But his inclinations also carried with it a hard-edged acceptance of the realities of the time. He did not ignore Asia; he simply looked around him and realised that in his era, its potential was strictly limited.
In summation, Jones and Benvenuti list Menzies Government initiatives in the area that range through education and exchanges (its support for the Colombo Plan is an outstanding example) through military and economic assistance.
"Menzies' supposed colonial mentality and indifference to Asia can only be sustained by an anachronistic projection of contemporary orthodoxies and practices into the complicated political geography of the late 1940s. Judging the past according to the standards of a different and hostile internationalist tradition only further compounds the problem," they write.
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"Effective, no doubt, for ideological purposes, it makes for bad history."
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About the Author
Graham Cooke has been a journalist for more than four decades, having lived in England, Northern Ireland, New Zealand and Australia, for a lengthy period covering the diplomatic round for The Canberra Times.
He has travelled to and reported on events in more than 20 countries, including an extended stay in the Middle East. Based in Canberra, where he obtains casual employment as a speech writer in the Australian Public Service, he continues to find occasional assignments overseas, supporting the coverage of international news organisations.
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