A PROUD DAY

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 111, 13 May 1939, Page 25

A PROUD DAY

MOTHER'S TRIBUTE

AUSTRALIA'S FIRST CITIZEN

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

SYDNEY, May 5. Two of the proudest people in the House of Representatives when the session opened.this week were Mr. and Mrs. James Menzies, of Melbourne, who made a special trip by air to Canberra to see their son meet the House as Prima Minister for the first time. It was an important day for Mr. and Mrs. Menzies. They saw their son make his official bow as first citizen of the Commonwealth, they were celebrating their golden wedding anniversary, and Mrs. Menzies made her first trip by aeroplane. They sat in the Strangers' Gallery, and members of both sides of the House left their seats and walked across to congratulate them. ■' , ' * Mr. and Mrs. Menzies, in an interview, painted a vivid personal portrait of the third son, Robert, now Prime Minister. Robert, they said, was born in Jeparit, a little town in Victoria, where Mr. Menzies was a storekeeper. They soon realised that he was "more than an ordinary boy.' When he was 13 he won a State scholarship. His paper was so good that the Educational Department sent them a telegram Of congratulation. He went from triumph to triumph. From Wesley College he won an exhibition which enabled him to go to the university, and there he was at the head of the list of first-class honours winners < for every year except one—and in that year he had not sat for first-class honours. He left the university as the! winner of two of the most coveted I awards in the "legal profession—the I Bbwen Essay and the Supreme Court i Judges' Prize. "We used to think he! ate law instead of learning itj" his! father said. "He used t6 look at a law book as affectionately as if it was his first-born child." Mrs. Menzies took up the tale. "You must not think he was just a'bookworm," she said.- "He always knew something about any subject that we and our friends mentioned. We think that his wide reading had a lot to do, with his success as a lawyer. . Aftyhow, I can never mention a book without his having already read it." PROUD OF WHOLE FAMILY. Mr. and Mrs. Menzies are proud of their children's careers. Leslie, the eldest, is now Assistant Trade Commissioner in New Zealand; Frank, the 1 second son, is Crown Solicitor in VieItoria; and Sydney, the Prime Minisiter's youngest brother, is in business jin the same State. The only daugh-

ter, Mrs. I. A. Green, is In an executive position in Melbourne.

Mrs. Menzies, during her interview, touched on a subject that drew widespread condemnation on Sir Earle Page from the nation—his attack on her son for not going to the war.

"Bob was perhaps the bravest member of my family,' she said. "I want to tell first why I think he was. Two of my boys went away to the war, and as soon as they got there they wrote home and said, 'Don't send Bob.' «We .told him again and again that two sons from a family was as much and more than a country *expected. We told Bob that we needed someone at home to look after us. Even with all this, it was hard to convince him not- to go.

"But finally he made the decision to stay at home. It was a difficult decision. And I think that is why he was perhaps the bravest of all my boys. As far as I remember, Bob never went to any place of enjoyment during the war. He gave honorary tuition to law students throughout those anxious years as a service. Can you wonder at my anger when I read that in the Federal House it had been held against Bob that he had not gone to the war."