SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER THE RT. HON. SIR
RCERTMrTNZIES, ON T1IE OCCASION OF A GoADITATION
CEiEMONIAL C0ITFELRTUG ON ! IIM THE HONODLARY DEGREE
OF DOCTOR OF LAWS, AT THE UNIVERSITY OF
EDINBURGHq SCOTLAND ON ! st JULY, 1963
Your Royal Highness, Mr. Chancellor, My Lords and Ladies
and Gentlemen This is every bit, as His Royal Highness said, a
tremendous day in ily life. You know, in Australia we address
our political people with a certain amount of offensive good
humour. Nobody who leads a party or leads the Government in
Australia is ever allowed to suffer from the illusion that he
is important, because he really isn't and every time Ive gone
abroad I have found here or there, a degree of importance that
I have never been able to sustain in my own country.
Of course I have been particularly honoured and delighted
today. I went through the Ceremony of the Thistle this morning
at St. Giles and came out as proud as Lucifer. I hadn't tripped
on my robe, I hadntt stood in the wrong place. Everybody
seemed to be quite content, even the Lord Lyon' But when I
knew all that time that this was to be followed by receiving
a Degree at Edinburghq I would like you to understand how full
my cup of happiness was. This is for me, and for my wife, and
for my elder son who has been here today, the greatest day in
our lives. And, of course, this Ceremony is added to by the fact
that His Royal Highness is your Chancellor. I've never been a
Royal Highness myself, I've never had to suffer the slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune which come to His Royal Highness0o
And we in Australia of course, know him, We thinkq on the
whole we know him pretty well. He has been out sometimes in
great ceremony on a full Royal visit. Twice he's been out
once to the Olympic Games, once to the Empire Games in a
fairly informal sort of fashion and he has won a place in the
Australian. heart which is second only tc that occupied by our
Sovereign lady, The Queen. But perhaps if he had just been His
Royal Highness Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, th.. se are
very considerable attributes, but he has in his own proper
person, added to them titles all around the world, which are
appropriate to be mentioned in this famous University on this
occasion because if there is one man in my own time who has
raised the banner of education, who has encouraged the young,
who has encouraged scholarship, who has encouraged widening the
frontiers of scientific and technological knowledge in the world,
it is your Chancellor, so that I venture to say that, at the end
of his liLfe, which is bound to occur in another sixty years, not
earlier I trust, but at the end of his life as he sits., as we
are all supposed to sit as we get older, by the fireside,
meditating on our sins of the past, extracting a little pride
from the few good things that we might have done that applies
to me he will be able to look back and know that nobody has
done more than he has in these great causes to which I have
referred and, therefore, while it is a singular honour for me to
be given a D6gree at the University of Edinburgh it is a profound
honour, an unforgettable honour, to receive it at the hands of
Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh.
-2-
Now, I must say that my sponsor today I thought did
me rather well, rather better than well, perhaps, and I will,
in future, forever love him forj. two reasons. One, he delivered
his address in English, I mention that Si:, because a few
years ago, some error having occurred at Oxford, they made me
a Doctor of Laws, a Doctor of Civil Law of Oxford? and they
had a variety of people, some distinguished scientists and
even Margot Fonteyn, who was to receive a Degree as a Doctor
of Music, of lovely gown, one of these things you see but
rather lacy, and lovely, and we paused at the School of
Divinity where we were given our tickets, you know our
instructions. I didn't have any today, so I wouldn't know.
But it turned out that every one of the Honorary Graduands
had the public oratorts speech in Latin and in English but
I was first I didn't get my copy until afterwards and so
I stood in front of Lord Halifax, who was the Chancellor and
I heard the public orator, in an impeccable modern pronunciation
of Latin make a speech about me, and I had to follow it,
He made two jokes, as all public orators do, particularly when
they are speaking in Latin, and I say with boastful Menzies
pride that I laughed at the right time, and when I came in
here today, I was rather apprehensive because I thought, well
now, I can cope with the public orator speaking in Latin in
the modern pronunciation, but how can I cope with the public
orator speaking in Latin with a Scots accent? And so I want
to say thank you very much for having delivered me from this
embarrassment, The other reason that I was delighted with him was that
he did say something about what might almost be regarded as an
adventitious association that I have with the University
development in Australia It is one of the remarkable things
in our generation, not perhaps mine but the current generation,
that when the Second World War ended, the first result in my
own country and, I think, Sir here was that there was a
tremendous upsurge of demand for University training. In my
own University I think there were 1,500 undergraduates, in my
own town, and within a year or two after the war there were
6,000, 7.000, 8,000, and the result has been that the pressure
of demand on universities for university training has been
phenomenal. The last estimate that I saw was that, by the
turn of the century, in Australia, with a population of something
under 11 millions at the present time, there would be
100,000 undergraduates and this of course, has put the most
tremendous pressure on universities. It is beginning to
produce new universities. It is beginning to present problems
of the most tremendous kind.
Ten years ago, realising these as a university man
myself, I performed one of the greatest acts of trickery ever
known in Australian politics. I say nothing about your
political scene I don't understand it. But I was in
England and I saw Sir Keith Murray, Chairman of the University
Grants Commission, and I said to him in a rather beguiling
fashion, " What about coming out and being the Chairman of a
Committee to investigate the university position in Australia?"
And he said as a few other people have said in the last week
or two, " Well I can't come unless Harold approves," because
Harold Macmillan was then the Chancellor of the Exchequer, you
see, and so I spoke to Harold Macmillan and he was in an
amiable and relaxed mood, and he said, " Certainly, old boy, yes,
why not?" He hadn't experienced then any of these recent
vicissitudes this is ten years ago and so I stole Keith
Murray. 0o0 / 3
-3
And then we set up a power~ ful Committee and it was only
after I had set it up that I confessed to my Treasurer, or,
as they would say in London, the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
what I was doing, and he said, " Oh yes, old man well if you
think that's all right, that's all right0" l " Well, I said,
" I want to warn you that these Committees are not economical.
This might cost a few million pounds," you see, and he being
in an amiable mood, said, " Well old boy, if you feel that way,
that's all right," and the result has been, you know, one step
leading to another as it always does, but we are now spending
almost as many millions as a Commonwealth on universities as
we were spending tens of thousands when this thing began and
in the result, it has meant that the universities, confronted.
by utter bankruptcy with this pressure of demand on their
resources, have been able to expand, to build.
I see among my audience this afternoon the Vice-Chancellor
of the University of Melbourne. If he could be persuaded to
break all the rules of a Vice-Chancellor of the University of
Melbourne and become vocal, he would tell you that this has
revolutionized the position of the universities. Or course
the work is not over. The work is beginning. We have great
p-foblems. I wonder whether we can cope with 100,000, 200,000,
whatever it may blxi, of prospective undergraduates by following
along the old paths, by having the university of the old
pattern. I think the time is coming when we must vary our
activitiese Graduate, postgraduate, the higher levels of
learning, the Ordinary pass degree, the Technological Institute,
the Technical Institute these present the most tremendous
problems to us and in all the work that I have to do about this,
and all the thoughts that I have to engage in, I confess, once
More, I have been remarkably assisted by the modern, forwardlooking,
active view of your own Chancellor. This is of
tremendous importance for the future of the world,
For all that is a generalisation, yes, but not so
generalised, perhaps, as you might think, because it is a
problem that comes to all of us. But to come here into this
place in Scotland is to be reminded that there are certain
foundations of learning which continue to be of supreme importance
for mankind, Scotland, of course, and I speak without any bias
on this matter, Scotland has a unique place in the history of
learning in the world. The farm worker of one hundred years
ago saying, " No, no, Jock must go to school, He must do something
better", and Jock, himself, with his son saying, " He m-ust go to
Edinburgh he must have a Degree". Learning, the ambi. ticn for
learning, the instinctive sense that the cultivated mind not
the snobbish mind the cultivated mind, is essentia3 for mankind,
has found its expression in Scotland more, I believe, than in
any other country of the world0 And, of course Edinburgh
itself with its ancient history embodies the whole of this idea,
And th3 idea is not just to be able to take a Degree, to got a
licence to practise the Law, or a licence to practise Medicine
or whatever it may be. The whole idea has been to reach out
to something which is at the moment, beyond you but which you
may attain with efforz and with character and with skill,
As Robert Browning said and it deserves to be the motto
of all great universities " A man's reach should exceed his
grasp, or what's a Heaven for." This is it a man's reach should
exceed his grasp and so you don't want to have coming out of
universities people who will say, even inadvertlentl y at some time
in the future, " Well, I finished my education in 1961.11 The
# a a 0/ 4
people who finished their education when they took a Degree
are not worth much, They may earn adequate incomes, but
they're not worth much. " A man's reach should exceed his
grasp, or what's a Heavurñ for," and so the graduate continues
to be the student. TMe graduate continues to feel that there
are, in the intellectual sense, fresh worlds to conquer,
And if you, of Edinburgh, realise as I do, and perhaps you do,
how much this great tradition in this mother country of so
many of us, has done to stimulate the minds and spirits of
people, to make them feel the future is more important -than
the past, you would share my profound pride on this occasion,
This is a great day for me; it's a great day
for us, as I said, I am grateful to you, I am proud of the
honour which you have done me, and I hope tl'at in time to
come, when they write those rather cynical obituaries that
they write about all public men and I am something of that
kind in my own country they will te prepared to say that, at
any rate, the fact that Edinburgh honoured him in this fashion
is a mark in his favour.