1962

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday September 25, 2009

Malcolm Brown

Evidence was growing that the US was ready to compromise with the Soviet Union over West Berlin. The Chicago Tribune said that President John F. Kennedy was about to capitulate to the Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, and that "another Munich is just around the corner". The West German President, Heinrich Luebke, assured Berliners that Kennedy's special envoy, Lucius Clay, "has not come to Berlin to surrender the city".The US Defence Secretary, Robert McNamara, rejected claims that the US was not willing to fight with nuclear weapons. He said it would use nuclear weapons of any size or quantity to protect the nation's vital interests. McNamara had been provoked by a statement by a Republican senator, Margaret Chase Smith, that America's build-up of conventional weapons signalled a change in policy.An Australian farm adviser, Wilfred Arthur, at Ben Cat model farm in South Vietnam, was kidnapped by communist rebels between the farm and Saigon and held for a ransom of a typewriter and medical supplies. After a few days, an Australian official, Laurence Crozier, was dispatched to pay the ransom and Arthur was released without ill effect. He had been advising on the management of the model farm, which had been stocked with Australian cattle.The national president of the RSL, Arthur Lee, came out fully in support of the Australia's restrictive immigration policy during a dispute over repatriation of three Malayan pearl divers who had been operating in northern Australia and whose contracts had run out. They did not want to return to Malaya and two went into hiding in Darwin. Lee said he was frustrated when popular emotion clouded the proper functioning of the Immigration Department.