New Delhi was not a professionally demanding post. Bilateral relations were cordial but constrained both politically and commercially. Relations had long been affected by the contrast between India’s leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement (which was in fact weighted against the United States) and Australia’s military alliance with the United States. Nothing that Australia said was likely to move India away from its opposition to the military intervention in support of South Vietnam, nor its calculated playing off of the United States against the Soviet Union while accepting American aid and being conciliatory to Moscow. Pressure from powers greater than Australia to negotiate with Pakistan over Kashmir would have been ineffective. The morass of bureaucratic regulation of the economy under an old-fashioned socialism frustrated Australian business investment.

Our substantial gifts of wheat during the food crisis earned us some goodwill in the Indian Government. I directed much of my energy to cultivating a better opinion of Australia in the influential print media and among members of the Lok Sabha (the lower House of Parliament). I doubt that I made much impression on the coterie preserving the Jawaharlal Nehru tradition (including his daughter Indira) and certainly not on the Defence Minister Krishna Menon, passionate defender of the Nehru faith. I recall that before I addressed a meeting of a young lawyers’ association, he introduced me with a warning to my listeners that I was aligned with the United States. Such absurdities were not universal and I was on good terms with some younger Ministers who were prepared to listen. There were plentiful opportunities for speaking engagements around the country where English was in common use among those influencing policy and opinions.

I gave special attention to the role of the armed Services at a time of spreading separatist movements, as well as the unresolved border dispute with China, and the feud with Pakistan. Some observers were speculating about the possibility of an Army takeover, which I discounted. On the face of it, the Army had great power and undoubted popular prestige. I had several talks with the General (later Field Marshal) commanding Eastern Command whose force of 300 000 illustrated the point. The British tradition of keeping out of politics seemed secure. Candour with me was encouraged by respect for Australia’s Service traditions and record, and for our historical British connection. I lectured often at senior Service establishments. There was limited sympathy there for the Soviet Union about which our intelligence assessors in Canberra showed interest, not least when the Indian Navy began to acquire Soviet submarines.

I learned more about British mess decorum in India than I did elsewhere. In speech and drill the customs of Sandhurst flourished, and their polo was certainly better. Nor was the Indian Navy an exception to the British tradition, judging by a scene on the grassy uplands of the Nilgiri Hills in the south as I approached the Wellington Staff College for one of my regular speaking engagements. A dishevelled rider in a red hunting jacket, tossed off his horse, was identified as a bearded Sikh naval captain. I learned that his quarry was a jackal because of the paucity of foxes.

Access to Bhutan was very restricted and only a handful of ambassadors were permitted entry. The Indian Army had at least one division deployed to protect the country’s frontier with China. Its Chief (General Kumaramangalam) made arrangements direct with the King for him to receive me. A young Australian house-guest was greatly impressed to hear him say: ‘I shall ring the King’.^[12] The Air Force was more reclusive, perhaps because of heavy reliance on Soviet deliveries of equipment, and I found congenial relations to be more difficult. In contrast, an Army General, Sen, when in office had said, after dinner in the Australian High Commissioner’s Residence, that he was leading a study of ways of conducting a successful coup against the Government. After a suitably dramatic pause he added that it was done at the request of the Minister for Defence, and had concluded that if any dissident command in the Hindu north were to start such a move, it would be quickly suppressed by loyal units from elsewhere.

There was time in India to reflect on the strategic assessments of my own country and the level of our defence preparation, while the Government dwelt on fears for national security. There was still a propensity, after Sukarno had been dislodged, to give more emphasis in Australia to our dependence on the ANZUS Treaty than to a sober estimate of Australia’s own capability to look after itself. There was not much in India’s policies to emulate. Yet, wrong-headed and hypocritical as India’s policies sometimes were, one’s mind was gripped by the undeviating direction of India towards national self-interest without concession to sentiment towards others, or to the ‘loyalty’ so evident in Australian official policies towards our ‘traditional friends’.

I visited Vietnam twice during my New Delhi assignment, the better to understand the prospects of the Saigon Government. In 1967 the Australian Ambassador, L.H. Border, escorted me to three of the Corps Headquarters to meet local commanders and officials. I flew by helicopter to the Australian Task Force Headquarters at Nui Dat for a briefing from those in the field. In 1969 I visited Saigon again. On each occasion I was briefed by the American senior commander and given what a sceptical Australian Army officer described to me as the optimistic briefing customarily given to American Congressmen. I was also briefed by each of the Australian two-star generals serving at the so-called ‘Free World’ Headquarters. I was later to serve with each in Canberra.

In pursuing these interests as an External Affairs official, and reporting what I thought of the state of the South Vietnam’s Government and my impressions of the US effort, I was influenced by my own conviction of the need for Australia to have a system to marry defence and foreign policy activities so as to produce sound security policy.