• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 822 0

ear which only served to strengthen the vitriol and within a short space of time he succeeded in further offending the Americans, upsetting the French, and annoying both the Russians and Chinese, in short all of the major players. His explosion at Cockram late one evening was returned in kind and this was judged as having had something of a positive modifying effect on the Australian's attitude. Field Marshal Smuts had, in the meantime, also lost faith with the discussions and was threatening to go home. He had been appointed President of the General Assembly from where he grew steadily more impatient with proceedings, comparing them unfavourably to the 1919 Peace Conference.41 His departure would have been hugely embarrassing and only a personal intervention by Lord Halifax persuaded him to stay. Despite this Cockram thought that inter-Commonwealth relations were better than at any stage of the Conference.42 The bureaucrats from the respective Dominion foreign affairs departments tasked with organizing the management of their respective delegations seemed content with the manner in which the alliance functioned. A number of them were pleased that the Dominion delegations had demonstrated that they had their own ideas.

The Conference itself, however, remained in a state of flux as it proved impossible to move the Russian position on the fundamental idea that the United Nations Organization should first 'discuss and consider' disputes without the automatic application of the proposed veto which was to be offered to each of the Big Powers. This issue had proven particularly difficult, Evatt believing it was 'a negation of democracy'. Although the self-appointed champion of the smaller powers could no longer count on Fraser's support about trusteeship, the New Zealander would still listen to the 'poison' being 'distilled into his ears'. The rest of the Australian delegation remained generally moderate though and it was clearly hoped that its leader's dissenting voice could be controlled. South Africa and Canada had been 'helpful and cooperative throughout', and what votes they had registered against the British position had been well considered and served to demonstrate the degree to which the Commonwealth was not a single block. The finding of a successful resolution to the domestic jurisdiction dispute proved this to be the case but in a fashion that was acceptable to the British delegation as 'the battle was fought and won'.43

With the Conference now hopefully drawing to a close Cockram could look back at the analysis he had provided earlier in the year. He had been proven correct in most regards not least in his warning that the great difficulty would be the Australian delegation. He had worried that it would be likely to find itself 'disunited and split by personal ambitions and dislikes', leaving it 'an unpredictable factor' upon which the British could not necessarily count for support.44 Headed by the deputy prime minister, Frank Forde, soon to become the shortest serving leader in Australian history, he and almost all of the other officials had been anxious to cooperate. There had been fatal division, however, as Evatt had often been 'hasty and suspicious'. In the view of those who accompanied him from Canberra, in many ways the Conference was both the high and low point of the Australian minister's career. He had successfully lobbied at the outset for Australia's inclusion as a member of the Executive Committee, an opening which 'gave so many opportunities'.45 From this position he assaulted those aspects of the agreements at Dumbarton Oaks that were deemed the most reprehensible. For this the small powers accorded him a vote of thanks at the Conference's end. What he had wanted, however, was the acclaim of the lead nations. His fruitless efforts to amend the Great Power veto in the Security Council did little more than extend the gathering's life by several weeks and ensure that he would be subsequently viewed with considerable suspicion by both the United States and Soviet Union.46 And in a clear sign that the