Julius, M. N.

The Truth about the Brisbane line / by M.N. Julius. (Brisbane : Queensland State Committee, Communist Party of Australia, 1943)

The "Brisbane Line" was notorious in Queensland as being a policy put forward by Menzies that stated that if Australia was to be invaded the troops would fall back to a line through Brisbane and defend Australia from there, ceding all areas to the north to the enemy.

The introduction to the pamphlet is by Fred Paterson, a radical barrister who later became the only Communist ever to be elected to Parliament in Australia; he was the member for Bowen in the Queensland Legislative Assembly from 1944 to 1950.

The graphic on the cover shows Menzies as a washerwoman washing his army tunic with the legend on the back reading, "Resigned Militia commission 1914". The clothes on the line, staked out across Australia from Adelaide to Brisbane, refer to the "scrap-iron that came back", a reference to the pig iron for Japan which Menzies insisted be shipped despite the protests from the Wharfies; "praise for Hitler"; "Munich" and "non-intervention to help Franco"; all of which refer to Menzies sympathies with right-wing totalitarian regimes and the policy of appeasement.