10~ 6 4/ 0425
THE ABMIDALE SCHOOL SPEECH DAY
11THi DECEME, 1963
Speech by the Prime Ministe: ie, the Rt. Hon. R. G.-Menzies
My Lord Bishop, Headmaster and Ladies and Gentlemen
Before I address myself -to the serious business
of the day, I would like ' to say that at the Girls' Grammar
School this morning, I was honoured by having pinned on to the
back of my chair a picture of a thistle. Today, I am happy to
tell you, the practical nature of boys manifested itself because
lying on the seat of my chair was a shilling ( Laughter) which I
now donate to any worthy school charity, ( Laughter) ( Applause)
Of course, you will not overlook the fact that while the thistle
now has some association with me or I have with the thistle,
the shilling also has an association with me because it's a
bob, ( Laughter) As a matter of fact, there was some reference
made I must refer to what happened this morning at the other
school, if for no other reason than this, that the Bishop this
afternoon really stole quite a bit of the speech I made this
morning. ( Laughter) And, like Mark Antony, I must wait until
it comes back to me, Anyhow, there was a reference made this
morning, apropos of The Thistle to the Prime Minister of Great
Britain, Sir Alexander Douglas ? Iome, whose name, as you know is
spltH-Ime and is pronounced 11Hume just my name, boys,
as you all know, is spelt Menzies but in Scotland pronounced
Mingies, So there we were once, two of us at a dinner in
London, one of those large dinners at which people make powerful
speeches and Lord Home as he then was, made a speech proposing
my health and had a litle fun about the pronunciation of my
name one way in Australia, another way in Scotland, and so on.
I had to get my own back by saying that when I got back to
Australia and was invited to a concert in the local town, with
perhaps the vicar presiding, though I would hope not because I
am a Presbyterian myself ( Laughter); I would look forward to
hearing him say, " Now Miss Jones will favour us by singing,
fHume, Hume Sweet Hume". ( Laughter)
Now Sir, I would like to pursue an idea which
I had in may mind when I came here and which I am stimulated to
say something more about nowl The function of education, This
sounds very, very heavy, doesntt it? The function of education,
All sorts of fine things have been said about it but I would
rather like to divide it myself very, very briefly into two
matters. First of all, we go to school, we go to a
university, if we are lucky enough to do so. We go to some place
of learning in order, I believe to equip ourselves to learn
by our own experience. I hope I convey myself on that matter,
To equip ourselves to learn by our own experience. Now, no man
can learn by his own experience if he permits himself no
experience, if he is merely one of a mass, one of a mob if he
has merely got the ambition of being so like everyone else in
appearance and dress and raind that he will never be distinguished
from any other man in the crowd. This is one of the terrifying
prospects of this century that people should succumb to the
mass idea, that people should be even so bemused as to believe
that the majority is always right. I know fellows like myself
occasionally like to get a majority; ( Laughter) but if I hadnt
got a majority this time it would have been conclusive evidence
to meo that the majority Is wrong. ( Laughter) But the point I
of a 0 0 0 0/ 2
2
want to make is this: Nothing could be more absurd than to
have your own mind devEloped to a point at which you really
believe that you can't disagree with the majority of people
without being a little odd, a litftle unworthy, a little crazy.
You, Sir, Ireferred to something that Jan
Christian Simuts had said about mankind being on the march0 I
remember that very well, It was in the same speech that he
pointed out that the most dangerous thing in the world was
the mass movement and the mass mentality which threatened to
destroy the freedom of mankind. This is true. I remember once
attending a church service somewhere or other, I've forgotten
in which there was a Scots preacher who told the story of the
first disciples on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, Suddenly
he stopped and hie said, " Picture the scn" and he described
it. He said, " That was the beginning of the greatest minority
movement in human history." Now this is true because Christianity
is the greatest minority movement in human history. We can't
count majorities in this world for Christianity, but it stands
for something more than that because people, generation after
generation and century after century, have been found who
believe that the majority was not necessarily right, that
minorities though they might be, they had standards to uphold
and great ideas to preach and to practice.
Therefore, and this is really what I am trying
to say, the first business is to learn to be yourself, not to
be somebody else. To be yourself. That doesn't mean to be all
filled with self-conceit, saying, " Ah I am the greatest fellow
in the world," but it is to be yourself and not a miserable
copy of your neighbour, not a feeble imitation of some other
fellow in your class or in your year or in your part of the
world, We have to be ourselves if we are to make our contribution
to life, whether that contribution is made in a vast place and
on a high ground or in a small place obscurely and quietly.
But we must be ourselves, not somebody else.
When somebody has learned by broadening studies
which may seem irksome, but which produce balance in the mind;
when he has through those processes learned to be himself, then
he will be well qualified to learn, to learn sensibly and wisely
from his own experience. And it is a pretty good man who does,
In my life, now no shorter than it was, I have seen people fall
time after time into exactly the same error because they have
not learned by their own experience because they have got into
the mental habit of having a stab aZ something as if the problem
had suddenly arisen. So we must learn and I say to the boys,
particularly, " Be yourselves."
Not a bad thing to be yourself, with all your
defects or with all your advantages or v'ith all your gifts or
with all what you may regard as your lack of talent; it is a
splendid thing to be yourself because it is as yourself that
people will deal with you in this life, that people will meet
you in this life, that people will judge you in this life. They
won't say, " O0h, you belong to a good crowd." 1 They will want to
know what you, yourself, are like. Therefore we must be ourselves
and prepared to learn by our own experience.
But of course, Sir, I don't need to say that in
a school, in any place that professes to be a seat of learning,
we must also be taught to learn from the experience of others
and the books are full of the experience of others. Every
library is full of the experiences of others; the whole study
of history is designed to enable us to benefit by the experiences
of others. I am astonished, timo after time, to encounter people
M3
who think they have been successfuLl in life because they have
made a lot of money whj.' Th really, quite frankly, is the lowest
of the arts very useful one lo have no doubt but it doesn't
mean much, on the whole, except to the individual; but who at
the same time will almost boast about their entire innocence of
what has gone on in the world before, as if they had made a new
world of their own, all of a sudden, without benefit of history,
without benefit of looking back or of looking forward, I think
it was Henry Ford who, having turned out to be a benefactor, I
think, of mankind, inventing the mass production of motor cars,
and having become a very rich man and very powerful and having
displayed a species of genius, I agree, in the industrial world,
and a great constructive genius at that, the moment he became
a multi-millionaire and a successful producer of motor cars
became, following our charming habit, an authority on everything,
So newspaper reporters wou]-d go to him and say, "' Excuse me, Mr.
Ford, what are your views on classical music?" " Excuse me, Mr.
Ford, what are your views cn the international situation?"
" Excuse me, Mr. Ford, who is your favourite poet, end why?"
Once a year, they ring somebody up in my family and say. " What
are your twelve favourite flowers?" ( Laughter) and that'leaves
me for dead because I only know the names of about six. ( Laughter)
It was Henry Ford himself who, being asked for
his views on history pronounced final judgment. He said,
" History is bunik". ( Laughter) Now, some of you earnest students
may have said this too, for all I know. ( Laughter) I get a
gleam in the eyes of one or two of you that suggests that you
mlay have said that under your breath. Believe me, just as a
knowledge of your own language is imperative for life, just as
the knowledge of somebody else's language, ancient or modern is
of terrific significance in life, so is the knowledge of history,
which is the gathered-together and recorded experience of other
people, essential for judgment. Any man who has to handle great
problems in my line of life, if you like, though this is by no
means the only one to try to make a decision about great
problems, I believe is grievously handicapped unless his mind
is sufficiently furnished to know that this is not the first time
a problem of this kind ever cropped up that it has cropped up
elsewhere, that other people have had to look at it, that some
people have solved it or tried to solve it in one way and the
solution failed because of certain circumstances. This is a
tremendous thing to have a mental background yesterday's mind,
if you like, in a sense, yesterday's memory in dealing with
today's problems. So you see your own experience the
experience of other people belore you, you must learn from both if
you are to come out from school with some sense of values,
Headmraster is so right,, It is a good thing to acquire a
vocation. I did myself and not to my disadvantage. It's a good
thing to achieve a profession or a trade or a skill or something
or other that will eanble you to earn a living. But earning a
living is the mere mechanics of providing yourself with food and
drink and clothing. Achieving a life, that's a different matter,
because that depends on human values upon human understanding,
upon having achievedg however modestly, a kind of civilisation.
Now, this is a school with a great name, a great
history, a great reputation and it has a Headmaster who has
expressed it in his concluding remarks perfectly: " This is a
church school. Dontt let us ever forget it." Here the torch
of learning burns alongside the altar of' the Christian church,
and this is a great thing because it means that the values we
achieve will be the greatest and best and most enduring values
in the world.