E. George Marks

Ernest George Marks (c. 1885 – 2 February 1935) was an Australian journalist and author who from the 1920s predicted military conflict in the Pacific between Japan and the United States.

[1] Marks was born in New South Wales into a family with French military ancestors, endowing him with a lifelong interest in Napoleonic matters.

His journalistic career began in 1903 and he rose to the position of chief court reporter, but became better known for his articles, books, and lectures on military strategy, particularly the risk posed to Australia by Japanese territorial ambitions in the Pacific.

His pugnacious writing style and strong opinions divided reviewers, with some appreciating his forthright statement of Australia's weak strategic position while others saw him as alarmist and peddling "old scares".

[8] In the mid-1920s Marks's interests turned to Australian defence policy and the threat posed by an ambitious Japan which had been on the Allied side during the First World War and was therefore not a defeated power.

Defenceless Australia in 1924, a rallying cry for a stronger Australian and British Empire defence posture[9][10] in which he criticised the results of the Versailles Peace Conference, the Washington Naval Conference, and the weakness of the League of Nations in allowing Japan to increase her military strength in the Pacific.

[13] He wrote the words to the patriotic song "Dawn of the Capital", to mark the opening of the Parliament House in Canberra in 1927.

[19] He suffered a fractured skull when he hit the ground and was admitted to St Vincent's Hospital where he underwent an operation but died later the same day.