In 1975 the Governor-General of Australia--who, as Mr. Buckley puts it, "is

generally expected to do nothing more adventurous than escort visiting presidents and kings to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier"--dismissed the Prime Minister, Mr. Gough Whitlam, and appointed Mr. Fraser. One month later, the voters confirmed Governor Kerr's judgments by giving Mr. Fraser's party a landslide victory. Three years later he was in trouble in the polls, at least partly because, although his government had brought down the inflation it had inherited, it had not brought down unemployment. Today's conversation starts slowly, with Mr. Fraser a little inclined to evasion ("I think it's impertinent for me to make a judgment about the kinds of policies the United States ought to pursue." WFB: "We'd be very grateful, because ours aren't working"), but it improves as we go along, covering matters from economics, to Australia's participation in the World Wars and the Vietnam War, to the proper relations with authoritarian

regimes such as Argentina's and Chile's. MF: "We're all affected by the world around us--what the United States can do, the physical power of the United States compared to the Soviet Union. Where does the weight of the hundreds of millions of Chinese fit into that particular equation? And Australia is a nation of 14 million people only, and small nations, I think, have to tread their paths with skill."