Wartime Relations

Curtin felt that his first priority was the defence, and indeed survival, of Australia. He felt that meeting with other leaders was not crucial to the war effort and that he could conduct negotiations with the Allies by cable. Politically, he lacked a working majority in either House of Parliament, relying on the support of independents until the 1943 election gave him a decisive majority and the security to plan an overseas visit in 1944.

In April 1944 John Curtin and his wife set sail on the Lurline for Washington. Elsie Curtin remained in America while Curtin flew on to the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference in London in May, rejoining her in Canada at the end of the meeting.

        In reports to the press
about his meeting with Roosevelt, Curtin declared 'there was complete
         harmony between our views'.                                 April 1944

At the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' conference in London, Curtin proposed that an Empire Council be established, involving the appointment of a standing committee of High Commissioners (any one of whom could be 'replaced at appropriate intervals by a special representative who could be a Minister') and the British Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, and supported by a secretariat on which all Dominions would be represented and which could be moved among the different capitals of the British Empire. However the proposal received little support from the other Dominion leaders.

Churchill offered 'the right hand
    of friendship' to John Curtin
          as 'that most commanding,
           competent, whole-hearted
     leader of the Australian People'.
                                May 1944

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