The PR Blog

This year, at Thanksgiving, as you sit down to remember what you are thankful for, I cannot help but wonder if perhaps the people currently in Washington DC have forgotten the true significance of this annual day of gratitude. For it seems to me, all these thousands of miles away, in Australia, that you, like us, had increasingly lost hope and feel somehow that  " The New World " has become " The New World Order " 

Next year, things may well be completely different. President-Elect Trump is determined  to resurrect Thanksgiving as a time to be proud again and to celebrate the richness that a FREE America provides. I feel that a turkey dinner is going to be a joyous meal, acknowledging the reason Thanksgiving is celebrated in the first place. So let us go back in time to when it all started... 

When the first settlers arrived on the Mayflower in 1620 at Plymouth , they had hopes and dreams to found a Nation free of Religious persecution and constraints of the then King of England, King James I.

At the end of WW2, America had about 6,000 merchant ships. In 2022, the United States merchant fleet had 178 privately owned, oceangoing, self-propelled vessels of 1,000 gross register tons and above.

Merchant ships are the lifeblood of international trade and commerce and even more so to island nations like England, Australia and New Zealand. They are also vital to the well-being of otherwise self-sufficient nations like the USA and Canada.

In 1941, England was the victim of an all-out drive by Germany to deprive Britain of its lifeblood of imports without which it could not feed its people. In a speech in 1940 Winston Churchill magnified the extent of this danger when he said that at any given moment 2,000 British merchant ships are in transit on the high seas. The losses of ships sunk by German submarines was huge and Churchill appealed to America for help. In 1941 alone Britain lost 1,300 ships sunk by German U-Boats.

Last time, I discussed the role of America in the defence and defense of the allies in the lead up to World War II. When, thanks to the back-up of American production, Britain was able to fight the threat from its enemies. As the war progressed, the allies were facing greater threats and assembly lines were needed to keep the allies armed.

On 7^th December Japan attacked the American base at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii. Tension between the two countries was extreme and had been rising for a long time starting with the American disapproval of the Japanese Army behaviour in China. As a sanction, America progressively denied supply of materials to Japan until it reached breaking point with the complete embargo on oil supplies without which Japanese industry could not operate.

Japan was well aware of the American vulnerability of weak defenses and there was strong support within the military to invade California. The decision not to invade was due entirely to the fact that it was known that there were many guns in the hands of the civilian population and California was very far from Japan which made supply a logistical nightmare.