A catch on the boundary: Australia and the free French movement in 1940

Abstract

ON 19 SEPTEMBER I94O, BY A BLOODLESS COUP DE FORCE ACCOMPLISHED WITH Australian support, the predominantly pro-Ally and specifically pro-de Gaulle sentiment prevailing among the French population of New Cale donia asserted itself in a dramatic act of ralliement to the self-exiled General's Free French movement. This small but significant incident in the second World War, happening as it did at a time when Australia was beginning to be conscious of the need to take a more independent line than previously in the defence of its international interests, has tended to take on its own legend as a bold and imaginative stroke of Australian policy. In 1952 Paul Hasluck called it 'a diplomatic adventure'.1 In the light of the documentation now publicly available it can be seen that the legend is justified more by the conduct and consequences of the operation than by its conception, which was imperial rather than Australian.2 In public as in private affairs all's well that ends well, but a re-examination of the record inspires a retrospective sigh of relief that the Australian government's anxiety to avoid interference in French affairs and to offer no provocation to Japan in the Pacific region did not, in the end, cause it to pass beyond the point of no return in appeasing the Vichy regime as the confidence-trick ster's policies being pursued by the armistice regime became more trans parent. Until the last moment, however, Australia was reluctant to grasp