R. I. P. jazz pianist Ramsey Lewis.  One of the great crossover jazz-men, his work was an entry point for a huge number of listeners to move into the genre.  His 1965 album "The In Crowd" was one of the gateway albums for jazz along with "Kind of Blue" and "Time Out."  

I really need to look at the New Wave. The only one I ever tried, and I didn't get very far, was Goddard's Alphaville. I was young then, so maybe I have more patience, now.

Hoping that we can emerge friends from this, foxley, and to make myself clear, here is the information on which I based my comments earlier and an addendum re Australia and Vietnam.  I think and hope that some of our differences re conscription are technical/semantic. We may have to agree to disagree about the several pragmatic reasons for Menzies' decision to involve Australia in Vietnam, which did not include being led down a primrose path by the American government, whom we all know did not cover themselves in honor. Over 500 Australians and 58,000 Americans paid the price for their respective misjudgments (the kindest word I could choose).

And to be triply clear, this was never a debate about the American government's superiority to a constitutional monarchy. I think I've long made loud and quadruply clear my criticism of my country's failings, including the current bend toward authoritarianism, and dare I say it, traditionally monarchial behavior on the part of a certain former president.

Thanks for reading, and if I or my sources are in error, please set me straight.  

Here goes:

During the First World War, compulsory military service was in force in Australia, but still limited to service inside Australia and its territories.



Only Australians who volunteered to do so could serve overseas; two referendums to introduce conscription for overseas service were defeated.



When Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, Prime Minister Robert Menzies announced on national radio that Australia was also at war.



Menzies announced the reintroduction of compulsory military training, with the proviso that there was to be no conscription for service beyond Australia and its territories.



However, that included strategic Australian territories in Papua and New Guinea.



Labour Party leader John Curtin, who had also opposed conscription during the First World War, voiced his party’s opposition to the move. He was also opposed to overseas service, even for volunteers.



However, despite his earlier opposition to conscription for overseas service, by late 1942, now Prime Minister, Curtin realized that with voluntary recruitment waning it was necessary to expand the limits of where the conscripted Australians could serve.



Curtin argued that it was necessary to extend compulsory service in the theatre known as the South-West Pacific Zone. This region, south of the equator and east to the Solomons, took in not only Australia, Papua and New Guinea, but also east Java, southern Borneo, Dutch New Guinea and various other islands up to the Equator.


While there was much debate about the conscription policy within his own party and in parliament, there was little public opposition.


Curtin also saw that sending more troops overseas would strengthen Australia’s hand in its diplomatic dealings with Britain and the United States after the war. He had realized right from the start that Australia would need to throw in its lot more with the Americans than it ever had. In his New Year’s message for 1942, Curtin said, “We are, therefore, determined that Australia shall not go, and we shall devote all our energies towards the shaping of a plan, with the United States as its keystone, which will give to our country some confidence of being able to hold out until the tide of battle swings against our enemy.”



This was a step toward Australian/American co-operation in the Pacific that eventually took Australia into Vietnam.


The Defence Act was amended in May 1964 to provide that national servicemen could be obliged to serve overseas, a provision that had been applied only once before, during World War II. The 1964 amendments applied only to the permanent military forces and excluded the Citizen Military Forces. In 1965, the Defence Act was again amended to require the CMF to serve overseas, which had not been included in the 1964 amendments.


Re: Australia’s being dragged into Vietnam:


In Australia… the conservative government had been outspokenly hawkish. When American officials first indicated, in December 1964, that the administration was considering sending combat forces to Vietnam and that an Australian contribution would be welcome, they seemed to have in mind a modest increase to the advisory team of 83 soldiers already in South Vietnam. Instead, Robert Menzies, Australia’s long-serving prime minister, sent a battalion of 800 troops, even though their role, like American strategy in general, was far from clear.

As Menzies saw it, the risk in American policy was not strategic overreach but isolationism, and what an American withdrawal from Asia in the face of defeat would mean for Australia and its neighbors. As a young man of military age during World War I, and as a youthful prime minister at the outbreak of World War II, he knew how painful it was for Britain and its dominions to be at war without America. The crucial step, it seemed, was to ensure American commitment: Once that was achieved, victory would be certain. Australia’s “forward defense” strategy after 1945 was to make small, but effective, military commitments in order to keep both Britain and the United States, which Menzies called “our great and powerful friends,” committed to Southeast Asia.


Australians had good reason to believe in the domino theory. Since 1945 Southeast Asia had been a cauldron of conflicts created by the complex combination of decolonization, the Cold War and longstanding local rivalries. By 1964 the region seemed to be at a tipping point. Malaysia was facing a confrontation with Indonesia, where the world’s third-largest Communist party was exerting increasing influence. Although not a Communist, Indonesia’s President Sukarno had received arms from the Soviet Union and boasted of his close ideological ties with China, North Korea and North Vietnam.


Tensions between the Malay-dominated government in Kuala Lumpur and the ethnic Chinese city-state of Singapore would lead to the ejection of Singapore from Malaysia in August 1965. The Thais and Filipinos had their own domestic insurgencies, as well as highly unstable neighbors.


In this volatile environment, many Australians considered a fairly small military commitment, combined with strong political and diplomatic support for the United States, a small premium to pay for Australia’s strategic insurance policy, the Australia-New Zealand-United States treaty.


-- New York Times August 4, 2017



In March 1966, the government announced that national servicemen would be sent to South Vietnam to fight in units of the Australian Regular Army and for secondment to American forces. Requirements for overseas service were detailed by the Minister for the Army, Malcolm Fraser, on 13 May 1966. Men who wished to avoid national service could join the Citizen Military Forces and serve only inside Australia, claim a student deferment or attempt a conscientious objection application.



Sources:



Australian War Memorial / “Conscription during the First World War, 1914–1918”

www.awm.gov.au/articles/encyclopedia/conscription/ww1



Australian War Memorial / “Conscription during the Second World War, 1939–1945”

www.awm.gov.au/articles/encyclopedia/conscription/ww2



Edwards, Peter, “What Was Australia Doing in Vietnam?” New York Times August 4, 2017 www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/opinion/what-was-australia-doing-in-vietnam.html



John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library jcpml.curtin.edu.au/



National Museum of Australia/ “1943: Second World War conscription”



www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/second-world-war-conscription#:~:text=The%20Second%20World%20War%20was,would%20be%20bolstered%20by%20conscription.

My apologies, Prince Hal. I was in a bad mood yesterday morning, and unfortunately you copped some of the flak, for which I am sorry.

Your sources are correct and I should have known you would have done your research. Part of the issue is semantics. Conscription is a loaded term here in Australia, and the plebiscites on conscription during WWI nearly tore the country in half (more so than our actual involvenebt in the war). As result, most Aussies (myself included), do not think of the Mandatory Service Act as 'conscription', but reserve 'conscription' to mean 'conscription for overseas service'.

Anyway. I hope we are still friends. This has just been a stark reminder for me as to why I usually stay away from political discussions, and as to why I should I examine my own mood before I lash out at my friends.

So again, I can only apologise for something I dashed out in haste.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled R.I.P. Thread.

Just to get back on track here


media.giphy.com/media/bfYUvXEuhnRte/giphy.gif

Marsha Hunt, age 104, actress and one of the last surviving victims of the Hollywood blacklist of 1950, and an activist for several good causes.

I found out about her death, and life, from metafilter.com.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsha_Hunt_(actress,_born_1917)