SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE RT. HON. R. G.
MENZIES, AT KING'S SCHOOL, SYDNEY, ON WEDNESDAY
14+ TH DECEMBER. 1960
This kind of speech is much the hardest kind of
speech to make. Do you realise that, all of you who suffer from
speeches and don't make them? ( Laughter) It's much the hardest
of the lot. When I arrived I looked around. I had no idea how
many political characters I knew masquerading today as Old Boys
of the King's School. This in itself is a most embarrassing
affair. Some of them, no doubt, have every right to be here.
( Laughter) Then the place is fall of parents who regard a Speech
Day as their annual penance and celebrate their penance for the
next three d. ays as Christmas virtue.
Then there are the poor unhappy boys of the School who
have to sit around, as I used to in my time, and listen to some
ponde. rous old politician make a boring speech, saying to themselves,
as some of them are already, " I wish he'd cut it down
and make it short". ( Laughter)
But there are just one or two things that I really
ought to say by way of self-excuse at the beginning.
The Headmaster, I thought, went to some pains to
demonstrate that John Pascoe Fawkner wasn't it John Pascoe?
Batman? Oh, well, both good Melbourne fellows ( Laughter) But
when he pointed out that Batman started here, and I gathered,
from what he said, steadily went down in life ( Laughter) by
going to Tasmania, and then establishing Victoria, he made me
feel that I was really sp caking as a representative of a quite
parvenu city. ( Laughter)
But I retort to him that I am not here speaking for the
parvenu city, but I am here as Prime Minister of Parramatta.
( Laughter, applause)
Then when I was looking through the book of the words
because you boys ought to realise that before somebody like
myself is asked to come to make a speech, the school authorities
give him the book of the words, containing all sorts of strange
information about the school I realised, with that eagle eye
that characterises a politician that the Headmaster and I became
Head masters ourselves in the same year. He became Headmaster
of King's;. and I became Headmaster of Australia -in the same
year, in 1939. But what gives him that almost unconscious air of
authority as he speaks to us today derives from the fact that
he's never been found out, and his term of service has been
continuous. ( Laughter)
Sir, I just want to take off one thing that you have
said which has been very mauch in my own mind.
It isn't easy for a school that has history, for a
school that has Old boys who think back to the Old School, and
the old school buildings, to make a departure and to move to some
other area. You mentioned Scotch College in Melbourne) cramped
in to about half a city block with a cricket ground two milbs
away. It was an adventure when it was finally decided to move
it out into a big expanding site.
I remember at another school in Melbourne gping along
to lay a foundation stone, which I do occasionally, but not too
frequently, And I said, because I knew-this school very well,
" I have never undorstood why you have a cricket ground and a
half hero, in this place. Did you over own more land?"~. The
answer was, " O0h, yes! W! o owned all1 the land for about two
blocks. But some prudent Council at som~ e stage where there was
a littic difficulty, said that we night as well " cash in"' on
the extra land". The result was that they cramped, and almost
crippled, the School that they wore supposed to govern.
There are plenty of examples of this and I think that
one of the reasons for this kind of thing wias that although our
forefathers were great men, and laid profound foundations in
Australia, there was a disposition perhaps it's net entirely
gone yet to have wide geographical horizons in Australia, but
somewhat narrow mental ones. This is something that we must
beware of. If somebody today in a city like Canberra, for example,
says, " WellI obviously this is going to be a University city,
we must have plenty of space for buildings of the future" somebody
is bound to say that this is extravagant.
I don't believe that any provision of land for a great
school or a great university was ever extravagant.
Here I must say that I feel, as you do, tremendously
excited to think that this most ancient of public schools in
Australia should have taken this decision to move out where it
will have elbow room, where it will have everything in the long
run that goes with a groat school, not forgetting beauty and
setting and illimitable prospects for the future. This I
think, is a notable event, though I'm perfectly certain 1hat if
I were an old King's School man I would have felt a little pang
about the prospect; but I am sure that this has been a great
thing. It is a very interesting matter to remember that just
as the war was ending and taxation was very high much higher
than it is now-but just at the end of the war when taxation was,
really still on the war time level, I used to become troubled
about the future of what we called the Great Public Schools, the
great Church Schools, here and in my own State, and olsewhtere,
because I believe in thenmost passionately.
I believe that they contribute something which is the
very reverse of snobbery which some of their critics like us to
believe they contribute a superb spirit of humility, of
understanding, of some of the relations between God and man.
These great Church schools have a part to play in Australia that
nothing else can play.
And I thought, " Well, it's not going to be easy for
people to send their sons to their own old schools, or to send
the son to one of these foundations, because of the high level of
taxation". Of course taxation has never g,' ne back to anything
remotely resembling pro-war conditions. Yet the fact is that in
these last 10 or 15 years we have seen the greatest era of
development in schools of this kind that Australia ever saw.
This proves what? I think that it proves that more and
more we have people in Australia who see the value of this, and
who are determined that their children are g-oing to secure some
benefit from it.
I think it is not for nothing that this property owns a
Scots name. This argues a decent ambition on the part of the
Church of England which I am3 happy to record. ( Laughter) Here
is a Scots name, even though I learned, with regret, that the
Captain of the School was called Dalzidl, when obviously he was
" De-ell". ( Laughter)
May I say something about the Scots? You will permit
reoa little bilotry. uronl't you on this rrz--GQ cots
always had a groat notion of 1) tiL They had a great .11,
that each generation in a family, however humble should have
some opportunity that the previous generation didn't have. So
that the son of the ploughman went to a secondary school and got
a little better educated, and learned a little bit of Latin in
those good days when people had to learn Latin and the grandson
went to Edinburgh and took a degree.
This was a passionate belief in education. And I'm as
proud as Lucifer to think that in this post-war period which
could have been, in some ways has been, materialist, we have
seen this passion for education grow in Australia in the most
remarkable fashion. What we are doing today is to celebrate one
manifestation of it.
Now I wonder if, with your kind permission I might
address a few brief words to my fellow students. The rest of you
are under no obligation to listen to this; though I regret that,
because if this were a political meeting 90% of you wouldn't be
here. ( Laughter) The Headmaster has said some good and memorable things
to all of us about courage, the groat virtue. Courage which is
not only the courage of the hand, but the courage of the heart
and the courage of the mind. It is very easy to agree with
everybody else, it is very easy to have your thinking done at
second hand so that you wait until somebody writes what his
thoughts may be and then you say, " There you are, those are my
thoughts". Thinking is frightfully hard work. But it is the most
rewarding work in the world. Thinking with all the hard work that
goes with it, preceding it, preceding the point of judgment, to
narrow the facts, to be prepared to look them in the eye, not to
be led away by some cheap argument on the sidb but to hammer it
out for youself. This is one of the great qualities of man.
I strongly recommend it to myself as well as to my follow student.
My old school in Melbourne had a motto, " Dare to be
wise" and when I was a boy I thought, " What an odd proverb that
is". I've come to know how true it is. Because to be wise, that
is to say to be able to form a judgment, and stand to it, requires
courage. It requires daring though many people perhaps
don't always appreciate it.
The second thing I want to say to you is this. We are
very clever nowadays it's a very clever generation. People
fire things off into the air, and one of them is credibly
reported to have hit the moon though what the moon ever did to
deserve this, I've never been able, quite, to discover. But it's
a very clever period of life, and we must be a little careful
that we don't become overwhelmed by our own cleverness. Because
wisdom is more than cleverness.
One of the troubles about this clever period of life
is that we have a tendency all of us, to think that we know so
much better than anybody else, and we are the cleverest generation
over to live in Australia though I don't think we are, but
we occasionally think we are that we fall into error, we become
a little brash, we brush aside other people's views. We fall
into bad manners, to put it simply.
I'm not at all sure that the standard of manners, of
courtesy, has improved so much in the last twenty years as the
standard of objective knowledge.
Therefore, I want to say that no man was ever an inferior man
bccause he had good manners because he had the courtesy which
recognises that there are o~ her people in the world and that
those other people may have other views.
That doesn't mean that you are not to fight hard to
convince then. That doesn't mean that you are to avoid conflict
about ideas. You can't avoid conf'lict unless you run away.
Therefore right through your lives you may be engaged in the
clash of ideas, in the clash of personalities. But above all
things, let us have that deg-ree of tolerance which is eribodied in
the idea of courtesy and 200od rnanners. It will be a very much
happier world if we can all corie up to that.
In the third place I would just like to say this. I
said it somewhere else the other day but Dean Pitt has given me
express permission to repeat it.
Good speech, clear speech, speech which pays a just
attention to the meaning, of words is tremendously important.
There are men here this afternoon I've seen a few if them who
run, or have run vast concerns in Australia. They know
perfectly well that if they didn't have the faculty of conveying
their ideas justly, and clearly to those who work under them,
they could not be effuctive in Lheir positions.
In the modern period of life some of the very greatest
Generals and Cormmanders have become groat Generals and
Commanders, not only because they had a certain genius for the
military art, but because they were advocates, theyod explain
ideas and do them clearly with economy and Aith justice.
Therefore, nothing annoys me more than to hear people
who ought to know bettor I'm now still talking to the boys
say, " Well, you know what I mean, you know what I mean", when
I really don't know what they mean.
In quarters not frightfully far removed from me I have
had occasionally to say, " I'm sorry I've not had the advantage of
studying Hottentot, would you mind speaking ordinary English".
Now, Sir, I think the Girls' Schools : live us an
example on this matter, because I do think, so far as I have
been able to see, that they pay some attention to it.
What I want to' say to the boys is this. This is a
wonderful language of ours. There is no language in the world
that has such flexibility, that has such -, reat literary stores
in it, the greatest language of poetry that man has ever known,
the great language of proseo. It raay lack some of the kick of
French prose, but it is a marvellous language. It has contained
some of the greatest writing, and somie of the greatest speech
in history. Let us respectthis languag-e. Don't let us have it
broken down by all sorts of cheap importations there are bound
to be one or two. Let us respect this langua 7e. Because, I
tell you that as you go through life, whether you are a lawyer,
or a chemist, or a doctor, or a soldier, or whatever it may be,
som~ e element of your success, some aspect of your capacity to
give expression to what you know, will depend upon your respect
for the English lang3uage and your quiet cor. u. mand over it. Not
long words long words are pretty silly: they are used as a
rule only by people who don't understand them.
Aima at simple, clear speech, and if you aim at that
and achieve it, you will find that this will make a very great
difference right through your lives.
Now Sir, it's quite clear, as is already obvious, that
I an talking too long and I an therefore * ping to bring this
lanentablo lucubration long wrords boys ( Laughter) to an end.
But I do want to say that I wias delighted to be given the
opportunity of coning here. I know what a jreat event this is
in the history of this fanous school, and it is a very great
honour to have been allowed to share it. ( Applause)