Word: curtins
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Government Man. Curtin's office in Parliament House at Canberra looks out on a quiet street, lined with poplars, evergreens and plums. Canberra is a self-conscious little community, carved out of nothing and slow to grow. Public buildings, the cathedral, the shopping centers are spaced wide apart. In between, enterprising Diggers run their sheep...
From that vantage, Jack Curtin runs Australia's Labor Government along strictly Australian lines and stoutly maintains the high-wage, high-profit economy which grew out of Aussie Socialism. Happily for Curtin and Australia, he has the energy and endurance for the job: some years ago, he gave up his heavy drinking, went on the wagon, and has been there ever since...
...Prime Minister's office, a cool room with blue leather and a blue rug, a couple of etchings and a map, Jack Curtin affects a huge uncluttered desk. A reserved man, shunning formal gatherings, he nevertheless likes to cock one foot on the desk and talk at length. He smokes incessantly-through a bamboo holder-and drinks tea without pause. He has good relations with the press (still sports his Australian Journalists Association emblem on his watch chain) and is a master at handling irate delegations. Recently a party went up from Sydney, determined to have a showdown...
...World. Curtin had not been in that office long when the world moved in on him and on Australia. First it was the Japs, a bitter disillusionment with the British at Singapore, a gripping fear. Then it was the Americans-and America...
Even before the Americans arrived, Curtin had looked to the U.S. Less than a month after Pearl Harbor, and three months after he became P.M., he made the first of a series of pronouncements which frightened Britons stiff: "Australia looks to America. . . . We shall exert our energies toward shaping a plan with the U.S. as its keystone...