OPENING OF ARTS BUILDING, UNIVERSITY OF
JESTERN AUSTRALIA, PERTH, W. A.
29TH APRIL, 1964
Speech by the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Menzies
Mr, Chancellor, Mr. Dean, Mr. Court and Ladies and Gentlemen
I see considerable changes since I was here last.
On the last occasion, as you have been reminded, I opened a
building belonging to what I suppose might be called the
Students Union. I received a very merry reception ( Laughter)
which I enjoyed, having led a few of them in my own time.
Today I am astonished to find the docility of the
students ( Laughter). They looked at us as we marched in here
with absolute respect ( Laughter). Jeli, it appeared to be so.
One or two almost had an appearance of veneration. ( Laughter)
At least it appeared to be so, and so these changes come, but
such is the fallibility of human memory that I ought to begin at
once by saying that I declare this building open. ( Laughter)
( Applause) You never know, I might do it again. It depends
entirely on whether, having made a few brief remarks, I look
around and my wife waggles an eyebrow at me to remind me that
I really ought to do it twice. ( Laughter)
Sir, it is a great pleasure to do this task because
it is a great pleasure to visit this University. I have always
had more than a sneaking idea that a university ought to be a
place that has some beauty, some charm, something to remember,
something more than a towering skyscraper as you see in some
cities, something that has atmosphere, something that in due
course will evoke memories, and I am bound to say that this
university is enviable in those respects. I know that some of
the new buildings are not, perhaps from one point of view, as
beautiful as others but then I am an old-fashioned Tory on
architectural matters. You see, I like this building; I think
it is wonderful, and one of the fascinating things to me is my
old friend, Professor Alexander, who has always masqueraded to
me over many years as a species of bolshevik ( Laughter)
( Applause) has been giving me from time to time broad hints
in a very friendly way that it is time I saw the error of my
ways, I'm delighted to find that at long last the wheel has
turned full circle in his case ( Laughter) and that we both
agree that this is a lovely building. So hero we are. This is
a new act. ( Laughter) I can say that about him because he is
an old friend of mine and I value his friendship and the fact
that he is a friend of nine was one of the reasons that helped
to persuade me to come over to perform this very pleasant task.
Now, Sir, it will hardly be said about me, though
I an the least scientific of mortals, that I am not interested
in science, the teaching of science, the development of science,
because when I look back on all the new science labs, that I
have opened at schools and upon various things that my own
government has been able to do, I realise that we have and
have, shown some practical understanding of the importance of
science, If I ever had a temptation to forget it then all I
would need to do would be to look around and see the Universities
Connission and see your representative on it, Professor Bayliss,
helped by a bias in favour of this university ( Laughter).
I wouldn't run any risk of not being aware of the importance
of science, but I always come back to the tremendous importance
in this world of the humanities. Now, I may have to say something / 2
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about this tonight; therefore I won't waste any powder and shot
on it because you will all be there tonight ( Laughter) and you
will have to listen to me a second time.
But, Sir, an arts building, designed to further the
study and understanding of the humanities, covering in its range
languages, ancient and modern, literature, history, philosophy,
all of these matters which are so easily forgotten in the modern
world where a lot of very successful people profess a distaste for
history. Indeed, wasn't it Henry Ford I who made that superb
remark whichreverberated around the world " History is bunk".
Well, that is one point cf view. It's a very poor point of view,
because I happen to be one of those who believe that one of the
first things, if you are to create a civilised man or woman, is
to induce in him or her some knowledge of men, past as well as
present, some knowledge of events, past as well as current,
because if there is anything calculated to bring proportion to
an otherwise educated r. ind, it is a knowledge of history, an
understanding of it; not an understanding simply of those things
that we used to have pushed into us when we wore very small
boys a long list of dates, of kings and battles but an
understanding of the great social development that has occurred
right through history in one country and another.
This is a necessary thing if we are to have a sense
of proportion if we are not to be in all our controversies
purely ad captandum as we too frequently are in the modern
world. It is so important to learn, not just from machinery,
from plant, from tust tubes important as all these things
are you must do more than that. It is necessary to learn
from men I will use " men" as including women for the sake
of brevity to learn from men. ( Laughter) Yes, I know, I see
the point you have made. Ihave known wcrenwhowere more long-winded
than men; I have known men who were nore long-winded than women.
It's a toss-up in the long run, but I will use " mon" as including
women in the best statutory fashion. We must learn from r. en, we
must learn from history, we must learn from literature.
Do you know that I an frequently shocked to discover
that there are r. en in the world of considerable scientific
attainments who are, when it cones to expressing themselves in
word or in writing, almost illiterate, and this is ridiculous,
on the face of it. Who can be a great scientific discoverer
unless he can convey to other people the nature of his discovery?
Who can conduct scientific research work of real value to the
people of the world unless he is able to explain it to other
people? Who, indeed, in any avenue of life can reach the top
nark unless he has the power of communication?
I have known a number of men in my life which is
now going on a number of rien of enormous distinction in some
particular field, whether it was in the field of military
activity or engineering or whatever it night be and when I found
them to be in the very top flight I suddenly discoverd by
contact with then that they had all these things the power to
express themselves with clarity and lucidity and justice so that
other people heard and understood and were prepared to follow.
Now this is so true, isn't it? And it is a very great pity to
find too many people, otherwise trer. ondously good at their
particular specialty who make some stumbling explanation of it
and who, when you put an enquiry say, " Well, anyhow, you know
what I mean." Now, the great function of a department of arts is to
produce balanced, educated, civilised people, not necessarily
specialists in some field but people who, having achieved a broad
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cultivation of the mind, are capable of quick learning, of human
understanding, of exposition and of objective judgment. This
is what I believe the humanities to be concerned about, whether
they achieve it through the teaching and study of literature, of
history, of languages, of philosophy or whatever may be, in the
broad curriculum. Now, Sir, it is a very interesting thing, I am sure,
because my friend. Professor Bayliss, as a member of the
Universities Commission, would bear this out, that although I
many of us thought that with all the concentration of the public
mind and headlines on physical sciences, on scientific discoveries,
on technological developments, from the more simple forms up to
sputniks and satellites I had thought that all this, by
romanticising these matters, would produce a tremendous growing
demand for space in the universities. Yet the fact is, so
far as I know there may be one or two exceptions the
restrictions on numbers going into the universities have needed
to be on the humanities side not on the science side. There is
a greater and growing demand on the humanities side so far than
there is on the science side, at least that was so the last time
I obtained some statistics about it.
I wonder why that is. In other words, I permit
myself, just for five minutes, to put the question to myself
and to you: Why does this come about? Why is there such a
demand on the arts courses? I think it is a very interesting
question and I sat down the other day to ask myself whether I
could think of the answers to it. Well of course, there was
one, a cynical answer, quite easy, and that would be that arts
subjects seem easier than scientific ones. That's a rather
cynical proposal. I have known some people who I think might have, in
a candid moment, said, " Yes, that will do me". You know, the
mathematicians....... although, of course you have a school
of mathematics in this department..... bu the mathematicians
are a horror to ordinary unmathematical people. There is one
thing I always thought about my colleagues who were great
mathematicians and that is that they had a slight advantage,
I might write a superb so I thought paper in English and
get 85 marks out of 100 because it was all a matter of opinion.
Same in history; same, with moderate concessions, in Latin
( Laughter) but my mathematical colleagues, they got 100 or they
got none. Well, I was almost among the none ( Laughter) and
therefore a lot of people I think, may imagine that it is
easier. I don't think here are too many who have that point
of view. I suppose there are some people who take up the study
of the humanities or some of then this certainly doesn't apply
to the classics because they think they call for somewhat less
precision of thought. And of course everybody here knows that
any man who engages in precision of thought, even in my humble
avocation, is always liable to be told that he is quibbling, that
he is pedantic or that there is some other incurable disease which
attaches to him. ( Laughter) And so there are quite a few people
who say, " Well, I like a little bit of looseness of thought.
I like a little bit of the broad sweep of humanity, old boy
you understand me? ( Laughter) and therefore I think I might be
attracted to become a Bachelor of Arts." Well, they are in a
hopeless minority too and in today's world I would have thought
a disappearing minority.
I have come to believe that there are very many
people in the world parents as well as students, who
instinctively react against what they feel to be a narrow
specialisation, who instinctively react against the idea that
a man should be educated for one specialty and for no other,
whereas in fact, he ought to be educated to have a broad view
of mankind, fitting him for a variety of occupations, because
he has developed his mind before specialising in some technical
matter. Now, there is a lot to be said for this, a groat
deal to be said for this view. I always like to remember if
there is one country in the world which, quite early in its
history, established a tradition of scholarship, it was Scotland,
where the ploughman's son was brought up, giving that he had
intelligence, to believe that he was not just to be a ploughman,
he was to learn something, he was to advance on the position
of his father, and how many ploughmen's sons in Scotland went
to Edinburgh or Glasgow and took degrees in arts, raising their
educational horizon, raising their general mental capacity a
tremendous number, a great tradition. And I suppose even in
Scotland there were people by whom we are all plagued from
time to time who said, " But this is useless learning. Why
learn Latin?" ( I'm sorry I didn't learn it better myself) And
if you replied, " Well, you will never really understand your
own language unless you understand at least something about
Latin," the answer is, " Oh, well, it's all right. It will do.
People will know what I mean, they will know what I am getting
at." This is really one of the important things in the world:
to have a breadth of study,
Now you look back in this century and some of us
at least, have lived right through this century. There hasn'f
been much deficiency, has there, in scientific exploration,
not much deficiency in scientific growth, some glorious triumphs
in the field of biochemistry and all these things that have to
do with the preservation of life, some dramatic, amazing and
sometimes horrible development in the great arts of destruction,
but could anybody say that thetwentieth century has been marked
by a growing understanding of human beings, by a better understanding
by one nation of another, by a greater realisation that
we are all human beings wherever we may be and that really all
human things ought not to be alien to us? Has there been any
adequate realisation of that? I venture to say not.
I believe that in the second half of this century
the proper study of mankind must be man in the true and vigorous
sense if we are to avoid marrying the advance of science to
constant or recurring human disasters. And that, Sir7 is why
I believe in the hunanities, because they serve humanity, because
they are vital to the survival of the human race, because in
their very name, they serve two purposes the humanist, the
purpose of the humanist, the purpose of the human being, living
as a social being, wherever he nay be in the world.
Now, Sir, this sounds awfully like a lecture on my
part but I am provoked to do it on an occasion of this kind and
before I open the building for the second timo ( Laughter), I
want to explain to you that I have had to be on my best behaviour
for today. I have had to give some rather shoddy imitation of
being intelligent ( Laughter) because I an speaking to you today
in the presence of two imen who have cost me and ny Government
nore than any other non I know. ( Laughter) 1
One of themlas over a long period of years disgorged
Commonwealth grants on a scale sometimes terrifying, but still
I am bound to admit he has never made a recommendation yet that
we have rejected. And the other one, of course, I have already
referred to the member of the Universities Commission.
Dear me, I remember when Keith Murray came out. I got him, and
I was in London and I borrowed him from Harold Macmillan and
got him out and set him up with a first-class commission of
enquiry and it was only when I had done all this that I was
game to tell the then Treasurer what I was up to. ( Laughter)
A bit of experience is not a bad guide on these matters
and so I kept dark until I had the Committee established and
then it went around and of course then it brought in its
recommendations. Dear me, oh I read them and I gave instructions
that they were to be circulated to Ministers on the
morning of the Cabinet meeting. ( Laughter) I got them all to
sit all day and at about midnight, I had a gene~ ral approval
for the recommendations. And that is how it all began. When
I look back on those modest beginnings -there were only about
œ 3OM in recommendations in those days -and I look at what these
boys do to me now well, every time I see Keith Murray
w, if ch is occasionally fortunately, I say to him, " 4hat a mild,
man you were". ( Laughtor)
However, Sir, this building is one of the results
and therefore, for the second time and I am like the character
in " Alice" you know, and what I say twice is right ( Laughter)
and so I say for the second time " I declare this building open"
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