Fools' Harvest. Erle Cox
without warning, would be synchronised throughout the whole world. Even allowing this, would anyone dream that the sworn ally of the victim would desert its friend in the day of peril. But above all could anyone conceive the grim humor of one of the three bandit Powers double crossing the other two, and helping itself to the choicest spoils while the other two did the fighting. We in Australia are like the laughing hyena in that we have very little to laugh about. Nevertheless there is something to smile at in reflecting on the feelings of the two when they found that they had been swindled by their accomplice. It will be a lasting regret to me that what the two wolves said to the jackal when they learned the truth will not be known.
[Burton died too soon. All that the two wolves said to the jackal will be found in Peel and Everard's "The Struggle for the Pacific." They never forgave the "Paramount Power" for its treachery, and stood aside when the Pan-American Confederation took punitive action in 1966.—Eds.]
But our ignorance of what was actually coming cannot be offered as an excuse. I belong to the generation that missed the first Great War that embodied the greatest joke of the ages—"the war to end war." Our parents, in disregarding the warnings, were caught off their guard in 1914, just as we were in 1939. But they had had sufficient sense to haw every available man in Australia under some kind of military training. Their organisation was ready. But in 1939, with the whole world still feverishly piling up armaments, we were fiddling about with plants for war material, and entirely neglecting our man power. This in the face of the certainty that the next fight would be in the Pacific, and that Australia would be in the thick of it. I suppose it is natural for my generation to blame those doddering idiots of 1918 with their crazy policy of self determination for small nations. They hadn't the sense to see that in forming thousands of miles of new frontiers in Europe they were creating a new cause for war in every single mile of them. Then there were Germany left without a colony, and the League of Nations—almost as rich a joke as the war to end war. Queer that our civilisation of the 20th century was then as blind as one day old pups.
Looking back to the early months of 1939, our self complacency had something in it that now appears almost grotesque. Our trouble was that, being so far from Europe, we could not recognise that our own interests were as involved in events there as much as if we had been in the midst of them. It was our misfortune that we were the least military conscious people in the world. The first Great War was 20 years behind us. The "Diggers" were all ageing men. We youngsters knew they had been great fighters, but to us the fighting itself was a page of history rather than an actual fact. All their fighting had been done abroad. Such marks as the war load made in broken lives and homes had almost been effaced from memory. The war monuments were to us only stones. Our Australia seemed so safe, so inviolable. Yet all the time we were hanging like a ripe fruit for any hand to pluck. It reminds me of those lines of Kipling in "The Ballad of the Clampherdown"—
"It was our warship 'Clampherdown' That carried an armor-belt; But fifty feet at stern and bow Lay bare as the paunch of the Purser's sow, To the hail of the Nordenfeldt."
Australia was like the Clampherdown. Everything outside the range of a few fort guns was "bare as the paunch of the purser's sow" to all corners. The armor-belt was narrow and weak, and our Clampherdown's guns were undermanned. But we appointed a lot of advisory councils.
God! the folly of it!
Spring was coming in with September—and so was the Paramount Power; a bare three weeks away. We were talking about such vital matters as football finals. I have tried often to remember any one thing worth doing in life that I did during September, 1939, before that Saturday morning. But I can remember nothing. I went to talkies I suppose; yarned about the coming yachting season or the surfing; went to the office and did my work. I remember the State Parliament was in recess, so I was having a fairly easy time at the office, because of it. I know Gwen—the first time I have written that name in nine years—was dividing her time between our boy and the garden of our home on Balmoral Heights, overlooking Middle Harbor. As I write a queer incident comes to my mind. I suppose I had jumped from a tram in Spit Road at the Stanton Street intersection a thousand times or more. But it was only on that Saturday that I really saw what a wonderful view through the Heads there was from the Stanton Street corner.
There is good cause why that memory rises clear cut from a host of blurred impressions.
But even before the first of the month every plan in three nations for what was to follow had been completed to the last detail. They were only waiting for the dawning of Saturday, September 23. Even had we known then of the armada that left a Pacific base in three divisions, between the seventh and the eleventh of the month, it would not have made much difference to the result. The knowledge might have prolonged the agony for a week or two. Only one thing could have altered the course of events. It is one of those futile "ifs" of history. Had the two wolf powers known of the treachery to them contemplated by the jackal, they must have held their hands. They believed in the doctrine of honor among thieves, however, and were badly left. But since they were all bandits together, the wolves should not have been surprised at the bad faith of the jackal. It is possible that the Paramount Power had reason to believe that after pulling the chestnuts out of the fire it would have been left with the husks. In any case it was able to sit in at the Berlin Conference with all the trumps in its pocket so far as Australia was concerned.
[History proves that Burton's suggestion was correct. Despite their indignation towards the Paramount Power, it is abundantly clear that the two European powers fully intended to repudiate their engagements, and to curb the Paramount Power's ambitions in the Pacific.—Eds.]
Chapter III
One of the strange and incomprehensible features of that first day is, that though I have prayed to forget the events of the afternoon, and cannot, I can remember so little of its earlier hours—those last uncounted hours of happiness for such a host of human beings. There seems to be a chasm of one moment between two eras—one second of time, but worlds apart. To show how little we value the gifts of peace, let me number the little handful of little daily things that I remember of the last six hours—then weigh them against the rest of my story.
Saturday, September 23, 1939, now known as "Bloody Saturday." was one of those perfect spring days that only Sydney can show. It was warm without being hot. There was scarcely a breath of wind and the sky was cloudless. I was down on the duty book to do a meeting in the Domain on Sunday afternoon, so I had my Saturday free. I cannot remember bathing, shaving or breakfast. I must have dawdled a good deal because I know I had to hurry when I left home. I had made an appointment at the office with Max Peters, who was giving me some standard roses, and I was to meet him at. 10.30. Gwen was quite excited about them. She was washing the baby as I rushed out of the house pulling on my coat. As I reached the door she called out to me to bring home some talcum powder. It was then just about 10 o'clock, and I had no time to spare. I cannot even remember what frock she was wearing or what we talked about at breakfast, the last time—but one—I saw her.. The 25 minutes run into the city to Wynyard is a complete blank. The day had brought out an unusual crowd even for Saturday morning, and it took me ten minutes to get across to the office in Castlereagh Street.
The usual Saturday quiet of a morning daily enveloped the building. Our floor, the third, was dead. In the subs' room I found Don Ringfield, our deputy chief of staff and our police roundsman, Billings, motionless, and intent on something on Don's table on which I threw my hat. Billings roared at me like the Bull of Bashan for a clumsy so and so nark. It appeared that my condemned hat had cost him sixpence. They were shooting flies with rubber bands at one shilling a pair. Honours were even, and I had ruined Billing's chance for a sitting shot. Come to think of it, their pastime reflected the state of the collective mind of the Commonwealth at the moment.
The next shooting both of them indulged in was not done with rubber bands, nor were flies their target.
I asked if Max had come in. Said Don with a wide derisive grin, "No roses for you this morning my boy. Your little playmate has gone out to the Hawkesbury on a job. Before he went—I rang him up—he explained that you