3 - War
Summary
Exploring the life of a politician active during the years 1939 to 1945 always runs the risk of assuming that the war so dominated life as to render inconsequential more private aspects – personal crises and thoughts stretching beyond either the contours of planning, reacting and mobilizing, when in government, or a blend of common ‘war-effort-mindedness’ and alternative policy when in opposition. In Spender's case, it would be imprudent not to allow the war a major structuring role, as he held ministerial positions until October 1941 and then continued on the bipartisan Advisory War Council (established October 1940) until its disbandment in August 1945. This chapter and the following one cover the war years in broadly chronological manner, divided by the fall of the short-lived Fadden government, and therefore the end of Spender's ministerial responsibilities, in October 1941. In the broad, the two chapters are separated by this division in Spender's war, with some extra space in Chapter 4 both to reflect further on some of the themes raised below, and to consider Spender's life beyond the dictates of the war.
War intensified Spender's preoccupation with the incomplete state of Australia's progress from colony to a developed outpost of the British world.
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- Australian Between EmpiresThe Life of Percy Spender, pp. 51 - 74Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014