JOURNALISTS' CLUB 2' TH ANNIVERSARY DINNER
SYDNEY. N. S. W. 31 st JULY. 1964+
Speech by the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Menzies
Sir, It is a very difficult and dangerous thing for a
politico to make a speech to newspapermen. ( Laughter)
Something you said reminded me of the fact that quite a number
of years ago, but after the occasion to which Ken Slessor
referred I was given a dinner this seems most improbable
but still it's true by some newspapermen when I was in
Melbourne. It was a very, vezy good dinner7 and there was
a certain amount of lubricant ( Laughter) available and I was
no doubt adequately lubricated but others were more so, and
at a certain stage in the night I remember a well-known
newspaperman coming along and standing over me as I sat in an
armchair and saying " You and he was rather tedious
abcut This, He kept on. ( Laufh er) He kept on, he kept on.
It was like a slipped disc. ( Laughter) " You know the trouble
with you is that you don't suffer fools gladly." ( Laughter)
( Applause) Much to my credit, I found myself saying, " And
what do you think I've been doing for the past fifteen minutes?"
( Laughter) Well, the Press and I have always understood each
other. i4e've always been a bit hostile. ( Laughter) We've
enjoyed a ceetain amount of hostility. We've loved it, and
every now and tiien I found myself reading one of my favourite
columnists and Ive read him and I haven't dared to say how
good he was because I knew that in that field, fur every friend
you make, you make three enemies, ( Laughter)
But I'm delighted to be here. I had forgotten that
it was twentyfive years ago that as a young and promising man
but perhaps not so promising as I am now,( Laughter) ( Applause3
Itd gone to Pfahlerb's Hotel..... Do you mind if I tell you
something about PfahleriTs Hotel? ( Laughter) Not that I
pretend to qualify as an extremely bibulous creature, but many
years ago, as it seems to me now, I was a great friend I am
happy to say, of Lionel Lindsay and I had met Norman Lindsay
a few times and we had a natter about this and that and there
was a dinner of some learned society you know, the artists
and architects and what-have-you, at Pfahlert's and I was a
guest. That afternoon I was around talking to Norman Lindsay.
He wasn't a guest, and I having that degree of impudence w. hat
maker a man a Prime Minister ( Laughter) said " Norman, you must
come tonight to Pfahlert's hotel. " Oh, no," with the wellknown
Lindsay voice. " But", I said, " You must come Norman,
you must. Lionel is going to be there." ( Laughter3 And he
said, " Oh, well, yes, old man," and I dragged him along.
Whoever was presiding at this dinner, he was as kind
as he could be. He just put it down to the eccentricity of a
politician, and I arranged with him that I would sit here and
Norman would sit there and Lionel would sit there. Well, now,
truth be admitted, they hadn't spoken to each other for about
five or six years, and I had an idea about this, so thoro they
were. With a suitable interjection by me? like a fellow putting
a rather stupid question at a press interview ( Laughter), ( you
all know what I mean by that) ( Laughter) they got cracking.
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They were going fifty to the dozen, right through the dinner.
The next day I went out to see Lionel, who was a particular
friend of mine, at his house at dahroonga and I said, " Lionel,
I thought that went rather well, last night, you and Norman."
" Oh yes, old man," he said, and you won't understand this unless
you know the Lindsays, he said, " Quite right. Very good fellow
Norman, but the only tñ' ouble is that he talks too much." ( Laughter)
Now, Sir, the second thing I want to say is that by the
great kindness of my deplorable press secretary, Ray Maley
( Applause) whose restoration to health pleases me beyond words
( hear, hear) ( Applause), I was given a copy of the journal
what was it called " Copy", a rather restrained title, so unlike
the headlines tc which I am accustomed but anyhow, I read this
with loving care and therefore I am able to tell you that I share
your pleasure in the fact that since 1941 Snakey Smith has not
been with us. ( Laughter) I didntt know Snakey Smith. I suspect
he was a fellow a bit like me. ( Laughter) Anyhow, Snakey Smith
was turfed out, I don't remember reading in the newspapers
about Snakey Smith being turfed out ( Laughter); I dontt remember
a great cause c6lbre having arisen over Snakey Smith's
expulsion. I donut remember about the rules of natural justice
having been violated, ( Laughter) You know really, you are
terrible, except, I suppose, that you have to take orders.
( laughter) Anyhow, Snakey is not with us.
Then I began to say to myself " Well now, I have had a
good deal of experience of this and that anA I began to think
about that greai; art of reporting now so neglected ( Laughter) and
my mind went back to earlier pulitical days, Now there are
very few of you here who don't know and recognise hive Turnbull
( hear, hear) ( Applause). Now would you allow me to say that I
think Clive Turnbull was one of the greatest reporters. I know
that he is a man of singular talent in many fields and one of
the greatnst reporters in my lifetime. ( Hear, hear) ( Applause)
The moment I began to think about it, I remembered that
in 1932 there was an election in Victoria this is before some
of you were born. But anyhow, there was an election in Victoria
and my crowd were about to win. It does happen occasionally.
( Laughter) For the oni_ time in my life, I was returned
unopposed a rather depressing experience for the electorate
of Nunawading in Victoria. Therefore, Sir Stanley Argyle who
was the leader of my side said, " Well, would you go out and do
a series of meetings around the country?" This was my first
barn-storming tour.
In those days, of course, the perquisites of office were
not all that good ( Iaughter), and so I drove my own car and I had
my wife with me in the front seat, and in the back seat a spare
wheel and Clive Turnbull. ( Laughter) Clive was sent ouZ by the
Melbourne " Argus" which was then in its heyday, and so there we
were. We went around, we drove to Warnnambool, Hamilton, Ararat
and Great Western and Stawell, and Clive was there at the back
with that rather humorous chuckling sound of his. The amazing
thing about this man was that although we had gone to meeting
after meeting and I had said all the usual things and the
audience had either been bored or not so bored, as the case may
be olive would send in a column for the " Argus" which not
only-and I would like you boys to make a note of this
contained a fairly accurate idea of what I had said with a
commendable brevity that I couldn't coimand ( Laughter but also
by a few little brush strokes this was brilliant conveyed
the atmosphere of the meeting. Now this seemed to me to be / 3
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the greatest exercise in reporting I'd ever known, and looking
back on it I still think it was. The few little smudgy strokes
which let the reader know something of the quality and character
of the meeting. So as the time went on on this journey, I
conceived quite an alfection for Clive. There he was in the
back seat of the car with the spare wheel ( Laughter) on the
left, and my poor wile sitting there, and I am sitting here
driving. I made a powerful speech in the morning at Ararat, If
you have been there, you will know Ararat no not JeDarit but
at Ararat the platform, the stage is the highest in the world.
It's about as high as the wall, so that when you spoke tc your
audience being lucky to get one ( laughter) you peered over,
like a man peering over the precipice. It uas really terrible.
Anyhow we got through it. I made a powerful speech. It perhaps
didn't mean very much, and then we drove on.
The afternoon meeting was to be at three o'clock at Great
Western. You know, Gr3au Western champagne..... Great Western
this and that, and Great Western is a lovely little hamlet on
which th'e sun falls pleasantly, in which, so far as I have been
abJe to observe, nothing ever haopens tut on my paper it said,
" Three o'clock Gre& t Western." So eing the :, lave of the
clock. I arrived at five to three. I pulled up my car with my
wife ' the spare wheel anc' Clive Turnbull, and we identified the
local hall, wnich is not difficult in a place like Great Western,
and at about ten past three, I said, " Well, it doe.-. ntt loolk like
a meating" and at twentyfive past three, a very earnest-locking
man arrived. It might have been a Journalist for all I Imew, but
anyhow, he was very seriousø He walked to the place and he
unlocked the door so I hopped out of the chariot and said, " Well,
excuse me, but there is a meeting, isn't there?" He said,
" 0h, yes, a meeting this afternoon. Wbat is your namesir?"
I said, " My name is Menzies" o He said " Oh yes, youtre speaking,"
I said, " You couldntt be more right, but is there a meeting?"
" Oh yes," he said, " That's all right," I said. " The moting was
for three o'clock and it is now twentyfive past, what about it?"
He said, " Oh, don't worry about that. Come in." So I walked
in and there was this little anteroom of the Great Western hall
with seats for twelve per. re. In those days, I was more
ambitious than I am now, and I said, " Twelve people?" He said,
" Yes, that's right. Twelve people. They'll be here." " uat" 9
I said, " Now, wait a moment. It's now half past three." " 0h,
well," he said, " You know. The boys dontt hurry along in these
parts. This is a wine-growing district,"
Well, now, I must tell you I was supporting a rather
battered veteran of my party who didntt quite know what it was
all about at this time and therefore had to be concealed and there
was a Country Party candidate I refer to this with great
deference and there was a Labour man. Well, we went in and
I had a look and I said, " Well, yes, twelve people." Then at
about a quarter to four, the audience began to arrive and believe
it or not, by four oclock, we had eleven people there and my
poor wife was there and Clive Turnbull with a pad, you know,
already to report this exciting event. Then the local man said,
" Excuse me, Sir, I will go and get the chairman."
He galloped along the road a hundred yards and collected
the chairman from the bar parlour ( Laughter). The chairman
arrived and I must say that the chairman had been rather overtrained
( Laughter) because he came in between a hiccup and a
hiccup and he sat there in the chair. Then he said, looking at
me, " All right, ladget going" and the lad got goingand I made
0000/ 1+
a speech. You must it doesn't matter whether the audience is
eleven or a thousand, you must speak your piece. But each time
I said this is a long time ago, you understand " a thousand",
he used to give a little hiccup and say " millions" ( Laughter)
and so I went along this millionaire course in this speech and
then I, very courteously, as my habit is, said " Any questions"
and two of the eleven had a question to put and eachi time my
answer was amended by the chairman who increased it quantitatively
by saying1 " No, no, Make it millions" and so we finished. At
the end, the chairman, who by this time war quite incapabla, of
rising from his chair ( I have a feeling most of you will
understand) ( Laughter3 said " Ladies and gentlemen. Tile besh
young candidate I ever hearA' and~. I gave a bit of a smirk, a..-id
so we got out and we went to T* Uhe footpath where I had my car,
with my wife, and Clive Turnbull andi the spare wheel,
This old boy came over and said, " Excuse me Mr. Mac,
but would you like to come along and have a bit of a Arink Cat
the corner?" I said " Well, it's very kind of you, : M~ t I am
due to make a speech In Stawell tonight". Oh, I'm sorry, Mr.
Mac but you know, Mrs Mac? you are the test candidate I ever
stood l'r." 1 You knaow, I in not very accustomed to this kind
of flattery ( Laughter) and thereforo I gave t1,9 nearest approach
to a smirk that a fellow like me can make. So I said, " 1Itm
terribly sorry" and we drove off and a quartar of a mile along
the road. to Stawell I pulled up the car and said, " Gosh, I
just remembered, Do you know that my candidate for this seat
is old So-and-So who has held it for some reason or another for
some time, and then thiere's a Labour man and then therets a
Country ' Party candidate whose name is MacDcnala." ( Laughter)
( Applause). I said to Cli. ve Turnbull having then more faith
in you wretches than I have now ( Laughzel,) I said, " What
should I do? Go back and put it a2. l right;" And he said,
1Oh, no ev ta hat. Pus. on to 14tawell," 1 Do you know
that when polling day came, and the results were out the next
day, I had secured the record of the vote Great Western.
I looked at the previous election and the current election, and
we had got exactly the same vote to a man. All I need to say
to you about that is that the following election wtan I dldntt address
the electors of Gre9t Western, Mac won. ( Laughter)
Now, might I tell you one other thing, because this
is really of historic importance. In Washington there are
two press groups. There is the National Press Club which is
replete with quarters, bottles, glasses. Itts a magnificent
place, and when you go there to speak, you are received on the
sidewalk and you are taken up and you are plied with various
liquors and then you go in and you make a speech. Then you
are asked questions,. The chairman has them all put on paper
and Le picks out the oncs that you think that he thinks you
can answer. I find this very advantageous.
Well, I must tell you because this will add to your
store of knowledge, that a few years ago, when Percy Spender
was our Ambassador in Washington, I was made a guest of State.
This is something rather important. You common herd wouldnt
understand this. I once was a guest of honour in Paris and
half the French guards were out on the streets and all sorts of
things happened. In America I was this time the guest at
Blair House, which is something. At Blair House, I must say
that the provision was adequate. But I had accepted an
invitation to make a speech at lunch time at what I thought in
my stupidity was the Press Club, but turned out to be the Press
Association whatever it might be. Well, Percy Spender who
Dos
was much shrewder on these matters than I was, called along
about twelve o'clock at Blair House and bounced upstairs and
saw me and said, " dell, now, before we go to this thing, perhaps
we ought to have a drink." I said, " Percy, nonsense
you know these boys. They'll give you so much to drink belore
lunch that you are very lucky if you make a speech at all."
He raised a query, I must say, in his favour about this but I
said, " Oh no you can't do that." So we ultimately went down,
bone'dry, and we fomd ourselves driven to the Hilton Hotel and
we were ? hen put into that floor that exists between the ground
floor and the first floor, the entresalle or something. Anyhow,
we went there and we met all the most worthy creatures in the
world, but nobody had anything to drink,
Then we went into the large diningroom and there they
had five hundred people and we marched in and I went to my
place. There was a magnificent old man in tne chai from
Florida. He was really a gorgeous person. Old he was as
old as I am. Therefore he was an old man, and he sat there and
I sat here, and I looked down and I saw two tired pieces of
cold potato and a glass of iced water ( Laughter) and I thought,
well, well, this is not the Press Club. ( Laughter) And then
this nic: e old man, whom I shall always recalllouked arouna at
me. He was really a fine old Southern gentleman. He said,
" I'm terribly sorry, you know, but you've been at the Press
Club and they are very rich and we are very poor. We just can't
afford to do these things.': So I said, " Oh, foe-get about it."
Then all of a sudden it occurr3d to mo2 and I aid)
" Now, wait a moment, I'm not complaining, You must forget about
me. Didn't Winston Churchill speak to ycu fairly recentlyT,
about a ycear ego?" And he Said " Yes, he did." " Well," I
said, " Don't tell me that you fobod Winston off with a little
iced water" ( Laughter) and he said, " Well, no, sir". From now
on, if you don't mind, I will say what Winston said in Winston's
own voice as iiearly as I can do it. Ke dida't, ho was a most
courteous chap from Florida. He said, " Well, you know, sir,
we knew that Winston Churchill liked a little alcoholic liquor,
so we sent down below and we got a double scotch and we had it
brought up." I said, " I know exactly what a double Scotch means
in this country. You fill an enormous glass with lumps of ice
and water and all this kid of thing, so that you wouldn't know
what it wasø" " Well now, sir," he said, " you've got something
th3rel because when the old gentleman picked it up and he tasted
it, he said, " You know, it's very remarkable how the flavour
of good Scotch whiskey dissipates itself.'" ( Laughter) He said,
" You know, sir, I don't know Winston Churchill as well as you
do sir but I got the hint and so we sent down below and we
got neat, without any additions, a doutble Scotch and it was
brought up and poured into the old gentleman's glass, and he
took it up and he tasted it and said ' Mm Yes. I can
distinctly taste the flavour" ( Laughter).
I mustntt be too frivolous any longer because I am a
very serious-minded fellow. Did I make a note of anything
else? Now let me have a look. You know, I'm flogged on by
this fellow Maley who every now and then says to me, " Have you
had any bright ideas" and I very seldom have. Oh yes. There
is one other that I thought I would say something to you about.
This is of great importance to you newspapermen because you
know, don't you, that you are the greatest suckers in the world.
( Laughter) Anybody who starts an old story afresh sells it
as if it were a new story. Now this is right, isn't it? / 6
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There was a great and good man in England called
Birkenhead and I have had the great pleasure to know a number
of witty and distinguished lawyers in England but every bright
remark that anyone of them ever made is now attributod to
Birkenhead. This is the rule of life. You chaps live on your
own legends. The othar day in Canberra, which is a little
provincial city which you -know but which now publishes a
national newspaper ( Laughter), a gentleman wrote a letter to
the press. Now the letters to the newspapers are fascinating,
aren't they? Unbelievable. I read them with immense joy.
This gentleman, if I may so desci. ibe him, had a very witty
movement in his mind and he wrote a letter$ having discovered
that there was one man in Canberra where we now ave a lake,
and this man wanted to buy a gondola. Now in Melbourne, my
own city, they have a thing called " Moomba". I have never quite
understood it. but there it is. And somebody had a gondola
brought out f6r Moomba and my distinguished compatriot in
Canberra said, " Well 11ll buy the gondola". I wouldn't know
at what price. It might have been quite cheap for all I know.
Anyhow, he decided to buy P gondola and then a witty fellow
must have been from the National University ( laughter) wrote
a letter to the " Canberra Times" wiiich is now, of course, you
understand, under very highbrow control ( Laughter) and said,
" I take great exception to somebody buying a gondola. Why not
a pair and breed from them."
Now this was recited to me in my own household as
almost a paroxysm of wit. A gondola, yes, why not
Until I remembered fiftyfive years ago, literally, whan I was
a schoolboy in Eallarat the stock joke in Ballarat was that
one of the local councillors, when told by another that they
ought to put a gondola on Lake Wendouree satd, " WV not have
a pair and breed from them?" ( Laughter) Ncw really gentlemen,
this is something that you ought to pay great attention to
because'it shows that all humour is a folie circulaira and that
wit is repetitive. I will always be indebted to this learned
gentleman in the " Canberra Times" because I will quote him when
in my own household cir-le I tell a little story so full of
wit, so full of point and the family say, " Cut it out, Dad,
you told us that twenty years ago." ( Laughter)
Now, could I say perhaps one other thing because so
far I've been a little irresponsible. We've just had a Prime
Ministers' Conference, and whatever else happens at a Prime
Ministers' Conference, it does recall you to the basic problems
of the modern world. It certainly does. You don't sit down in
rather halcyon fashion and say to yourself, " How like we are"
but you find yourself saying, " How unlike we are. How different
we are" and therefore a Prime Ministers' Conference is something
rather exciting, quite different from the Conferences of the
past, and if there is one thing that sticks out in my mind about
this last one, it is that we are different. I wouldn't dare to
give my complete impressions of all the people who were there,
but there is just one aspect of this matter that I might just
say something to you about and that is that we have Africa, a
series of countries Nigeria, Ghana Uganda, Tanganyika, Kenya,
Sierra Leone etc. and these present their own problem in the
most difficult way and they produce people of a most different
kind. Now, without making any odious comparisons, may I say
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to you this that the Prime Minister, the head of the Government
of Nigeria Nigeria with 36 million people, the largest single
country in the African continent is Sir Abubakar Balewa.
I would think I was lucky to go through the rest of my life and
meet another man so wise, so full of' character, so understanding
of the problems of the day as Abubakar Balewa. This is a great
man. ( Applause) And I wouldn't say that about everybody else. But
why do I say this about him and not about others? The answer
is that the great problem in today's worldI a problem that we
must all give great thought to, is the problem of countries
surging to their independence politically but economically
dependent on other people. This is a tremendous problem. So
much time is devoted to being able to say, 1-le are politically
independent" whereas to be politically independent and economically
and commercially dependent on the next man is almost a
contradiction in terms. Abubakar Balewa understands this
perfectly. He devotes much of his time to developing his own
country, to strengthening his own country, to making his own
country a self-surviving unit in the African 3ontinent and
when some of his more impetuous colleagues from other African
countries put all their weight and emphasis o political
independence and rather disregard tne economic problem, he
looks at them and occasionally says to them words which
indicate that there are first things that have to con'e first.
I am a great believer in the Prime Minister of
Nigeria ard I fear very much the almost rabid desire or the part
of some people to assert their political independence while
attaching small importance to ho-r they are to live and whether
they are to live at the mercy economically of some other country,
they having forgotten that if you are economically at the mercy
of Country B then you are in a fair way to be -he political
servant of Country B.
Gentlemen, it would be a great mistake for any of us
to be dogmatic about these matters. It would be a great mistake
for any of us speaking for myself as a Prime Minister to
huddle to ourselves the 7rirment of an old Cormonwealth and wash
our hands of new ones. We can't do that. We are all members
one of another. We must do our best, and one of the things that
has to be done is to make it understood, in the most friendly
and helpful way, that no young emerging nation can be a young
and genuinely independent nation unless it has within itself not
only the formalities of political self-government but the
essences of local self-government, of economic welfare of a
capacity to endure whatever anybody e) lse does. Now, we overlook
this in. Australia becnuse we are not only politically independent
but we are economically independent. iJe stand on our own feet.
This is, of course, of tremendous importance, We take for
granted, no doubt, a great deal, I am not saying we can live by
ourselves because any nation that today says it can live by
itself is a fool of a nation, but within those limits, we are
economically self-contained, we arc politically self-contained
and we now have, as I realised when I was in London this or this
nation, politically independent, proudly independent, politically
and economically in an enormous moss of problems. One of the
things we will have to do is not to be superior, not to talk down
but to say to them all, " Well now, we realise your problem, we
value your independence politically, what can we do to help you
with trained men, experts with techniques?" This is not all a
matter of so many millions of pounds. It is a matter of human
understanding and human assistance, and came out of the London
Conference feeling that whatever A or B or C might say back home,
the truth was that it is in terms of human assistance and human
understanding and technical encourigement and the reception of
people to be trained in administration cr . ihatever it may be that
we have our great contribution to make to the new Commonwealth.
41 4