SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER, RT. HON. R. G.
MENZIES, AT THE OPENING OF THE OVERSEAS TELECOMMUNICATIONS
CONFERENCE, 12 SPRING STREET,
SYDNEY, 28TH SEPTEMBER, 19529
Sir, I am very grateful to you for your very kind
words, but you struck a chill into my heart when you referred
to what I an about to say as an " inaugural address", because I
don't mind telling you that I said cheerfully to one of your
Masters here today " How long do I go, about 12 minutes?" and I
distinctly got the impression that that would be acceptable unless
I could improve on it and make it eight. And to have
this signified by you, Postmaster-General, as an " inaugural address"
is really rather terrifying.
Still it is a family conference. I hope you will allow
me to talk to you in a family way. I have been attending
family conferences, meaning by that, conferences in which have
been represented Great Britain anid Canada and Australia and
New Zealand for more years than the locust has eaten. In fact
you wouldn't think to look at me, with my boyish outlines
( laughter) that the first one I attended was just on a quarter
of a century ago at No, 10 Downing Street.) and I have been,
by some accident or other, at many of them since and I enjoy the
family conference. And particularly is it a good thing when you
don't just meet to exchange a few ideas and produce one of those
famous communiques with which I have been associated in the past,
from which all meaning is religiously excluded. After all,
this is in a very true sense a business discussion. You are go
-ing to deal with a great enterprise, which I am sure we will
all approach in a most co-operative way. It is a reat enterprise
that will bring us even closer together and more securely
together in the field of oornmuni cations.
When I knew that I was to do this and I knew because
Charles Davidson ordered me to do it, and he's a Colonel, and I
therefore treat him with a certain amiount of meretricious respect,
I allowed my mind to play on the subject of'corimunications,
Well, it is, I think one of the remarkable things of
this century to look back I look back over my own lifetime
and to ask oneself: " In what field of humian activity is it that
the greatest developments have been m~ ade in my lifetime?". I
put on one side the subtle mysteries of the bio-chemists and the
people who have wrought their own miracles, but in ordinary human
relations the most remarkable miracle that has been wrought
has been in the field of communi cations.
One has only to look back on it, I am old enough to
remember the first time a telephone appeared in our village at
any rate and it filled me with such horror that I've never
quite got over it. My staff tell me that I'm tho rudest man on
the telephone they've ever known, Well that's only because,
when you pick that thing up and you're asked a question you say
" Yes" and hang up, or Then the other fellow hangs up.
But they tell me I am not very good at it, that it is all rather
abrupt, and perhaps the reason for that is that in my later
youth, which some of you will remember very well, it was a great
thing to get on to the telephone in the evening and talk to some
young woman with whom you were passionately in love, or thought
you were, Those conversations used to last about three quarters
of an hour. They were not conversations they were interrupted
by long silences while each partner to this curious transaction
tried to think of something amusing to say, and failed hopelessly.
But the telephone well, look at it, you find yourself
on one side of the world and you say " I'd like to speak to somebody
in Australia", or " I'd like to speak to somebody in the
United States" or " the United Kingdom" and quite frequently you
bet through. That, I think, is fascinating and not infrequent
-ly, when you have got through, you hear wha the other man has
to say! They tell me it's very " good, and of course it is a
miracle. The other day I had occasion to answer the telephone
in the morning.. They put a call through to me and it was my
wife and she was travelling to Tasmania aboard the new ferry
" The Princess of Tasmania". She launched it and they gave her
a free journey the first time. And I said to her " Hello.' Did
you have a nice voyage?", you see one of those fatuous remarks
and she said " We are at sea" t. Well that is a state
that I have been in so frequently that it took me nearly a minute
to realise that they were still on the water, using a radio
telephone, and really, it was as if you were in the same room
carrying on a conversation.
The telephone the telegraph, wireless, broadcasting,
television, those are all matters of communication, these are
all matters that bring us nearer to each other and now they
have discovered a now way of communicating wih ' the moon, by
hitting it. Well that is ag-ain an essay in the field of communication,
because it is perhaps occasionally overlooked that
all these satellites are sending their owm nessages just as
pilotless aircrafts send their own messages. We have the whole
of this simply phenomenal development of communic,: itions. You
exports take it for granted because you understand about it and
you can see the next step arising, but I assure you that when I
sat down and said to myself " Well there's the telegraph,
there's telephone, wireless, there's broadcasting, there's television
and there are satellites isn't this the most remarkable
revolution that's occurred, humanly speaking, in -the last quarter
of a century?". And I an sure that it is. I was talking
to a very distinguished business man the other day from another
country and we agreed that if understanding between countries,
and business contacts between countries could advance in the
next 10 or 20 years as phenomenally as communications between
countries and individuals have advanced, the world had a fair
chance of improving itself before this century is out. And
that, of course, is so true.
You have made the world smaller. It isn't your fault,
nor, I hope, is it m-. ine in particular, but it certainly isn't
your fault, that in the very period in which you have enabled
people almost literally to stretch out their hands and touch
each other, and speak with each Uther, as if they were face to
face, in that very period tho."* Cld has'% boen very busy
building up divisions of other kinds. We have had one of the
greatest waves of acute nationalism since the War that the World
has ever seen. Prejudices have been exacerbated, hostilities,
sometimes very bitter ones, have been played on, some of the
most barbarous things in modern history have occurred, and all
this, in spite of the fact that you have put into the hands and
minds of men and women these priceless means of talking with
each other, coimmunicating with each other, 7, etting,, to understand
each other. And therefore I hope that we are going~ to have a
second revolution coming on top of yours indeed the World
needs it very much,
Anybody who is concerned with politics, anybody who
attends, as I do myself, International Conferences in which we
discuss the grave issues of peace and war and of International
understanding, can't help being struck, time after time, that
while we have had put into our possession the whole mechanics of
International understanding, we have, so far, not yet acquired
the spirit. Our hands have been, to that extent, more adroit
than our hearts, or than our minds.
But, Sir, I believe that when we have broken down
some of the barriers, when Leaders of Great Nations have come to
3.
regard their meetings as a commonplace and not as some phenomenon
which requires massive headlines, when they have got into
the habit of saying " Well I'm so close to this man, my means of
communication are so easy that I'll have a talk with him tonight,
I'll ask him to come over tomorrow.." don't forget that
the Jet Aircraft is one of the great means of communication, and
not merely a means of destruction think we ought to have a
chat next week-end". This kind of thing which is commonplace in
your own country will, I hope, become a commonplace, internationally.
And when it does I think great changes will come to the
world. You know, if you can stand right off and be at arms'
length it is terribly easy to nurse your prejudices and to
nurse your hatreds and to say " That nan's no good"'. I have met
a lot of fellows in the world in my lifetime that I thought were
terrible fellows. I became quite fond of them after I met them.
I even can remember this is very confidential having a deputation
come to me once from a few sturdy characters and at the
end of it, one ofthem stayed back and said: " I think I'd just
like to tell you that you're not half such a big so-and-so as
they told me you were". There you are, that was the benefit of
direct face to face cormmunication
But, really Gentlemen, it is, I think, a great and con
-structive piece of work to be able to sit down to discuss this
Cable, to discuss this great enterprise which will bring our
family closer together, and it is a jolly -ood thing to start
with the family, because not one of us is contemplating fighting
the other and we all know that on all the great occasions of
trial, we are the one people and we stand together, We know
that, and therefore something that brings us closer together is
a great thing, but it doesn't only bring us closer together it
is another stop in this remarkable development which has put into
the hands of the people of the world one of the greatest instruments
for peace that the world has ever had. I would like
you to think of it in that way. These are great instruments
for peace, because they are great instruments for mutual understanding,
and if we are such fools in the world as not to use
these implements as we shoid, well then, that's a reflection on
us, but, I venture to say, not a reflection on you,
As far as we are concerned in Australia, we have an
undiminished belief in the significance of the British Commonwealth
in this world, and if I may say so, we have the oldest
associations in the world, with the countries that are here represented,
indissoluble associations, We can have an argument,
occasionally, but the argument is never fatal, it is an enjoy
able argument.-we are all argumentative people, except New Zealanders,
and of course they take it for granted that you will
agree with them anyhow.
But to get together in this fashion in this new exhibition
of co-operation in the communications field will, I
believe, be a very powerful contribution to the sanity and civilization
of the year. To tell you the truth, and this of
course is very secret information, I'm much more interested in
what you are going to produce out of this conference and the results
which I hope will flow from it, than I am in the question
of " Who next hits the moon with a rocket?". I don't like this
monkeying about with the Moon myself. The moon has been quite
useful to you and me in its day cnd of course it has other trifling
advantages in the world's geography and oceanography.
But these are the straight, simple means of bringing
people closer togethor. Many things that have been happening
since in the International world, though they would be great instruments
of bringing us together, are thought of, and written
about, as if they were instruments to divide us, to make us
jealous of somebody else and to stir up hatred in our bosoms.
Indeed, to no, it is one of the reflections on our tine that
whereas even I can remem. ber the tine when, if some scientist
produced sone new wonder, the whole world applauded it the
whole world wanted to take advantage of it. They didn~ t say:
" What side of an Iron Curtain was he on?" or " What country was
he The people who pioneered the great anti-biotic drugs,
these fellows, the marvels, the Flemings and all those people of
the world, they wore International property, everybody was proud
of them, everybody was delighted with what they did, and I think
that one of the things I hold most against certain people in the
world is that they have now set out to teach us -to believe that
a great piece of technology, a splendid piece of Applied Science,
in whatever field it nay be, is to be regardod so~ lely in terms
of rivalry, so that we get our tails dowm if the other man wins
the first heat, or the third heat. What a lot of nonsense it
is. I have no sense of shamie about what people of our kind,
not me, I'm the least scientific of mortals, but the record of
people of our kind in the world, in all those discoveries of
science which have brought untold benefits to hum--anity, will
take a good deal of knocking about by somebody who in some particular
or specialised field manages to do something, and do it
extraordinarily well, that nobody else has yet done.,
And so, Sir, I commwend your task it is perhaps pedestrian
from the point of view of those engaged in rocketry, but
it is vastly important and I believe that as a result of all
these discussions, and what gYoes on, we will find ourselves able
botween ourselves, to make this new developruent and to forge
another link in the chain of communications that will bring us
closer together, and, in due course, bring the people of the
world closer together.
And so, Charles, I have the very reatest honour indeed,
not in delivering an address, but in declaring the Confer-~
ence open, and I think, Sir, that you won't be entirely irregulawhich
you frequently are I ought to propose, quite impertinently
to this meeting that when I have sat down you might
perhaps instal the Postmaster-General in the Chair, so that the
business hereafter m~ ay be regular.