Cablegram unnumbered 8 January 1940,
Following message to be released to Press at 10.30 p.m. Australian
time 8/1/40.
Broadcast by the Prime Minister [1] regarding the appointment of a
Minister to Washington.
‘I am taking this opportunity as Prime Minister of Australia to
tell you that arrangements have just been completed for an
exchange of diplomatic Ministers between the United States of
America and Australia. The first Australian Minister, who will
leave shortly to take up his appointment, is the Rt. Hon. Richard
Gardiner Casey, at present Minister for Supply and Development in
the Australian Government and formerly Treasurer or Chief Finance
Minister.
This is the first time that Australia has made a full diplomatic
appointment to a foreign country and the event is therefore of
great historic interest to us. We have for a long time felt that
the problems which concern the nations surrounding the Pacific
Ocean are of special and vital interest to Australia and that as
an independent nation within the British family of nations we
might quite reasonably expect to play an effective part in the
development and strengthening of peaceful contacts between all the
Pacific Powers.
I may say that we have under immediate consideration the question
of diplomatic representation at Tokyo: but our first appointment
has been made to the United States of America because, as a
British community, we feel that we have a great deal in common
with the United States and that by closer contact with them we may
contribute to a fuller understanding between the English-speaking
peoples of the world and, through that fuller understanding, to
the peace and well-being of the world.
The United States of America has no aggressive designs against any
other country. Neither has the British Empire. We have the same
general ideas of Government: we attach the same supreme importance
to the liberty of the individual: we have in common the conviction
that the proper object of all Governments is to forward the
happiness of ordinary men and women and not merely of a chosen
few. And we are the better able to exchange our ideas and to
forward our ideals by joint effort because we speak the same
language and share the same literature.
I say to you quite frankly that Australia attaches importance to
have [sic] the friendship of the United States and is prepared to
do much to improve it. But may I also say that I believe that the
friendship of Australia as an integral part of the British Empire
is of importance to the United States. The British and American
peoples have too much in common and, may I add, too many precious
ideas at risk in this turbulent world, not to realise that,
whatever their organic relation may be, they are both exercising
similar functions and that the safety and development of each is
of profound importance to the other.
Reciprocally with our own action, the United States Government has
agreed to establish a Legation at Canberra. [2] The American
Minister will be the first person to be diplomatically accredited
to Australia. Housed at Canberra, he will become for all
Australians the living embodiment of a gesture of friendship and
recognition by the United States. You may ask why, when there is a
British Ambassador at Washington, it is thought necessary to
appoint an Australian Minister. Somebody may say to you that this
sort of thing indicates that the various British nations are
falling out with each other. Nothing could be further from the
truth. The presence of an Australian Minister at Washington, so
far from weakening the position of the British Empire at that
capital, will strengthen it. Each British Dominion brings to the
British Empire not only unswerving loyalty to His Majesty the King
as the centre of that Empire, but also its own special knowledge
born of its own conditions. Just as we enjoy great privileges as
members of the British Empire, so we are subject to great
responsibilities. We must each play our own part. Just as we feel
that we are contributing effectively towards the future peace of
the world by sending Australian sailors and soldiers and airmen to
fight in Europe, so do we believe that by increasing our
diplomatic contacts around the Pacific, we will be contributing
powerfully towards that common understanding without which
permanent peace is impossible.
Mr. Casey is uncommonly well qualified to fill the distinguished
office to which he has been appointed. He served throughout the
last war, being awarded the Distinguished Service Order and the
Military Cross. For some years after the war he returned to his
profession as an engineer and was indeed for some time in the
United States. He was for some years Liaison Officer in London
between the Commonwealth Government and the British Cabinet
Secretariat of the Foreign Office [sic]. His experience in this
way has made him very widely known in British political and
official circles.
For the last seven years Mr. Casey has been one of the most
influential members of the Australian Government, exhibiting in
the complex financial and business matters with which he has had
to deal the highest qualities of capacity, energy and patriotism.
Less than a month ago he returned from London where he represented
Australia at a series of brief but important discussions on war
problems. He will thus go to Washington exceedingly well informed
on a great variety of matters.
I am quite sure that he will prove not only a distinguished
representative of his own country, but a real contributor to the
achievement of those national ideals to which I have referred.
If there is one thing that I believe most sincerely, it is that we
must all get to know one another better if the future of the world
is to be a peaceful future. The business of diplomacy is not a
mere business of dexterity in negotiation. Its real purpose is to
remove misunderstandings, not to create them. Its real
justification is peace.’ [3]
1 R. G. Menzies.
2 The first U.S. Minister to Australia, Clarence E. Gauss,
presented his credentials on 17 July 1940.
3 This cablegram was also addressed to S. M. Bruce, High
Commissioner in London, and to Lt Col E. E. Longfield Lloyd,
Government Commissioner in Japan.
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[FA: A3196, 0.127]
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