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Stanley Melbourne Bruce, 1st Viscount Bruce of Melbourne (15 April 1883 – 25 August 1967) was the eighth Prime Minister of Australia (1923–29). Bruce made wide-ranging reforms and mounted a comprehensive nation-building program in government, but his controversial handling of industrial relations led to his dramatic defeat at the polls in 1929. He later pursued a long and influential diplomatic career as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, at the League of Nations and as Chairman of the Food and Agriculture Organization Council. Born into a wealthy Melbourne family, Bruce studied at the University of Cambridge and spent his early life tending to the importing and exporting business of his late father. He served on the front lines of the Gallipoli Campaign in World War I and returned to Australia wounded in 1917, becoming a spokesperson for government recruitment efforts. He gained the attention of the Nationalist Party and Prime Minister Billy Hughes, who encouraged a political career. He was elected to parliament in 1918, becoming treasurer in 1921 and then prime minister in 1923. In office Bruce pursued an energetic and diverse agenda. He comprehensively overhauled federal government administration and oversaw its transfer to the new capital city of Canberra. He implemented many reforms to the Australian federal system that strengthened the role of the Commonwealth. He established the Commonwealth Peace Officers and Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, the forerunners of the Australian Federal Police and the CSIRO. His "men, money and markets" scheme was an ambitious attempt to rapidly expand Australia's population and economic potential through massive government investment and closer ties with Great Britain and the rest of the British Empire. However, his endeavours to overhaul Australia's industrial relations system brought his government into frequent conflict with the labour movement, and his radical proposal to abolish Commonwealth arbitration in 1929 prompted members of his own party to cross the floor to defeat the government. In the resounding loss at the subsequent election the Prime Minister lost his seat, an event unprecedented in Australia and one that would not occur again until 2007. Although he returned to parliament in 1931, Bruce's service in the Lyons Government was brief. Instead he pursued an international career, accepting appointment as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom in 1933. Bruce became an influential figure in British government circles and at the League of Nations, emerging as a tireless advocate for international cooperation on economic and social problems, especially those facing the developing world. Particularly passionate on improving global nutrition, Bruce was one of the key figures in the establishment of the Food and Agriculture Organization, serving as the first chairman of its governing council from 1946 to 1951. He was elevated to the peerage in 1947 and became the first Australian to sit in the House of Lords, as well as the first Chancellor of the Australian National University. Although his diplomatic career went largely unnoticed in Australia, he continued throughout his life in London to vociferously advocate for Australian interests (particularly during World War II) and asked that his remains be returned to Canberra when he died in 1967. ==Early life== Stanley Melbourne Bruce was born on 15 April 1883 in St Kilda, Victoria, a suburb of Melbourne, and was the youngest of five children. His father, John Munro Bruce, was of Ulster Scottish descent and had emigrated from Ireland to Australia in 1858 at the age of 18. His mother, Mary Ann Henderson, was Irish and had married her cousin John after emigrating to Australia in 1872 at the age of 24. John Bruce was a talented businessman with "a flair for buying and selling", which would secure him a partnership in an established Melbourne importing firm that became known as Paterson, Laing and Bruce in 1868. As his wealth grew, John became increasingly influential in colonial Victoria's social and political life. An avid golfer, he was one of the founders of the Royal Melbourne Golf Club. He was prominent in the liberal protectionist political movement within the state, and an early supporter of future prime minister Alfred Deakin. John's success ensured that Bruce, his sister Mary and brothers Ernest, William and Robert were born into affluence. Shortly after Bruce's birth the family relocated to the stately Wombalano manor in Toorak. However, John was an aloof and remote figure in the lives of his children, as Bruce later recounted. Despite their family's Presbyterian faith, Bruce was sent to Melbourne Church of England Grammar School (now Melbourne Grammar School) and subsequently Bruce would come to identify principally as Anglican. Bruce was an average student but extremely active in the sporting life of the school and captain of its football team, and then of the school itself in 1901. The economic depression of the 1880s and 1890s hit the Bruce family fortunes hard. John Bruce lost much of his fortune in the Victorian bank collapse of 1894 and incurred large debts to buy out his partners in the importing business in 1897. The family suffered a great deal more tragedy over the coming decades. Stanley's brother William committed suicide in 1899, shortly after seeking treatment for mental illness. Just two years later John Bruce took his own life during a business trip to Paris; he had suffered from depression as a result of the great pressures on his business and finances. His sister Mary endured a long illness before succumbing in 1908, and his mother died too in 1912. Finally, Bruce's beloved brother Ernest shot himself in 1919, suffering from physical and mental injuries sustained during his military service in World War I. In the aftermath of his father's death in 1901, the family fortunes were at a low ebb and Bruce went into the family business after leaving high school. The young Bruce was ambitious and determined to get an education. With loaned money, he moved to the United Kingdom with his mother and sister and enrolled in Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 1902. He was a popular if average student, heavily involved in the athletic life of the college, including as a member of the Cambridge rowing crew that won the Boat Race in 1904. Rowing remained one of his great passions, and he continued to coach crews (including several for the Henley Royal Regatta) and write on the subject for much of his life. Ernest Bruce had remained in Australia to take charge of the family's business interests. In 1906, he lobbied the directors of the company to have his brother Stanley take over the chairmanship of Paterson, Laing and Bruce, and was ultimately successful. Despite being just 23, he proved an able chairman, and with Stanley in London managing the exporting and financial interests, and Ernest managing the importation and sales operations in Melbourne, the financial fortunes of the business and the family rapidly recovered. During these years, Bruce also trained and worked as a solicitor and then as a barrister in the London with the firm of Ashurst, Morris, Crisp & Co. His work for the firm took him to Mexico in 1908 and Colombia in 1912, which fostered an interest in international affairs. By 1912 Bruce was a wealthy businessman and successful barrister, and it was in this year Ethel Dunlop Anderson traveled to England and was reacquainted with Bruce, whom she had known as a child. Aged 32, Ethel was of similar Scottish-Irish ancestry and hailed from a prominent squatter family of Victoria. She shared many of Bruce's interests, especially golf, and his political outlook. They married in July 1913 in a quiet ceremony. Theirs was a close-knit relationship they would have many acquaintances but a small circle of close friends, and their relationship was one of mutual devotion. But the death of all but one member of his immediate family in just over a decade, and the fact that the Bruces would bear no children of their own, deeply affected Bruce and he "was left with a sense of insecurity and melancholy" for much of his life. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Stanley Bruce」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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