• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

The Institute of Australian Culture

Heritage, history, and heroes; literature, legends, and larrikins

  • Home
  • Articles
  • Biographies
  • Books
  • Ephemera
  • Poetry & songs
    • Recommended poetry
    • Poetry and songs, 1786-1900
    • Poetry and songs, 1901-1954
    • Rock music and pop music [videos]
    • Early music [videos]
  • Slang
  • Timeline
    • Timeline of Australian history and culture
    • Calendar of Australian history and culture
    • Significant events and commemorative dates
  • Topics

Australia Day [26 January 1942]

11 May 2012 · Leave a Comment

[Editor: An editorial from the Canberra Times during the Second World War.]

Australia Day

For more than a century and a half, January 26 has been the day on which Australia has been able to approach as the annual miles one in the march forward of a young and virile race. Compared to other peoples, we are lacking in age and deficient in numbers but we yield to none in virility. And this has ever been a feature of the Australian — whether the Australian was born overseas and became an Australian in spirit or whether the Australian was born within these shores to assume a part of our heritage and to take his share in the task of nation building. Thus, it has been that each succeeding Australia Day has been an occasion for measuring national progress, and each succeeding survey has demonstrated that a superior summit has been reached in our country’s greatness.

To-day, Australia Day is not given to rejoicing. Throughout Australia, there will be work instead of play as the nation’s war effort braces itself for greater calls in the name of Australia. To-day, for the first time in our history, the very future of Australia is at stake. In Malaya, Australian forces are engaged in a desperate fight to save Singapore. In New Guinea, we are defending Australian soil against the Japanese invasion. Over the South Western Pacific, the Royal Australian Air Force now is in daily combat with the enemy. In Australia itself, the war potential has attained new heights only to find that more and still more has to be achieved. The Australian people is ready for whatever may come and will fight as our fathers fought against the elements in settling the wide spaces of a continent. But, this Australia Day tells us through every portent that we may see that Australia is being forced to a new conception of her place in the world and a new appraisement of her relative position to other countries.

To-day, Australia is one of the Allied nations united in the Pacific conflict, and there is none that is contributing more in proportion to its resources of men and materials more than Australia. But, Australia has not received and is not receiving her due from that very quarter of the world to which traditionally and instinctively we have rendered aid in every trouble for 60 years past. Other nations with us in this fight have sent greetings on this Australia Day but from the United Kingdom there is silence in answer to our call. From our comparatively slender store of man power, we have given men for every phase of war operations. Young Australians who came forward to help Britain in a common fight now lie in war graves in Africa, Europe and Asia. The Australian Government sent them forth assured solemnly by the United Kingdom Government that the Pacific zone would be adequately guarded. Not only has the United Kingdom Government been found wanting in this respect, but it has consistently failed and is still failing to give to Australia that place in war decisions that we have earned long since.

Thus it is that Australia Day finds Australian nationalism surging to high spirited resolve to defend Australia tinged with an indelible disappointment at the failure of the United Kingdom. Every day that this dissatisfaction continues in Australia, there will be an increasing resolve to alter future relations within the British Commonwealth so that we shall never incur a similar risk again. The new world order after the war will for Australia inevitably contain a British Commonwealth very much different to the present. We have been led to believe that we were in a partnership only to find that in a crisis we are treated as small minority shareholders without a seat on the board of directors. We shall not tolerate this for the rest of the war and we shall never tolerate it in the peace. All those attributes which have made up Australian nationhood rebel against the old order of the British Commonwealth and make us resolve that a better British Commonwealth shall arise and that we shall no longer be content to sit at the footstool.



Source:
The Canberra Times (Canberra, ACT), Monday 26 January 1942, page 2

[Editor: Corrected “here is slence n” to “there is silence in”; “comparatvely” to “comparatively”; “simlar” to “similar”; “people is ready” to “people are ready”.]

Filed Under: articles Tagged With: Australia Day, SourceTrove, year1942

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Australian flag, Kangaroo, Wattle, 100hThe Institute of Australian Culture
Heritage, history, and heroes. Literature, legends, and larrikins. Stories, songs, and sages.

Search this site

Featured books

The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses, by Banjo Paterson A Book for Kids, by C. J. Dennis  The Bulletin Reciter: A Collection of Verses for Recitation from The Bulletin The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke, by C. J. Dennis The Complete Inner History of the Kelly Gang and Their Pursuers, by J. J. Kenneally The Foundations of Culture in Australia, by P. R. Stephensen The Australian Crisis, by C. H. Kirmess Such Is Life, by Joseph Furphy
More books (full text)

Featured lists

Timeline of Australian history and culture
A list of significant Australiana
Significant events and commemorative dates
Australian slang
Books (full text)
Australian literature
Rock music and pop music (videos)
Folk music and bush music (videos)
Early music (videos)
Recommended poetry
Poetry and songs, 1786-1900
Poetry and songs, 1901-1954
Australian explorers
Topics
Links

Featured posts

Advance Australia Fair: How the song became the Australian national anthem
Brian Cadd [music videos and biography]
Ned Kelly: Australian bushranger
Under the Southern Cross I Stand [the Australian cricket team’s victory song]

Some Australian authors

E. J. Brady
John Le Gay Brereton
C. J. Dennis
Mary Hannay Foott
Joseph Furphy
Mary Gilmore
Charles Harpur
Grant Hervey
Lucy Everett Homfray
Rex Ingamells
Henry Kendall
“Kookaburra”
Henry Lawson
Jack Moses
“Dryblower” Murphy
John Shaw Neilson
John O’Brien (Patrick Joseph Hartigan)
“Banjo” Paterson
Marie E. J. Pitt
A. G. Stephens
P. R. Stephensen
Agnes L. Storrie (Agnes L. Kettlewell)

Recent Posts

  • [The new stamps] [re the new Tasmanian postage stamps, 2 January 1900]
  • The Leading Lady [poem by “Stargazer”, 31 January 1917]
  • The Naval Contingent: With the Australians in China [17 October 1900]
  • Australia Day [26 January 1953]
  • Australia Day [24 January 1953]

Top Posts & Pages

  • Poetry and songs, 1786-1900
  • Australian slang
  • The Man from Snowy River [poem by Banjo Paterson]
  • The Bastard from the Bush [poem, circa 1900]
  • The Bard and the Lizard [poem by John Shaw Neilson]

Archives

Categories

Posts of note

The Bastard from the Bush [poem, circa 1900]
A Book for Kids [by C. J. Dennis, 1921]
Click Go the Shears [traditional Australian song, 1890s]
Core of My Heart [“My Country”, poem by Dorothea Mackellar, 24 October 1908]
Freedom on the Wallaby [poem by Henry Lawson, 16 May 1891]
The Man from Ironbark [poem by Banjo Paterson]
Nationality [poem by Mary Gilmore, 12 May 1942]
The Newcastle song [music video, sung by Bob Hudson]
No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest [poem by Mary Gilmore, 29 June 1940]
Our pipes [short story by Henry Lawson]
Rommel’s comments on Australian soldiers [1941-1942]
Shooting the moon [short story by Henry Lawson]

Recent Comments

  • rob buntine on No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest [poem by Mary Gilmore, 29 June 1940]
  • Carol on Poetry and songs, 1786-1900
  • Annie Crestani on Under the Southern Cross I Stand [the Australian cricket team’s victory song]
  • Peter Pearsall on The Clarence [poem by Jack Moses]
  • Trevor Hurst on Timeline of Australian history and culture

For Australia

Copyright © 2023 · Log in