By Miriam Dixon
'Lang is greater than Lenin': untrue for a start, and Australians showed greater enthusiasm for 'Lang is Right', an alternative slogan undoubtedly more wide spread during the Depression. But 'Lang is greater than Lenin' was nevertheless a popular slogan and it turns out to yield many surprising layers of historical significance for us.
For Australians, the Depression was the culmination of a strangely ideological decade or so: in the following pages I use the term the 'red 'twenties', though without imputing any majority status to red ideologies. Some of the lead-players are articulate: for example John Thomas Lang and John Smith Garden. But we also try to infer the role and mood of an almost inarticulate 'player': the 'rank and file'.