The real and active Communists in Australia present us with our immediate problem — not the woolly-headed dupes, not the people who are pushed to the… - Robert Menzies

We can lose this war, and with it we can lose all. But we shall not lose it if every individual in the British Empire determines that for him there shall be nothing but cheerful and self-sacrificing effort until the war is over. I tell you quite bluntly that Australia cannot play her proper part in the winning of this war if she subtracts from her war effort by one unnecessary grumble, or by one act of sectional selfishness, or by the unnecessary loss of one day’s work.

Are you looking forward to a breed of men after the war who will have become boneless wonders? Leaners grow flabby; lifters grow muscles. Men without ambition readily become slaves. Indeed, there is much more in slavery in Australia than most people imagine. How many hundreds of thousands of us are slaves to greed, to fear, to newspapers, to public opinion – represented by the accumulated views of our neighbours! Landless men smell the vapours of the street corner. Landed men smell the brown earth, and plant their feet upon it and know that it is good.

There is hardly a section of the community that doesn't in one breath protest undying hostility to Government interference and, in the next breath, pray for it.