OFFICE OF THE HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR AUSTRALIA IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
Australian News and Information Bureau, Australia House,
Strand, London, W. C. 2 Telephone: TEMple Bar 2435
AUSTRALIA CLUB SPEECH.
Describing the Summit meting next week as " one of the great
climwctic events in the world", the Prime Minister of Australia, Mr.
Robert Gordon Menzies, surveyed the Commonwealth in relation to the
current international scene. Mr. Menzies was addressing members of
the Australia Club at a dinner given in his honour at the Savoy Hotel
on Monday, May 9./ qOIn the course of his speech, he said:-
UI would like to begin by saying that, as the Prime Minister of
Australia, I ' dip my lid' to Harold Macmillan, who, after all, began
this pioneering and exploratory work. There were people who, when
e went to Moscow, said " Oh no, no, no, you mustn't do that kind of
hing there is no precedent for that. To hell I'm sorry
to hell with those people. _ s a matter of fact, Harold Macdllan made
the adventure he opened up the door; he said " Well, I shall go", and
s he said the other day to two or three of us it has now become
ather fashionable not fissionable, I don't want to open up any
troubles in the Labour Party bat fashionable for people to go around.
I think that that is a wonderful thing. Not because I amn silly
enough to believe that in one blow at the Summit all the great problems
of the worldcan be resolved, but because I hope I am sensible enough
to believe that when human beins can meet each other and sit dovm and
talk and go to some trouble to understand each other, there you have
the beginning of wisdom. Therefore, I am all for the Sum. mit, and when
I say I am all for the Sunnit I won't be there I mean I am all
for the Summit meeting. Not because I believe that at the Summit
neeting there will be 15 problems all neatly dis osed of b, the rules
of Laclid is Euclid still presentable? I don t know but because
IS ubnemliit evmee etthinagt , ito nei s mtahtet erf irnsott syteet p dettheartm cinoeudn tsis. deAtenrdm iinfe, d , a t thtehnis I
t hink the whole world will say " Well, at least this is the beginning
f the new age of common sense."
Who am I to say that the problem of Germany will be resolved, or
the problem of Berlin; but nuclear tests why not? just on the
edge of agreement. And suppose that were resolved, suppose you had
one matter, two matters resolved; this would blow round the world like
fresh air. People would say " Well, at any rate the great men of
the great countries are hoping for settlement."
But the second thing that I want to say to you is this: We are
and in this respect I want to say to the people of Great Britain what
I would say to the people of Australia, because we are very much of a
kind we are a little bit disposed to think that the burning question
of the moment is the determining question of the future. But it isn't.
To be rid of nuclear tests, to have some temporary agreement about
Berlin, to lay a foundation for discussions about the future of Germany
these are very important things. But I happen to belong to the school
of thought that says, or believes I am saying it now that
armaments, the pressure of armaments, the whole terror of a world
standing to arms; these things are not causes, they are results. Anmd
they are results of tension, hostility, bitterness, and therefore, we
must go below the surface of the arnmraent arguments and say " What
is it that keeps the world standin--. at rnms?" And when we put that
question, we ought to think about the answer.
2-
What are the cuases of the world's us go.
back 15 years to the end of the war and say to ourselves " What has
happened to bedevil the world, which was going to be a world of peace
and co-existence and prosperity in which we would all devote our
talents and resources to the greatest thing in life, which is to make
ordinary men and women happier and more peaceful and give their
children a more lovely futg~ I?"
What has happeo bcause the things that have happened are
the causes of offence in the world today. We needn't too much
concentrate on the results. Let us go back to the causes. And
here we have the causes the Soviet Union spreading round Middle
Europe. Look at Poland and East Germany and Czechoslovakia and
Roumania. Gentlemen, we are too easily persuaded to forget about
these things. These countries were among the great homesof freedom
in the world; marvellous countries with great men, great democracies,
great hopes for the future; the homes of scholarship and tradition
and freedom. And they have now become let's face it colonies,
colonies of the one great colonial power left in the world.
I don't iysolf believe that you can pacify the world if, at the
Svery moment at which the British colonies look around the world;
I have been sitting with them at No. 10 if at the very moment when
the British colonies have been marching to freedom and independence and
self-government and membership of the Commonwealth, we shut our eyes to
the fact that there are more ancient democracies, more ancient
* politically speaking, more ancient countries lying athwart Europe who
are the colonies of the new imperialism. These are tremendous things
they are terrible things. I think that we all ought to know before
we persuade ourselves that everything is for the best in the best of
all possible worlds, that there is no longer a propaganda instrument
which is designed to reduce to slavery our people in Australia people
all around the world.
This is not to mean that we deny other people their rights, but
it is to mean this that we would be perfect fools if we believed
that by settling one point here or there we would remove the causes of
these grievous discontents of the world. In short, we must never
lose our courege. We must stand for those things that relate to
human beings in which we believe and for which we will live and die.
This is of the vastest importance, but we must at the same time be
Sprepared to make a beginning.
All I have been saying to you is that I think that the Summit
meeting is to be looked at as the promising beginning, but not as a
definite end. You may all perhaps, be disposed to agree with that.
There are certain things in the world; there are great symptoms,
great results, there are deep-lying causes, but before you can begin
to discuss the causes, before you can begin to get down to discuss
with these great nations in the world those basic matters which
produce the differences, it is essential to remove those more
superficial matters which prevent you, so popular are they, from
getting at the causes.
Now that is one thing that I really want to say to you. We
are a little bedevilled in the world by popular campaigns, by
newspaper campaigns, by looking at the " hot news" circumstance of
the moment so that we don't talk about political philosophies in
South Africa, we talk about Sharpeville. This is more attractive;
this is more newsworthy. We don't talk about the great causes of
difference between the Soviet world or the Chinese world and our own
free world, but we talk about nuclear tests, nuclear weapons.
Now all these things are vastly important, but I do beg of all
of you not to suppose that by dealing with one of these the
resultant factors you have got at the root cause of the trouble.
There will be no peace in the world, no peace whatever in the world,
until we have all got to understand that no country is to be
overthrown by propaganda, by subversion; that every country has the
right to run its own life in its own way.
-3-
Whether it is our way or not doesn't matter so much some of us
think so occasionally, but it doesn't. Every country must run its
life in its own way. It must get up in the morning and go to bed
at night feeling that it isn't being pressed and harmmered by the
propaganda of some other nation or some other body of Government.
This is tremendously important. The one thing that so many people
don't understand is that if a man wants to loaf he ought to be
allowed to loaf. That if a,. an wants to think in a funny, silly
way, he ought to be ^ iwed'-o think in a funny, silly way. It is
only when we become ovirtuous that we want to tell people how they
ought to think, how they ought to live, what they ought to do, that
we become involved in this deplorable mischief which bedevils the
world. Now here we are all tonight we are all British people and
thank God we understand something about liberty and we have never
supposed that liberty is a freedom to do what somebody else tells you.
Do let us understand that liberty is liberty.......... these things
are vastly important, and when our distinguished representative goes
to the Summit don't let us be like people standing around saying we
asked for a miracle. There are no miracles to be got nowadays.
As a matter of fact, Kruschev is the best public relations man in
the world. He changes his tactics every day and conceals the fact
that his strategy remains identical with what went before.
But so many people can be deceived by this kind of thing.
Don't let us be deceived this is the Australia Club, but we are all
British, we are all of the same strains of blood not devoted to
reasoning out very closely what have in our minds, but with a
deep instinct down in our guts as to viwh: t is right. Don't let us be
led away from it. Don't let us be beguiled by transient events.
Let us always come back to the basic truth that there are certain
great things about the world that we have understood that we have
practised as nobody else in the history of man has practised.
I have been sitting at No. 10 with people who couldn't have been
there unless we had these beliefs and practices. wvieh ent alk about
that let us think about it without apology and say " We are not being
Sled off by false gods". We know what are the basic things that make
for the peace and content of mankind and not for the first timo in our
history we will stand to them and battle for them."