THlE GEORGE ADLINGTON SYME ORATION
by
THE PRIME MINISTER
( THE RIGHT 40ONOURABLE SIR ROBERT MENZIES,
KeT., Q. C. M. P.
a t
WILSON HALL, M--ELBOURNE
on
Tuesday, 28th May, 1963.
S PE E CH A ND SPE AKVER S
THE GEORGE ADLINGTON SYME ORATION
SPEECH AND SPEAKERS
In April 1929, being then a junior Minister in the McPherson
government, I arrived at Scott's Hotel to attend the annual dinner of the
Melbourne University Graduates' Association. Ten minutes later I was told
that Sir George Syme, who was to have made the principal speech, had suddenly
become ill. Would I speak in his place? I agreed, and did the best I
could. Sir George Syme died a week later. He bore a name which has been
part of the stuff of Victorian history. He himself added lustre to it;
not just because he had remarkable technical skill, but because he had
statesmanship, unselfishness, devotion, and a clear integrity. The great
medical profession does itself honour by regularly calling his name into
remembrance. My own qualifications to deliver the Syme Memorial lecture are
open to grave doubt. True, in my hey-day at the Victorian Bar I appeared
in quite a number of medical cases and cross-examined a considerable number
of medical witnesses. True also, I have, on satisfactorily rare occasions,
been a sometimes impatient patient. I have no more reason than most to
believe in the infallibility of medical judgment, which in my own lifetime
has had to be exercised in rapidly changing circumstances and in times made
turbulent by a greater achievement of new knowledge and new techniques than
can be found in almost any other field. But I have emerged with a profound
respect for the medical profession, and in particular for its leaders and
original thinkers. Sir George Syme was one of these. He sought to raise
standards and to accept growing social responsibilities. He was one of
your great statesmen. A statesman in any aspect of life has great responsibilities.
He must evolve ideas, and, even more importantly, he must intelligently
understand and assess those of others when they reach him. The product of
these processes may be a policy and a course of action. In this event, he
must convey to others something of his own beliefs and enthusiasms. He
will sometimes do it in writing; he will, more frequently, find it
necessary to do it in speech in conversation, in conference, in all the
means of persuasion. For good or great ideas are not commonly their own
advocates. They must be conveyed, with lucidity and conviction.
In our world, speech grows more and more important. If
competently engaged in, it can shorten time-tables and accelerate results.
It is this reflection which has led me to select as my topic
" Speech and Speakers", a topic which may not be so irrelevant to medical
and surgical progress and practice as might appear on the surface.
2
The art of speech is of course much admired.
are numerous, for it is attractive. Its masters are few,
are great. Yet it remains the most potent instrument for
and political progress. Its practitioners
for its difficulties
spiritual, social,
The passion for making speeches is prevalent, particularly in
our own country and in America. It is, in my considered opinion, possible
to survive, and, with good fortune, enjoy three speeches after a public
dinner. But six or seven or eight, or more, are beyond reasonable human
endurance. Yet, at a Smoke Night of a respectable body some years ago there
were 29 speeches, and not all good. In a sound country town which I visited
for some official purpose when I was Attorney-General of Victoria, I listened
after lunch to 14 speeches, thirteen of which were, fortunately, highly
critical of myself. In the United States people are so addicted to listening to
speeches that they actually pay people to make them. This must be a splendid
experience for the speaker; I have yet to enjoy it. In my own earlier
political days I suffered greatly from two classes of men. One was the
Chairman of a public meeting who, clearly and perhaps reasonably doubting
my capacity to expound my subject, would make a preliminary explanation of,
say, 20 minutes, usually leaving my political audience in such a state of
vocal exasperation that it took me another 10 minutes to get a hearing at all.
Still, it may turn out that I owe that Chairman something, for he unwittingly,
in my salad days, gave me much practice in the handling of interjectors.
The other
called upon to move a
minutes to explaining
said had I know how. man I am thinking of was the good friend who, being
vote of thanks, took the opportunity of devoting
to a rapidly dispersing audience what I would have
Yet, these little souvenirs of mine do establish that there is
a widespread interest in speeches, a popular desire to make them, and even,
though I hesitate, to listen to them. The subject therefore warrants
( as I hope you will generously agree) some examination of principles and
some illustrations from my own life and experience.
In a growing world, the complexity of whose problems invites
but at the same time defies quick or superficial judgment, the evolving
or the criticising of ideas remains pre-eminent. Every research worker
knows this. And, because " there is no new thing under the sun", which
means that research is discovery, not creation, truths of an earlier discovery
will from time to time have to be applied to new circumstances.
The work of the thinker cannot end in the laboratory or the study if it
is to be fruitful for mankind. It must be conveyed to others clearly
and, where possible, simply, in writing or in speech.
-3-
Tonight I am, having regard to the clock, confining myself to
speech. Indeed, I go along a narrower path still. I want to speak about
that kind of speech Which is public or semi-public, des-igned to achieve
some result other than the rare pleasures of conversation.
As I understand the matter, public or semi-public speak ' ing has
three main purposes; to instruct. to persuade, to entertain. The three
are. I hope, not mutually exclusive. There ha79 been, of course, speeches
designed for vanity, for personal notoriety, or for the purpose of occupying
time, as in the case of a stone-wall or " filibuster". They do not fall
within my thesis. There are almost as many methods of speech as there are speakers.
I will illustrate some of them, from my personal knowledge.
Winston Churchill wrote and read his speeches on most occasions.
When I say " wrote", I should say that, in my own time, " wrote" meant'llictated
and amended". Most of us, when we dictate, either to a human being or a
machine, prefer to dictate alone. There is still a certain amount of selfconsciousness
about it. Churchill was not like that. Early in 1941, for
example, when I spent about 8 or 9 weekends with him at " Chequers". I walked
in to his small study one evening, to find him, pacing up and down, dictating
a draft of a broadcast. The stenographer was tapping away at a silent
typewriter, in a corner. I offered to withdraw. Winston gave me a cigar
and waved me to a chair. I soon discovered his methods (" You know my
methods, my dear Watson!"). He tried every word, every phrase, for weight,
for meaning, for sound. He knew, of course, that a broadcast speech must
come effectively to the ear and must, if possible, achieve its instant
persuasion and inspiration. He knew also something which, for the rest
of us, would be a vain dream; that posterity would dwell upon his words.
In the result, he had arrived at a composition with his stenographer.
When he was just trying out a phrase, he would speak it in a low voice,
almost like a grumbling whisper. When he had arrived at the phrase, he
spoke it " loud and clear", and down it went.
Thus softly " until victory is as~ ured" " until we have
emerged victorious" " until" " UNTIL THE DAY HAS COME!"'.
I remember, many years ago, when Ramsay MacDonald was Prime
Minister, sitting in the gallery of the House of Commons, looking down on
Churchill, who was then in the political wilderness. He sat, as he has
in more recent years, in the front row, just below the gangway. He was
speaking, i. e. he was reading his typed speech, which he had ensconced in
a species of book, held in front of him. This disappointed me, for I
had never heard Churchill speak before. But I suddently realised the
superb art with which he could read. He wbuld pause, chuckle, change
4
the tempo and the inflexion, and then deliver the carefully prepared phrase
as if it were literally a brilliant impromptu. That was the occasion,
recently referred to in a Melbourne newspaper, on which Churchill was
criticising Ramsay MacDonald and, referring back to an earlier speech, said
" and that, Mr. Speaker, was when I ventured to
describe the Right Honourable Gentleman as er
chuckle chuckle ( while every Member sat forward
with expectancy) " as the bonelsss wonder!"
So you will see that Churchill had his own methods. But the
result, as we all know to our advantage, was all clarity, and feeling, and
inspiration. I did not ever hear Lloyd George in a public or parliamentary
speech. But I did have some opportunities, in long private conversations,
of asking him about his methods. He wrote his speeches, memorised them,
and delivered them in the high Welsh manner. This faculty of memorising
a speech is one to which I have never been able to aspire. For me, it
would be dangerous: I am sure that I would, mentally, be looking back
over my shoulder, and the forward drive of my speech would be lost. But
Lloyd George managed it to perfection. He was, of course, a-man of
extraordinary and-magnetic personality, like Winston himself; such men
can survive the dangers of any technique. Lloyd George's son, Gwilym,
who was to become a Conservative Cabinet Minister, once said to me, at a
small luncheon in London, " I believe you have been seeing something of
my old man. What do you think of him?". I protested that this was an
impossibly embarrassing question. Gwilym smiled, and waved my protest
aside. So I sat up and said " Well, for many years now your father has
made no political pronouncement with which I could agree. But if he
thought it desirable to make me a disciple and an apostle, and exercised
his powers upon me, I think I would find it necessary to follow him!".
My third example of this speaking technique is the late J. M.
Barrie. Back in the thirties, when the late Lord Dunrossil was " Shakes"
Morrison, he took me to Stanway Hall, in the West Country, to meet
J. M. Barrie. It was a fascinating experience, upon which I have no time
to dwell tonight. But, as I walked around the grounds with Barrie, we
fell to talking first about cricket, and then about speech making, and in
particular about Barrie's famous rectorial address at St. Andrews on
" Courage" one of the great speeches of our time. Those of you who
have read it ( as I imagine you all have) will remember its extemporaneous
quality and its flashes of whimsical and penetrating humour. " Well", he
said, " Menzies, I wrote it, and learned it, and delivered it, and a
fortnight later I could not have remembered it at all!"
I mentioned, then, the word " whimsical". I am of course
conscious of the fact that the coantemporary intellectual rejects
whimsicality, and probably rejects Barrie.
I don't know whether they will regard this as evidence in their
favour, but I feel compelled to tell you that, on this same memorable ( to me)
occasion, Barrie said to me, " Did you ever think of writing a novel, Menzies?".
Those of you who have known me only as a political tactician will be surprised
to learn that I replied " Yes, frequently, but though I think I could write
the dialogue, I could never invent a plot". To which Barrie replied:-
" Take my advice". Write a play. A novel means 90,000 words. A play
mean~ s only 20,000 words and they pay you five times as much for it."
I record this memory not to cry down the name of one of the great
literary figures of our time, but to prove, if it needs proving, that he had
a wry humour of his own.
Take anoth ' er type of speaker the after-dinner speakers. We
have all suffered from many of them. After-dinner speaking is a great art,
much neglected by the kind of man who thinks that, the state of euphoria
induced by a good dinner should be counteracted by a dose of heavy statistics.
Before the war, the late Lord Hewart, then Lord Chief Justice, was regarded
as a great after-dinner man. The first time I heard him was at a great
Anglo-American dinner in London. When his time came, he unashamedly pulled
out from under his plate a typescript and held it up, and read it! He did
better on the last occasion when I heard him, at a dinner at the Goldsmith's
Company, when he was down to answer the last toast, that of " the other
visitors". His speech I can remember vividly. " My Lords and Gentlemen,
at this time of night I have two speeches of thanks. One is my short
speech ' Sirs, thank you very much!' . The other, is my long speech ' My
Lords and Gentlemen, I take this opportunity of thanking you very much
indeed!' Pray regard me, on this occasion, as having made by long speech!".
The best after-dinner speaker I-~ ever heard was the late Norman
Birkett ( Lord Birkett), who was also a wonderful cross-examiner and advocate.
He had a beautiful voice and a flashing wit, and, so far as I could tell,
did not prepare the language of his speech in advance. He entertained his
audience without fail; it was only later that they realised they had been
instructed as well.
Speech, especially clear speech based upon knowledge and clear
thinking, is of immense importance to the expert witness. I will take
just two examples from your own profession, many members of which have in
my own forensic experience, failed as witnesses by under-estimating the
cross-examiner and not refreshing their memory of the text-book elements
of the subject in issue. But cross-examiners usually fell back defeated
6
before Alan Newton and Victor Hurley. How admirable it was to listen
to great experts who knew that a capacity for clear and authoritative
expression is as important in one profession as in any other. Alan
Newton was, of course, a man of most versatile genius. I thought he
would have excelled in any field. The point I am concerned to make is
that Newton never fell into the not uncommon error of thinking that the
precisions of speech do not matter that " You know what I mean" is good
enough. My personal methods may perhaps deserve a very brief mention.
I invariably write memorial lectures, since I have what is, as
yet, a not completely defeated hope that some day somebody may wish to read
them. I write important formal statements for the House. All this
writing I do in long hand, by a lead pencil! But I do not write debating
speeches or public political speeches ( except, of course, a Policy Speech),
or social speeches. I do a lot of preparation of facts and ideas, and
make highly summarised notes and headings; but I never prepare the actual
language. Naturally, drawing upon my own forensic experience, my mind
turns to the advocacy of the courts of law. Yet, interestingly enough,
the most persuasive advocate I ever heard was a soldier and engineer. Sir
John Monash. When I was, for a brief period, a junior Minister in the
McPherson government in Victoria, and John Monash was Chairman of the State
Electricity Commission, a proposal he had put forward was almost unanimously
rejected in Cabinet. When the news reached him he came straight up, and
was without delay admitted to the Cabinet Room. He was given a seat at
the table. He asked whether he had been rightly informed of the rejection.
The answer was " Yes". He hitched up his chair, looked at all of us, one
by one and said, slowly and firmly " It is clear to me that Ministers have
not understood the matter. I will now explain it." He proceeded to do
so, with a clarity and force I can remember to this day. We were all
attracted by his magnetism and swayed by his argument. Questions were
few, hesitant, and almost apologetic. When the final silence came, Monash
produced an Order of Approval from his pocket and, with the mere hint of
a smile, said " I take it then, Mr. Premier that my proposal is approved.
If you will be good enough to sign this paper, I can depart". The Premier
signed. We all, quite spontaneously stood up, and the great man left.
I have always felt certain that if Monash had not possessed what the late
Brudenell White once described to me as " the divine gift of utterance",
his place in military and civil life would not have been as assured as
it is.
7
I have just referred to the great John Monash. I could contrast
him with another great man and soldier, Field Marshall Lord Wavell. When
Wavell wrote, whether in a life of Allenby or in a despatch to Winston
Churchill, he wrote like a master. In the earlier part of 1941, when
Wavell was greatly outnumbered in the Middle East campaign and Rommel's
panzer divisions were rolling eastwards, I saw quite a few of the pungent
messages sent out by Churchill, who was of course in complete command of
direct and ( where necessary) colloquial language. I also saw some of
Wavell's replies. They rivalled Winston's own. Yet, oddly enough, Wavell's
conversational powers were limited., When I was in the Middle East in January-
February, 1941, and had proper occasion to put quite a few questions to him,
Wavell's replies were almost always monosyllabic and frequently cryptic. I
naturally concluded that he did not approve of me. This did not surprise
me, for many people had felt the same way. But later on, when I had arrived
in London, I found that this was wrong; that he was very well disposed
towards me; but that he had found oral utterance difficult and even
embarrassing. He preferred to work out his ideas on paper, and was
cautious of talk. It is perhaps for this reason that some other generals
of the war achieved a quicker fame. The historian will ultimately, I hope,
correct this, for Wavell's mind and character, exercised under great
difficulties, were of the loftiest order. Perhaps the truth is that the
power of exposition and persuasion is more important in an operational
commander. I don't know. Wavell was acutely conscious of his great
responsibilities, and would not lightly speak about them. Yet, years
afterwards, in 1948, at a dinner at Leo Amery's house in London, I found,
to my joy, that, with the responsibilities off, Wavell could talk freely
and with fire and conviction.
My first profession was that of the law, as a barrister. I
loved it. Some people think it dreary; I cannot think why. But it is
not my purpose to write or read a treatise on the practice of the law.
Tonight I am concerned with expression, particularly oral. Expression
in writing, as I have endeavoured to show in the case of Wavell, must take
a high place. Barristers are briefed by solicitors to write opinions on
matters on which the solicitor or his client thinks Counsel's opinion
necessary. In my time at the Bar we wrote our opinions on blue draft
paper, and only occasionally sent them out to a professional typist for
copying. One consequence of these primitive methods was that, in order
to avoid writer's cramp, we wrote with economy of language and managed to
answer the questions without undue circumlocution. If, when we were
juniors, we were briefed to draw interrogatories, ( which are written
questions delivered before action and to be answered on oath by the opposite
party), we seldom drew more than seven or eight. But they were drawn with
such care that in most cases they could not be evaded, with the result that
the calling of certain evidence at the hearing was rendered unnecessary.
Then came the great age of the stenographers. They proliferated in
8
Selborne:: Chamb'ers,. Opinions became much longer, and sometimes, cynical
friends have told me, less intelligible and precise. As to interrogatories,
their numbers multiplied out of all proportion to their results. It may
be, of course, that one tends to glorify the past.
" Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day.'"
But, from the point of view of speech, the great art of the law
is advocacy; the examination or cross-examination of witnesses, and the speech
to the judge or jury.
My learned friends tell me that cross-examination is not what
it used to be. Perhaps it never was. But, in my own time, I knew more
than one case to be lost by bad cross-examination. Too many advocates
forgot that to cross-examine a witness effectively you must study the
witness and try to assess his strengths and weaknesses, instead of putting
your head down and laboriously making notes of his evidence in chief.
Good cross-examination requires homework to determine the real points of
issue on the facts, a close study of the human being in the box, and a
most careful, though perhaps casual-seeming, precision in the framing of
each question. Repetition and noise and a belligerent attitude may tickle
a few ears, but they will seldom win a case.
But it is in the address to the court, judge or jury, that the
highest arts of consecutive forensic speech and argument are called for.
Here there is a distinction to be made between argument to a judge ( who
is by popular legend a man not swayed by emotion) and an address to a jury
( which is by equally popular legend subject to all the frailties of mankind).
I hope that the greatest of contemporary lawyers, Sir Owen
Dixon, will forgive me if I say that I did not ever think him to be quite
at home addressing a jury. To use the modern jargon, he found difficulty
in getting on to the same wave-length. But I never expect to hear a better
legal advocate. And I say this having in mind, at the English Bar, such
men as Wilfred Greene, Gavin Simonds, and Stafford Cripps. He wasted no
words. He knew his case in all its aspects, and was of course extraordinarily
well furnished with its legal background and its subtleties.
But above all he had a superb sense of selection. If you were his opponent,
hoping that you would have time, when your turn came, to dwell pleasantly
on your better arguments, you suddenly found yourself precipitated into
the most difficult argument of all, Owen Dixon having most unexpectedly
sat down with a characteristically Dixonian smile.
On the criminal side, I remember with pleasure George Maxwell,
the most formidable advocate to a jury I ever heard, or, for that matter,
9
ever heard about. Maxwell played, not upon the intellect, but upon the
human emotions. He had a remarkable faculty for identifying himself
with his client. So much was this so, that I have known him, as we
robed at adjoining lockers at the Law Courts, to speak despondently about
his client and tell me that all he could do was " to make a bit of a plea
for mercy", and be back at the luncheon adjournment, shaking his head at
me and saying " It will be a gross miscarriage of judgment if the young
fellow is convicted!". By the time George Maxwell had made his final
address and had convinced the jury that they ran some risk on the " dread
day of judgment" if they wantonly or unreasonably convicted the accused,
the case was almost over. I have heard quite a few professionally
humorous counsel laugh their own case out of court. I have known a few
criminal advocates succeed in being so detached that they lost contact
altogether. But Maxwell was pre-eminent. Even when he became blind,
at the height of his career, he had a superb touch. I looked into his
court one day, just in time to hear him say:-
" I now turn to the witness Robinson. I could not
see him, gentlemen, because it has pleased the
Almighty to deprive me of my si* 1t. But although
I couldn't see him, I could hear him. And he sounded
like a damned rogue!"
Could I turn to my own second profession, that of politics?
That it involves the art of speech is of course clear. It is hard to
suppose that a great thinker who was inarticulate could command support
and give effective leadership to a democratic electorate. This may seem
to you to be a misfortune, and in one sense it is. But we must face the
facts of Parliamentary democracy. People will not follow a eader whom
they do not understand, or who seems to them to be unaware of the problems
of their own lives.
Thus it is that the great Parliamentary leaders in Australia
or Great Britain have, in I suppose the great majority of cates, had the
faculty of speech. They have, of course, varied. Fashions of speech
change. The classical speech of the famous parliamentarians of the late
18th century is still most readable for us. Burke, for example, may have
bored the House of Commons, but he still reads uncommonly well today. On
the other hand, coming to the 19th century, I find the speeches of Gladstone
somewhat dreary reading. I remember that, having just been reading the
story of his famous Midlothian campaign, I got hold of the speeches he
then delivered. I am bound to say, with improper irreverence, that they
would never have done for a modern audience. I at once concede that this
comment ignores the effect of the voice and the appearance, which must have
had a magnetism of their own. Of all the 19th century Parliamentary
speakers, I confess to a preference for John Bright, whose flashes of simple
and moving prose, coming, as such things do, fromi the gerterotis emotions of
the speaker's heart and mind. have the stuff of imortality in them.
" The angel of death has been abroad throughout the
land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings:"
It is, of course, to be remembered that uncommon eloquence is
sometimes self-defeating. The critics are all too ready to asisume that
fluency and an apt choice of words can create -a great speech independently
of thought and ideas. This not uncommon error'has temporarily done a
disservice to the memory of that very great Prime Minister. Alfred Deakin.
" Ali yes", you will hear someone say, " He was a silver-tongued orator" ( the
word orator, by the way, has achieved an almost offensive connotation:)
" but, after all, what did he say?".
Now I heard Deakin only when I was a school-boy. But~ years
afterwards, I became immersed in the stream of Australian political history,
and became a Prime Minister myself. All I wish to say is that Deakin did
more to fashion the great national policies of Australia than any other
leader we have or have had. Men and their work are easily forgotten.
But if you care to examine the foundations of Australian policies on defence,
tariff, British trade, industrial arbitration, to say nothing of our
irrigation systems, you will find the mary of Alfred Deakin. Yet, for
the short run of history, he spoke too wet
" Billy" Hughes observed no rules; as a speaker he was
sui oieneris. The more eloquent of his earlier speeches do not, in my
experience, come well out of a second reading. They lack restraint and.
are over-decorated. But at the time, delivered with enthusiasm, despite
the defects of his voice, they had a profound and at times an historic
influence. Those were, of course, the days when he was expressing deeply
held beliefs. Later on, when I was associated with him in Cabinets, the
fires had burned low, lHe had become much too conscious of the pressures
of what he regarded as contemporary or even temporary public opinion,
The old wit remained, cruel and devastating, but as a speaker of persuasive
or compelling power he had cepsed. Perhaps he stayed in politics too
long; I will make a mental note of it.
So that it will not be thought that I am entering upon the
risky experiment of making a graded list of Australian political speakers,
I will mention only a few, simply to illustrate my theme.
Among leaders in my own time, J. A. Lyons was, I think. the best
Parliamentarian. In my opinion, this has not been adequately appreciated.
At question-time or in debate, he preserved, with the greatest of simplicity,
the personal friendship of his opponents. He had-gre~ at. human. it1a nd gio
11
malice. He could, of course, speak, and speak very well. But other
aspects of Parliamentary life and government administration attracted him
more, for he was above all a great humanist. There was much to learn
from him. John Curtin and J. B. Chifley, both notable Labour Prime Ministers,
were quite different personalities and speakers. Curtin had a philosophical
quality; he spoke with great effect, and enjoyed the rounded period.
Chifley was no orator in the conventional sense, and had a somewhat grating
voice: but he was, in his direct and homely fashion, a powerful and
commanding leader of his party.
Quite a different type of speaker was W. A. Watt. He was, I
think, the best platform speaker I ever heard; the voice strong and vibrant,
the appearance almost piratical, the tempo measured, with every word and
every syllable receiving its proper weight. He created a sort of
intellectual compulsion. I should add, by way of irrelevant reminiscence,
that many years ago, before I had thought of entering Parliament, I was
asked to speak, as a sort of preliminary pipe-opener, at Geelong. The
principal speaker was Watt, who was at his top, rejoicing our friends and
destroying our opponents in the hall with unerring strokes. The next
morning, I turned to the local newspaper, hoping, no doubt, to read some
of my own boyish profundities recorded. What I read was a first-class
report of Watt's speech, followed by the encouraging sentence " A Mr.
Menzies also spoke, and revealed a peculiar sense of humour".
No doubt my amour propre was wounded at the time, but I have
since come to believe that it was one of the best reports I have ever had.
The art of Parliamentary debate is, I think, suffering from
some adverse influences. The introduction of the broadcasting of
Parliamentary debates at Canberra has some advantages in public information.
But my own feeling is that speeches are tending to become set speeches,
and are losing something of their true debating quality. It was for the
fear of this that Winston Churchill, himself a great Parliamentarian, used
his influence, when the bombed-out House of Commons was being restored, to
resist broadcasting and fighit for the re-creation of a House which could
not seat all of the Members at the same time. He wanted to preserve the
intimacy of debate, to make members still conscious of the fact that they
are addressing the House, their fellow-members, and not the outside public.
There is much to be said for this view, though perhaps the changing
techniques of today are tending to impair it. In spite of the disproportionate
and adverse publicity which is frequently given to quite
trivial incidents, Parliament remains a remarkably good cross-section of
the people; and this, after all, is its historic function.
12
I hope that what I have said will have shown that there are
many varieties of speech, several different purposes to be achieved, and
greatly differing techniques. Are there, then, any basic principles?
I would think not, for there are even more variations in audiences than
there are among speakers. Indeed, there are clearly different tastes in
different countries. In my limited experience, Americans, who practically
invented that phenomenon, the lunch-time speech, delivered on the precarious
foundation of cold meat, a lettuce leaf, and a warming draught of iced
water, enjoy listening to written speeches, suitably stocked with statistics.
In England, where the best after-dinner speakers are the best in the world,
because they regard the speech as an expression of art, most speakers in
the House of Commons appear to read their speeches. At Canberra, for
intelligible reasons, many second reading speeches by Ministers and leaders
are read, but most of the speeches in general debate, certainly most of
the effective ones, are expressed in impromptu language. I have occasionally
written out a speech on international or economic topics, or even a memorial
lecture like this, where precision is essential. But whenever I have to
do so, I dislike it. It is good for the record, but is not good for the
direct audience. It secures better newspaper reporting, for obvious reasons;
the art of reporting is in decline. But if the object of a speech is to
persuade, the speaker must be sensible of his audience, must catch its mood,
and must be prepared to turn aside into productive avenues at the expense
of the pre-determined course. For, if you are to persuade an audience,
you must metaphorically be down off the platform and among your listeners.
And the object of persuasive speech is to have your audience not leave saying
" He can speak", but saying " He was right!".
My final observation is this. Over the course of history, many
men have been asked to give advice about speaking. Let me start high.
It was Demosthenes himself who said that the condition of oratory was
" Action! Action! Actioh!". This was a somewhat cryptic statement, and
has been sometimes misunderstood as if action meant physical action.
As it happens, I have on a few occasions been asked by young
men to offer advice on public speaking. My invariable answer is:-
" There are three rules. The first is, have something to say. The second
is, have something to say. The third is, have something to say.".
I stand by this advice, though you will be the judges of my
capacity to take it myself.