War and peace

As Prime Minister during several major conflicts, Robert Menzies made it known to the Australian community that war represented the struggle for the survival of democracy in the face of tyranny. By David Furse-Roberts.

Serving as Prime Minister through both the early phase of the Second World War and the Cold War, the spectre of war was never far from Menzies’ mind. Although Menzies did not serve in uniform during the Great War of his youth, he was not oblivious to the indelible scars its carnage had left on hundreds and thousands of families and communities throughout Australia. With Menzies believing up until the late 1930s that the Great War had been ‘the war to end all wars’, he shared the aversion of his fellow Australians to the prospect of yet another global conflagration. For this reason, Menzies supported Neville Chamberlain of Britain with his cautious policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany. Writing to Chamberlain in August 1939, he wrote that ‘No nation should ignore real efforts at settlement because of false notions of prestige’ and deplored war as ‘the greatest possible calamity’. While Menzies was no pacifist, he was nonetheless convinced that the negotiation of a binding peace-settlement with Hitler would be infinitely preferable to a declaration of war on Nazi Germany. In his approach to the Nazi question, Menzies largely continued the policy of his UAP predecessor Joe Lyons but distanced himself from the more hawkish outlook of Chamberlain’s successor, Winston Churchill, in the late 1930s. Destructive, barbarous and uncivilised, war to Menzies represented a ‘failure of the human spirit’ and was a fate to be averted at all costs.

With Britain’s declaration of war on 2 September 1939, however, Menzies immediately ‘declared that Australia was also at war’. From the tone of his broadcast, it was evident that Menzies dreaded this outbreak of war but owing to both Australia’s loyalty to Britain and its international obligations to defend other European nations from Nazi German belligerence, he determined that it was right to involve Australia. As a wartime Prime Minister, Menzies and his government prepared Australia for war by announcing the commitment of troops to join British forces and undertook administrative reforms to increase the capacity of Australia’s defence departments. Eager to lead a united political front during the War, Menzies invited Labor to join his UAP in forming a national government, but the ALP rebuffed the offer. Appreciating the critical role of Britain in the execution of the war, Menzies travelled to Britain in early 1941 to hold talks with Churchill and his War Cabinet. Despite some historical perceptions that Menzies simply jettisoned Australia’s interests in the Pacific to curry favour with Churchill, the Australian Prime Minister protested at his British counterpart’s inability to understand the situation in Singapore or the vulnerability of Britain’s dominions in the Pacific. As well as defending Australia’s interests abroad, Menzies made overtures to Ireland and Canada to enlist their support for the British war effort, but was unsuccessful. Shortly after his return to Australia in May 1941, the support of his UAP colleagues crumbled and Menzies relinquished the Prime Ministership on 28 August.

Whilst no longer Prime Minister, Menzies continued to take an abiding interest in the war, indeed his very decision to resign was motivated principally by wartime considerations. With Australia at war, Menzies believed that national unity was paramount and given his contentious position within the UAP, he saw his decision to resign as ‘offering real prospects of unity in the ranks of the government party’. A destabilised and divided government, on the other hand, would serve only to cripple the morale and leadership the country desperately needed to see the crisis through. Menzies used his time in the political wilderness to broadcast regular messages to the people and many of these 1942 addresses frequently alluded to the then-omnipresent theme of war and peace. Menzies spoke about how the war represented not only a clash of national interests but the struggle for the survival of democracy in the face of tyranny. Turning to specific themes, Menzies spoke on ‘women in war’, ‘the schools in war’, ‘the moral element in total war’ and ‘paying for the war’. With his eyes fixed on the future, Menzies also spoke presciently about the shape of affairs following the war. In 1942, he hoped for a world where both the Germans and Japanese could ‘live and move in amity with ourselves’, a vision which soon came to pass as the former axis powers each emerged as a constructive contributor to the peace and prosperity of the post-war world. While Menzies had argued in 1942 that the nation required its immediate energy and resources for a sustained war effort to overcome the enemy; the resumption of peace, in his poetic phrase, would require the people to once again ‘beat their swords into ploughshares’. Accordingly, industry, agriculture, development and education would be charged with the task of rebuilding the country after the war. 

Menzies viewed peace in a very similar vein to that of freedom. Like the notion of liberty itself, he saw peace as ultimately springing from the character of individual nations and their people. Accordingly, his faith in the capacity of the United Nations to guarantee world peace was somewhat more circumspect than that of his Labor opponents such as H V Evatt. While Menzies envisaged a legitimate role for the UN, he believed that alliances and bilateral relations between freedom-loving nations such as Australia, New Zealand, Britain and the US proved the best means of securing peace. The best way to advance world peace was not simply to build a stronger UN with more binding declarations and covenants on its member nations, but rather the cultivation of peace-loving ideals, such as freedom, toleration and justice, across the nations of the world. In just the same way that the State could not enforce democracy on its own citizens, it was naïve to believe that an international organ such as the UN could impose peace on its member states, particularly those bereft of intrinsic peace-loving principles. The proper pathway to lasting peace, therefore, was for nations such as Australia to stand in solidarity with other free nations, and together, they could forge constructive trade relations with other countries which would then open up avenues to commend free, democratic ideals for these countries to adopt for themselves. Menzies held that the creation of constructive and fruitful trade relations between countries could lay a firm foundation for world peace.

Selected Menzies quotes on war and peace

“War after war is the result of a failure of the human spirit, not of some superficial elements but of the fatal inability of man to adjust himself to other men in a social world”

Robert Menzies, Education, Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, 26 July 1945

“In my own lifetime, twice Australia has been involved in war, in enmity, but neither time because Australia wanted to be anybody’s opponent, but because somebody wanted to be the opponent of Australia and what Australia believed in…we are a peaceful people. We are capable of being warlike for a time, but always with the ambition for peace”

Robert Menzies, Speech at Dinner Tendered by His Excellency, First Minister Djuanda of Indonesia, 2 December, 1959

“I am old-fashioned enough to believe that the greatest guarantee of peace in the world is that nations should trade peacefully plentifully and profitably with each other. This is a tremendous foundation for understanding and therefore for peace”

Robert Menzies, Opening of the ANZ Bank Building, Pitt and Hunter Streets, Sydney, 24 September 1965

“We are tempted to think that the defence of the realm is something which occurs in terms of arms and nothing else. Arms, war, the defence of the realm. But the defence of the realm is a continuing thing. The defence of the realm includes the defence of its, to be quite homely, its economic structure, its prosperity, its social justice, its institutions, the rule of parliamentary democracy, the rule of law, all of these things are matters which have to be defended. Don’t take them for granted. They have been destroyed in many parts of the world overnight”

Robert Menzies, Speech at Dover’s Maison Die (Town Hall), 20 July 1966

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