Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 183
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[Page 183]
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existed more in thought than in deed and never caused any serious social friction.
As the first half of the year 1914 passed, the whole World seemed as stable, peaceful and prosperous as it had been for the past decade: and as scientifically progressive too. The first aerial mail had been flown from Sydney to Melbourne by a Monsieur Guillaux, and a direct telephone service from Sydney to Melbourne opened. Away across the Pacific the Panama Canal was getting its finishing touches, ready for the official opening on August the fifteenth. Right at home, in Parkes, our Dad had been elected Mayor, a position he was to hold throughout the next few momentous years.
But over on the other side of the Earth ominous things were happening, soon to upset the old order and our happy way of life, and to end the hundred years of the British Empire's naval - and to a great extent its political and trading - supremacy. It was an empire unique in all known history.
On the 28th June, the Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand was assassinated by political insurgents while driving through the streets of Sarajevo, the Capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina (now part of Yugoslavia). It all seemed very remote from Australia, and, to us, hardly news of any importance. But the "arms race" between the Entente Cordiale (Britain, France and Russia) and the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary) was reaching breaking point, and this political assassination started trigger fingers itching in real earnest. On the 4th August, Britain, immediately supporting France and Russia, officially declared war on Germany when her troops ruthlessly invaded Belgium, whose neutrality had been guaranteed, in a written document, by the Great Powers of Europe, Germany included.
The Australian Commonwealth Government, a Labour Party administration led by Prime Minister Andrew Fisher, immediately legislated for the despatch of a small Naval and Military Force to seize the German occupied Rabaul, the main settlement and port of New Britain. This task was accomplished within a few weeks of war commencing.