THE KOREAN WAR

‘No other democracy’ asserted the Sydney Morning Herald in July 1950 as Australian troops reached Korea, ‘has a more direct concern in blunting the thrust of Communist aggression in Asia’. The importance of the war was in no doubt. ‘Another world war might break out almost any day’ predicted the press, but this importance of the Korean War perceived at the time was lost over the following fifty years. In 1950, so close to the Second World War, war was fresh in people's minds, and the threat to the ‘free world’ seemed to be real once more. American military intervention, it was reported, was necessary in order to hold ‘back Russia from an eventual attempt to seize world control’ as the United States faced ‘the greatest risk in its history, the risk that the Communists might strike elsewhere while the nation's strength is at its lowest point as a result of the Korean war’. It was Australia's responsibility to ‘prepare with utmost speed to make whatever contribution the latest decision may entail’ and to assume ‘the degree of responsibility held by a country so situated as Australia … forced by geography to keep a watchful eye on happenings in Asia’.