AUSTRALIAN-AMERICAN ASSOCIATION
ANNIVERSARY DINNER HELD AT MELBOURNE 29TH OCTOBER. 1965
Statement by the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies
Sir and Ladies and Gentlemen
May I first of all enter a caveat about this word
" Oration". Now having like some of you leairned a little Latin
and less Greek which puts us on the same footing as Shakespeare
I know about the Oratio Recta and the Oratio Obliqua have any
of you forgotten that? I hope so, because that will give me a
spourraitoiuosn reputIa dtino'nt foprr oploesaer nitnog om ake Buatn oIr adtoino'nt; likIe jutshti s wawnotr dto
talk to you a little about one or two things, but before I talk
to you about one or two things, may I just mention something about
one or two people.
First of all, I would like to say that it gives me great
satisfaction to sit here comfortably and listen to Weslev Ince
making a speech, because he and I were at school together.
You would never believe it of course, because, really, Wesley's a
cultivated fellow and I'm a politician, but we were at school
tcgether, and he's been a friend of mine ever since which does
him infinite credit. And therefore Wesley, I was delighted to
be able to hear you speaking tonight so admirably, if you'll
allow me to say so.
And then of course Floyd Blair, a reticent character,
is here from the United States. No some of you may have
forgotten that Floyd Blair is a merchant banker. Now this is
a very mysterious occupation. And he arrived in Australia what
was it Floyd? about a year ago, and had a press interview.
You Imow the passion that Americans have for press interviews,
and so Floyd had one. And he encountered a cross-examiner who
for the first time in his experience or mine wanted to know
something. And the cross-examiner said ' Ae. t is a merchant
banker, Mr. Blair?" And he said, " Oh, that's quite simple.
You see there's a fellow over here who has money to invest, and
there's a fellow over here would like some money to be invested
by somebody, and so we bring them together and as the mone
crosses the board, we take a little out of it for our own dividend."
Now I must say Floyd, that was the first time I ever understood
merchant banking to perfection. But having said that, which may
be deroagatory for all I know though I don't intend it to be.
I want To tell all of my fellow Australians here, that if there's
one man who has been the moving spirit of the American Australian
Association in New York, it's Floyd Blair. He's a wonderful man
and a great friend, and I am, as I'm sure you are, delighted to
have him here tonight.
Then there's one more preliminary observation that I
might like to make and that is that you had a message from Lord
and Lady Casey. It's a marvellous event in Australian history that
they should now be at Government House. We're all delighted about
this. And the news of the appointment of Lord Casey to be Governor-
General must have given particular pleasure, I think, in Washington,
because he was our first diplomatic representative in the United
States. I don't believe that anybody ever did more I doubt if
anybody did as much to interpret Australia to the United States
as he did. And therefore, now that he sits in the highest position
that is available in this country, as Governor-General of Australia,
I like to feel that he will continue to be a symbol of the association
between our two countries. / 2
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And of course Lady Casey irrespective of him she's been
the President of the iomen's Section you mustn't hold me u on
a technical point on this matter. But she has been, and with
immense success. So that this association here in the United
States and this conjunction of the planets in the minds of a man
like myself, have their embodiment today at Government House at
Canberra. I just want to mention that because I'm sure you would
all want to send your greetings to them, and your thanks to them.
As for the Cinque Ports, well, I'd like to tell you in case
you haven't heard it, inough I've done my best to promulgate the
idea. The other morning when the radio announced thisTppointment,
a man rushed out of his filling station at Canberra to a happy
passer-by who wanted five gallons of petrol and said, " Have you
heard the news? " No, what news?", said the fellow very drily.
All that he knew was that he wanted five gallons at an extravagant
price he thought. And the garage-keeper said, " But Sir Robert
has been made Lord Warden of Singapore." Now I " ould like to make
it quite clear that this is confidential. I wouldn't want my
distinguished colleague, Mr. Lee of Singapore, to know about his
because it might involve me mightn't it in some obligations but
there it is, so treat me witn respect I'm the Lord Warden of
Singapore. And the other preliminary remark I thought I'd like to make
to you was this, that years ago eight or nine years ago having
made a powerful speech at the Pilgrims, this most celebrated society
in London, I was invited to be the guest of honour of the Pilgrims
in New York at the Waldorf-Astoria. Six hundred men and women, if
not all Daughters and Sons of the Revolution, at least all impeccable
and I know I was the guest of honour, because it said so on the
menu. And being the guest of honour, I thought well I must as I
have tonight, give a little thought to what Im to say and
prepared a pretty powerful lucubration, you see. Well, before all
this happened...... you know, in the United States of America if
I may say so, Floyd, you are devoted to gadgets, and one of the
gadgets this night was a sort of lectern, which rose or fell and
it had buttons cn it marked " up" or " down". And in my colonial
innocence, I thought " up" meant up with the noise, and ' Rown' meant
down with the noise but it turned out no. It was up with the whole
jolly machine. And I almost had my neck broken, you see, two or
three times when I pressed the wrong button.
But anyhow there were some powerful speeches made as there
always are in the United States of America. Nobody will ever say
that the United States of America failed for want of being vocal,
and so two or three people made speeches. One or two of them I
thought were quite acceptable, and then up got a distinguished
Minister as we would call him he was one of the secretaries of
one of the departments and he made a powerful speech about me for
ten minutes. So flattering that I knew instantly that he didn't
know me, but I was none the less pleased on that account and having
done this, and I was beginning to purr and thinking, well, now
this where I get up and hope to press the right button, he put his
hand up like that, and one of his speech writers they have those
animals, you know, Floyd in your country he came along with a
typed script, and for half an hour, I listened to a learned
discussion on automation.
Well, I'm of course many things, and possess a great variety
of talents no doubt, but I'm not automatic. But this was half an
hour on automation, and at the end of this time, all the men out
of the Sons of the Revolution were down like this. Some of them
had their heads right down on the table, others were half way and
the women, with that diabolical faculty with which God Almighty has
endowed women, were sitting up, bolt upright, with their eyes open
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and sound asleep. Oh yes, this is a form of feminine genius
and all I know is that when at twenty to eleven what's the time
low? when at twenty to eleven, I, the guest of honour I repeat,
so described on the bill of lading got up to speaki the men were
in that comatose state that I've described, the women like this
and for the first ten minutes I had to put on a music hall turn
in order to wake them up. ' ell, after all, that's what I've
been doing for the last five minutes.
Now having said all those things for what they are worth
I would like tonight, without being quite as long as John suggested,
I would like to say something because this is the twenty-fifth
anniversary, and we're living in a state of affairs in the world
in which the relations between the United States and Australia, and
indeed between the United States and the entire free world, have
never been more important and have never been more urgent.
And so, I would like to offer a few views on them.
I don't know whether you realise that today is October 29th.
Well, from October 15th to November 15th was duclared by the
Communist Party at Hanoi in North Viet Nam to be a special
propaganda month, and it was to be described as the Hate America
Month. Now this is not fiction, this is it the Hate America
Month, from October 15th to November 15th. And in the result,
Sir, identical demonstrations have been put on in most of the
capitals of the world, including great cities in Australia, based
on this slogan Hate America; Down With America. What's America
Doing In Viet Nam? What's America Doing Intervening in the Affairs
of the World? Hate America. You know this is a horrible,
horrible slogan. It's a reat pity that it receives so much
free publicity all round the world the Hate America Monthwhereas
any people who are sensible, who are sensible of individual
liberty, who are sensible of the tremendous issues that divide the
world, could well be excused if they had a Thank America Month,
not a Hate America Month.
We are in this time constantly hearing pleas that we should
negotiate for peace in Viet Nam and that we should persuade the
United States to give up bombing in Viet Nam. Now I've heard this,
you've heard this; there are so many people, decent people,
misguided people, including soae clerical people who join in this
cry You must make peace in Viet Nam. And it's about time we
sorted outselves out and decided how you make peace in Viet Nam.
About time we sorted our ideas out and discovered for ourselves,
and, I hope, for other people, why it is that the United States
which five years ago would have hesitated a long time before putting
a single ground force on to the Asian Continent, now has 200,000
fighting there. hy has this happened? Is this because the
United States has some axe to grind?
This just makes me ill when I hear people who ought to know
better accusing the United States of America of pursuing some
selfish interest. What selfish interest? Do they want to make
South Viet Nam a colony, Really ladies and gentlemen, who wants
a new colony today? Of course it isn't because they want a colony.
Is it because they have overwhelming commercial interests? Of
course they haven t. It just happens, and I'll come back to this
before I finish that the United States of America today has
accepted and acted upon policies which, I believe set an example
to the modern world in unselfishness and responsibility.
Now perhaps it's not a bad idea on these matters to try
to settle our minds on a few first principles. Would you mind if
I mentioned one or two? I don't want to be too tedious on a happy
night like this. But in a civilised world, every nation is
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entitled, in the immortal words of the American Declaration of
Independence, to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
This wasn't something that Thomas Jefferson wrote just for the
American colonists. This was something that was written as it
turns out, for the entire world. We're all entitled to life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These are very simple
things. They are not aggressive things, they are homely things.
They are the kind of things that in our own families we all
understand life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And
what's happened is that above all people, theadministration of the
United States of America have said, if not in terms at least by
implication, that this is true for the people of South Viet Nam,
just as it was true for the people of Virginia and Ca'rolina life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
And that being so, our second great principle is that each
nation has the right, the right to defend itself against aggression
and to call on its friends to help it. Does anybody quarrel with
that? So far I've not heard that anybody does. Buc when any
nation our own nation, Austr-iia hs to decide its answer to
that call for help then it has to answer itself a few questions,
and I thought about this a great deal before I did,
Some of you may recall the Jefferson Lecture at Monticello
a couple of years back. Do you mind if I engage in the poor
exercise of quoting one paragraph of what I said on that occasion?
I said: " The freedom or man ( this was a good topic in the home of
Thomas Jefferson), the freedom of man is not a local perquisite,
and it can't be defended in isolation." Now that remains true.
It isn't a local perquisite. It's not good enough, it would never
have been good enough for the United States to say " Well, as long
as we preserve our freedom, t doesn't matter about the rest."
It would never be good enough for us in Australia to say " As long
as we defend our freedom and preserv iithat's good enough." Because
freedom is one of the great human things in the world, and it can't
be defended in isolation.
Now all these principles have been recognised both by the
United States and by Australia. And it Is because of their belief,
their belief and our belief in these principles, that we have
Australian forces, small enough in all conscience, operating in
South Viet Nam, and the United States has vast forces operating
there. And yet the presence of both of those forces is today in
our own country, and in many other countries under attack.
The Hate America Week has been reproduced in Australia.
' ho are the people who attack it? Will I understand when the
Communists attack it? Because the Communists in this issue in the
world are the aggressors and nobody seriously disputes it. Nobody.
On either side of Parliament at Canberra, nobody disputes it,
nobody denies it. But the Communists of course believe, particularly
those who are allied with Peking, that the withdrawal of
American forces would mean the collapse of successful resistance,
and therefore would mean Chinese Communism trium~ imt in South East
Asia. This is not oversimplifying it. This is so profoundly
true. It's perfectly understood in Washington. It is not perfectly
understood by some of the critics and agitators in Australia.
If the United States walked out of South Viet Nam and we
walked out with them not that we are a major factor what do
you suppose would happen? How lng would South Viet Nam last?
How long would it take to have Chinese Communism triumphant on the
very edges of the Sunda Straits? This is the great issue of our
time and we in Australia are indeed fortunate that we should have
had in the United States of America a predominant view that accepted
the responsibility for saying this must not happen. Because if
it does happen then we can give up exercising ourselves about who
is going to win the cup next Tuesday. we'll have to begin to
exercise ourselves very fiercely about whether we are to be here
self-governing, free, at all. This is not an extravagant statement.
This is an extremely sober and considered statement.
Now as a matter of fact you'll be told by some people,
including some who ought to know better, that what's going on in
Viet Nam is just a sort of civil war, there's a sruggle for freedom.
And they are not incapable of telling you that this resembles the
struggle by the American Colonies themselves in the late years of
the eighteerth century. This is a struggle for freedom. 7ell,
fortunately the facts on that are very clear because the South
Viet Nam liberation Front, as it's called they've started one in
Viet Nam; I haven't yet heard that they've started one in Australia,
but no doubt they will but the South Viet Nam Liberation Front was
established in 1960 by the North Viet Nam Communist Party. It is
their puppet. It is their instrument, and in order to make this quite
clear, the commander-in-chief in North Viet Nam as recently as March
in this year said " The problem of the peaceful reunification of
Viet Nam is the affair o the Vietnamese people". So far so gcod,
on the face of it.
" It will be settled" he went on to say " by the Viet Nam
' Fatherland Front' ( that's the major Communist Party) and the ' South
Viet Nam Liberation Front'". In other words, this will be settled
by the Communists and no non-Communist need apply. This is perfectly
clear. This is not a strange exercise of my ojn. This has been
repeated time after time by the Foreign Minister of Great Britain
whose party is not my party. This is not a party affair. The
other day he made a speech in Tokyo in which he reiterated the same
thing, Michael Stewart did that here is a crude demand by the
Communists of North Viet Nam that they shall be in charge of the
future of South Viet Nam and therefore of course never forget it
of the future of Thailand the future of Malaysia the future of
Singapore, the future of Indonesia and, and thenheret'hse big
questaon, the future of Australia?
And are we to be content to allow these dreadful things to
happen leaving them alone, being frightfully high minded, leaving
them alone until the day comes when at the very end of the line we
find ourselves defending ourselves on our own shores? Of course
we shall do it, of course, but should we? Should we allow ourselves
to be beguiled by these people who want us to believe that this is
just a little civil conflict in South Viet Nam? I believe, Sir, I
believe most profoundly, that all of those who are agitating on
this matter in Australia are consciously or unconsciously, and I hope
most of them unconsciously, are trying to weaken the national will in
Australia by propagating doubts as to the justice of our actions, and
of course, American action in South Viet Nam, for no other purpose,
no other intelligible purpose than to weaken the resistance to
aggression in this part of the world.
Now Sir, I've spoken already rather longer than I intended to,
but could I add two things? Every now and then somebody says to me.
in a very well-meaning way " But why don't you favour negotiations?
Why don' tyou favour peace?" And could say for mysel and for all
of you " Of course we favour peace, just as the United States favours
peace. But who stands in the way of negotiations for peace? Who
is it? I wish people would just read and reread the sober history
of events in the last two years. There must have been thirteen or
fourteen or fifteen attempts made on our side of the world to secure
a negotiation. The United States, the United Nations, the Prime
Ministers' Conference,( the last one that I attended when we set up
a mission to go), the seventeen unaligned nations; Tito in Yugoslavia
1. a strange but fruitful alliance as I would have thought with
India. Time after time, and every time Peking and Hanoi have said, / 6
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" Nonsense, ve won't talk," and they have usually rejected these
approaches with contempt and with insult. This is the great thing
to remember, that in the whole of this period of two or three years
when decent human beings in both our countries have just been
sweating over this matter and hating the idea of a war that might
be avoidable not one word has come from the aggressor to indicate
that he would even talk about it. You may understand, I'm sure
you do how I feel when people of eminence, here or there or there,
write to me and say, " Why don't you negotiate?" The answer being,
of course, I would negotiate, my Government would negotiate, the
United States Administration would, the British Government would at
the dro of a handkerchief, if the other man said " I am . illing to
negotiate.' But of course he's not. He has made it quite clear
that as long as he think he is winning by violence and terror, he
won't talk. And that's why in plain simple English the United States
of America is so profoundly right, and we in our smaller way are so
profoundly right in saying, " Very well, as he won't talk until he
knows he can' win, it s our job to beat him."
Now the last thing that I want to say to you rather
reproduces something I said in my own Parliament not long ago.
I'm no servile follower of United States policy. I'm happy to say
that in my time I've been on such terms with all the American
Administratiors that I could say what I thought even in terms of
disagreement and have it listened to. h'-it the United States has
done with Australia in these years is treat Australia as being an
adult country with a point of view that is worth listening to.
And therefore we've always been able to disagree on details the
press vies on details, but on the central things that determine the
future of mankind, we ve been happy enough to find ourselves in
complete unison with them. This, I think, is of tremendous
importance. However, it will be all the more important to our own people
if they will just remember one great central fact. It's one of
the great facts of modern history. Not a matter of whether
Australia likes the United States because it has a sort of cupboard
love for the United States. This is one of the great central
facts of modern history. In this century the United States of
America has had prolonged periods of isolationism, and it has
been jolted out of them twice by the terrors and horrors of war.
And one of the great things of our time has been that ever since
that happened for the second time in the second great war, the
United States has without hesitation moved into a position of
supreme power, carrying with it the aclmowledgment of supreme
responsibility. This is the most terrific thing in our modern time.
If the United States had simply been the greatest power in
the world, the greatest arms power, the greatest nuclear power,
the greatest industrial power, and it sat back and said ' Well,
that s rather nice isn't it, we're the great power this would
have been a terrible thing. But ever since 1941, the United States
has cheerfully and sometimes under great criticism accepted the
responsibilities that go with great power. It pours out aid, it
pours out assistance of every kind. It does it with such
generosity, a generosity of its own taxpayers, never let us forget.
It does it with such generosity and so frequently, that a lot of
us are disposed to say, " Oh well, you can take this for granted.
Ask America tbdo this, ask America to provide that.' Look, this
is not true. The American people are just like us in Australia.
They don't like paying taxes unduly. Of course not but they have
through all these years accepted the responsibility that goes with
power and the result is that in all these other parts of the world
what the United States has done and is doing deserves not miserable / 7
7
carping criticism but an intelligent understanding. This is
something that fits into tne broad structure of the defence of
freedom which, in the long run make no mistake, is our own defence.
And therefore it is not difficult for th6 head of a Government in
Australia to find himself en rapport with the head of an administration
in the United States; not difficult at all for people
like myself to understand that Australian-American association,
Anglo-american association is no longer a post-prandial bit of
enthusiasm, but something which is the very stuff of life for
all of us and not only for us, but for other people.
Now I'm sorry to have s oken for so lonr, and perhaps so
seriously about ', his matter, but I just wanted to convey to you
the feeling of distaste I have when people want to promote a
" Hate America Week", when people cash in on the easy temptation
to throw stones at the rich relative. This is so easy, we all
know all about it. And yet it is on this association, this
" marriage of minds", this " marriage of passions", this " marriage
of understanding" that the future of all your children and
grandchildren will depend.