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During World War I, a conflict (cuộc xung đột) that posed no immediate
threat (mối đe dọa) to the Antipodes (vùng đất đối chân; Úc và New Zealand), 295,000 Australians volunteered (tình nguyện) to go and fight on the Western Front (mặt trận phía tây). One in five never returned home (không bao giờ trở về nhà), including 53,000 who perished (chết, bỏ mạng) on French and Belgian soil. Another 152,171 Australians were wounded, many more than once.

How did the French thank Australian war widows (góa phụ) and Australian children who grew up without fathers after World War I? By charging them to build monuments (tượng đài) for their dead. Some even profited through kickbacks (lại quả).

...Two years later, when an Australian veterans fund asked the mayor (thị trưởng) of Villers-Bretonneux Dr. Jules Vendeville how their savings could be used to commemorate the 2,473 Australian soldiers who died defending the French commune, Vendeville proposed the construction of an abattoir (lò mổ).

...During World War II, another 40,500 Australians gave their lives defending France and other European allies against the Nazi war machine and French turncoats (kẻ xoay chiều, kẻ phản bội theo hàng ngũ đối lập) who formed the Vichy puppet government (chính quyền bù nhìn). But how many French soldiers have died defending Australia? Not one.

Fast-forward to 1973, when Australia and New Zealand, which lost 16,000 soldiers in France during WWI, were forced to institute costly proceedings (thủ tục tố tụng tốn kém) in the International Court of Justice (Tòa án Công lý quốc tế) to halt French nuclear tests in the South Pacific.

That did not stop France from carrying out nuclear testing in the Pacific for another 22 long years, the coup de grace being Operation Satanique, the sinking of the Greenpeace (tổ chức hòa bình xanh) flagship the Rainbow Warrior (chiến binh cầu vồng) in New Zealand by the French foreign intelligence service that resulted in the death of a photographer who was sleeping onboard the ship.

...Also in 1973, the U.K. joined the European Common Market, robbing (cướp) Australian farmers of their largest export market because tariffs and quotas against non-E.U. member states saw Australian butter, cheese and beef disappear from U.K. supermarket shelves and replaced primarily with French products.