11th September, 1960,
Good evening ladies and gentlemen:
This talk,as I suppose you would call it, that I am to give to you this evening is called the "Wind of Change". That phrase, of course, has been rendered immortal by Mr. Harold Macmillan after his visit to South Africa.
It is perfectly true that, at in our time your time and my time the wind of change is blowing more and more in the history of the world. Sometimes in one country it is a mere gentle zephyr; in other countries, in other circumstances, a raging hurricane. But that the "wind of change" is blowing is beyond question. And one of the purposes of my talk to you is to show in what places and in what fashions that wind is blowing.
As a matter of fact, do you frequently think, as I do, about the changes in the maps? The maps we used at school seem strangely out of date today, There have been more changes in the maps in the last ten years, or fifteen years, than I suppose for a hundred years of history before: map-changing; new countries; new problems.
One of those new problems a very important one for us relates to the British Commonwealth. Now when I was at London earlier this year we had a discussion between the Prime Ministers many discussions between them and one of the things that we had to consider, and are still considering, was the future of the Commonwealth. Because it is changing so rapidly. I first attended one of these meetings, not I confess as Prime Minister, but as deputising for the late Mr. Lyons, years ago. And at that time there were just the old five members of the Commonwealth. Today we have increased in numbers. Before we are very much older we will have Nigeria as a new member. It may very well be in the next three or four years that there will be several others. The result is that this is becoming a much larger Commonwealth in terms of membership oi Prime Ministers; though to people who look back with some nostalgia to the past it may seem a smaller Commonwealth because it is not so cohesive as it used to be. But that it is changing is quite clear. , and that you and I have to accommodate ourselves to the change is equally clear.
I suppose that one of the things that we have to bear in mind is that these changes are largely an expression of nationalism. It is very curious, when you look back on it and remember that during the war a lot of people thought that there would be an increase in internationalism, it's very curious to realise how quite the opposite has occurred. True there have been international movements. But the feeling for nationalism in individual countries has become more intense. And the result is that in Africa, in particular, we have seen the surge towards nationalism grow. In Africa I am putting the Congo on one side at this stage we have seen Ghana, we have seen Nigeria, we can glance over the map and have a look at Kenya and Tanganyika and the countries of the Central African Federation. These are all countries which, only a few years ago, were colonies, were completely controlled, for all practical purposes, by the colonising power. Today each of them is moving rapidly: Ghana has already moved there; Nigeria has already, for all practical purposes, moved there; and the others are on the way. And that means, whether we like it or not and I certainly have no objection to it myself that nationalism, the growth of now nations, newly politically independent powers, is with us. And unless we face up to it, until we realise that it is the fact and that we must live with it, we may very easily fall into error about it,
Now I said just then that these countries were reaching political independence It is not enough to have political independence. That, indeed, is one of the great problems of the world: that political independence has outreached economic independence. People who say, and rightly, " We have our political independence" are still all too frequently in the position of having to go to the rest of the world and ask for help on the economic side. That we will have to do it of course is quite clear; but it is one of those oddities about the new nationalist movement which has to be noted, and which has to be respected as one, of what I call " the facts of political life".
Indeed there is another point that you ought to have in mind and that we all ought to have in mind. And that is that as the developed countries of the world, with their new technologies, become more and more prosperous, so does the gap between their standards and the standards of the underdeveloped countries grow. Because the under-developed countries have not the technical resources. Therefore they don't improve their position so fast. And the gap between the "haves" and the " have nots", in consequence, so far from narrowing tends to grow. And that is full of trouble for the world unless the advanced countries in the world take every opportunity of helping in the highest possible technical degree these countries of what we are pleased to call an undeveloped order, or an under-developed order.
Now I think I should turn from that matter of African nationalism in the broad just to say word about the Congo.
The Congo - and I'll talk about it comprehensively now, whether French or Belgian - is in one sense an illustration of the dangers of precipitate action. You know we all have ideas about when a colony should be given self-government. Some people want to do it very, very fast; and some people don't want to do it at all, perhaps. I belong to the school of thought that says: " You must prepare a colony for self-government it is no use throwing it, metaphorically, to the wolves and having done that, then you should not hold up the grant of independence too long, once you are satisfied that in effect the country can govern itself". That is a perfectly simple view and there is no very great novelty about it. But in the case of the Congo I fear that the preparation had not been made and we have all soon how, when the colonising power began to withdraw, all sorts of internal disputes broke out almost in a sense, a sort of tribal warfare, With the result that the United Nations has had to intervene; with the result that the rest of the world represented in the United Nations finds itself carrying a very substantial burden as the cost of intervention in the Congo for the preservation of law and order or for the restoration of it in the first instance.
We are all helping tc pay for this, you know. Australia, as a contributor to the United Nations, is a contributor to what the United Nations is doing in the Congo. If, contrary to the facts of history, the native people of the Congo had boon brought along to take their share in self government, had been taught administration which can't be learned over night then the whole position in the Congo might be different from the position that we are now looking at.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I am sometimes asked by people: "What are the chances for democracy in those countries in Africa?". I don't know. But I do just want to say this to you. Don't fall into the error of thinking that democracy is something that you hand over on a plate, or that is conveyed by a book of instructions: " Well here you are you govern yourselves: this is how you elect a Parliament: this is how you get a Prime Minister and a Cabinet". It isn't as simple as that. A lot of these countries emerging into independence have got there because they have been led by some outstanding man of dynamic energy. And of course when they get independence, as in the case of Ghana, you are bound to find that that man, their leader, has far more power than you would expect a Prime Minister to have and that their Parliament is nothing like the power or influence that you expect your Parliament to be.
All sorts of forms of government will be evolved in these countries. They will evolve their own, because they have a right to evolve their own. It need not be like ours. It may have far more executive authority in it. It may occasionally make you think that it is dictatorial. But these people will come through all that: they will ultimately find their own way of ruling themselves. And when they do, well, that will be democracy. Not necessarily our sort of parliamentary democracy, but democracy in the sense that the people are ruling themselves.
Now that perhaps means at this stage that I ought to say something, in this context, about South Africa. As one South African said to me: "You know, Mr. Menzies, everybody knows how to solve the problems of South Africa except the South Africans themselves". There is a good deal of truth in that. It is marvellous to me how swift we are to solve other problems of which we know very little. but to solve them out of hand sometimes with dogmatism and sometimes in a rather abusive way. The fact is that South Africa has a set of problems of which we, in Australia, of our own experience, know nothing: a great problem of mixed races: three million white people; nine million Bantu, as they say, meaning by that the indigenous inhabitants, either black or coloured. This is a tremendous problem and only the South Africans can solve it. That is why: I want you to remember only the South Africans. You don't suppose we are going to take steps to tell them in some compelling fashion what they are to do? We wouldn't like anybody to tell us that either. I think they have a difficult task in front of then. I can see all the troubles involved in their policy. But all I do is to point out to you that that policy is as old as the great J. C. Smuts himself. Because apartheid was first of all devised and laid down by him as an instrument of policy separate development of the separate races, a long, long time ago. You and I may think it won't work. But it will be for South Africa to work out its destiny.
But in relation to the Commonwealth, of course, there is a quite different problem coming up. Because the South African. Government has announced that it is going to have a referendum on the question of Republic or no. The Government, under Dr. Verwoerd of course, is strongly Republican and it will be asking for a vote for a Republic from the people who are entitled to vote in South Africa. I, of course, don't know what the result will be. But I do know that on this occasion there will be a difficult problem as to whether South Africa, having become a Republic. will be allowed to remain in the Commonwealth. You may say, " Well of course that would be fanciful because India became a Republic and stayed in; and Pakistan stayed in; Ceylon gave notice and was allowed to stay in; Ghana, only at the last meeting, Republic, allowed to stay in. How could it be denied to South Africa?"
.Well you and I may look at it that way, But one of the oldest things about this Commonwealth of ours is that we don't have votes: we have unanimity. is not a subcommittee of some other body. This is a meeting of heads of Government and unless they agree, then they say nothing,; of their joint wisdom, if they do agree, they say so. But everything, so long as I can remember it, has been conducted on the footing of " No votes", " No lobbying", " No majorities", " No minorities". And consequently the position has. been, so far, that if a member of the Commonwealth, being a monarchy at the time, says, " well, we've decided to become a Republic, but we want to remain in the Commonwealth" then all the other Prime Ministers have had to agree and have in fact agreed before that is approved of. And therefore we have the problem and it is a real problem as to whether, if it becomes a Republic, South Africa will secure the unanimous approval of the other members of the Commonwealth, some of which have violently criticised her racial policy, when the time comes. I don't know. I make no prophecy about that at all, But I certainly, though my own views are very well known, would not risk any guess as to whether the unanimous agreement will be forthcoming, That is one of the problems in front of South Africa.
Now turning from there, in this very disjointed survey, just could I say a few words about Asia - South East Asia.
This continent of Asia, of course, is very close to us. Africa, about which I have been talking, is a great problem, but a problem, in particular, because the propaganda of the Soviet Union is increasingly directed to the African countries and the African races. But with us here we have an immediate concern with Communists China. with the propaganda-of Communist China, and the constant probing of Communist China -probing which one day takes it in the direction of the Matsus and Formosa, and on another occasion into Laos. or on another occasion by pressure on South Vietnam or wherever it -may be, there's constant probing relaxing of tension, increasing of tension, which is. of course the classical communist manoeuvre, , Well Communist China is a country so enormous that : we can never afford to forgot it. It is estimated that by the turn of the century. there will be a thousand million people in Communist China - and -a thousand million people under Communist control and with all the fervour of the Communist when he is engaging in propaganda and pressure.
Cne of the favourite techniques of the Communists, and we've seen it in South East . Asia, is to get inside a country, to identify himself with what can be made a nationalist movement so that he himself becomes prominent in what is regarded as a war of independence. It can always be said that it is a nationalist movement. We may say it is -a Communist movement. I have heard men, whose opinions I respect, defend vigorously a lot of these movements on the ground that they are quite shortly and simply nationalist movements and that we mustn't attribute any communist colour to them .Well my answer to that o f course is that you must judge the tree by the fruit, The fact is that the troubles in Indo-China, French Indo-China, at the time when North Vietnam, under the influence of the Communists, began to infiltrate and then to attack, a'. l those troubles were re-presented to the world as a nationalist movement. But the fact is that right down to the frontier between North Vietnam and South Vietnam today, the communists are in control. And but for that wonderful little man Ngo Dinh Diem, in South Vietnam, who has defended and that country so well they would now be in charge in South Vietnam ,
We know what mischief they have been up to in Laos. I am very glad to think that there are sobering forces in Laos which are calculated to produce some stability of government. But it has been for a long time just touch and go as to whether the Communists in that country would not get the upper hand. In which case the boundaries of influence of Communist China would be pushed another number of miles in the direction of Australia.
Thailand is not a powerful military country, nor indeed is it a country of old established and powerful self-government. Burma is, of course, outside the Commonwealth now living pretty constantly under threat. And therefore across this movement we have now for some years thrown SEATO the South East Asian Treaty Organisation whose annual ministerial meeting I attended in Washington this year. SEATO, with Pakistan in it; on the other side the Philippines in it. And apart from that, Thailand, Australia, Now Zealand, France, Great Britain, with other countries who are within what we call " the protocol area" the countries we have, in effect, guaranteed from aggression in order to preserve this defence against the onrush of Communism.
One of the things that emerged in Washington was this and it is quite important: that it is easy to talk about South-East Asia, the free world, as we might call it, in South East Asia - the SEATO countries and so on - easy enough to talk about those. But we talk about them, primarily, as if they were a geographical area: " Oh, yes; that's South-East Asia". But you can't look at it in that completely simple fashion. You can't just say: " That's South-East Asia" unless you are creating in South-East Asia a community of feeling, a sense of community. And so far that is not entirely present. I warned my colleagues at that Conference that the Russians not the Russians for this purpose, the Chinese, the Communists, wherever they are are the great experts in the world at fishing in troubled waters. And that if there wore differences between Thailand and Cambodia as there are or differences between Thailand and Laos, or between one country or another out there, then those differences would be exploited by the Communists; and that therefore we must do everything that wo can to eliminate them.
Now I am sorry to have taken so long on that because I just want to say a few words to you about Now Guinea.
I don't need to say as much as I would have needed to say if Mr. Hasluck had not made his statement in the House comparatively recently. It was a magnificent statement of Australia's relation to Now Guinea, our policies of the past and our policies of the future. It wasn't a Party statement: it was made on behalf of Australia. That ground was covered, covered the activities of two administrations, at least one of them Labour and one of them my own. I thought it was something, a story, of which we could be proud.
It is a very great misfortune that there should be people in our own country who so little understand what has been going on in New Guinea, so that they voice their criticisms frequently, most frequently, at third hand, and have those criticisms advertised to the world. The truth is that we in New Guinea we Australia, in New Guinea have a remarkable record, particularly since the war which left New Guinea completely debilitated in terms of administration, just the mere broken remnants of administration; so that starting from the end of the war everything had to be built up, as we might say, from scratch. I would like everybody to read the story of what has happened since the war, because it is a good story. And the interesting thing is that the Trusteeship Council, of which Australia was one of the promoters, has always taken a favourable view of what we have been doing,. But we go on: we are quite confident that we are in the right direction, because we believe that in due course New Guinea will become a self governing community. And we hope that when it does, it will make its own choice of friendship and continuous association with Australia.
Well there it is ladies and gentlemen: that is a very imperfect sketch of some of the problems that surround us. We have to get used to looking at them, thinking about them and solving them. It is only in that way that we will be able to live with happiness in the new world. If we continue to think too frequently that we live in an old world, with old problems, then we shall miss the whole point about the new, and we shall end up by being unhappy at novelty, in a world in which we should have welcomed it, and learned to live with it, and to improve it, and to understand it.
Goodnight ladies and gentlemen.