Character building

Robert Menzies believed the moral character of its citizens was essential to the survival of a free and democratic society. By David Furse-Roberts.

Amidst his public pronouncements on routine matters of policy such as fiscal management, foreign affairs, defence, health and education, Menzies found occasions to ruminate on the deeper questions of human character and virtue that he regarded as lying at the heart of Western civilisation and the survival of its free ideals. The human carnage wrought by two world wars and the steady rise of material prosperity in the post-war years were two of the great twentieth-century phenomena that prompted Menzies to focus on matters of the heart and spirit. With his appeals to honesty, self-sacrifice, community service, tolerance and individuality, his basic conception of character represented a synthesis of his Presbyterian faith and liberal philosophy. Like his messages on public speaking and the English language, his exhortations to cultivate moral character were frequently directed to younger audiences at school presentation nights and assemblies. Menzies understood that the rising generation of Australians would be responsible for determining the future character of the country he presently led.

Appreciating that the two gruesome world wars of the twentieth-century were not merely geopolitical conflagrations but the product of corrupted human hearts consumed by enmity and malice, Menzies firmly believed that the restoration of good moral character in the souls of men and women was key to rebuilding modern civilisation from the rubble of war and strife.  While applauding the tremendous contribution of medicine, science and technology to twentieth-century civilisation, Menzies argued that these advances must never come at the expense of nurturing spiritual and moral values. As the calamitous course of the twentieth-century had testified, it was impossible for modern break-throughs in health and quality of life to usher in a better world without human beings better understanding and valuing one another. The other development that necessitated a focus on the moral and spiritual was the rapid growth of material prosperity in the post-war decades. The Menzies era witnessed steady increases in both home and car ownership amongst Australian families, with the proliferation of new household appliances offering an unprecedented quality of life. Menzies was conscious that the policies of his own government had contributed to this greater affluence and he welcomed it as a sign of national progress. At the same time, nonetheless, he reminded Australians that politics was more than a mere matter of ‘loaves and fishes’ and that ‘man did not live by bread alone’. In whatever age and circumstance, the simple virtues of integrity and service to others would always trump materialistic considerations of wealth and status.

Like the very ideal of freedom itself, Menzies held that moral character was primarily cultivated within the heart and mind of the individual. Character sprang from the combination of an individual’s personal beliefs and life experiences which were moulded by one’s family upbringing, education, religious instruction and peer relations. For this reason, governments could not be expected to cultivate moral virtues in their citizens simply by passing new laws or creating new departments. When speaking at charity events, Menzies would remind his audience that there could be no ‘Department of Loving Kindness’ or ‘Minister for Loving Kindness’. Loving acts of kindness to others flowed from the heart and mind of the individual and were not deeds that people could mechanically outsource to their governments to perform. While governments had an important role to play in passing laws and criminal codes to restrain human wickedness, Menzies saw families, schools, churches and voluntary associations as the great incubators of personal character. Indeed, Menzies and his government esteemed  non-government schools not so much for their place in society as ‘status symbols’, but rather for their avowed mission to educate boys and girls in character as well as in learning.

As Prime Minister, Menzies frequently affirmed that the survival of freedom and democracy in a society such as Australia was dependent not so much on the efficiency of its government, or its economic prosperity, or even the strength of its defence forces but rather on the character and virtue of its own citizens. For Menzies, it was primarily the ethic of self-sacrifice and service to others that breathed fire into the life of democracy. Given that democracy represented a social contract of rights and responsibilities between citizens, it was the discharge of these responsibilities to one’s neighbour that enabled democracy to flourish. It was precisely for their practical care and protection of others during the wartime blitz that Menzies lauded the besieged citizens of London as examples of ‘fine democrats’.  On the other hand, if people allowed the human predilection for self-interest to rule, Menzies warned that citizens would become ‘tired democrats’. To overcome this fatigue, it was essential to inculcate in every individual, a spirit of service to the community and nation where the interests, wellbeing and comfort of one’s neighbour would come first. Describing the capacity for self-sacrifice as a ‘God-like’ quality, Menzies credited its inspiration to the Christian faith and the figure of Jesus Christ.

In addition to the cardinal virtue of selflessness, Menzies emphasised the supreme importance of tolerance as the great antidote to prejudice and hatred. For Menzies, tolerance was both a Christian ethic and a liberal principle of the Enlightenment. Menzies’ concept of tolerance, however, did not necessarily resemble the contemporary, postmodern notion of tolerance as being merely an affirmation that all truth-claims, traditions, attitudes, habits and behaviours must be accepted as equally valid. To Menzies, such a definition of tolerance would have no doubt appeared to him as dogmatic, naïve and morally indefensible. What Menzies meant by tolerance was the capacity for human beings to understand one another and live peaceably with each another. It did not mean that citizens were compelled to validate or agree with the different belief-systems or lifestyles that others happened to embrace, but rather a mutual preparedness for people to understand, discuss and reason with each other’s differences. In short, tolerance was about the freedom for individuals to agree to disagree.

With the ethic of tolerance presupposing a diversity of human traits and characteristics, Menzies saw human individuality as a quality to be affirmed rather than suppressed. The uniqueness of every individual man and woman was a blessing and not a curse. In accordance with his liberal philosophy, he saw it as infinitely preferable for people to simply be themselves rather than seeking to be the ‘same as everybody else’. If people had the freedom to be true to their individual personality and disposition, they could not only flourish as individuals but enrich the life of the community as a whole, with the disparate interests and occupations of citizens serving to complement each other. For Menzies, civil society represented one body with many parts, and the body could only function if each part discharged its own role. Thus individuality for Menzies was never a basis for separatism or the pursuit of narrow self-interest but rather a precondition for cooperation and the realisation of a truly contributory citizenship.

Selected Menzies quotes on character, virtue and civilisation:

“You know as well as I do that the easiest and quickest way to score in a political argument is to appeal to intolerance, hatred and prejudice. Such appeals are, perhaps, good politics; but they are detestable statesmanship”

Robert Menzies, “Australia Today – Man to Man”, Broadcast, 17 March 1954

“The whole art of civilisation is the art of learning to live with differences and of achieving a tolerance of other people’s views, which is in reality one of the great threads of civilisation”

Robert Menzies, Address to Students at Gadjah Mada University, Jogjakarta, Indonesia, 3 December 1959

“Fear is our greatest enemy. So far, a century of the most brilliant scientific achievement, of growing political consciousness, of material advancement, has been marred by fear, suspicion, and actual hatred, to a degree without modern precedent”

Robert Menzies, Speech at Harvard University, 16 June 1960

“This is a free country, and it’s free in the best sense, meaning by that, that it believes in a just deal for everybody, it admires ability, it admires energy, but above all it admires decency. Character is by no means overlooked in Australia”

Robert Menzies, Opening Speech at Mount Scopus College, Burwood Victoria, 13 September 1960

“The rarest form of courage, I think, in the world, is moral courage. The courage that a man has when he is prepared to form his view of the truth and to pursue it, when his not running around the corner every five minutes to say, ‘Is this going to be popular?”

Robert Menzies, Speech at Cranbrook School, 10 December 1960

You will test the civilisation of any community by finding out how many men and women there are in it who are prepared to do something, unselfishly, for other people”

Robert Menzies, Speech at Narrabri Town Hall Civic Welcome, 29 September 1961

“We in Australia have too much of a passion for uniformity. Everybody must have the same, everybody must go through the same kind of schooling, everybody if possible must have the same set of orthodox ideas. This is no good. The strength of a nation is in the differences that it has among its own people, so long as those are honest differences all serving a great ultimate national cause”

Robert Menzies, Address to Wesley College, 13 December 1965

David Furse-Roberts is the editor of Menzies in his own words: A collection of quotes. You can purchase the book here