OPENING OF RED CROSS HOUSE, HOBART PLACE,
CANBERRA. A. C. T.-19th SE-PTEMBER7 1961+
Speech by thie Prie inister, the Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Menzies
Sir Roy and Lady Oliver, Your Excellencies and Gentlemen:
Before I forget, I declare the building oper,.
( Laughter) ( Applause) Whatever I say hereaf. ter will be just
a trifling bonus because the job is now done.
I was very interested in what Sir Roy was saying.
Of course, he is an old Chief of Staff, and chiefs of staff
seldom miss an opportunity of getting a little money or a
project out of the Government. ( Laughter) I was therefore
a little disappointed when he comforted you by telling you
that with these admirable and highly solvent tenants in the
building, they will wipe off the debt. I was sorry that he
said tha. I thought he was going to say, " Well, that will
help us, but unless we get a lot more hel~ p from you people,
we will have a debt hanging around our neck."' This is a
point that I make for him. ( Laughter) Because, of course
this is just a small building. When Canberr'a . has risen i
its fullest state, this will have to be added to, This -will
I hop0, ir, due course, Dr. Newman Morris, become the national
headquarters of -U* he Red Cross in th'a Capital of this co'intry.
Therefore I suggcst to Sir Roy that he ought to
always keep on his face that st..--ige l2ook of a man who is
yearning for somebody to produce some money. It is quite
easily done; as I tell. you, in the past I have seen him do
it, ( Laughter) sometimes with~ success.
It Is a very interesting conjunction of events
today because putting it in round terms the Red Cross
Movementl-is 160 years old and the Australian branch or organisation
is 50 years old and therefore we are dealing with an
organisatien which already has achieved considerable seniority.
T was reminded, when I was thinking -about this matter today,
that the founder of Red Cross was and I hesitate to pronounce
his name because of local rules about French names but I
will call him Andre Dunant and if anybody says it's " Dunant"
I accept correction. ( Laughter)
But he was a very remarkable man in two respects.
One was that the battlefield of Solferino filled him with the
most tremendous ideas that something ought to be done about
the care of the wounded and it ought to be done without having
regard to sides, it ought to be done in a broad sweep of
humane action, and that nations themselves ought to subscribe
to a convention so that all those who needed attention as a
result of battle could have it irrespective of what side they
had been on. This is elementary enough to us today who have
inherited the benefit of this matter, but in those days, an
idea of immense novelty but of course, so profoundly humane
in its conception that It took on and before long, most if
not all of the nations of the worldahad understood it, subscribed
to it. The second interesting thing about it was that he
drew some inspiration, a great deal of inspiration from the
work of Florence Nightingale. You know, Sir, I speak with
hesitation in the presence of distinguished Generals and
people of that order, but really, the Crimean War, and the
events which followed on it, are very difficult to understand 0 oeeo./ 2
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today. It seems an almost inexplicable contest. It did
two things, anyhow, in the case of Australia. It honoured
the names of its not frightfully competent Generals by
attaching their names to hotels and items of clothing ( Laughter),
and so we have a raglan sleeve, a cardigan jacket, and hotels
in the suburbs in Australia were built at that time richly
garnished with their names, and this, I think, is very satisfactory.
If they were now alive and looked back on it they
might feel that they had done better than they knew. ( Laughter)
But the remarkable thing about it was the conflict,
so difficult to understand as we look at it over a hundred
years later, gave rise to two most astonishing developments.
The first of them, of course, will always -be associated with
the name of Florence Nightingale. I think people are
occasionally inclined to think of her as the Lady with the
Lamp, as a rather benign and kindly creature, who soothed the
brows of those who needed attention in the Crimea, She wac
of course, one of the most astonishing women of the nineteenth
century, one of the most a stonishing people, male or female,
of the nineteenth century.
It isn't for nothing that Lytton Strachey, when he
wrote abcut eminent Victorians, included her in his relatively
small galle:' y, because she had enormous strength of will,
tremendous ability, a superb capacity for telling politicians
where they got off, considerable fam.-' ly influenca which 3he
didn't hesitate to use. She was responsible herself for the
whole modern character of nursing. Indeed, I 3lways delight
to remember the story of Queen Victoria, herself a very strongminded
woman, always sure that she was right and, sometimes,
let it be admitted, she was right but not always, But when
she had had Florence Nightingale up to tePalace in audience,
and had listened to her and had fallen under the spell of her
personality, she wa~ s reported, as many of you will recall to
have said " Ah, what a mindl She ought to be in 2-harge o
the War Office," ( Laughter)
Nc, w, Florence Nightingale; we can have all sorts
cl, views, very properly quite sentimental about her. The
fact is that this woman was one of the great creative people
of the last century. She created the whole modern conception
of hospital treatment and of nursing and she did it at a time
when it was considered faintly disreputable to become a nurse,
when the popular image of the nurse was the one created by
Dickens you know when he decribes Sairey Gamp who had a
little container on the mantelpiece and took a drop of it when
she felt disposedo ( Laughter) This was a revolutiun that was
created by Florence Nightingale. She is one of the great
people in our entire history, And then this was followed up,
partly I am sure as a result of the stimulus of hier example,
by the creation by this great Frenchman of the Red Cross idea
and of the Red Cross organisation.
Now, Sir Roy Dowling who has devoted a tremendous
amount of energy I think with great public spirit to this
matter, has told you something about its history, something
about its numbers today, something about its growth, and all
this, of courses is tremendously stimulating. I just want to
supplement what he said by mentioning one point.
In time of war the work of the Red Cross becomes
vividly clear in the public eye. Nobody doubts its enormous 0 a 00
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value, its tremendous and sacrificial efforts in time of war,
and in time of peace, we are a little inclined to think
" Well, that's over" and also to think 111dell that canli
happen here" and there is threfore a danger that the Red
Cross may come to be regarded as something that falls back
into a state of hibernation between one war and another.
Now, I just want to say to you that you can't in
the event of war bring into existence a mass of' services of
this kind without notice in a week or two, any more than you
can bring into existence armed forces to perform th. eir tasks
at a notice of a week or two. There must be tremendous
preparation when we are in a state of peace and the more
the Red Cross organisation is sustained, not onl-y by the money,
by the understanding and moral support of the people of
Australia, between wars or after a war, the better it will
be for our efficacy in these fields whatever may come.
I beg of ' you, don't let us fall into the error of
thinking that wilen all is quiet the Red Cross doesn't matter
and that when all is not quiet we may suddenly expect to find
a fully sustained and well organised Red Cross, ready to do
its work at th3 drop of a handkerchief'. In otber words, we
must, I 1elieve ir Australia keep our interest in the work of
the Red Crcss always up to date, keep our personal support
up to date, keep our financial support up to date, because it
is only iii that w~ ay that when the big strains come on to it,
it will be able to sustain them and perform its remarkable
lunction-on behalf of humanity.
And so. Sir ' Roy, I amn delighted to think that6 in this
city, increasingly becoming recognised as the capita). of this
nation, you have this building, a building which will serve
as a constan't reminder-to peopl~ e of the significance of what
goes on. I dontt wanc to say any more thrn that because I
don't subscribe to this old doctrine that when people come and
sit in -the shade and feel cold, they ought to be compelled
to listen to politicians ad nauseam. I don't believe in that
at all, so I'm not going to detain you, but I want to say to
you, Lady Oliver, that I accapt your invitation with very
great pleasure* I am delighted to find that somebody like
yourself, distinguished in office and in person, has been
so actively engaged in this matter.
I publicly acknowledge -the great services that have
been rendered by Sir Roy, by Dr. Williams, by all those who
have been mentioned; I needntt go through them, one by one.
I would like to extend my own congratulations to the Minister
for the Interior and to the Chairman of the Capital Commission
because a great deal ol co-operation has performed itself in the
bringing about of the result that we see today,
There's a rule in Parliament, in the Standing Orders,
and as I don't need to tell some of you, the Standing Orders
are an interesting document, never observed by presiding
officers or members, but there is a rule in the Standing Orders
against tedious repetition. I shall now in the highest
tradition of Parliament, violate that rule. I will engage in
repetition. I declare the building open.