Diamond Jubilee Dinner

Diamond Jubilee Year

THE SETTING

The highlight of our 60th Anniversary Year was unquestionably the magnificent formal dinner held in the Canadian and Ontario Rooms of the Royal York Hotel on Tuesday evening, February 11th, when almost 1,800 members and guests of the Empire Club greeted our Guest of Honour and Anniversary Speaker, the Right Honourable Sir Alec Douglas-Home.

On this historic occasion it was appropriate that among the very distinguished head table guests were all the Past Presidents of the Club who were possibly able to be in the city on that occasion. We were particularly honoured to have with us that night the Prime Minister of Canada; the Prime Minister of Ontario; the Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario; the former Lieutenant-Govemor of Ontario, Colonel the Honourable J. Keiller Mackay; the Honourable Paul Hellyer, Minister of National Defence; the British High Commissioner; the Chairman of the Metropolitan Toronto Council; the Mayor of the City of Toronto, and a host of other distinguished guests.

The setting was a most colourful one--the rooms bedecked with flags and bunting, the attractive table centrepieces and the magnificent floral arrangements. Pomp and ceremony had their place, adding to the unforgettable nature of the evening without detracting in the slightest from the unusually relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere which marked the event as one of the most successful ever held in Toronto. Thanks to the great organizational talents of the Chairman of the Diamond Jubilee Committee, Lieutenant Colonel Bruce J. Legge, and the wholehearted co-operation of many of the Toronto Militia units, the Anniversary Dinner turned out to be one of the most magnificent and impressive observances one could hope to attend.

Prior to dinner and during the early part of the evening the guests were entertained by the Toronto Garrison Artillery Band playing in the balcony. All key entrances and stairways were manned by colourful sentries of the Queen's Own Rifles of Canada. The head table and the V.I.P. party were each respectively conducted from the library to the Canadian Room by the Pipe Majors of the 48th Highlanders of Canada and the Toronto Scottish Regiment. As the distinguished guests approached the Canadian Room they passed through the outstanding Guard-of-Honour provided by the Royal Regiment of Canada and were greeted as they entered the Canadian Room itself by a resounding fanfare from the Coronation Trumpeters of the GovernorGeneral's Horse Guards.

The events that occurred following the post-dinner break are recorded in the following pages, but the words alone, however wonderful they may be, cannot entirely recapture the excitement, the colour, and the unforgettable spirit that pervaded the entire affair and which helped to make it such an unforgettable milestone in the Club's history.

MR. LANGLEY:

Would you be good enough to take your places? I hope our emergency seating plan is working out reasonably well and I thank you for your patience, gentlemen.

First of all, I want to welcome you all most warmly to this magnificent dinner. I think it is a great tribute to our Guest of Honour that such an overflow attendance should greet him here tonight.

This is a particularly historic event because to the best of my knowledge this is the first private function that has ever been graced by the presence of three Prime Ministers.

As you will see from your programme I will be introducing two of them later. I do want to take this opportunity to express a special welcome to the Prime Minister of Canada, The Right Honourable Lester B. Pearson.

We are sorry indeed that our Honorary President, the Governor General, could not be with us tonight. He had hoped it would be possible for him to attend and he has asked me to express to all of you his regrets at not being able to come and to extend his very best wishes to everyone attending this dinner.

Now, to proceed with the formal part of our programme it is my pleasure to ask our Second-Vice-President, Mr. R. B. Stapells, to propose a toast to the Empire Club.

MR. STAPELLS:

Thank you, Mr. President. This is indeed an honour. It is said that although a woman may know that she is loved, still she likes her lover to tell her so, and so it is true of all manner of persons, including this Club, "Our Empire Club", which has been advancing the interests of Canada and a United Commonwealth and Empire for sixty years.

It is therefore fitting that we should show our affection for this Club of tradition in a traditional manner.

A toast, gentlemen. Please rise with me and drink a toast to our Club on the occasion of its Sixtieth Anniversary. Gentlemen, the Empire Club of Canada.

MR. LANGLEY:

Thank you very much, Mr. Stapells. Past President John Griffin will, I know, echo your thoughts as he responds to this toast.

MR. GRIFFIN:

Your Honour, Mr. President, Mr. Prime Minister, Premier Robarts, Prime Minister Douglas-Home, my Lords and gentlemen: How can anyone sum up in a few words the history of the Empire Club? Perhaps by saying that it is a forum of opinion and a rostrum for distinguished men. The history of the Club is found in the speeches which are delivered from our platform and these addresses reflect in a remarkable way the history of our country, its domestic problems and its relations in the world over the last sixty years.

In fact, The Empire Club has no history apart from the history of Canada, whose welfare it was founded to serve. How that history has changed and varied since our founding! When this Club was founded in 1903, there must have been men living in Toronto who navigated the Nile with Kitchener or marched to Mafeking in South Africa and I am sure there are a few senior members in the room tonight whose fathers did just those very things. Although these events took place in far off corners of what was then the British Empire, the founders of this Club believed that they, the events, were of concern to Cana dians. The founders of this Club believed in a sense of family and a spirit of community which informed and inspired the Empire in those days which, please God, will continue to regulate the relationships in the Commonwealth for generations to come.

The founders of this Club believed in one Canadian nation as established by The British North America Act. The idea that a province belonged by virtue of a terminable contract, with the right to break away and establish a separate sovereign state would have been anathema to them just as it is to us.

Only last week this Club heard an address entitled "Separatism, a Dangerous Philosophy". I think it is significant that we were spoken to on this subject. Perhaps it means that this Club, which was founded to help hold the British family of nations together, is beginning its second sixty years as a strong influence to hold Canada together.

MR. LANGLEY:

Thank you very much, Mr. Griffin. I think you and the members will all be interested in a brief excerpt from a letter which the Chairman of our Year Book Committee received today from the Library of Parliament and which acknowledges the receipt of our last year's Year Book and in this message points up, I think, the continued significance of our work as stressed by Mr. Griffin.

The Parliamentary Librarian says, amongst other things: "Certainly we have found it a valuable aid in assisting Members of Parliament to prepare speeches"--and a promise for the future when it says: "We wish you at least another sixty years of successful operations and hope that you will continue to provide us with your valuable volumes." Now, gentlemen, without benefit of further introduction but with a very warm welcome, the Prime Minister of Ontario, John P. Robarts.

MR. ROBARTS:

Mr. Chairman, your Honour, Mr. Prime Minister, Your Worship, Mr. Chairman of Metro, my Lords, honoured guests and gentlemen.

It is a great pleasure for me to be here in the midst of this very enthusiastic group of members of the Empire Club of Canada, and at the same time it is a great privilege and delight to greet very warmly the British Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who is accompanied to Toronto today by The Right Honourable Lester B. Pearson, Prime Minister of Canada.

I am delighted to have this opportunity to pay tribute to the Empire Club of Canada on the occasion of this Jubilee Dinner and as has been said so well by John Griffin: Since it was formed in 1903, this Club has consistently stood for a united Canada within the Commonwealth. I think that we can say that the success of the Club really has stemmed from the broad character and the extent of its activities which have caused it to grow in esteem and in influence among the Canadian people and in celebrating this sixtieth year, the Club is honoured tonight by the presence of Sir Alec Douglas-Home.

Now, Sir, since your stay in Ontario is to be a brief one, the Province of Ontario is unable to do what it might have done in different circumstances had you been here longer, but we are availing ourselves of this opportunity to be associated with the Empire Club in recognizing this evening as a very special occasion indeed.

Therefore the Government of the Province of Ontario is making a presentation to the Empire Club of this special box, which I might say, Sir, is made of Ontario silver, and we are very proud of our local products in this province.

Perhaps I can read to you what is engraved on the top of it, which can say more clearly than I the purpose of the presentation presented by myself on behalf of the Govern ment and the people Of Ontario to the Empire Club of Canada.

"In recognition of its Sixtieth Anniversary Of valued services to the people of Canada and to mark the presence at this Diamond Jubilee Dinner of the Right Honourable Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, Toronto, February 11th, 1964."

Therefore, Mr. President, may I ask you to receive this on behalf of the Club with the best wishes of the Government and the people of Ontario.

CHAIRMAN

Mr. Prime Minister, this is truly a princely gift. I wish you could all see it. It is a magnificent box. It bears the Coat of Arms of the Province of Ontario at the top, over the inscription and the Coat of Arms of the Empire Club at the bottom.

It is a magnificent thing. I think it is wonderful that our Diamond Jubilee and the visit of Sir Alec Douglas-Home should be so magnificently commemorated.

A simple "Thank you" hardly seems adequate to express to you, Sir, and to the Province, the very warmest appreciation of all the members of the Empire Club for this recognition of our sixtieth anniversary. You have paid us a wonder= ful tribute. We are very grateful.

I think many of the members would like to see this box and therefore when we do adjourn we will arrange to have the box left right here so that anyone who wants to come up and see it will have an opportunity to do so. It is a magnificent box and well worth seeing.

Now, gentlemen, the address of our Guest of Honour is being broadcast coast to coast by the national network. We are now going to await directions from our producer, Mr. Reid Forsee, so when I rise again, we will be on the air.

MR. FORSEE:

Good evening. In a few moments CBC Radio will bring to you an address by the Prime Minister of Great Britain, The Right Honourable Sir Alec Douglas Home, K.T., who is the Guest of Honour at the Diamond Jubilee Dinner which crowns the Sixtieth Anniversary Year of the Empire Club of Canada.

The dinner is being held in the Royal York Hotel in Toronto in the huge Canadian Room, which is filled to capacity for this event.

The British Prime Minister spent yesterday in Ottawa conferring with Prime Minister Pearson who is here this evening, and before returning to London will meet with President Lyndon Johnson in Washington.

The Chairman of this Empire Club Diamond Jubilee Dinner is the Club President, Arthur J. Langley. We are transferring you now to the head table and Mr. Langley.

CHAIRMAN

Your Honour, Honourable gentlemen, my Lords, distinguished guests and members of the Empire Club of Canada: I think it is a very happy coincidence that our Guest of Honour should have been born in the year of our founding and we are very proud that he is honouring us tonight on the occasion of our birthday celebration. We welcome him not as a stranger but as one who in the discharge of his public duties has visited Canada before and become widely known by all Canadians and more than that, renowned and highly respected.

His boyhood progression through Eton and Oxford led quickly to the battlefields of politics, and a seat in the House of Commons which he held for fourteen years until his defeat in 1945.

Shortly after re-entering the House in 1950, he succeeded his father as the fourteenth earl and took his seat in the House of Lords where he served until the dramatic days of last fall when he again stepped upon the Commons stage but in a new and very challenging role.

Sir Alec's contributions as Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, as Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Lords and latterly as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs have brought him intimately into touch with all facets of our evolving Commonwealth and with every aspect of the tangled web of world affairs that demands so much of strength and wisdom and patience from the leaders of the free world and for this we can all be very grateful.

We are glad, too, that coupled with this impressive background goes a friendliness and a keen sense of humour that he may perhaps attribute to his Scottish lineage.

Certainly as one of our members reminded me, we owe much to the Scots. For example, Sir John A. Macdonald, George Brown, Alexander Mackenzie and William Lyon Mackenzie all played key roles in shaping Canada's early years but I think that few, however, know that the link between our guest and Canada's early development as a nation is a very personal one, for Sir Alec is a direct descendant of both Lord Durham and Lord Elgin.

A statesman who has grappled with great and serious problems, Sir Alec has yet the wit to have made this canny observation:

"The English always say that we Scots retarded the advance of civilization. If we had known what civilization was going to be like, we would have retarded it a great deal longer."

Gentlemen, it is with great pride that I present the Prime Minister of Great Britain.

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE SIR ALEC DOUGLAS-HOME:

Your Honour, Prime Minister of Canada, Prime Minister of Ontario, Mr. Mayor, Chairman of the Metropolitan Council and Mr. President. I think it is at that point that I pause to recall that my great grand-father wrote the Canadian Constitution. Immediately I must make up for all that by thanking you for the really princely hospitality and warmth of the welcome you have given me this evening, even though, Mr. Chairman, as you disclose, I am a Scotsman.

This evening I had to look in the telephone book upstairs and when I looked I really might as well have been in Glasgow and it is at that point I must say when there are so many Scotsmen around, I begin to feel sorry for all the rest.

I remember at the beginning of the war being in a sergeants' mess in Glasgow with a lot of Scotsmen around, throwing their weight around, and there was a corporal of the Irish Fusiliers there and he could stand it no longer. He went up to a sergeant in the Argyles and he shook his hand in his face and he said, "The heart of an Irishman beats as loyally under the tunic of an Irish Fusilier as ever it did under the kilt Of a Highlander."

Confused anatomy, but the meaning is clear. Under what better circumstances could I come to talk to the Empire Club of Canada than coming fresh from conversations that I have had with the Prime Minister of Canada, one who has always played such a creative part in international affairs.

I don't think I shall be revealing any secrets when I say that one of the subjects we touched on was Anglo-Canadian trade, and I said to him that I hoped Canada in the future would buy more from Great Britain than she is at present, at which he looked faintly surprised but readily agreed that our trade ministers should meet and talk.

Very good--this is splendid. I must warn both Ministers I hold the whip hand because if Britain wants to earn dollars from Canada, I warn you, I shall send the Beatles to Toronto--and they will bring back, I think, either Canadian dollars or Ontario silver or whatever it may be.

But I am not going to talk to you about Scotland this evening. I am not going to talk to you about economics. I am going to make a bold proposition and that is that there is today a change coming over the world.

Man's emotions from the very beginning of time have been simple but elusive. They have been food and life, and the lot of man has been an unending struggle and he has never won the fight for either, either against nature or against his neighbour. Perversely, when the invention of machines put plenty within his grasp, at least in the northern part of the world, mankind embarked on the latest edition of the religious-political war. A large part of the energy of man since the war has been absorbed in the conflict between communism and democracy; with the communist in the east launching a crusade to impose a paradise upon others, whether they liked it or not, and with the free man in the west believing that the state exists to serve the individual and to provide man, if the state can help, with food and with security and, if it is possible in this life on earth, with happiness.

There has always been something in the nature of Christian man to identify tyranny with evil and insist that man will lose his life and his dignity that God gave him, if he is dominated by another and given the nature of the communist creed, I believe that the cold war which we have known for many years now, was inevitable.

Corruption, Sir, can march so far under the banner of benevolence but the communists revealed their true colours when they tried to impose paradise at the gun point. The reaction of the free world was immediate and instinctive and before we could--can or could--come together with the communist world for the purpose of peaceful living or as President Johnson lately put it "the pursuits of peace", it was necessary, absolutely necessary, that force should be eliminated from the communist calculations for the future.

I believe, in fact, that it is possible to say as far as the Soviet Union is concerned; that force is eliminated from their national programme and I believe that the change came with Cuba, when the American action in Cuba demonstrated in a stark and total sense that war as an instrument of policy was a dead-end for communism and that shock pulled up potential aggressors sharp in their tracks. And what is more, face to face with the bomb every man and every country had to re-think the philosophy which had governed life between neighbour and neighbour since the beginning of time.

Man, in his need or in his greed, had always turned to wars and then in a moment of arresting and really blinding clarity there was the revelation at the time of the Cuba crisis that force has no meaning except death.

This time the response of both East and West was instantaneous.

Now, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which I had the privilege of signing in Moscow, was not on the face of it a parting of the ways. Nevertheless, in that act, East and West chose, and the decision which both the Soviet Union and the great nations of the West chose at that time, was to turn our backs on the signpost which showed the way and the road to war and at least the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was this: it was a recognition that living under a mushroom cloud was very much nearer hell than paradise. That was the least of it--the most of it was a renunciation of force and as far as the British people are concerned, and I notice this of Canadians, too, we have always felt that sterile coexistence with the Soviet Union should be converted into positive cooperation and following the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty I think that the steps on the road to cooperation will be very slow. Nevertheless, having made the choice, I believe they will be deliberate and that neither party, neither the Soviet Union nor the West will now turn back; and if that judgment is right, and I, in my time, have said some pretty harsh things about communism, if that judgment is right, then that in itself is a great gain for mankind.

But, Sir, there is something much more than force which has to be abandoned if peace in the world is to be real. It is the communist doctrine, the communist belief that subver sion and the chaos which follows upon subversion bring to communist states an opportunity for new domination and power. That belief is active. How else only the other day could the leader of the great Chinese Republic on leaving the Continent of Africa have said, apparently with great satisfaction, "The prospects for revolution in Africa are excellent."

If that doctrine survives and as it does, there is another. task before the countries of the free world. For that tendency to subvert and to undermine and to bring about chaos must be exorcised with the same pertinacity as we used to convince the Russians that force cannot under any circumstances pay.

So I think it must be clear even to the communists that disorder followed by chaos means poverty and that poverty above all things drags man into war and a war that will lead to man's own destruction.

If, however, the Russians have thought, and they have done so, that they can stir the pot of trouble and gain some advantage from it, then if they take one look at the rich, northern, stable part of the world and the poverty-stricken half which is to the south of us then I think the fact must carry conviction. For the betterment which the Russians seek for their own people and the better living that they want must lie in cooperation, and that strife and disorder must be the worst enemy of modern Russia.

So I hope that Russia, having abandoned a policy of active war and war as an instrument of policy, may now begin to see that great chaos and disorder is one of the most short-sighted things that she could create, from the point of view of her own development and the happiness and the future of the Russian people.

The second greatest preoccupation of the rest of humanity has been the virtual end of the process of decolonization. It began one hundred years ago, Sir, as we have just been reminded, when Lord Durham wrote the Constitution of Canada and introduced self-government. At that time, if I may paraphrase one of the writings he sent home at the time, he forecast that the future of the British colonies would be to move from dependence to independence to interdependence and that was not a bad forecast one hundred and thirty years ago.

Our great neighbour to the south of you, and we in Scotland have a great neighbour to the south of us, too, and on the whole we have profited pretty well out of them--your great neighbour, I suppose, might put the date a little earlier at a certain tea party.

But the fact that British Colonial rule is nearly at an end and remember this--that it was the seed of principle in the Christian democratic societies that made it inevitable that the end of colonialism should be free nations, interdependent with each other in a Commonwealth.

But here the change is evident. The political face of the world has been recast. The balance of power has been redistributed. The British Empire and other empires have gone and the new countries of Asia and Africa are groping to find food and security and identity and peace.

And, basically, Sir, they have the same choice, the newly independent countries, as their northern neighbours had when the great empires of Europe began to break up.

Are they going to concentrate their energies on the simple needs of their people, the food and order and security and education, or are they going to divert their energies and their scanty wealth into postures of rivalry and jealousy which lead to frustration and fear and want and war?

Is the reaction to decolonization going to be nationalism and racialism and the sequel to freedom, covetness; or are the old nations and the new nations going to refuse to be petrified into the Old patterns and consciously settle down to find prosperity and safety with and for each other?

On the face of it one might, as one looks at the world of today, despair. In many countries, law and order is at best precarious and in all too few the law rests on consent and in all too few the Order is just, and if there is so much internal anarchy and external rivalry, how can we establish international law? How, having established it, can we act on it?

The instrument, Mr. Prime Minister, which all of us in the West chose, was the Security Council of the United Nations and we hope we can rely on it to give collective security to any country which might be threatened. It has not yet succeeded in establishing worldwide order or an international police force and indeed, it has only been able to make the most tentative start because of the veto and the use of the veto by the Soviet Union.

We may hope, gentlemen, if I am right in what I said earlier, that the attitude of the Soviet Union may change but we must be honest with ourselves. Even if Russia were to modify the veto tomorrow, and a standing force for the United Nations was created, by what authority would it lay down the law? Because, Sir, nations today hesitate again and again to put their affairs in the hands of the Security Council, whose members embrace such wide interpretations of justice and such very different senses of human values.

I suggest that there is therefore an urgent responsibility which lies upon Canadians and the people of the United States and the people of Britain to lead the members of the United Nations back to the principles of the United Nations Charter.

I can, at least on behalf of my country, pledge you this: that we shall persevere to make the United Nations into an effective instrument of collective security and a guarantor of man's basic needs for food and life and peace.

There is much credit that goes to this organization today. It is the speaker's corner of the world. It does much to alleviate hunger and want and to bring education to people and it has begun policing operations which we hope one day will end up in an international police force.

We and you work for it. We and you pay for it but we cannot begin to organize world order and stability until the Soviet Union and the friends of the Soviet Union cease to use the United Nations for their own political ends.

Sir, the message which Mr. Khrushchev sent to me about Cyprus only the other day, which got an immediate and I hope a just reply, is a measure of the gulf that yet has to be breached before we can make the United Nations a working reality. Also, there is, all Over the world, widespread jealousy, rivalry and strife which prevent the creation of an international police force representative of a united world.

And it is all that--and that is saying a lot--it is all that that you Canadians, we British and the United States in particular, have to change. Therefore, at present we are bound to conclude that it is not the goodness of man which keeps the peace, but the peace is kept by one thing today and one thing only, and that is the fear of the nuclear bomb. It is that which is bringing to an end the cold war. It is that today which is in fact keeping the peace. It has held the peace since 1945 and it keeps it now, for this very good reason, that nobody dares to start a war because any war today may escalate quickly into a nuclear exchange.

The nuclear deterrent has compelled the Soviet Union to drop its hybridous policy and enter into areas of agreement.

I think what the bomb has started may well now be followed by wheat. The United States and Canada have taken a deliberate decision, and do not underestimate the decision taken. You have decided to meet your communist neighbours' needs and this may be the modem illustration and perhaps the modern beginning of beating swords into ploughshares.

I trust, at any rate, that it will be the symbol of, change, for although the nuclear bomb keeps the peace and although it is the only guarantor of peace one can see at the present time, at any rate in the northern half of the world, nevertheless the nuclear bomb is only acceptable if it is a means to an end, and while it holds the peace we must launch a convincing attack upon the discontent in the world, and the only way to do it is to get all the countries so deeply involved in helping each other to live and live well, that racialism and rivalry, envy and covetousness and the desire to expand at the expense of your neighbour should be put aside as obsolete relics of the past.

Gentlemen, the Christian Churches have showed us lately an example in striving for unity which has been widely acclaimed by ordinary men and women the world over. Now the Christian nations must throw themselves into the task of healing these artificial divisions of the world. We shall have many opportunities in 1964, in the industrial, northern half of the world, to encourage, as President Johnson has said, "the pursuits of peace".

It is clear that the problem Of problems which faces us all in the future, in the years ahead, is the disparity of wealth which there is between the rich nations of the north and the poor nations of the south. It is very clear that the great gulf cannot be bridged in a few years, but there are the strongest of reasons for tackling it now. There can be no stability and order until we succeed. So long as there is hunger to satisfy, sickness to cure and education to supply, then our conscience urges us on to do so.

But the thing we must mark is this, that the division of wealth broadly coincides with the division of colour, and therefore there is a danger of racialism separating the world in horizontal fines and, gentlemen, if we should exchange the evil of an East-West confrontation for a confrontation between North and South, where colour was identified with poverty and riches with a white skin, then that will be a danger far more terrible than anything we have faced in the history of the world up to now.

And, is there an answer to hand? Well, there is in the United Nations through which we must all work, but I am going to suggest to you that the modern commonwealth, Sir, of every race, is a wonderful opportunity to defeat these dangers by example.

Finally this, and in a word, what are the means? There are the developed countries which are giving larger and larger quantities--it is not all, you know, a question of money. It is a question of people and an exchange of people. We have in Britain today 42,000 commonwealth students in our universities and colleges and a thousand out in the field. The more we can send people out into the undeveloped countries of the Commonwealth, the more quickly we shall lead them to prosperity.

There is trade and investment. The most important contribution the developed countries can make is the steady expansion of their own economy because that gives increased markets and also increases our ability to invest and give aid. It is very seldom that one gets the best of all worlds, but in this case it is the duty of the developed countries to prosper.

Then, we must have liberal trading policies and there are two opportunities this year: the United Nations Trade Conference and the Kennedy round for a reduction of tariffs. There is the possibility of greater stability from commodity price arrangement and the problem too of international liquidity, so countries may tide over temporary balance of payments strain. We have done better than we did in the past but there is still improvement to be made there.

Lastly, there is the part which the receiving countries must play and in this they must create a climate of confidence if they want capital to come. Of course, over the years Canada has been in this way an outstanding example but now we are trying to help the under-developed Common- , wealth and the under-developed world. We must in fairness say that nothing will induce investors to put their capital overseas if their profits and their capital itself is in danger of confiscation. Therefore, it will be a very good thing if a code of conduct for the treatment of capital can be worked out by the recipient countries which they will pledge themselves to observe.

Sir, one of the ironies of life has been that the newly independent countries have been born into a world which is already interdependent. The great countries and the great nations can no longer impose their will on the small, nor can the small countries hope to enjoy even the fringe of the prosperity of the twentieth or twenty-first centuries without the help of the great nations. For those who are tempted to fling their weight about, this will be a restraining influence. For those who have drunk deeply of the heady wine of independence, perhaps it will be a sobering thought.

But there are great prizes to be won if we act together and if we do not act together let us remember that nobody can say that as the years and generations go ahead, the nuclear danger will not fall upon man and we may not be alive to collect the prizes. It will be small comfort then for the few, poor, stricken survivors to apportion the blame.

I see no reason why the northern nations of the world and in this I include the Russians, should not recognize the common duty in working together to solve what are com mon interests. We and the Soviet Union have everything in common in that we wish to preserve the human race from extinction. We have a common interest in fostering prosperity and expansion. We have everything to gain, surely, from rising living standards, and the subvertent who destroys society, leaves an impoverished wreck on the hands of all.

Therefore, the surest way to serve mankind and the only way in the twentieth century, is to jettison idealogical conflict and to organize the world together for peace and plenty. If the Soviet Union is willing to settle the differences in Europe and turn to the fruitful field of enterprise, then the small squabbles in the world will all disappear, because the poor and discontented and thwarted will see before them the prizes of the fullness of life.

When I spoke at the Montreal Economic Conference in 1958 I quoted, as I quoted to you tonight, what my great grandfather said about the future of the Commonwealth and the future of nations; how they were bound to move from dependence to independence to interdependence and that is good. So let Canada and Britain, who sowed the seeds of independence, who are working together for interdependence, help the world to reap the harvest.

I have spoken to you this evening for a long time and I thank you for your patience. I remembered I was getting rather long and that there was a time in my youth when I used to go and play games several times a year against a local lunatic asylum. I cannot imagine what put this into my head at this time, but I do recall that when we used to have lunch with them after the game, there was the chief lunatic there who thought he was God and he was rather sticky in conversation. I remember that one of our wives, seeking to loosen things up a bit, turned to him and said "Sir, is it really true that you made the world in six days?" To which he replied with dignity and restraint, "Madam, I never talk shop at meals."

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, sir.

Gentlemen, our thanks will be expressed by Past President Colonel Bruce Legge.

COLONEL LEGGE:

Mr. President, your Honour, honourable Prime Minister, my Lords, distinguished guests and fellow members of the Empire Club of Canada. It is an impossible task to offer your appreciation to the Right Honourable Sir Alec Douglas-Home for his magnificent address to the Diamond Jubilee Dinner of the Empire Club of Canada.

To please him, I should say all of his audience are conservatives and so they are by Emerson's definition. "Men are conservative when they are luxurious." They are con servative after dinner. Emerson's conservatives are not Mr. Pearson, but everyone of us enjoyed Sir Alec's speech. Tonight, Sir, you represent that proud line of British Prime Ministers who have spoken a variety of speeches to our Club and whose names illuminate the past sixty years of world history. In 1922 Mr. Neville Chamberlain, in whose office you once served, Mr. Prime Minister, spoke to us of our inevitable destiny as a united people.

In 1946 Sir Anthony Eden proclaimed "Ours is not a faith that we seek to thrust down the throats of others but we believe in our faith because it is founded upon freedom."

During Hitler's rise to power, Mr. Harold Macmillan told the Club "Isolation is a very good defence against smallpox. It is a very bad defence against invasion."

In 1927 Mr. Stanley Baldwin demanded that the high road of learning should be made free for all who can walk, and added a modern Toryism, Mr. Prime Minister, but do not prohibit motorcars or flying.

Sir, only last December you said in the Palace of Westminster, "It was a speech of Lloyd George's that brought me into this place."

It was in 1923 that Lloyd George told us of the British inability to advertise their virtues, and that inability, he hoped, would never change.

Then, in 1929 the immortal Sir Winston Churchill, flawlessly introduced as the gentleman of courage, told the Club: "There are two ways of governing people, force and tradition. In the British Empire we rely upon tradition."

Sir Alec, as a Scotsman who governs the English, you have tonight enhanced the lustre of the great British Prime Ministers who have preceded you to our forum and you have enriched the living tradition of the Empire Club.

Like Edmund Burke you reminded us that people will not look forward to prosperity who never looked backwards to their ancestors, even if they did not write the Constitution.

Mr. Prime Minister, it is exactly one hundred and fifty years ago since General Ross stormed Washington for the British. I hope that you will not now have too much diffi culty in persuading President Johnson that the Beatles, whom you must have sent from Britain and who are now at the very moment of this dinner invading Washington, are not your secret weapon to beat the Americans at their own game but are simply there to earn America's dollars.

Sir, we trust that you will return to London in safety and in honour. Above all, we hope that you will always cherish the tribute which the Empire Club Of Canada gives to you for speaking to us in our Diamond Jubilee Year as the Right Honourable, The Prime Minister of Great Britain.

Ladies Dinner for Lady Douglas-Home

While Sir Alec was dining with the members of the Empire Club, we were privileged to be able to entertain his gracious wife at a private dinner in the Saskatchewan room of the Royal York Hotel.

Our hostess for the evening was the wife of our President, Mrs. Arthur Langley, who received with the wife of our Honorary Vice-President, Mrs. Earl Rowe. Joining them for this occasion were Lady Lintott, Mrs. William Allen, Mrs. Philip Givens, Mrs. J. R. W. Wilby, Mrs. Robert Curson, Mrs. Jean Casselman, Mrs. Keiller MacKay, Mrs. D. R. Michener, Mrs. R. B. Stapells, Mrs. E. M. Howse, Mrs. B. J. Legge and Mrs. Harold Gillingham.