Letters to Australia, Volume 6

Résumé du livre

Volume 1 begins with 13 wartime broadcasts, given with war at its most threatening for Australia; they are a call to courage in dark times. The broadcasts became more nuanced when they resumed, in 1945 with the war almost won, and, over the remainder of the decade, they covered a wide range of issues, the complex aftermath of war, moves towards disarmament and the control of nuclear weapons, the shift of power from Britain and Europe to the US and USSR; the evolution of the Cold War; the birth of the United Nations; the first moves to European union, and the stirrings of the fundamentalist violence that is so large a part of today's conflicts. Volume 2 completes the 1940s broadcasts, with a series on decolonisation, and a remarkable set of commentaries on the events and people nations and regions, starting with Europe and concluding with the Americans. In Volume 3, Julius Stone returned from overseas in early 1950 and quickly resumed broadcasting. Through 1950 and 1951, the issues that attracted his analysis were disarmament, the growth of Germany, and the war in Korea.