Cablegram SFC30 SAN FRANCISCO, 31 May 1945, 4.14 p.m.
SECRET
You and the Ministers will understand that the great struggle we are waging here is in every case to obtain modification of the Dumbarton Oaks draft to make it more democratic and in accordance with our policy, publicly announced and consistently followed.
In such a struggle some conflict and straight speaking are absolutely essential if we are to avoid being tricked or side tracked. The results we will show at the end will, I am confident, be a complete justification of our policy and influence. We have not been bestowed the role of leader of any block. We have simply followed our policy fearlessly and we have already established our claim to be regarded as perhaps the most constructive and forward looking nation at the Conference. This is admitted on all sides. A typical reaction is the B.B.C. official broadcast which I am telegraphing and which represents a conservative approach. [1] You will readily understand that a section of Australian press which is strongly anti-labour does not relish these developments and you will be careful to indicate the true position whenever the occasion arises.
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1 A talk for the BBC given by commentator Alistair Cooke on 28 May was repeated in an unnumbered cablegram dispatched 31 May (on fileAA: A1066, E45/1/8). Reporting Evatt’s statement on Australia’s attitude towards the Big Power veto, it noted ‘the forceful leadership of the Australian Delegation … Australia has known its mind and spoken without ambiguity when some of the Big Powers seemed bogged down in indecisions’.
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[AA : A3195, 1945, FOLDER, INWARDS FROM AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION SAN FRANCISCO (AND LONDON), I.17898]