FOR PRESS WHITE HOUSE LUNCHEON 64/ 0 7
TEXT OF SPEECHES
Following are the texts of speeches by Presicent Johnson
and the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, at lunch on
24th June at the !" hite House, Washington.
PRLSIDIENT JOHNSON
" Mr, Prime Minister, Mr. Chief Justice, My Friends
This is a delightful and very happy and heartwarming occasion
for me today.
It is one to which I have looked forward with great
anticipation. We here in Wasington know our guest as a good and great
friend of America
I hope that Sir Robert and all of his countrynaen know
equally well that the President is both an old and good friend
of Australia : ind a very great admirer of the Australian peoplea
As many of my personal friends and associates have heard
me say through the years, I lost at least a part of my heart
to the Australian people a long time ago.
I v'ill never forget their warmth when I wac statiuned.
there in the early and anxious days of the war in the Pacif: c,)
and just to illustrate why our guest of honor has been Prime
Minister for 17 years and why he has beon an astute and expert
parliamentarian for more than 35 ye: ars, before we came
downstairs I was telling him of the graciousnesj of a great
lady whose name I could not remember, but with a very slight
description of her qualities and her assistance to me during
the early dnys of the war, the Prime Minister, without any
difficulty, called her name and located her and brought
back to my memory many other gorid things obout her.
I long for the day to come, and hope it can come between
now and November, when I will have my constituency as well In
hand and know them as well as he doe-,
Some of you may be familiar with the accounts of one
apisode that occurred when the plane in which I was riding as
a member of the Navy was forced to land away from our Base.
Several writers later filed stories that my contacts with
Australians in the area indicated that I might have had a
promising political future down under.
I can only say that in considering his extraordinary
success for many years, the Prime Minister obviously has much
to teach the elective officials in America, and I am so proud
that I have been privileged to sit and visit with him and to
learn from him.
We are grateful, Sir, that you honor us with this visit
this year, We remember with particular favor your visit to our
country last year when you sat here at this chair by the side
of our beloved President John Kennedy.
At that time you made a statement which I think expresses
so well the feeling between our lands.
Then you said, " We work for the same kind of free world." / 2
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In the geography of frecdom, all areas and all corners and
all regions of the free world are important, and they are all
vital. For us here in the United States it has been a source of
great strength to know that there stands a nation so dedicatei
to freedom's defense as Australia.
I don't know when a news announcement has given our
country more comfort or been received with greater satisfaction
than the announcement made las week by your Minister c'l
External Affairs concerning the additional contribution that
the people of Australia were ready and anxious to make to
contribute men and materials and equipment along the side of
our men who are now fighting for freedom in South Vietnami,
So we are proud and we are very grateful, Mr. Prime Minister,
to have you stand by our si. e.
We are glad to have you stand with us as members of ANZUS.
V o are happy to work with you in the United Nations.
We are assured to know that you are with us wherever
freedom is in danger.
Australia and the United States do really, truly, as
you say, woirk for the same kind of free world.
I am sure that brief as your visit now must be, this
frienly meeting with you, will help us to work together in
even closer understanding,.
I am grateful that you have come here.
Out di3cussions have been fruitful,
Our understanding has been improved,
My desire to return your visit has increased, if that is
possible, So to my good friends who have assembled here v. ith us
today in this house, I should like to ask you to join with me
in a toast to Sir 1obert M-enzies, The Prnie Minister of
Australia, and to the enduring bonds of friendship and freedom
between our lands.
Mr. Prime Minister."
SIR ROBERT MENZIES
Mr. President, Chief Justice, and Gentlemen I have
been reminded by you, Sir, that last year I spoke in this room,
I think, in the presence of and as the guest of that great man,
the late President Kennedy, and I should not wish to begin
even the briefest of speeches without paying a tribute of
respect and affection to his memory.
But, Sir, the world goes on, and you now have the
responsibilities of this enormous office.
I think perhaps the one thing that prevents a man occupying
one of the very greatest offices in the world from becoming
subject to delusions about himself is that he is usually so
conscious of the task and of the responsibility that he has no
time left for showing off.
This is so true. 000 / 3
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You have this enormous responsibility, and you would be
perhaps surprised to know how many people, so many thousands
of miles away from you, and whether they would be on your
side or another in your own country, they pray for you and
wish you well in the discharge of this immense human
responsibility, And so, Sir, I am greatly honoured to be here as your
guest. There is another thing about it.
I am here as Prime Minister of Australia, a British
country. I myself am British, and some people might say
insistently so, but here we are in one place, at the one time,
When I saw you last time here, Sir, and you were
Vice-President, I was beginning to turn over in my mind . vhether
I shouldn't have a premature election, and I de. ided that
I should, Most people were confident that I would be beaten, but
I wono Now T don't know whether there is a moral in this,
Mr. President, but everybody I have spoken to so far in the
United States is confident that you will win.
I hope this is not a bac omen.
Now, Sir, I don't want to detain this distinguished
audience, but I think that it would be appropriat-, if you
don't mind, for me to say something about the position of
your great country in the world, and particularly in the
free worl, and in particular with us in Australia.
It is one of the issues of history, something that I
have referred to before today, that nations which have immense
power, and, therefore, acciumulate immense responsibilities,
are seldom terribly popular.
Great Britain, you know, was the Great Power in the
world in the 19th Century, and enjoyed a supply of epithets
of an abusive kind in Europe which has perhaps never been
equalled since,
Great Power doesn't give you great friendship.
Indeed, great gifts to other nations don't buy
friendship. Gratitude is a scarce commodity, and yet all great
nations, and none more so than yours, perhsps none so much
so as yours, have been conscious of responsibility and have
done things materially and spiritually for other countries
in the world, and very frequently have received small thanks
for it. That doesn't matter.
What matters is that these things are cone,
What matters is that people are given an opportunity
of standing on their own feet, of developing their own
national and individual characteristics.
This I am sure in the long run is a good thing for the
world.
But mhen it comes to a country like Australia, well,
we are a small country,
I preside over a country which is about twice as large
in point of population, and perhaps ten times as large in
point of physical resources as the country which was presiled
over by Thomas Jefferson,
It is worth recalling becaus we go on as yor went on,
and we may some day in the wisdom of providence and by some
strength in our right hands ani courage in our own hearts
and minds be one of the great and powerful countries in the
world,. But that is a long way off.
What is present with us J. s that vwe have a relationship
with the United States which is not the rslationship between
a benefactor and a pensioner.
It is, I am happy to say, a proud relationship 06tween
friends, one immensely powerful and the other, ourselves,
much less powerful?
Why are we friends
People will say to me in a skeptial sort of mood,
" Yqs, o c-ours,, you keep in with tle United Statos be-ause
you want i. hem to defen. you."
This is said as if we regardel the problem of our defence
as something for somebody else to attend to, and for us to
neglect or ignore.
Don't you believe it for one momenta
Vde shall defend ourselves in Australia, whe . ever the
circumstances, to the very last gasp that we have, but we will
defeni ourselves with all the greater succoss if we know that
we have great friends like yourselves who will be defending
us or helping to defen?.-us not because there is some statutory
obligation, or not just because of some treaty between us,
but because we both heppen to believe in exactly the sane things,
the same attitudes of mind, the same patterns of behaviour,
the same great attributes of character and quality.
These things we have in common,
It is because vwe have them in common that we will defend
them in common.
Sir, there may be people around the world, I dare say
there are, who fall into the deplorable habit of thinking
that the United States should be regarded as a sort of
Gendarme to keep the peace of the world, and true it is that
you have accepted enormous responsibilities, but ion't you
think for one moment that in my country when we consider
problems of international peace and war we say " Lea-e it to
the United States".
We may be small, but we are friends, and it is a good
thing to have friends, great or small.
It is a good thing, above all other matters, to have
friends who are not going to resort to questioning when the
day of trial comes, but who will be there, and there for all
purposes of the survival of those things that you stand for and
that we stand for.
I am always completely at home in this place, in this
city, always capable of having an argument with an American.
Not with the President.
I wouldn't dare to do that.
And not with the Chief Justice, althouoh I would enjoy it.
But with Dean Rusk, vwho I want to tell you at once,
I don't care what side you are on in politics, but Dean Rusk
is personr. gratissima with us in Australia.
But still capable of having an argument, of course.
It will be a poor day, won't it, when we can't
It would be a very poor day when little iustralia won' t
be able to summon up its traditional impudence by looking
at the big United States and saying, " What do you mean, you
big stiff This, of course, will happen.
You wouldn't belie-7e it, but there are people in my own
country who have been heard to make rude remarks about me,
and I don't mind that a scrap as long as they are in the
minority. But, Sir, I have enjoyed meeting you today.
I had met you before, but in a highly formal sense.
I am very glad to kn-w that from now on we will be able
to communicate with each other in terms of personal
friendship. I do hope you will be able to come to Australia, and I
believe that you want to come to Australia,
But whether you succeed in the near future or, as one
might say, in my time, or not, the fact remains that in'-
Australia you have friends, little friends, friends you may
chide, friends you may encourage, friends to whom you can hold
out all of the usual appurtenances of friendship which run from
chastisement to approval, but still friends, because I want to
make it clear to you that however small it is, the thing that
we do, we will always be foun, to do it because we know that
everything that matters for us, and everything that matters
for you, is at common risk in this strange world, and must,
therefore, be defended explained and defended in common,
Sir, I thank you very much, indeed, for your great
courtesy. I regret very much to find that your congress is under no
better discipline than my House of Parliament, and some of the
ones who were here whom I was hoping to persuade about
something or other have gone off, not to persuade or to be
persuaded but to vote.
So thank you very much. OO---
ISSUED BY The Press Secretary
to the Prime Minister.