Suchergebnisse

External affairs have exercised the minds and loyalties of a sizeable section of Singapore's politically articulate population ever since the first preparations towards self-government were taken in 1955. Even though questions of defence and foreign policy were until September 1963 the responsibility of Whitehall exclusively and thereupon transferred to the Malaysian central government, Singapore developed its own informal relationships with several foreign or Commonwealth states during those years and hotly debated international problems which seemed to impinge on the island's political future.

It is now almost sixteen years since R.G, Menzies, then leader of a resurgent parliamentary opposition, informed his colleagues that it would be "the very ecstasy of suicide" for Australians to assist in the elimination of European colonialism from Asia. For better or worse, the right honourable gentleman was unable to stem the tide of Asian nationalism, and with the political facts of life so patently irreversible, most imperial-minded Australians seem to have conditioned themselves, however reluctantly, to some kind of co-existence with Asia. Again and again Australians are informed by their historians, political scientists and poets alike that theirs is the task of reconciling the legacy of a Europocentric history with the immutable and oft-times unpleasant facts of geography.