AUSTRALIA CLUB
Speeches at the Dinner held at the
Dorchester Hotel in honour of the
RT. HON. R. G. MENZIES, C. H.,
Q. C. ( Prime Minister of the Commonwealth
of Australia) on Monday
22nd June, 1959 with introductory
remarks by H. R. H. DUKE OF
GLOUCESTER, K. G. ( President of
the Australia Club), who was in
the Chair
SPEAKERS: THE RT. HON. HAROLD MACMILLAN, M. P.
proposing the toast of Australia
and
THE RT. HON. R. G. MENZIES, Q. C.
who responded
37 Dover Street,
London, W. I.
July, 1959.
H. R. H. DUKE OF GLOUCESTER
Gentlemen; On behalf of the Australia Club, I welcome our
distinguished guests. I thank them for honouring us and enabling
us to make this a unique and historic occasion.
I have often dined at Vintners Hall in the City where they
boast a room where five kings were entertained at one meal.
But some of those kings were captives, whilst our Prime
Ministers and ex Prime Ministers are freemen and have never
been captive to anything but their ideal of service to their countries,
the British Commonwealth and Empire, and to world
peace. For me, personally, this is a great occasion: to have under
my control, assuming that to be a fact, such a posse of Prime
Ministers, or should I say a " pride", is something of which
nightmares are made, but in reality is an enormous pleasure and
honour. Looking at them, I am reminded of something one of their
great predecessors-Disraeli-said exactly one hundred years
ago: " The Australian Colonies, though now in their youth,
but in the youth of giants, have already, as it were, thrown their
colossal shadow over Europe." Well, 1 am glad we have here
in our English team a figure whose shadow, mentally and physically,
grows no less.
But I feel that these words of Disraeli's could not better describe
the powerful figure and personality of that great and
representative Australian, Mr. Menzies, whom we delight to
honour tonight.
I now call upon the Prime Minister of England, Mr. Harold
Macmillan.
THE RT. HON. HAROLD MACMILLAN
Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury:
Your Royal Highness, your Excellencies, My Lords and
Gentlemen, this is a great responsibility which has been entrusted
to me tonight to propose the Toast of the evening-
Australia-and in the presence of so many great men, and
above all my master, leader, chief, it needs a very bold man to
dare to speak. You described, sir, in a generous phrase the proper
way of giving an account of a number of Prime Ministers,
" a pride of Prime Ministers." I think it was a less generous
undergraduate who was asked how you should describe a number
of heads of colleges and answered at once, of course, " a
Lack of Principals". ( Applause.)
This is a very great occasion for me because it recalls to my
mind that it is only eighteen months ago-it seems only a
month ago--since I had the honour of a visit to Australia.
That was indeed for me an unforgettable experience. I never
can be sufficiently grateful for the kindness which you showed
me, Mr. Menzies, and all the people of Australia showed to my
wife and myself on every occasion. There were, of course, one
or two moments of disenchantment. I remember as I drove.
into Sydney on my first arrival there I was amazed to see the
great numbers of people on the streets and issuing from all
houses; a huge crowd had turned out to welcome me, far
greater, I thought, than any similar crowd could ever be in the
old country, and I was deeply touched. Then someone told
me the truth. It was six o'clock ( laughter), that dramatic hour
when they open in England and shut in Australia. Of course,
I was duly impressed by Sydney and I described it, if I remember,
in a speech written for me by my advisers as " the greatest
City in the British Commonwealth, if not in the world". Naturally
a few days later I said the same thing about Melbourne.
( Laughter.) It is a great opportunity for me tonight to have been chosen
to propose this Toast, if only because it gives me the chance of
expressing publicly the deep impression which was made upon
me by that visit, and then I am able to pay my tribute to our
guest of honour tonight, my friend-I am privileged to call him
my friend-a great man, a great Prime Minister, a great figure,
perhaps the greatest figure in our Commonwealth today.
( Applause.) As you know, quite apart from a spell in office between 1939
and 1941. he has now been Prime Minister without a break for
ten years. That is not a bad not-out innings even for an Australian
( laughter) and he has not just stayed in but he has scored
quite a lot of runs. I must say at times I envy him. Then he
seems to do it so easily; he organises his life so well that every
June ( laughter) happily we find him in London-Mid June,
about the time the Test Matches are coming on. I never get
there. All I can do is to sneak away from the Cabinet room
and have a look at the tape every now and then.
Under the guidance of Mr. Menzies, the stature of Australia
in the world and her influence in world Councils have increased
beyond all recognition. I remember when I was a boy the
popular imagination in this country was that Australia was a
land of sheep farmers and cricketers, especially fast bowlers.
Well, you have since added tennis players, golfers, and four
minute milers to the cricketers, and, by the way, may I make my
passing tribute to the cricketers and say how much we admire
their skill in the arts of fielding and occasionally of throwing,
( laughter.) But perhaps I had better be careful about that or I
shall be no-balled. You have sheep farmers, cattle farmers and
you have a great deal else, too and if we look back only a generation,
how extraordinary has been the growth. Thirty three
years ago--I will take that year because it was one of the years
in which England won the ashes, but it had another distinction.
In that year the Imperial Conference met at which the philosophy
of the modern Commonwealth, the economic philosophy was defined
for the first time and there is in a corridor in Downing
Street a picture of the members of that Conference, dressed in
what seems now rather an old fashioned. I would even say Teddy
Boy, appearance. But sitting in the front row is the leader of
the Australian delegation, your Prime Minister of the day, a
certain Mr. S. M. Bruce; how proud we are to have this great
man with us today. ( Applause.) That Conference was the
beginning of a new era not only for Australia but for the whole
British Commonwealth. It also marked in a sense the end of
the old era for Australia, for it was the last year in which the
Commonwealth Parliament sat in Melbourne before moving to
Canberra. In those 33 years Australia has indeed travelled a
long road. Her achievement has been staggering and one of
which every Australian has a right to be proud.
Let us think first of the economic achievement. Australia
is still, as she then was, largely a primary producing country;
at least three quarters of her exports are in primary exports and
we, I am happy to say, in the United Kingdom still take about
one third of these exports. In this way, I think, we have contributed
to the stability of the Australian economy. In the
same way, you take a great proportion of your imports from the
United Kingdom. We are thus involved together and the more
we are the better it will be for both of us. But of course, each
country has its problems which have come with this generation
and indeed it would be strange if it were not, for you cannot
take the world twice in a single generation, break it up into
pieces, and then expect everything to go on exactly as before.
The amazing thing is how much goes on as before and in the
same spirit. Our economy has changed. At the moment we
have an abundant supply, almost more than an abundant supply,
of coal. We lack ashes, of course ( laughter), but you seem
strangely unwilling to export these. In these years, Australia
has made an immense stride forward in the industrialisation of
that country. Her economy now shows a great variety and, of
course, that very process brings with it, as we know so well, new
problems, and hence the revision of the 1926 Agreement which
we made by agreement with you in 1957.
But leaving for the moment the economic side, it is in the
political stature in the world councils that Australia has made
such a significant advance. Her net-work of diplomatic representation
has spread over the whole world, and its quality has,
if I may say so, steadily grown and served to enhance Australia's
prestige, and with this expansion of Australia's political ties has
marched the inevitable increase in her world wide interests and
her world stature. In Commonwealth countries, partly no
doubt from the character of the Prime Minister and partly also
because of the strength and power of the country itself, Australia's
voice is heard more and more convincingly; nor can we
forget this-that whenever we are in trouble or any difficulty in
the Old Country, we know we can look with absolute certainty
to the support and loyalty and sympathy of the Australian people.
( Applause.) They came from the same stock, share the same
loyalties, and many of the common interests. There are, of
course, some countries-I am sorry to harp on this theme but as
it is being broadcast to America I thought it would be good for
them--although unintelligible it would be good for them. There
are some countries and one's heart bleeds for them, who do not
yet play cricket. At the time of the 1954 Geneva Conference
a British diplomat was said to have observed to a South Korean
colleague " I see your Foreign Minister is batting first on our
side". The Korean was a little at a loss, but answered " Yes,
I hope he makes first base ( laughter). All the same, I think
this is a great gift, a symbolical gift, which England has given
to the World. The Speaker's wig and Mace and the Umpire's
white coat may perhaps be said to be legacies to the world of
which England can be justly proud, for, after all, they both
embody the same general idea.
I am glad that the Prime Minister of Australia has been able
to do so much travelling. He fixes these things very well; he
has been to Canada; he has seen for himself how the new concept
of Commonwealth interdependence is growing. He is a
frequent visitor to the Indian sub-Continent and to New Zealand,
and he has been able to include South Africa in his travels.
In a divided world the Commonwealth has, I believe, more to
offer than ever before to the cause of peace. Australia not only
takes her general responsibility but her regional responsibility.
Her membership of her keen interest in the Colombo
plan activities, her intelligent struting of Asian affairs-all these
have marked out for her a constructive and valuable role in the
future, and I think I ought to add, as Prime Minister of the
United Kingdom, a special word of thanks for all Australia has
done for us at Woomera.
Now, sir, since it is your guest and not me you wish to hear,
I would now conclude, if I might be allowed to do so, with a
few words on a wider theme. We live in an age, I expect we
always have done so, in which the voice of the croaker, the
moaner, the faint-hearted and the cynical, are often heard, and
now, of course, amplified by all our modern means of communication;
these people declaim to us in flat and boring voices how
they see coming the decline and fall of the British Empire. What
they are really witnessing, if only they had the eyes to see, is
something vastly different. It's re-birth. The curtain is not
falling on our British story; it is rising on a new Act and as the
transformation takes place, from a dependent Empire, into a
free partnership of independent and interdependent nations
under the Crown as the head of the Commonwealth. Of course,
in this process complicated and different problems will arise.
They arose, also, in its foundation. We must surely approach
this new phase in a firm spirit of confidence and faith, and
fortunately this is the spirit of Australia and I firmly believe of
the Old Country, too. ( Applause.) ( T
Mr. Chairman, this habit of denigration is nothing new-it
runs right through British history. It has sometimes been
powerful and sometimes partly answered. I would venture, if
you would allow me these few moments more, to read to you a
sentence from Macaulay-the essayist, not the Yorkshire bowler
( laughter). Writing 120 years ago, he used these words at a
period when it seemed to many that the whole history of England
was finished and would end in chaos and revolution. He
said:-" We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error
who tell us that society has reached the turning point, that we
have seen our best days but so said all who came before us with
just as much apparent reason. On what principle is it", he
went on to ask " that when we see nothing but improvement
behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before
us". All that I saw of Australia during my visit convinced me
of the immense future that lies before her. Her material reserves
are vast, and so too are the moral qualities that will allow
people of Australia to make the best use of those resources. We
in the old country can rejoice at this prospect which opens up.
Our two countries have done much together and been through
much together. We have shared sorrows and we have shared
triumphs. Ours is a partnership that will endure. Together
we have battled for freedom and we have won and together we
will work to give the world peace and prosperity. ( Applause.)
THE RT. HON. R. G. MENZIES
Your Highness, my Lord Chancellor, my Lords and Gentlemen,
I always feel at a singular disability when I come after the
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, my friend, Harold
Macmillan, who has a superb technique. When called on to
speak, he rises looking at if this were an entirely unexpected
honour ( laughter) he gazes around the audience quite diffidently
as much as to say " Pray help me! ( Lauglter) and then delivers
his magnificent speech! Whereas 1, of course, get up full of( T
brash confidence ( laughter) hoping that somebody will be hostile
( l aughter) and have to follow himi! I must say [ 1was a little uneasy
at the beginning of his speech when he referred to Disraeli,
because, while I am not a master of history like the Prime
Minister of the United Kingdom, I have some sketchy retrospec
tive recollections ( laughter) of him, and when he referred to
Disraeli in a strange context, because he was referring to the
fact that there were former Prime Ministers here, I thought he
was going to quote that rather nasty little bit of Disraeli's when
he said that he saw sitting opposite to him a row of extinct volcanoes!
( Laughter.)
Well, I am not yet extinct ( laughter) thanks to some extraordinary
inadvertence on the part of the Australian electors
not so long ago. But I think I Would like to say something
about some of those who are here at the top table. I would
like to begin by saying that I think that it is a remarkable
honour to be paid to anybody that Sir Winston Churchill should
have come here tonight. ( Applause.) That he is and was
always a volcano nobody will deny ( laughter) but extinct?-
nonsense, here he is! I am very glad to think, though I am iotherwise
sad about it, that what is being said here tonight is
being precipitated by modern art and science into another room
in which his wife and my wife are sitting. And so I hope you
will forgive me if I break the normal rules on such an occasion
by saying that everybody here tonight, and certainly everybody
in Australia, having as we have the deepest affection for the
great man, would like to send a message of deep affection to his
wonderful wife. ( Applause.)
I don't need to say anything about other people, perhaps, but
it is fascinating to me, as a man from the " back blocks", as you
might say ( laughter), to come into London and to be able to
read in one newspaper on one day " Attlee on Churchill on
Eden." ( Laughter.) This, I think, is most fascinating, and I
am lucky enough to have been Prime Minister of my own
country so long as to have sat under Attlee, under Eden, under
-the great Churchill. And this is, I think, one of those things
which for somebody like myself constitutes a sort of subtle title
of honour not to be forgotten. ( Applause.) I would like to
say to them how much I appreciate the fact that they are here;
I would like so much to say to Clem Attlee how much I am
delighted that he should have been here. ( Applause.) Indeed,
the last time I saw him was not in person but on that strange
and revolting instrument, the television ( laughter) in which he
was interviewed at great length and offered a series not of
lengthy views but singularly monosyllabic views on a great
number of affairs, and, as I sat and looked at it, I enjoyed it, I
envied it. You know, when a current politician is being interviewed
either on television, or on the wireless, or by the Press
in person and he is asked a question and he says " Yes" or " No",
he is regarded as something of a cad! ( Laughter.) And perhaps
they said that about my friend Attlee. Anyhow, he said
S" Yes", pulled the pipe out of his mouth and said " Rubbish"
and put the pipe back again. ( Laughter.)
One other thing I would like to say to you of a personal kind.
and that concerns not my old friend the Lord Chancellor but
my old friend the present Lord Chief Justice, because when I
opened the newspapers and for once believed what I read
( laughter) I saw that he had become, Hubert Parker had become,
Lord Chief Justice of England. ( Applause.) Beggared
as I am by politics, my memory is not entirely imperfect, and I
remember on a certain celebrated occasion in the Privy Council,
I had, purely ex-officio but also vocally led, two distinguished
lawyers of the English Bar. He was the second and I sent him
a cable, and the cable if he just does not mind my referring to it,
said this: " Isn't it wonderful. After all, there was a time
when for a solid fortnight in the Privy Council, I argued the case
and I had two juniors. One of them has been Lord High
Chancellor of England, and the other is now Lord Chief Justice.
After this, even my opponents in Australia can't say I have never
had any respectable period in my life." ( Laughter.)
Sir, I don't want to make a long speech-I think that would
be not appropriate-but, if you would allow me, I would like
to say just a word or two about my own Country, my own proud
Country, of which I am infinitely proud myself, something about
this Country, the Mother Country of the whole Commonwealth
and Empire, and perhaps a glancing reference to the state of
the World. Could you bear that? ( Hear, hear) because if you
could, I will be as brief as is decent about each of these three
matters. First of all, about my own Country. I do not think that it is
widely understood as it might be that Australia has gone through
a period of growth and development beyond the expectation of
anybody a decade or two decades ago. ( Hear, hear.) I
remember before the war, when we took the finest advice we
could get-that is to say, from economists and from statisticians,
both of whom are extraordinarily good men-retrospectively!
( Laughter) and they said to us, not only orally but in writing,
that Australia would, in due course, by about 1975, have 7
million people, and the population would then begin to decline.
I remember this so vividly; it coloured the whole of our policy
for quite a time. And here we are in 1959 with 10 million
people, and I assure you with every expectation of having 20 or
million people by the turn of the century. ( Applause.)
Now, it is a matter of great comfort to me-and I raise no
controversial issues about that-when I tell you that the population
of Australia is increasing, for the first time in recorded
modern history, at a greater rate per cent. than the population of
Japan. ( Laughter.) Now that is very important; that may, of
course, mean that the Japanese have accumulated certain
modern ideas ( laughter) but I would not wish to go into that
unduly. The fact is, however, that the growth of the population
in Australia both by migration and natural increase has
been, I think, the dominating factor in the development of my
Country ( hear, hear) because it is not merely a matter of having
more people: what counts is that all those who consider the
future of their various business enterprises, all those who consider
whether they are going to put money into a country, are
Salways and properly concerned to know that they have an increasing
constituency, and, in Australia, I think that that has
had the most remarkable results.
I think that nothing pleased me more as I came around the
world this time than to discover how. many people, who were
knowledgeable and significant emphasised their own surprise
at the fact that in a period in which our great staple commodities
like wool and base metals had had a sharp recession in price.
Australia had gone along with stability, with growth, with optimism
and that no recession of any kind had occurred. This is
something worth recording; it is worth thinking about because,
after all, it is not so many years, as my Lord Bruce will remember
so well, when a similar decline in export income produced
the most devastating results.
And similarly, when I came to this country, this wonderful
SCountry, this country which is at the very heart of our entire
inheritance, I find-and, as my colleague has somewhat offensively
reminded me, I am here quite frequently ( laughter) but
I find this time a spirit of optimism, a general air in the country
and outlook in the country, and, added to that, the objective
statistics of the country which persuade me completely that this
Country, battered as it has been twice in this century, battered on
behalf of mankind, as it has been twice in this century, is once
more resuming its position of success and confidence and courage
and leadership in the world! ( Applause.)
Any man who is so inveterate a traveller as myself is bound,
of course, to meet many people, and I have become somewhat
accustomed in recent years to that gloomy dyspeptic character, to
whom Mr. Macmillan made a glancing reference, that gloomy
realist, as he calls himself, who says: " Well, of course, old man,
let us begin by admitting that Great Britain is now a second-class
power." Oh, how I love those people! ( Laughter) a secondclass
power. And when you say to him: " And why, pray tell
me", if 1 may borrow an immortal expression, " do you think
Great Britain is now a second-rate power?" The wretched creature
will always answer by casting out mathematical tables.
" Well, you know, there are so many people; somebody else has
so many more; somebody else has only a few less, you see."
Gentlemen, this, if I may venture to use one of my favourite
expressions, is utter drivel! ( Laughter.) How long is it since
we became obsessed by mathematics, when we measured up the
quality of a nation. I can't remember in my reading of history
any time since the spacious days of the Great Elizabeth when in
this country people said " Well we are a third-rate power because
between us we muster fewer people than somebody else,
or somebody else." This is utter nonsense! This is merely
an arithmetical outlook on the world. The one thing that
matters, and matters today more than ever before, is the qualitative
outlook of the world. ( Applause.) Nothing will ever persuade
me, although I occasionally find my colleagues at Whitehall
a little difficult to deal with, nothing will ever persuade me
that this country, with all her Sister Dominions about her, in the
woorfd sth e Rwsuy Club, is not one of the great powers in the
world because she is. It is nonsense, it is defeatism, to get away
from that profoundly important idea, because, after all, the
greatness of a country, the greatness of a Commonwealth, the
greatness of the United States, Mr. Ambassador, with all its
enormous resources, is not to be cast out merely in terms of
numbers of people, or tons of steel. Its greatness depends upon
the quality of its contribution to the thought, the moral dignity,
the moral leadership of the world. ( Applause.)
Therefore, sir, I belong to those millions of people who like
to feel that when we think of our own Country, Australia, we
think of the British World; we think of the ancient homes of our
race; we think of those who have in every testing period been
not only leaders here but leaders in my own Country. Does
anybody suppose that when the war was on and the voice of
Winston Churchill came out around the world it was the voice
of one man, or the voice only of one group of islands in the
world? Forget about it-it was the voice of free men all over
the world, and, in particular, it was the voice of the people of
the British Commonwealth all over the world! ( Applause.)
I hope we won't fall into the elementary error of thinking that
when great events, dramatic torturing events, of that kind, are
over that we relapse and we get back into our own little groups
and we forget the marvellous unities produced by crises. I hope
we won't fall into that error. I hope-that the next time you meet
a man who talks about this Country as a second-rate power, you
will remember those famous words which have just occurred to
my mind: " I would grasp Metternich until I felt his
red, wet throat distilled in blood \ etwixt
these two hands." ( Applause.)
That, no doubt, is an incitement to violence and could not
be approved of, even by a former Home Secretary! ( Laughter.)
But all I mean to say is that in whatever vernacular you may
offer it, tell him-you know exactly what 1 mean
( Laughter)-what you think about his views!
Sir, as for the state of the world, I just content myself by
saying this, because time marches on, I have had the great
privilege myself in the last few days of having much discussion
with the Prime Minister here and his colleagues, about four
hours' discussion with Chancellor Adenhauer at Bonn, and about
three hours' of discussion with President De Gaulle in Paris, and,
more than ever, I am a believer in conference and in talk.
I know that those who can't talk very well have a rather
acute disregard for those who can. ( Laughter.) I know that
politicians are regarded as a somewhat dubious form of life, but,
believe me, talk is, perhaps, the most important thing in the
world. You have only to do what I have been doing in the
last few days to realise that there are misapprehensions in the
minds of people which can be removed only by talk, only by
conference. only by thrashing it out across the table.
And this is why I firmly believe that you can't have too many
conferences about the state of the world. Any differences that
exist are all the better for being isolated and looked at, because
the average difference when you look at it, when you discuss it,
disappears like a spilt piece of ice aream on a tablecloth. It is
very true-let's talk.
The present Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has said
this time after time; his very distinguished predecessor said it in
his usual vivid terms more than once. But I believe in conference.
People say to me: " Oh, the Geneva Conference, this has gone on
for weeks and nothing has happened. They have now
adjourned. Another flop." And some distinguished patriot,
who has a large-paying audience in some vehicle of information,
establishes his patriotism by publishing to the world: " All this
is nonsense. It is a failure."
Gentlemen, I want to say this to you. I do not believe that
honest talk between our kind of people and other kinds of
people was ever a failure, because, believe it or not, what is said,
what has been said at Geneva, gets known around the world.
Here in Great Britain, here in London, you are naturally
exercised about the state of Europe: so are we. Why should we
ignore the problems of Europe, because it is out of Europe that
the great crises of this century have come. But you must never
forget that in our corner of the world we lie offshore, in
Australia, and so does New Zealand, from a vast Asian
population, scores and perhaps hundreds of millions of whom
are not yet deeply committed either to the East or to the West.
as we call it; resistant to Communism but not completely
involved in what we call the broad scope of Western Policy.
But these are people who are moving up into the light of
self-government. Every time they hear or read an honest case
manfully presented, fairly presented, the kind of case that has
been presented at Geneva, in which there is no greed and no
injustice and no slavery, but on the contrary freedom from
slavery, for millions and millions of people, their minds must
be affected, and, as to the extent to which they are affected, they
are doubly affected when they find these noble and splendid
views opposed by dead silence, by blank negatives or by overt
S or codvert threats.
Gentlemen, don't forget that. Don't become too upset
because a conference at a certain time doesn't produce a
zoncrete result. I believe in my heart that everything that has
occurred at Geneva, that the whole presentation of the case of
the Free World has done infinite good to the cause of freedom,
and, nonetheless, because it is brutally rejected by other
people. ( Applause.)
In short, sir-and I have been too long already, but " in
short" means in short at last! ( Laughter)... never let us
forget that the struggle in the world, the struggle in the Cold
War is a struggle for the minds and hearts of ordinary men and
women all around the world... ( Hear, hear)... and in that
struggle for the minds and hearts of ordinary men and women,
the steady, faithful, honest presentation of decent policies and
decent proposals can never be overthrown.
Sir, it is for that reason that I am a great believer in
conferences. I hope that they will go on because I do not
believe for one moment that the leadership which has been
( r generously put forward by this country and by our great friends
in the United States of America is to be easily overthrown by
people who simply say " No, no, I will take when I can." They
won't take, they won't dare to take if the decent opinion of
hundreds of millions of normal people around the world is
against them. ( Applause.)
CONCLUSION. At the conclusion of the Dinner Viscount Bruce of Melbourne
expressed warmest thanks to H. R. H. Duke of Gloucester for
attending the Dinner and taking the Chair on this memorable
occasion. He mentioned -that an invitation had been sent to Sir Anthony
Eden but unfortunately through ill-health he had been unable
to come. Had he done so there would have been present all the
living past and present Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom
and Australia.
His Royal Highness thanked Lord Bruce for what he had said
and for the manner in which the Toast had been received.