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country, 3,000 British teachers, 10,800 technical advisers, 5,700 educational experts in Commonwealth countries. Then multiply that to take into account other Commonwealth countries' exchanges. Think of the more than 250 Commonwealth societies, the 40 Commonwealth-wide professional associations, establishing contact at every level of society . . . from established professional levels: Commonwealth lawyers, teachers, scientists, farmers, pharmacists. I should pay a tribute here to the work of the Commonwealth Foundation in helping to set up these associations and other bodies, such as the Royal Commonwealth Society, whose guests we are today
Then there are the younger groups, the twinning of schools, students, VSO work, youth exchanges and study tours in which societies such as this one have led the way .
and I welcome in that connection the setting up of the Commonwealth Youth Exchange Committee with its big conference here next month. These exchanges and others in the field of technical assistance where experts from one Commonwealth country are working with another in field and farm and laboratory, university or Government office, these people and the contacts they make are what the biologists would call the DNA of the Commonwealth structure, the genetic determinants of what makes this unique association tick.
CC
As this habit of working together and consulting together is reflected in the main inter-governmental organs of co-operation, under the eye of the Secretary- General, Mr. Arnold Smith, we have an instrument to hand to meet the world problems of the 'seventies, the problems of an advanced industrial society, the problems of the waste of world resources, of hunger and population pressure, of race and human equality. Everyone knows the quotation from John Donne: No man is an island." In these days, of course, no island is an island either, and here is where the span of Commonwealth experience is an asset not just to its members but to the world. I think we have to notice, therefore, that the Commonwealth relationship being expressed so extensively in terms of people, of meeting together for purposes of common use and common interest, of people from this long list of so varied countries, this is something that has a vitality of its own. It is of a different nature from the relationship that we shall progressively obtain with those who will be our fellow members of the European Economic Community.
To sum up, in practical terms, as I have described, we shall in the negotiations seek all proper and reasonable safeguards to meet Commonwealth trading problems. Moving away from the practical to what you might call the spiritual and personal plane, there is no reason at all why the vigour that there is in the personal, professional and
professional and scientific relationships between the different Commonwealth countries should suffer at all from our membership of the European Economic Community.
Well, Mr. Chairman, I have quoted from the 16th, 17th and 19th century. Somebody once remarked: "In the House of Commons in the 17th century people quoted from the Scriptures, in the 18th and 19th from the classics and in the 20th from nothing at all." As a matter of fact, what we most frequently quote now is each other's speeches. The telling phrase begins: "And does the Right Honourable Gentleman remember what he said in May of last year ", so I thought I would conclude by a quotation from something I myself have written: "In this and other ways, the United Kingdom demonstrates and will continue to demonstrate that its devotion to the Commonwealth is no mere matter of words, and is in no way qualified by our belief that the united Europe, including Britain, would be to the general advantage of us all."