Rupert Lockwood, correspondent for such diverse newspapers as the Melbourne Herald and Tribune, a journalist in Moscow, radical publicist and veteran of the Petrov inquiry, witnessed many of the events he so vividly describes. He recalls the campaign to release Indonesian political prisoners detained by the Dutch in Australian POW camps and examines the boycotts and mutinies in Australia that crippled Dutch attempts to reoccupy their former colony. He reveals deep-going anti-colonial attitudes not often suspected in white Australia, discusses the impact of the union boycotts on the armed forces and war supplies of the only foreign regime to which Australia has ever played host, and brings to light Australian ambitions for an independent influence in Asia.