backroom briefings John Curtin's war CLEM LLOYD & RICHARD HALL backroom briefings John Curtin's WAR edited by CLEM LLOYD & RICHARD HALL from original notes compiled by Frederick T. Smith National Library of Australia Canberra 1997 Front cover: Montage of photographs of John Curtin, Prime Minister of Australia, 1941-45, and of Old Parliament House, Canberra Photographs from the National Library's Pictorial Collection Back cover: Caricature of John Curtin by Dubois Bulletin, 8 October 1941 Published by the National Library of Australia Canberra ACT 2600 © National Library of Australia 1997 Introduction and annotations © Clem Lloyd and Richard Hall Every reasonable endeavour has been made to contact relevant copyright holders of illustrative material. Where this has not proved possible, the copyright holders are invited to contact the publisher. National Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data Backroom briefings: John Curtin's war. Includes index. ISBN 0 642 10688 6. 1. Curtin, John, 1885-1945. 2. World War, 1939-1945— Press coverage—Australia. 3. Journalism—Australia. I. Smith, FT. (Frederick T.). II. Lloyd, C.J. (Clement John), 1939- . III. Hall, Richard, 1937- . 940.5394 Editor: Julie Stokes Designer: Beverly Swifte Picture researcher/proofreader: Tony Twining Printed by Goanna Print, Canberra Published with the assistance of the Lloyd Ross Forum CONTENTS Fred Smith and the secret briefings 1 John Curtin's war 12 Acknowledgements 38 Highly confidential: press briefings, June 1942-January 1945 39 Introduction by F.T. Smith 40 Chronology of events; Briefings 42 Index 242 rederick Thomas Smith was born in Balmain, Sydney, Fon 18 December 1904, one of a family of two brothers and two sisters. His family subsequently moved to Kogarah and then to Rockdale in Sydney's southern suburbs where Smith grew up. He caught a train each day to Cleveland Street Boys High School, near Sydney's Central Station, matriculating and doing well in French and Latin. He left school at 15 to work as a copy boy at the Evening News in King Street, Sydney. In the 1930s Smith was a State political reporter with the country press, working for Utting's News Service. In 1939 he joined another news agency, Australian United Press (AUP), becoming bureau chief and manager of its Canberra office. At the time, AUP serviced almost all of Australia's country newspapers. Smith was close to Donald Kilgour Rodgers, Curtin's shrewd and politically sensitive press secretary. In May-June 1944, Smith led an Australian press delegation to Canada, a delegation which also included Allan Dawes of the Melbourne Herald and Don Whitington of Sydney's Daily Telegraph. The delegation travelled 10 000 miles across Canada from Vancouver on the west coast and the Yukon to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia in the east. As is often the case with working journalists, when the professional roles were reversed and the interviewer was interviewed by Canadian journalists, Smith showed highly developed skills in conveying the scope and intensity of Australia's war effort to an international audience. After the war ended, he joined the Sydney-based magazine publishing house of K.G. Murray in 1946, working mainly on administrative matters rather than writing. He became managing director of K.G. Murray, retiring in 1972 when the firm was taken over by Sir Frank Packer's Consolidated Press. In his leisure time, he revived his studies of French, achieving a notable fluency. K.G. Murray's involvement in ski-field development allowed him to become a skilled skier. He was also an expert woodworker and made his own furniture. Although Smith always spoke with great admiration of Curtin and his conduct of the wartime prime ministership, his family and colleagues do not recall him as having any particular political affiliation. He was a dapper dresser and a trifle formal in manner. He married Jean Hegarty in 1931 and the family lived at Rockdale until the end of the war, subsequently moving to Wahroonga on Sydney's North Shore. Fred Smith died on 4 February 1992. iv FRED SMITH AND THE SECRET BRIEFINGS In November 1972 Fred Smith, a bureau head and senior journalist in Canberra's Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery, deposited a bulky brown folder in the Manuscript Section of the National Library of Australia. In the folder was a wad of fading typescript and a photograph of John Curtin, sitting at his desk surrounded by a group of senior journalists. The typescripts contained transcription of Smith's notes of briefings given by Curtin to a select group of Canberra Press Gallery journalists covering much of the Second World War, from June 1942 until late January 1945. They range over the strategic, military and political conduct of Australia's participation in the war from the immediate aftermath of the Battle of the Coral Sea (in May 1942) to early 1945 when the war's end was clearly discernible, and Curtin, his crushing responsibilities discharged, was drifting towards death. At the personal level, Smith's recording of the press briefings provides an unsurpassed picture of Curtin's expression, his inflections, his verbal mannerisms, his force and eloquence, his swingeing irony, his mild profanity and occasional obscenity. Smith gives us very little sense of Curtin's physical presence—what today would be called his 'body language'—apart from generalisations that the Prime Minister looked 'better' or 'unwell', or that he was 'particularly bitter' towards a hapless reporter whose newspaper had provoked his wrath. He illustrates most vividly, however, the full spectrum of what might be called Curtin's table-talk— the Prime Minister talking colloquially but mostly with composure and control to a group of trusted intimates, conveying and receiving political intelligence, mulling over the turns and shifts of momentous events. It is very much a one-sided portrait because the emphasis is wholly on Curtin's exposition. The contributions of the intermediary journalists are treated largely as cues and there is virtually no projection of discourse. Although the framework of the press briefings and their content often seem much the same from day to day, Curtin's distinctive tone and often unexpected twists of phrase and interpretation lift them above the mundane. 1 THE SECRET BRIEFINGS Despite the moderation and detachment of much of Curtin's analysis, his routine exposition builds a cumulative power as, over 40 months, the war moves from virtual defeat to assured victory. Curtin never exceeds the bounds of the possible as he expounds and accounts for this transformation, setting it resonantly in a context of global strategy. Nor does he gloat as the emergent triumph of the Allies unfurls. There is a sense of composed gratification, but also a hint of incredulity, that what began very badly has turned out so well. Counterpointing the incisive, sometimes passionate Curtin is the detached, astringent reporter Fred Smith, who selects and shapes the material, mostly reporting Curtin's words verbatim but also providing occasional comment, filling in background or obtaining elaboration from Curtin's extremely able press secretary, Don Rodgers, and other members of the administration. What Smith provides is very much the model of the dispassionate, objective journalist, avoiding overly subjective comment and interpretation, largely letting Curtin and the facts find their own voices. Unquestionably, the 120 or so briefings augment and illuminate our understanding of how Australia fought the Second World War, and give fresh perceptions of its civil and military leaders. Their overall impact in these crucial areas of study, however, is incremental rather than transforming. The official war histories have provided a solid foundation for the political, administrative, social, economic, supply and medical history of the war; Smith's despatches provide a valuable supplement to the great mass of published and archival material already available on Australia's war effort. Origins of the press briefings It is important to note that these briefings do not begin until mid-1942 when, arguably, the most decisive phase of Curtin's prime ministership was over. Curtin became Prime Minister in October 1941. In December, Japan had struck Pearl Harbor, bringing the United States into the war. Darwin had been bombed early in 1942, although the news had been kept from the Australian community, as the briefings make clear. For the first time in more than 150 years of settlement, white Australians died from enemy assaults on their own territory. Japan conquered the 2 THE SECRET BRIEFINGS Philippines, Malaysia and the Netherlands East Indies. The surrender of Singapore to the Japanese sent the Australian 8th Division into three years of captivity. At the request of Curtin's government, General Douglas MacArthur left the Philippines and came to Australia to take command of the newly created South-West Pacific military zone. The build­ up of tens of thousands of American troops began in the South Pacific, especially in Australia. Australia's military divisions undertook the long and hazardous voyage back from the Middle East to protect their homeland. Finally, the great naval victories of Midway and the Coral Sea in mid-1942 sealed the highwater mark of Japanese expansion based on naval power. These momentous events are touched on in the briefings only in retrospect, and it is pertinent to ask Prime Minister Curtin (seated) talking to senior journalists why. According to Smith, the briefings were instigated and press secretary, Don Rodgers (second from right), by Don Rodgers. In these circumstances, Rodgers latched during a press briefing in onto the notion of providing top-secret briefings to senior Parliament House, Canberra From the Papers of members of the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery. In Don Whitngton (MS 3810) Manuscript Collection turn, these heads of service (or bureau chiefs) could pass National Library of Australia 3 THE SECRET BRIEFINGS the confidential information provided by Curtin on to their editors who determined content of their newspapers, and to their proprietors who dictated overall editorial policy.