to China, 1931-3.”Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.23, no.3 (December 1977): 346- 59.

Attard, B. “Australia as a Dependent Dominion.” Working Papers in Australian Studies, no.115 (1999), Sir Robert Menzies Centre for Australian Studies for Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London.

Attard, B. “The Australian High Commissioners.” Working Papers in Australian Studies, no.68 (1991), Sir Robert Menzies Centre for Australian Studies for Institute of Commonwealth Studies University of London.

Attard, B. “The Limits of Influence: The Political Economy of Australian Commercial Policy after the Ottawa Conference.” Australian Historical Studies, vol.29, no.111 (October 1998): 325- 43.

Attard, B. “ ‘Moral Suasion’: Empire borrowers and the London capital market during the 1920s.” Seminar Paper, University of Melbourne, March 2002.

Bell, C. “The ‘Singapore strategy’ and the Deterrence of Japan: Winston Churchill, the Admiralty and the Dispatch of Force Z.” English Historical Review, vol.116, no.467 (June 2001): 604-34.

Berger, S. “William Harbutt Dawson: The Career and Politics of an Historian of Germany.” English Historical Review, vol.116, no.465 (February 2001): 76-113.

Best, A. “Economic Appeasement or Economic Nationalism? A Political Perspective on the British Empire, Japan and the Rise of Intra-Asian Trade, 1933-37.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol.30, no.2 (May 2002): 77-101.

Burton, H. “The Trade Diversion Episode of the ‘Thirties.” Australian Outlook, vol.22, no.1 (1968): 7-14.

Carlton, D. “The Dominions and British Policy in the Abyssinian Crisis.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 1 (1972): 59-77.

Carlton, D. “The Dominions and the Gathering Storm.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol.6, no.2 (January 1978): 172-5.

Clarke, A. “Menzies and Hitler.” Australian Financial Review, 19 April 2001, 57.

Conlon, R., and Perkins, J. “Australian Governments and Automotive Manufacturing 1919- 1939.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.45, no.3 (September 1999): 376-91. 438

Cumpston, I.M. “The Australian-Japanese Dispute of the Nineteen-Thirties.” Australian Quarterly, vol.29, no.2 (June 1957): 45-55.

Doherty, J. “Die Dominions und die Britische Außenpolitik von München bis zum Kriegsausbruch 1939.” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, vol.20, (1972): 209-225.

Douglas, R. “Chamberlain and Eden 1937-8.” Journal of Contemporary History, vol.13, no.1 (January 1978): 97-116.

Edwards, P. “Australian Foreign Policy in the 1930s and 1940s: Problems of Documentation.” Australian Outlook, vol.29, no.3 (1975): 335-40.

Edwards, P. “R.G. Menzies’s Appeal to the United States, May-June 1940.” Australian Outllook, vol.28, no.1 (1974): 64-70.

Edwards, P. “S.M. Bruce, R.G. Menzies and Australia’s War Aims and Peace Aims, 1939-40.” Historical Studies, vol.17, no.66 (April 1976): 1-14.

Gilbert, A. “The Conscription Referenda 1916-17: The Impact of the Irish Crisis.” Historical Studies, vol.14, no.53 (October 1969): 54-72.

Gilbert, M. “Appeasement in Action.” History of the 20th Century, vol.4, chapter 57 (1969):1571- 6.

Goldman, A. “Sir Robert Vansittart’s Search for Italian co-operation against Hitler, 1933-36.” Journal of Contemporary History, vol.9, no.3 (July 1974): 93-130.

Gow, N. “Australian Army Strategic Planning 1919-39.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.23, no.2 (August 1977): 169-72.

Hart, P. “J.A. Lyons, Tasmanian Labour Leader.” Labour History no.9 (November 1965): 33-43.

Hirst, J. “Australian defence and conscription: a reassessment (part I).” Australian Historical Studies, vol.25, no.101 (October 1993): 608-27.

Hirst, J. “Australian defence and conscription: a reassessment (part II).” Australian Historical Studies, vol.26, no.102 (April 1994): 39-56.

Kneipp, P. “Australian Catholics and the Abyssinian War.” Journal of Religious History, vol.10 (1979): 416-30.

Lake, M. “John Earle and the Concept of the ‘Labor Rat’.” Labour History no.33 (November 1977): 29-38.

Leitz, C. “ ‘Export or Die’; Foreign Trade in the Third Reich.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.48, no.1 (March 2002): 52-64.

Lukowitz, D. “British Pacifists and Appeasement. The Peace Pledge Union.” Journal of Contemporary History, vol.9, no.1 (January 1974): 115-27.

McCarthy, J. “Australia and the German Consuls-General 1923-39.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.27, no.3 (1981): 344-53.

McCarthy, J. “Australia and Imperial Defence: Co-operation and Conflict 1918-1939.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.17, no.1 (April 1971): 19-32. 439

McCarthy, J. “Singapore and Australian Defence 1921-42,”Australian Outlook, vol.25, (1971): 165-80.

McCraw, D. “The Zenith of Realism in New Zealand’s Foreign Policy.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.48, no.3 (September 2002): 353-68.

McDougall, D. “The Australian Labour Movement and the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1939.” Labour History no.33 (November 1977): 39-52.

Meaney, N. “ ‘A Proposition of the Highest International Importance’: Alfred Deakin’s Pacific Agreement Proposal and its Significance for Australian-Imperial Relations.” Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies, vol.5, no.3 (November 1967): 200-13.

Meaney, N. “Australia’s Changing Perception of Asia.” Paper presented at the Japan Cultural Centre (25 November 1996). Sydney: The Japan Foundation, 1997.

Meaney, N. “Australia’s Foreign Policy: History and Myth.” Australian Outlook, vol.23 (August 1969): 173-81.

Meaney, N. “Britishness and Australian Identity: The Problem of Nationalism in Australian History and Historiography.” Australian Historical Studies, vol.32, no.116 (April 2001): 76-90.

Megaw R. “The Australian Goodwill Mission to the Far East in 1934: Its Significance in the Evolution of Australian Foreign Policy.” Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol.59, (1973): 247-63.

Megaw, R. “Undiplomatic Channels: Australian Representation in the United States, 1918-39,” Historical Studies, no.15 (1973): 610-30.

Mercer, P. “Home Hill, Devonport: The Family Home of Enid and Joe Lyons.” 40ºSouth Tasmania, no.25 (June 2002): 51-53.

Meyers, R. “International paradigms, concepts of peace, and the policy of appeasement.” War & Society, vol.1, no.1 (May 1983): 43-66.

Meyers, R. “Britain, Europe and the Dominions in the 1930s: Some Aspects of British, European and Commonwealth Policies.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.22, no.1 (1976): 36-50.

Miller, R. “Britain and the Rhineland Crisis, 7 March 1936: Retreat from Responsibility or Accepting the Inevitable?” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.33, no.1 (1987): 60-77.

Millmow, A. “L.F. Giblin ‘The Economist Who Had Everything’,” Tasmanian Historical Research Association Papers and Proceedings, vol.48, no.2 (June 2001): 84-96.

Mills, W. “The Chamberlain-Grandi Conversations of July-August 1937 and the Appeasement of Italy.” International History Review, vol.19, no.3 (1997): 594-619.

Murray, R. "Munich Revisited.” Quadrant, vol.42, no.6 (June 1998): 46-52.

Nash, D. “The Boer War and Its Humanitarian Critics.” History Today, vol.49(6), (June 1999): 42-9.

440 Neilson, K. “The Defence Requirements Sub-Committee, British Strategic Foreign Policy, Neville Chamberlain and the Path to Appeasement.” English Historical Review, vol.118, no.477 (June 2003): 651-84.

O’Brien, J. “Empire v. National Interest in Australian-British Relations During the 1930s.” Historical Studies, vol.22, no.89 (October 1987): 569-86.

Offner, A. “Appeasement Revisited: the United States, Great Britain, and Germany, 1931-1940,” Journal of American History, vol.64 (September 1977): 373-93.

Pesman Cooper, R. “Australian Tourists in Fascist Italy.” Journal of Australian Studies, vol.27, (1990): 19-31.

Pesman Cooper, R. “ ‘We Want a Mussolini’: Views of Fascist Italy in Australia.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.39, no.3 (1993): 348-366.

Primrose, B. “Equipment and Naval Policy, 1919-42.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.23, no.2 (August 1977): 163-8.

Ross, A. “The Economics of Rearmament, 1933-39.” Journal of the Australian War Memorial, vol.9 (1986).

Ross, A. “Australian Overseas Trade and National Development Policy 1932-1939: a story of colonial larrikins or Australian statesmen?” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.36 no.3 (1990): 184-204.

Rutland, S. “Australian responses to Jewish refugee migration before and during World War II.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.31 no.1 (1985): 29-48.

Sissons, D.C.S. “Manchester v. Japan: The Imperial Background of the Australian Trade Diversion Dispute with Japan, 1936.” Australian Outlook, vol.30, no.3 (December 1976): 480- 502.

Sissons, D.C.S. “Private Diplomacy in the 1936 Trade Dispute with Japan.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.27, no.2 (1981): 143-59.

Tamchina, R. “In Search of Common Causes: The Imperial Conference of 1937.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol.1, (1972): 79-105.

Torney-Parlicki, P. “Selling Goodwill: Peter Russo and the Promotion of Australia-Japan Relations, 1935-1941.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol.47, no.3 (September 2001): 349-65.

Trotter, A. “The Dominions and Imperial Defence: Hankey’s Tour in 1934.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol.2, (1974): 318-29.

Trotter, A. “Tentative Steps for an Anglo-Japanese Rapprochement in 1934.” Modern Asian Studies, vol.8, no.1 (1974): 59-83.

Tsokhas, K. “Protection, Imperial Preference and Australian Conservative Politics 1923-39.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol.20, no.1 (January 1992): 65-87.

Tsokhas, K. “Tradition, Fantasy and Britishness: Four Australian Prime Ministers.” Journal of Contemporary Asia, vol.31, no.1 (January 2001): 3-30.

441 Tsokhas, K. “The Wool Industry and the 1936 Trade Diversion Dispute between Australia and Japan.” Australian Historical Studies, vol.23, no.93 (October 1989): 442-61.

Twomey, P. “Small Power Security through Great Power Arms Control?─Australian Perceptions of Disarmament, 1919-1930.” War & Society, vol.8, no.1 (May 1990): 71-99.

Walker, D. “Survivalist Anxieties: Australian Responses to Asia, 1890s to the Present.” Australian Historical Studies, vol.33, no.120 (October 2002): 319-30.

Watt, A. “Australia and the Munich Agreement. Underlying assumptions and operative methods of Australian Foreign Policy (1938).” Australian Outlook, vol.17, no.1 (1963): 21-41.

Watt, D.C. “Appeasement: The Rise of a Revisionist School?” Political Quarterly, vol.36, no.2 (1965): 191-213.

Watt, D.C. “Der Einfluss der Dominions auf die Britische Aussenpolitik vor München 1938.” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, vol.8 (1960): 64-76.

Watt, D.C. “Imperial Defence Policy and Imperial Foreign Policy, 1911-1939. A Neglected Paradox?” Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies, vol.1, no.3 (1961-3): 266-81.

Watt, D.C. “Pirow’s Mission to Berlin 1938.” Wiener Library Bulletin, vol.12, nos.5-6 (1958): 53.

Webster, Sir Charles. “Munich Reconsidered: A Survey of British Policy.” Stephenson Memorial Lecture No.10, RIIA, International Affairs, vol.37, no.2 (April 1961): 137-53.

Woodard, G. “The Diplomacy of Appeasement.” Quadrant, vol.23, nos.1-2 (January-February 1999): 48-53.

C: Unpublished Theses Attard, B. “The Australian High Commissioner’s Office: Politics and Anglo-Australian Relations, 1901-1939.” DPhil, University of Oxford, 1991.

Denholm, M. “A Study in Achievement: the Lyons Tasmanian government 1923-28 and the career of J. Lyons.” MA, University of Tasmania, 1973.

Fairbanks, G. “The Australian Foreign Policy and Defence Debate, 1931-41.” MA, University of Sydney, 1966.

Harrison-Mattley, P. “Australia and the Far Eastern Crisis, 1931-33.” MA, University of Sydney, 1969.

Hart, P. “J.A. Lyons: A Political Biography.” PhD, ANU, 1967.

Lloyd, C.J. “The Formation and Development of the UAP, 1929-37.” PhD, ANU, 1984.

Murphy, P.B. “Australia-Japan Relations 1931-1941.” PhD, University of NSW, 1975.

Ovendale, R. “The Influence of United States and Dominion Opinion on the Formation of British Foreign Policy 1937-1939.” PhD, University of Oxford, 1971.

Rotunda, D.T. “The Rome Embassy of Sir Eric Drummond, 16th Earl of Perth, 1933-1939.” PhD, University of London, 1972.

442 Sells, A. “Enid Lyons: the ‘National Housekeeper’-A Biographical Study 1897-1951.” MA, University of Melbourne, 1987.

Twomey, P. “Australia and the Search for a Stable International Order, 1919-41.” PhD, University of Cambridge, 1989.

D: Websites National Archives of Australia. 14 November 2002. “Australia’s Prime Ministers”: Joseph Lyons. Available [Online]: http://primeministers.naa.gov.au/ [14 November 2002]. Includes a web version of Joseph Lyons: Guide to Archives of Australia’s Prime Ministers, edited by S. Marsden. Canberra: National Archives of Australia, 2002.

E: Methodology Aitkin, D. “Writing Political Biography.” In Historians at Work: Investigating and Recreating the Past, edited by D. Duffy, G. Harman and K. Swan. Sydney: Hick Smith and sons, Sydney, 1973.

Brett, J., (intro. and ed.). Political Lives, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1997.

Brett, J., (intro. and ed.). “Robert Menzies and England.” In Political Lives, 71-84. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1997.

Brett, J. “Robert Menzies: Psychobiography and the Public Man.” In Tracing Past Lives. The Writing of Historical Biography, edited by R. Broome, 23-32. Melbourne: History Institute Victoria Inc., 1995.

Brett, J. “The Tasks of Political Biography.” In Political Lives, edited by J. Brett, 1-15. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1997.

Broome, R., (intro. and ed.). Tracing Past Lives. The Writing of Historical Biography, vii-xi. Melbourne: History Institute Victoria Inc., 1995.

Cox, N. “Public Records.” In Contemporary History. Practice and Method, edited by A. Seldon, 70-88. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988.

Crick, B. “Biography and ‘Character’.” In George Orwell: A Life, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980.

Davies, A. “The Tasks of Biography.” In Essays in Political Sociology, 109-118. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1972.

Dollard, J. Criteria for the Life History. New York: Peter Smith, 1949.

Duffy, D., G. Harman and K. Swan, (eds.). Historians at Work: Investigating and Recreating the Past. Sydney: Hick Smith and sons, 1973.

Eakin, P. “Writing Biography: A Perspective from Autobiography.” In Shaping Lives. Reflections on Biography, edited by I. Donaldson, P. Read and J. Walter, 105-202. Canberra: ANU Humanities Research Centre, 1992.

Edel, L. “The Biographer and Psycho-Analysis.” International Journal of Psychoanalysis, vol.42, (1961): 462-63.

Edel, L. “The Figure Under the Carpet.” In Telling Lives, the Biographer’s Art, edited by M. Pachter, 16-35. Washington: New Republic, 1979.

443 Erikson, E. “On Psycho-historical evidence.” In Life History and the Historical Moment. New York: Norton, 1975.

Hamburger, E and J. Charley. The Troubled Face of Biography. London: Macmillan, 1988.

Hamilton, N. “The Role of Biography.” In Contemporary History. Practice and Method, edited by A. Seldon, 165-9. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988.

Holsti, O. “Foreign Policy Decision Makers Viewed Psychologically: ‘Cognitive Process’ Approaches.” In In Search of Global Patterns, edited by J. Rosenau, 120-44. New York: The Free Press, 1976.

Hooton, J. “Women’s Life Writing: Power and Alterity.” In Shaping Lives. Reflections on Biography, edited by I. Donaldson, P. Read and J. Walter, 117-32. Canberra: ANU Humanities Research Centre, 1992.

Joyce, R. “Samuel Griffith, the Biographer and the Matter of Sources.” In Biographers at Work, edited by J. Walter and R. Nugent. Brisbane: Institute for Modern Biography, 1984.

Kazin, A. “The Self as History: Reflections on Autobiography.” In Telling Lives, the Biographer’s Art, edited by M. Pachter, 74. Washington D.C: New Republic, 1979.

Kearns, D. “Angles of Vision.” In Telling Lives, the Biographer’s Art, edited by M. Pachter, 90- 103. Washington, D.C: New Republic, 1979.

Kitson Clark, G. The Critical Historian. London: Heinemann, 1967.

Lasswell, H. Power and Personality. New York: Norton, 1948.

McDougall, D. Harold D. Lasswell and the Study of International Relations. Lanham: University Press of America, 1984.

Martin, A.W. “Elements in the Biography of Henry Parkes.” In Biographers at Work, edited by J. Walter and R. Nugent. Brisbane: Institute for Modern Biography, 1984.

Martin, A.W. “Henry Parkes: in Search of the ‘Actual Man Underneath’.”Historical Studies, vol.16, (1974).

Nelson, H. “Written and Spoken Lives and History.” In Shaping Lives. Reflections on Biography, edited by I. Donaldson, P. Read and J. Walter, 133-40. Canberra: ANU Humanities Research Centre, 1992.

Pachter, M., (intro. and ed.). “The Biographer Himself: An Introduction.” In Telling Lives, the Biographer’s Art, edited by M. Pachter, 2-15. Washington DC: New Republic, 1979.

Pachter, M., (intro. and ed.). Telling Lives, the Biographer’s Art. Washington DC: New Republic, 1979.

Phillips, W. “Historians, Biography and History.” In Tracing Past Lives. The Writing of Historical Biography, edited by R. Broome, 1-10. Melbourne: History Institute Victoria Inc., 1995.

Raspin, A. “Private Papers.” In Contemporary History. Practice and Method, edited by A. Seldon, 89-100. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988.

Rosenau, J., (ed.). In Search of Global Patterns. New York: The Free Press, 1976. 444

Seldon, A., (ed.). Contemporary History. Practice and Method. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988.

Seldon, A. “Interviews.” In Contemporary History. Practice and Method, edited by A. Seldon, 3- 16. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988.

Stanford, M. The Nature of Historical Knowledge. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986.

Tuchman, B. “Biography as a Prism of History.” In Telling Lives, the Biographer’s Art, edited by M. Pachter, 132-47. Washington DC: New Republic, 1979.

Walter, J. “Biography, Psychobiography, and Cultural Space.” In Shaping Lives. Reflections on Biography, edited by I. Donaldson, P. Read and J. Walter, 260-87. Canberra: ANU Humanities Research Centre, 1992.

Walter, J. and Nugent, R., (eds.). Biographers at Work. Brisbane: Institute for Modern Biography, 1984.

Ziegler, P. “Biography: The Narrative.” In Shaping Lives. Reflections on Biography, edited by I. Donaldson, P. Read and J. Walter, 260-87. Canberra: ANU Humanities Research Centre, 1992.

_

445 APPENDICES

APPENDIX I: The ‘secret’ Rhineland cable. ‘J.A. Lyons, Prime Minister, Canberra, to S.M. Bruce, High Commissioner in London’, Cable no.12.3089 Desire you submit following to United Kingdom Government: Commonwealth Government appreciates the comprehensive reports of Rhineland dispute sent by United Kingdom Government which the Commonwealth Government have interpreted differently from the Union Government, vide copy of cablegram by Union Government to Union High Commissioner sent to us. We cannot agree with severe indictment of France’s past policy nor the implication that the United Kingdom is unduly supporting France in the present conversations. Commonwealth Government feels it cannot usefully comment at moment except to say that war would find little support in Australia and would never lead to a lasting solution. Commonwealth Government concurs wholeheartedly in United Kingdom attitude and endeavour to find a formula as to present status of Rhineland which would be acceptable to Germany without undue loss of prestige and pending the negotiations for a general settlement with German proposals as basis of discussion. Feel that the view of France indicated at Council and Locarno Meetings too rigid and prejudices agreement at private conversations. We appreciate that in present situation especially in view of Hitler’s election appeal to German people the tone and method of presentation of any proposal by other Locarno Powers is of utmost importance and any proposal couched in language that could be construed as an ultimatum should be avoided. We suggest that any proposal should have the appearance of being based upon Hitler’s proposals rather than upon Germany’s breach of Locarno Pact. Appreciate that difficulty is to ascertain what proposal would be acceptable to Germany, as once resolution publicly announced Locarno Powers other than Germany must be prepared to implement it fully in interest international law and security. Therefore might it not be possible to obtain through private British mediation the German minimum desiderata without offence to France and without breach of Locarno solidarity?

LYONS

3089 Lyons to Bruce, 16 March 1936, A981 EUR 4 Part 1/12, NAA, Canberra; text confirmed in CP290/5/2, NAA, Canberra; also part in Meaney, Australia and the World, 402-3. 446

APPENDIX II: Selected Canberra-London communications, 26-30 September 1938.

The time difference between London and Canberra in the period 10 April-2 October 1938 was nine hours, due to British Summer Time (BST=GMT+1), rather than the usual ten hours (Canberra/AEST=GMT+10). London time was therefore the same as Middle European Time (MET in Berlin and Rome=GMT+1) in this period; vide DAFP vol.1, 543.

Communication London (BST) time Canberra (AEST) time (GMT+1) (GMT+10) Circular telegram, DO to PMs, 3am, 26 September noon, 26 September survey of situation, A2937/85/B277 Lyons to Bruce, prior to 10.15am, afternoon/evening, telephone conversation, 26 September 26 September DAFP, vol.1, 279 Lyons to Chamberlain, prior to noon, afternoon/evening, telephone conversation, 26 September 26 September CAB 23/95 Lyons to Chamberlain, arrived 12.57pm, dispatched before 9.57pm, cable, DAFP, vol.1, 278 26 September 26 September, (drafted that afternoon) Circular telegram, DO to PMs, dispatched 1pm, arrived after 10pm, A2937/85/B281 26 September 26 September MacDonald to Lyons, dispatched 6.06pm, 7.51pm, 26 arrived after 3.06am, 4.51am, three “Wilson” cables, September; 11.58am, 27 September A463/1957/1067 2.58pm, 27 September Circular telegram, DO to PMs, dispatched between 8pm- arrived between 5am-9am, Chamberlain broadcast text, midnight, 28 September A2937/85/B304 27 September Circular telegram, DO to PMs dispatched 12.30am, arrived after 9.30am, Copy of Hitler letter (DBFP 28 September 28 September 1938 1144), A2937/85/B311 Lyons to Chamberlain, arrived 5.00am, dispatched 1.15pm, “Mussolini” cable, DAFP, vol.1, 28 September 28 September 288 Lyons to Chamberlain, from 7.30am, from 4.30pm, telephone conversation, 28 September 28 September NC 8/26/15 DO114/94/186 Lyons to Bruce, telephone 8.30am, 5.30pm, conversation (overheard by 28 September 28 September cabinet), A2694/18/5 Bruce to Lyons, cable, DAFP, 1.42pm, received after 10.42pm, vol.1, 290 (texts of DBFP, 3rd 28 September 28 September series, vol.2, 1158-9 Circular telegram, DO to PMs, 2.45pm, received after 11.45pm, on postponement, 28 September 28 September A2937/85/B321 MacDonald to Lyons, 3.17pm, received after 12.17am, cable on postponement, 28 September 29 September A981 CZE PART 3 MacDonald to Lyons, 4.25pm, 1.25am, cable on Perth to Mussolini, 28 September 29 September A981 CZE PART 3

447 APPENDIX III: Cables DAFP, vol.1, 278/288 DAFP, vol.1, 278:3090 Mr. J.A. Lyons, Prime Minister, to Mr. N. Chamberlain, U.K. Prime Minister. (Canberra), 26 September 1938. SECRET Following for Prime Minister We have followed with great admiration your initiative and courage in the face of extreme difficulties. As we have approved of your policy we have not thought it necessary to encumber you with our advice, but think that the time has now come to make three points. First, we think that the cession of Sudeten areas to Germany having been agreed upon in principle, the precise method of giving effect to the decision is not a matter of sufficient importance to warrant a dispute leading to war. We fully appreciate questions of national pride, but think that before a ruinous, and perhaps inconclusive, war is permitted, consideration should be given, not to the value of what has already been conceded, but to the value of the actual points now in difference. Second, we think that the form of the questions to be put to the people of Sudeten areas by plebiscite, should either be settled forthwith by agreement or left to be conclusively determined by some neutral authority. Unless these matters are cleared up before the actual taking over of areas by Germans we can foresee much future trouble and dangerous controversy under circumstances unfairly disadvantageous to Czechoslovakia. Third, we think public opinion will require adequate assurances as to the future of Czechoslovakia. LYONS

DAFP, vol.1, 2883091 Mr. J.A. Lyons, Prime Minister, to Mr. N. Chamberlain, UK Prime Minister. (Canberra), 28 September 1938. Repeated to Mr. S.M. Bruce, High Commissioner, London. At this late hour I venture to suggest that there may be some possibility of averting war by personal appeal to Signor Mussolini. I can think of no other individual who might be able to influence Herr Hitler towards peaceful solution. If Bruce, our High Commissioner in London, could be of any service to you by flying to Rome bearing personal message from you to Signor Mussolini you may of course regard him as available and I am cabling him urgently to this effect. I suggest Bruce because, as Prime Minister of Australia, am on good personal terms with Signor Mussolini. J.A. LYONS Prime Minister

3090 DAFP, vol.1, 278 (arrived 12.57pm, BST), 26 September 1938; A981, CZECHOSLOVAKIA 13, NAA, Canberra. 3091 DAFP, vol.1, 288 (arrived 5.00am, BST), 28 September 1938; A483 1957/1067, NAA, Canberra; PREM 1/242/19, PRO, London. 448 APPENDIX IV: Cable DAFP, vol.2, 63 DAFP, vol.2, 633092 Mr. J.A. Lyons, Prime Minister, to Sir Thomas Inskip, U.K. Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs. (Canberra), 30 March 1939. SECRET You will recall that during 1936 the question of the appointment of Australian Counsellors at British embassies was discussed with the United Kingdom Government, and as a consequence an experiment was made with the appointment of a Counsellor at Washington. The system of liaison has worked well in practice and has proved beneficial to the Commonwealth Government but it is felt that our constantly increasing international contacts make it imperative we should have more direct representation in those countries which are of considerable importance to Australia, especially in the region of the Pacific Ocean. You will remember at the last Imperial Conference I raised the question of a Pacific Pact on the broad principle that regional agreements by separate members of the British Commonwealth in the promotion of friendly collaboration and mutual understanding with neighbouring countries would not only be of assistance to Great Britain but would materially help in the general cause of peace. We regard the above considerations of paramount importance in the present state of international affairs, and are of the opinion that the time has arrived when the Commonwealth of Australia should establish separate Missions commencing with Legations at Washington and Tokyo. The promotion of goodwill and a spirit of cooperation with the United States and the British Commonwealth are considered vital. In addition we have considerable trade interests, and the increasing direct contacts in the social, cultural and scientific spheres make Washington obviously the first selection. The establishment of a Mission at Washington would in our opinion render necessary a similar and simultaneous Mission in Tokyo. In view of present tendencies, the establishment of a Mission at Washington and not at Tokyo would probably be regarded as a deliberate slight and as a desire to promote friendly relations with America at the expense of Japan. Moreover, it is in Australian national interests to maintain and extend friendly contacts with Japan, and an independent Mission we feel sure will be productive of much good. In this respect the last two Consuls General have on several occasions intimated that Japan would warmly welcome the establishment of a Legation by Australia. Recently we have received strong representations from the Consul General about alleged anti-Japanese sentiments in Australia, and an Australian Minister would be in a position to counteract any such false impression in Japan, and prevent possible deterioration in our relations. You will recall the fact that over a long period of years the policy of successive Australian Governments has been against the establishment of direct diplomatic representation abroad. Australia has steadfastly stood for the maintenance of the common British diplomatic front. We are still of this opinion and by the proposals contained in this telegram we do not in any way mean to imply that that this common diplomatic front will be in any way endangered. We are moved to the present proposals solely by reason of the necessity to improve and cement Australian-American relations which we believe might be valuable to the cause of improved Anglo-American relations. We should be glad if you would give consideration to these proposals and furnish your views at an early date, including, in anticipation of your favourable reaction, the best method of raising the question with the two Governments and whether it should be intimated that we would welcome a reciprocal Mission to be established simultaneously in Australia.

3092 DAFP, vol.2, 63, 30 March 1939. Draft attached to External Affairs memorandum, “Australian Representation Abroad”, Cabinet Papers, 30 March 1939, A6006/12, NAA, Canberra.

449

Minerva Access is the Institutional Repository of The University of Melbourne

Author/s: Bird, David Samuel

Title: J.A. Lyons, the 'tame Tasmanian': a study in Australian foreign and defence policy, 1932-39

Date: 2004

Citation: Bird, D. S. (2004). J.A. Lyons, the 'tame Tasmanian': a study in Australian foreign and defence policy, 1932-39. PhD thesis, Department of History, The University of Melbourne.

Publication Status: Unpublished

Persistent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11343/35373

File Description: J.A. Lyons, the 'tame Tasmanian': a study in Australian foreign and defence policy, 1932-39

Terms and Conditions: Terms and Conditions: Copyright in works deposited in Minerva Access is retained by the copyright owner. The work may not be altered without permission from the copyright owner. Readers may only download, print and save electronic copies of whole works for their own personal non-commercial use. Any use that exceeds these limits requires permission from the copyright owner. Attribution is essential when quoting or paraphrasing from these works.