ELDER STATESMAN SIR ROBERT MENZIES TALKS ABOUT THE BRITISH EMPIRE

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32381, 21 August 1970, Page 10

ELDER STATESMAN SIR ROBERT MENZIES TALKS ABOUT THE BRITISH EMPIRE

(By TERRY COLEMAN in the “Guardian”, Manchester) (Reprinted by arrangement)

Sir Robert Menzies, formerly Prime Minister of Australia for 18 years, and present Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, was sitting in a flat in Westminster talking about the British Empire. On a table beside his chair lay a biography of the Duke of Wellington, formerly Prime Minister of England though only for two years or so, also formerly Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, but probably not so sound an Empire man as Menzies.

Sir Robert has written in his new book* that one must not yearn for the days that are gone, and that it must be recognised that the old British Empire - was an accident of adventurous seafaring history. After reading this it is a great temptation to ask a Morfe-Imperial-than-Menzies question. Was it such an accident? Because if it was, why shouldn’t the accident have happened to other people? Why wasn’t the British Empire created and maintained by, say, Venice or Holland?

It is not possible to be' more Imperial than Menzies. “Put Venice on one side,” he says. “Now the Dutch were great navigators. We speak of them with respect where I come from. They were the first to come round our shores, before we were ever heard of. But the climate, the fertility of Britain, gave her a width of experience and imagination: and surrounded by deep water, not by the Zuyder Zee. And inquisitive wanting to poke their way round the world, over the horizon.” Influence Of Climate

Yes, but why put Venice on one side? And why shouldn’t it have been Portugal? Didn’t they poke their heads round the world too?

“Mediterranean countries,” said Sir Robert “Lush climate and constant inducement to idleness. Britain always had the advantages of a damnable climate, and storms flashing by. Nothing to be come by easily, so then you work for it.” Now there’s a Scots Presbyterian philosophy? —“Course it is. I was brought up in a little household by a little grandmother and we observed the Lord’s Day. I remember as a schoolboy in Ballarat a little kid, about 10, on an old tram in Ballarat one day, and I said, •Grandma tells me she’ll give me sixpence if 1 learn the 119th Psalm.’ There was laughter. They said she’s got herself a good bargain. [The 119th Psalm has 22 parts and 176 verses.] I saw she was putting it over me, but I did learn a great number of Biblical passages.” Bible To Politics How did Menzies get from the Bible into politics? What were his political thoughts and when? His father, who was a storekeeper in a small country town in Victoria, became a member of the State Parlia-

ment “1 suppose 1 had some para-filial ideas at the age of ■ 12 or 13. At that age I was prepared to say the old man 1 was right” When he went to 1 university he made one 1 speech to a hostile audience, 1 which be enjoyed. He was 1 called to the Bar. It was not < until his late twenties that i he thought he’d give it a < Igo and stand for the Upper ] House in Victoria. He was i well beaten and wasn’t all ' that keen, but then the man > who won suddenly died, so j Menzies stood again and won. - Me thought in his innocence , that to enter the Upper House in Victoria would be a mild introduction to politics, but six weeks later he was made a Junior Minister. By the time he was 35 he was Attorney-General of Victoria, and three years later Attorney-General of Australia. “From that time my number was up.” He had been a very successful barrister. How much of his income did he lose by going into politics? He said three quarters. Could he afford it? ' He said: “No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of Heaven.” The Genuine Article

In 1935 he came to England for the Jubilee celebrations. “Vastly impressed by King George and Queen Mary, just names to me before I came, had to make our bows. The old King was the genuine article, unpretentious, quite amusing.” After the death of the old King, and after the war, the old idea of the Empire, and then of the Commonwealth, was dissipated year by year. Sir Robert said the newcomers to the Commonwealth were strangers to the old instinctive ideas he and his old Empire colleagues had. Instinctive? —“Yes. I'm the grandson of Scots and Cornish parents. I’m instinctively British. I have this collection of ideas. I didn’t need to be taken by the ear and persuaded that Britain had done great things. I knew it, and

still believe it to be true.” At the Coronation of Elizabeth in 1953, Menzies said that if the spirit of that year endured, it would be one of the most crucial dates in history. But it hadn’t endured, had it? He supposed not. What was the spirit of that year, anyway? “Very interesting thing. The Prime Minister of South Africa, jolly old Malan, now it would be an exaggeration to call him resolutely proBritish, but he enjoyed this Coronation; went home singing hymns of praise about the Monarchy—not so far as to abandon his own Republican ideas though." Spirit Eroded Sir Robert feels that the ' spirit of the Commonwealth : has been eroded. “At Prime Minister’s Conferences now. Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, ; Malawi, all this kind of thing. , I got on with them, but we ; had different ideas. They all : claimed they were democra- : cies. I couldn't believe in i democracy with only one ' party in the country. Talking > of Rhodesia, they would say I ‘One man, one vote.’ But I i would say to them ‘Do you 1 have one man, one vote? As •we understand it, a vote ! means a choice of candi- ’ dates’.”

What did they say to that? —“They laughed. And said I didn’t understand them. No doubt they still have some belief in their minds that they are democratic.” Sir Robert went on to say that British democracy had grown up from the soil, from village roots, and then Parliament had been created. He has always been a great praiser of democracy. In his new book he writes that people may be temporarily sidetracked but will always come back to the truth, and that this is the glory of an intelligent ‘ and educated democracy. But when had the English way of government become democratic? He thought certainly not until after the Reform Act of 1832, and probably not; in a modern sense, until the end of the nineteenth century. Freedom Under Law Then wasn’t he really talking not about democracy at all but about Freedom under the Law, which is quite another tiling, which existed in eighteenth-century England, but doesn’t now exist in some places which are formally democracies? “A point there,” he said. “Someone ought to write a book about it one day.” He supposed that, technically, responsible government began the day Walpole accepted defeat and resigned. But it was the British genius to bring slowly together the two principles of freedom under the Law and democracy. What was it in Britain now that disappointed him? He said that the sense of individual responsibility which had after all made this country and got it through two world wars was being frittered away. “And yet, F don’t doubt if a great crisis arose, everything I’ve just s?.id would be falsified. So I hope.” He remembered once meeting a very embittered AngloIndian officer, a great pessimist, at a house party in Kent. This man said if you looked at an English man and a woman on a tandem bicycle, the woman was bigger, and when the women were bigger it was a bad day for the race. The date, said Menzies, was 1938 or 1939: only a few months later the English people were showing that for some reason or other the race was still all right, so he was not now incline:’ to give way to despondency Achievements Extent But I had understood him to say that “the glory had departed.” Was he sure of that? It seemed to me that English was more a world language than ever, and that was something. He said: “I use the word glory loosely. The language, literature, the sense of law. freedom; my God, everyth!® achieved here remains extant But. It’s a nice thing to s» you’ve led an honourab?; life but it’s no compensatio: if you’re going to peg out” I said I had been ver.much struck by an American who had told me that Eng land might not be a Great Power any more, but she had the blessed virtue of decadence, using that word in its best sense. He meant that work for its own sake was no longer the first thing in people’s lives, that people expected less of each other, and that this bred a sense of charity. It was all very civilised. Sir Robert: “That seems to me just a long-winded way of saying the flower of British civilisation is and always has been tolerance. If that's what you mean, quite right Now off you go.”

•“The Measure of the Years by Sir Robert Menzies, will be published on October 26 by Cassell

Terry Coleman of the “Guardian”, Manchester, interview* Sir Robert Menzies, former Australian Prime Minister, whose influence is still felt at a time when South Africa and the E.E.C. negotiations continue to strain Commonwealth relations.