In late April 1952 the Treaty of San Francisco, which ended the war between Japan and the Allies of the Second World War (increasingly styled as the United Nations in the war’s latter years) came into effect. Not everyone signed. India later concluded its own treaty, while China’s signature, despite it being a key belligerent, was forestalled over international disputes about whether the Communists or Nationalists were the country’s legitimate government. Australia had been among the signatories to the treaty the previous September, however, despite the deep misgivings of many Australians who were appalled at the supposedly ‘soft’ peace – in February 1952 a petition with 100,000 signatures opposing the treaty had been presented to the Federal Parliament.

If the still relatively new government of Sir Robert Menzies was domestically troubled by this, they could face the electorate with a high-quality insurance policy in the form of a newly signed security arrangement with the United States. Though Menzies later enthused about its value, he had been less interested in trying to achieve it and it was his Minister for External Affairs, Percy Spender, who, like his Labor predecessor, H.V. Evatt, that doggedly pursued it. Counterfactually, it may be that the realities of the Cold War could have led to a similar security guarantee later, but the thing that got Canberra and Washington to sign such a document in 1951 was war. In fact, two of them.