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EIGHTH MINI14G A'IND METALLURGICAL CONGRESS BANQUET
HELJD AT TIM,~ R~ OYAL2I~ BALLROOM, EXHIBITION iBUIi DING,
MELBOURNE 2ND MARCH, 126~
Sjeh h rm iitr h lit. Hon. proberMezs
Sir, Your Excellencies, ladies and Gentlemen
I think I ought to begin by making a rew, small,
light-hearted protests. Our great host has complimented the
Governor on having been Antarctica. I would go there tonight
with the greatest pleasure in the world. ( Applause) 1Why he
should be given marks for going there out of a sense of public
duty while I lwould go there out of sheer necessity, I don't
quite understand, ( Laughter) but between you and me, Sir, I
would like to be there.
There is one other little preliminary observation
I would like to make. Your President made yesterday a somewhat
ill-reported but remarkable Presidential address and, unlike
many of you I have read it. ( Laughter) ( Applause). And I read
it with loving care. And in the course of it he spoke about
the constant need for research and developmeni.
Now I agree with this I am a great believer in
this, but while I still have it in mind, what I suggest to
you scientific people who insist on innocent victims wearing
this uniform ( Laughter applause) iLsthat you conduct a small
research into delivering mankind from the constriction of stiff
collars and stiff shirts. ( Applause) And if you want to give a
small prize for the winner of this piece of research, I will
willingly contribute œ-A100. ( Laughter)
Now I've got that off my chest my wife had to get
it on to my chest it is an awful business to be the wife of
a bad-tempered husband who has to wear these stupid things, but
it's almost as bad to have to wear them. However, you've
registered the point haven't you, sir? Old Menzies promised
: CLOO as a prize for ilhe iman who could discover how to get rid
of them, and I hope all you gentlemen sitting there comfortably
and sneakingly in your black ties ( Laughter) will support me.
Now, Sir, when I found that I had been once more
cast in the role of proposing the toast and I now do so but I
will come back to it a little later to the Mining 2nd Metallurgical
Industry of Australia and New Zealand, I said " Oh dear
me, what have I let mayself in for?" And I was reminded that
twelve years ago, in this very place, I had let myself in for it.
Mind you, it was a better time of thle year, the temperature was
milder it was then characteristic Melbourne weather, and I
made a speech. W~ ell, as my speeches are not written, I demanded
of my long-suffering staff that they should produce a copy of
what I said twelve years ago on the remote chance that one of
you old boys might remember what I then said, And they had no
notes but they said, hhIt's published in a book" and so I looked
up one of those expensive volumes that you sent me later on and
there it was full of misprints ( Laughter) but still, I got a
rough idea of what I had said on that occasion. And having
amended the misprints I find and this is perhaps something that
I want to repeat tonight that I had said this e / 2
2-
" The best thing that could happen to this
world is that all the great specialists in
specialised knowledge should work inside their
specialty, should work and sweat so that humanity
may know all that there is to be known in that
field, but that they should live ( they the
specialists who work in their specialty) they
should live outside of it, that they should
recognise that there is a life outside the work
that i-re do day by day in the course of our own
special a ctivities." ( Applause)
Now, I venture to say that that was one of my
better remarks, suitably edited after I read the book. You know,
" he lives for hs work" is a good phrase, pointing to the
contrast with the clock-watcher, but that we should live only
in our specialties is, I rather thin%, one of the disasters of
the century. I've been around a good deal for a long time and
have had a good deal to do with our relations with other
countries and the various crises of the world and more and more
I find myself believing that one of our disasters is that the
cleverer we become, the more scientific we become, on the whole
the less civilised we've become.
And the reason is perfectly clear. You may be,
as our President is, a tremendous expert in a great dynamic
field of knowledge. You may be, as so many of you are, great
exflperts in these fields. And yet if, to you the only thing
that matters is that your scientific and applied scientific
skill should be of the highest order and what happens in the
world doesn't matter, then the end will be trouble and disater.
Give me somebody who works in his specialty and
who manages to live outside of it you see the points I am
making to you because while the world has an enormous demand
for skill, for science, for expertise and this demand becomes
more and more satisfied, the world has much greater demand for
wisdom, for understanding, for a belief in other people as well
as in ourselves, and therefore this is one of those cases, Mr.
President, on which we have an opportunity of thinking about
these things and indeed, Sir, I am not being very original
because you, Mr, President, made a speech last night which on
its merits should have been published verbatim in every newspaper
in Australia ( applause) because it was informed, it was wise
it was realistic and it was optimistic, Now mark those last
two words realistic and optimistic,
You know that meidncholy fellow you encounter
in the club armchair whether it is in Kalgoorlie or in Melbourne
you know who says, "' Jell, you know old man, Ilra a realist,"
meaning that he's steeped in gloom ( Laughter). " I'm a realist"....
well., now let's have reoalists by all means but let them be like
your President, optimists, because that's the best kind of
relaist, and let us remember in Australia in particular i dont
profess to speak so much on behalf of New Zealand, although New
Zealand is here and New Zealand is a great country and is in the
fullest sense our blood brother ( Applause) but let us recall
I won't be long let us recall what has happened as a result of
the work of realists who face the facts but who are at the same
time optimists who conquered the future. a so so s / 3
-3
Well$ I can remember when a serious time many
of you may with a stroke of fortune when I came back into
office at the end of 194+ 9. It was like the old scene in the
" Tale of Two Cities" do you remember othen the slogan was
" Recalled to Life" and Dr. Nanette came out of his cell and
came back to London? I was " recalled to -life" if that is
the right expression at the end of 194+ 9.
All I viant to do is to remind you of the fact that
at that time there was a fixed belief, based on that most
pregnable of all foundations, the views of the experts, that
our supplies of iron ore were very limited, tha t we must never
allow one ounce to go out of the country. This was at the end
of 191+ 9. As for oil and natural gas an expression which I
must explain to some of our wives relates to something that
comes out of the ground ( Laughter) as for oil and -natural
gas, the whole of life was a big query, wasn't it? People who
talked about looking for oil and who went on looking for oil
were regarded as amiable lunatics, and today coal,*., coal,..
When I came back into office, wie were importing coal importing
coal and as the charter party rate at that time wias a little
high, -, re paid if this is the right expression Sir we paid
through the nose for the coal that we got, and today we're a
large exporter of coal,
Tin production was failing, and today it has all the
signs of vivacity, Bauxite was imported and today, my distinguished
friend on the right the President, has only two embarrassments
about bauxite. Neither of them relates to the quantity of
bauxite in Australia, One of them relates to how you get the
cash in to develop the wretched stuff and the ot'ner is what you
do with it when you have it. ( Laughter) But look, bauxite
look at Lindsay Clark down there, he knows all about this but
really it is hard to remember, isn't it, that in 194+ 9 bauxite
was a somewhat rare imported commodity.
Now there are dozens of other examples but I've
mentioned these, Sir, in order to remind ourselves that this
dramatic change has occurred in Australia not because of me;
I don't claim to h, 1ve anything to do with it but it has
occurred in Australia because there were optimists of energy,
of drive and of confidence who translated all these things
into achievement, Therefore ( applause) perhaps all I need
to say is this. I was born there's no secret about my age at the
end of 1891+, and before long whisked off into an old mining
city I mentioned this twelve years ago but you've forgotten
an old mining city called Ballarat, and to us in those days,
to us small boys in those days, mining was a sort of memorial
of the past. There were old poppet heads, there were old
mullock heaps, and in an adventurous mood we would crawl along
old drives and suddenly discover we were about to fall in and
be lost forever and then realising our responsibility to
history, we came back. ( Laughter) But there was Ballarat
the old mining city the old gold mining city and so one became
accustomed at tha,:; t time to say, " Yes, Australia " I'm speaking
about Victoria nowr in particular, Henry. I won't make any
reference to what happened in Sydney at a certain stage because
this is indelicate, but in Victoria the pastoral age, the gold
mining age, the agricultural age, the manufacturing age, all
these have followed each other and each of them has brought 0mO@* 6O0 0/
its own wave of population into Australia. But when the
historian sets himself out to organise this thing in his own
mind, I think that he will say that the age that intervened
between your last conference and this one is the most dynamic
and productive age in the history of our nation. At any rate,
I believe so and therefore I say so.
One other thing only, Sir, I w. ould like to say.
This Conference is a conference which I think more than any
other in Australia or in New Zealand is unique in its collation
of practical kcno-. Iledge and its dissemination of practical
knowledge. I had a look through the book of the wvords
the programme and really, gentlemen, all I can say to you is
that people who do as much work as you do every day on
practical matters would never qualify for a convention in San
Francisco. D. o you know what I mean?
This is a remarkable event and a remarkable conference
and I was delighted, Sir, when I heard or read in your speech
( because I didn't hear it) your admirable point which we all
need to remember that we mustntt go in too much for dividing
things into the black and the white, we mustn't go in too much
for the false dichotomy to which we are all rather prone, we
mustn't say " Either you're for wool or you're for artificial
fibres*" W~ e mustn't say, " Either youtre for coal or you're
for oil or natural gas". What we have to understand more and
more and this I thought, Sir, was the keynote of your speechis
that in this modern world we are all whether we like it or
not, interdependent interdependent internally, " Wooll
artificial fibres, natural gas and oil coal Australia, the
new world, the new nations we are interdependent and we will
do very badly if in the course of our-work we don't recognise
this fact and realise that what happens in the new ' vrorld in
the new nations, politically immature, economically immature,
will not only determine their future but may very ea-sily
determine ours. And therefore, Sir, I want to say that it is a rare
pleasure to me to be speaking for a little while at a conference
which I believe is directing its mind to some of the greatest
problems that we have not only here but all around the Commonwealth,
and I would like to compliment them on having been given
such magnificent leadership as you have already given them.
( Applause) Therefore, Sir, to come back to the right form of
the words, I propose, ladies and gentlemen, the health now
lot's get this right of the mining and metallurgical
remember the trouble I had about pronouncing thiat word the
mining and metallurgical industry of Australia and New Zealand,