Arthur Tange, page 10
From the start of the Korean War, therefore, Tange was close to those who made Australian decisions. On 26 July 1950 he accompanied Alan Watt in a hurried trip from Canberra to Moss Vale, where Spender was recuperating from his recurrent stomach ulcers. Advised by Watt that the British, contrary to prior assurances, were about to announce a commitment of troops to Korea, Spender decided that Australia should pre-empt Britain and make an earlier announcement. It was a bold move, as Menzies was then travelling by sea to the United States and could not be consulted, but it proved a vital step in Australian-American relations, the warmth of which helped Spender to achieve the ANZUS treaty and Menzies to secure a loan of USS25O million. Tange was a witness to what the official historian of Australia’s involvement in the Korean War, Robert O’Neill, has called ‘one of [Australia’s] rare significant crises of choice in the conduct of relations with its two major allies’.126
More than fifty years later, as Australia was marking both the centenary of federation and the half-centenary of the Korean War, Tange told television viewers that ‘Australia contributed forces to Korea for its own diplomatic reasons, not through any sense that it was our duty to protect the people of Korea.’127 This typified what O’Neill has described as Tange’s ‘uncompromising pragmatism’.128 He was referring particularly to an important policy paper that Tange wrote in February 1951, but the phrase could equally be applied to Tange’s advice throughout the war. He urged his ministerial superiors to provide as much military and political support to the United States as was necessary to maintain American goodwill. But he had also seen General Douglas MacArthur rashly pursue his offensive in North Korea to the Yalu River, precipitating the Chinese intervention and leading President Truman to speculate publicly about the possible use of the atomic bomb. In later years Tange retained a suspicion that American political and military leaders might be tempted to resort to similarly extreme and counterproductive measures. Tange was also inclined to be sceptical of British policy and diplomacy, although he was happy to recommend collaboration when appropriate with Britain and other Commonwealth nations, especially in seeking to moderate unwelcome American policies. His experiences during the Korean War shaped his views on Australia’s relations with ‘great and powerful friends’ for the next thirty years.
Tange was especially clear-sighted in foreseeing likely outcomes to complex situations. In the policy analysis of February 1951, he saw the South Korean government of Syngman Rhee—a dictatorial figure only marginally preferable to his North Korean counterpart—as an embarrassment to the United Nations cause. Consequently he recommended negotiations with the Chinese to secure a unified Korea, which would probably mean a communist government rather than support for the Rhee regime. As O’Neill has noted, Tange was right to foresee that special protection for the Rhee government would require a military commitment by the United Nations, and then the United States alone, for decades to come.129 The United States chose to follow a different course from that foreshadowed by Tange’s analysis, and has thereby ensured the eventual emergence of a more democratic and highly prosperous South Korea, but at an enduring and substantial cost to the American taxpayer. The Korean War exemplified many of the hardest dilemmas faced by the United States and its allies during the next forty years. It was an environment that sharpened and toughened the hard-headed realism of Tange’s approach to international relations.
In early 1951, with Australian forces fighting in Korea and the country in political turmoil over Menzies’ attempt to outlaw the Australian Communist Party, Spender resigned from Parliament and accepted Menzies’ offer to become ambassador in Washington. He was succeeded as Minister for External Affairs by Richard Casey, a wealthy and patrician politician who had served Australian Cabinets as a senior minister and, at Churchill’s request, as Britain’s wartime Cabinet Minister resident in the Middle East and as Governor of Bengal. Casey would overtake Evatt’s record as Australia’s longest-serving foreign minister before taking a seat in the House of Lords and then becoming Governor-General in 1965, the first native-born occupant of that position to be nominated by a non-Labor government. His tenure at External Affairs would be distinguished by his eagerness to develop relations with the new countries of Asia and his efforts to ensure the closest possible relations between Australia, Britain and the United States, which included personal interventions intended to patch up relations between London and Washington. Always better suited to diplomacy and vice-regal office than to the more brutal elements of domestic politics, Casey not only extended his worldwide network of high-level friends and contacts of many nationalities, races and creeds, but also took a paternal interest in the young diplomats of External Affairs. If Casey knew of Tange’s close association with Alfred Davidson (whom Casey, as noted earlier, regarded as a dangerous megalomaniac), he did not hold it against Tange. The two men soon formed a close working relationship that, with time, matured into a warm personal friendship.
Casey’s instinct was to direct his first international trip as Minister for External Affairs towards the Middle East, but he was persuaded by Watt that he should instead signal that Australia’s interests were now focused on South-East and East Asia. Accordingly, he travelled, accompanied by Watt, in July-August to Jakarta, Singapore, Saigon, Bangkok, Tokyo and Manila, with short visits to Hong Kong, Pusan and Seoul. This visit had considerable impact on Casey, leading him in subsequent years to sponsor a substantial increase in Australian diplomatic representation in the region and to support the view that the security of Australia was greatly affected by developments not only in Malaya and Singapore but also in Indochina and Burma.
Casey shared the scepticism of Menzies and Spender towards the United Nations. In one of his rather forced attempts at humour, he liked to describe the UN Charter—a sacrosanct document for Evatt—as ‘a cross between the Lord’s Prayer and the telephone directory’. Nevertheless his department persuaded him that it was his duty to attend the annual meeting of the General Assembly. Casey’s second visit abroad, from October to December, therefore included Jakarta, Rangoon, Delhi, Karachi, Cairo, Rome, Paris (where the General Assembly met), The Hague, London, Ottawa, New York, Washington and Honolulu. Unlike ministers in later decades, who would be accompanied by substantial parties of officials and subordinates, Casey took just two people with him: his private secretary, Max Loveday, and Tange.
For several weeks, Tange had almost unrestricted access to his minister and was his principal source of official advice. This trip was probably the foundation for their close working relationship. Loveday noted that Casey seemed more comfortable with Tange than he had been with Watt.130 A lawyer by profession, conservative by nature and exceptionally cautious by instinct, Watt tended to hedge his advice: ‘On the one hand, Minister … but on the other hand …’. Casey preferred Tange’s style, more confident and decisive. Unlike Spender and Menzies, Casey also made a point of including an official, often Tange, whenever possible in his discussions, even in one-to-one talks with presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers.
Shared experiences did much to create a cordial working relationship, whether it was paying solemn respects at the tomb of Mahatma Gandhi or walking in stockinged feet on the floor, wet and littered with dog droppings, of the Golden Pagoda in Rangoon. At the General Assembly meeting in Paris, Casey was outraged by the anti-Western tirade launched by the Soviet delegate, Andrei Vyshinsky, who had been the state prosecutor in Stalin’s notorious show-trials during the 1930s. Although sitting next to his minister, Tange was unable to prevent Casey from interrupting Vyshinsky by standing, approaching the podium and trying to take a point of order, which the chairman understandably declined to accept. As Tange now knew, Casey was above all a gentleman, one who found it hard to understand, let alone tolerate, conduct he regarded as ungentlemanly.
Tange’s star was clearly rising rapidly. One day two junior External Affairs officers were in Parliament House when they saw Tange, McIntyre and Harry striding through the corridors, probably answering a summons from the Minister. One of the juniors joked to the other: ‘It’s the race for the Secretaryship!’131 On that day McIntyre, a former athlete, seemed to have the edge, but in the metaphorical race Tange was abreast of him and taking the lead. When Watt was about to accompany Casey to East and South-East Asia in July 1951, he recommended to Casey that Tange and McIntyre should alternate as Acting Secretary on such occasions. Casey agreed, saying that Tange should act on this occasion and McIntyre the next. In fact it is not clear if McIntyre ever had his turn. Tange had already been Acting Secretary in January 1951, when Watt accompanied Menzies to a Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference, and he had further stints in August and again in September 1952.132 Tange was still only in his late thirties, but that placed him among the senior members of an exceptionally young department. A study in December 1952 showed that, of the diplomatic officers in External Affairs, 52 were in their twenties and 59 in their thirties, with only thirteen in their forties and three aged fifty or more.133
In 1952, there was no sign that Watt contemplated leaving his position. In that year Spender, now making a notable impact as ambassador in Washington, was knighted. He replied to Tange’s letter of congratulations in extraordinarily warm, almost deferential, terms:
My dear Arthur
There is no one from whom I would rather have received congratulations than yourself. I think you know the regard I hold for you and for your service to Australia. Our association in the Department was in many senses far too short, but sufficiently long enough to have given me the satisfaction of, I hope, acquiring your friendship.134
While this tribute was presumably private, Spender’s high opinion of Tange was probably known and contributed to his next major task. Spender was inclined to act as if he were still the Minister for External Affairs, not an ambassador who was required to consult his government and act on instructions. In November 1952, less than six months after Spender expressed the hope that he had won Tange’s friendship, it was announced that the young official would be sent to Washington as Spender’s deputy. In the minds of Casey and Watt, Tange’s principal task was to curb Spender’s inclination to develop and pursue his own foreign policy, rather than that of the government.
Tange was appointed at the level of minister, a diplomatic grade below ambassador but higher than counsellor (the level given to Hasluck when he represented Australia at the Security Council). Until the 1940s the convention was that only great powers sent ambassadors to each other, while lesser countries sent ministers to head diplomatic missions. Thus the heads of Australia’s missions to the United States, the Soviet Union, Japan and China during the 1940s were all designated as ministers, until the missions were elevated to the status of embassies. Tange’s appointment as a minister, when only deputy head of mission, reflected both the respect in which he was held and his success in negotiating the best possible terms and conditions for his appointment. Although he insisted that he was only seeking sufficient emoluments to do the job and to retain his ranking in the public service, and Charles Kevin advised Watt that ’Mr Tange’s approach is very reasonable’, Casey thought that Tange’s opening bid was excessive. After considerable discussions, Casey signed a list, covering two foolscap pages, of terms and conditions, with the further agreement that these conditions were to be reviewed in a few months. He then wrote almost apologetically to Tange:
I hope you do not think that I have been gunning for you over your prospective allowances at Washington. I hope I don’t have to tell you that this is not the case at all. I want you to have at least all that is necessary—but the original proposal seemed to me to be criticisable. I have discussed it with Alan Watt again this morning and we have decided on S5,000 [for the living allowance]—with a proviso that in three or six months the matter is reviewed, and as I have marked the papers it will be reviewed sympathetically and not in any hardboiled fashion.135
The appointment was handled as if it were that of a head of mission—an Executive Council minute, a long press release by Casey, a call upon the Governor-General and congratulatory messages from the public.136 One came from Eris O’Brien, the scholarly Catholic bishop who had been a member of the Australian delegation to the United Nations General Assembly the previous year. O’Brien told Tange that he had formed a high opinion of ‘your learning and practical experience and … your calm and unprejudiced judgements … I found you always a most friendly and helpful person, with a straight and matter-of-fact outlook.’137
Tange spent most of January 1953 as Acting Secretary while Witt took leave. Tange then travelled by sea via Britain to the United States, arriving in mid-March. On arrival he wrote to Casey that he was grateful for the six-week sea voyage, which had been ‘a tremendous benefit to my family and myself’ and had ‘relieved my mind of a good deal of tension’, leaving him ‘well equipped physically to start this new mission’. His only regret was that spending four days fog-bound in the Thames estuary had left him unable to use the letters of introduction to two senior British ministers, Viscount Swinton and Selwyn Lloyd, with which Casey had furnished him.138
After the expectations built up by the manner of his appointment, the outcome was anti-climactic. Tange found it as hard to hold Spender’s coattails, metaphorically speaking, as it had been literally to hold Casey’s at the General Assembly. Spender’s energy often took him to New York, on United Nations business, or elsewhere around the country, where a Washington-based Tange could do little to restrain him. Even Lady Spender, who achieved considerable success as a hostess in the competitive milieu of Washington society, proved more than a handful for the young official. Tange spent much of his time in Washington in discussions with Alexis Johnson, a senior State Department official, on the vexed and complex question of repatriation of prisoners-of-war from Korea. Tange admired Johnson but had less regard for Walter Robertson, Assistant Secretary of State for the Far East in the new Republican administration. ‘Robertson’s overriding interest in world affairs’, as Marshall Green later recorded, ‘was to uphold the position of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek as President of all of China, even though Chiang and his defeated Nationalist forces had fled the mainland in 1949 to take refuge on Taiwan, China’s island-province’.139 Robertson was the administration’s leading representative of the ‘China lobby’, which supported Chiang’s hopes of a return to power on the mainland with American support. In later years Tange’s suspicion of the ‘China lobby’ and their influence on American foreign policy remained an important element in Australia’s approach to issues involving the United States and China
Another lasting impact of Tange’s time in Washington was more personal. Jenny greatly enjoyed the kindergarten she attended, which encouraged artistic expression and individual development. This experience sparked an interest in pottery, which became a lifelong hobby, and inspired her later choice of career as a kindergarten teacher and director.140
In June 1953, in the honours list that coincided with the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, Tange was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), both a recognition of his past services and, given his age, a sign of expected further advancement. By this time Watt was finding the strain of the secretaryship intolerable. A tense man who found it difficult to delegate, Watt was also having difficulties with Casey’s fondness for unorthodox ventures into personal diplomacy. Impressed by the role of the British Commissioner-General in South-East Asia, who had a roving commission to oversee British diplomatic interests in the region, Casey gained Cabinet approval for Watt to spend three months in Singapore on a similar basis while still remaining Secretary. Watt could see that this would be unworkable but volunteered to resign as Secretary and become Australian Commissioner for South-East Asia, based in Singapore.141
Watt for his part appears not to have known that Casey had for some time been looking for a new departmental secretary. As early as November 1951, Casey had raised the idea with Alfred Stirling. A longstanding member of External Affairs, Stirling looked and sounded like the model of a traditional British ambassador, but even he knew that, as he told Casey, ‘running a dept. is not my line’.142 More than a decade later Stirling was told by Walter Crocker, at that time a critic of Tange, that Casey had also approached both Keith Officer and Allen Brown over the position.143 Officer was another longstanding member of External Affairs, better suited to diplomacy abroad than to policy-making in Canberra. Allen Brown was Secretary of the Prime Minister’s Department and was developing an interest in foreign policy that Tange would later find severely inconvenient. If they had indeed been approached, they would have had quite different, but equally valid, reasons to decline.
In July 1953, during protracted discussions with Casey over the Singapore proposal, Watt sent a handwritten confidential note to Tange, indicating that he had asked to be relieved of his post at the end of the year. Casey, he said, was likely to agree, provided he could get Menzies’ support and agreement on a replacement. Watt said that he had made several suggestions. One was to appoint Alfred Stirling, together with a deputy secretary ‘who would really run policy’. The alternative would be a younger man. meaning either Tange, McIntyre or James Plimsoll (recently returned from notable work in Korea), with Tange and McIntyre having the stronger claims. Witt said that Casey ‘has not got to the point of expressing a preference, but any hints suggest that he rules out the Stirling idea and that on the whole he would prefer to appoint you’. Ever cautious, Watt warned that nothing might come of any of these thoughts, but he clearly thought it appropriate to advise Tange and had even identified his likely replacement in Washington—at the level of counsellor rather than minister.144 A few weeks later, Tange received another personal note, this time from Casey who said that he would be in Washington in early September and ‘would like to have [an] opportunity to see you privately’.145 It is unlikely, therefore, that Tange was completely taken by surprise when Casey offered him the post, although both men later liked to relate Tange’s alleged expostulation: ‘But I’m only 39! What will I do with the rest of my life?’ (By one account, Casey retorted that he might become a Tibetan monk.)
