Editing Stanley Bruce (section)

==Legacy and evaluation==
{{See also|Historical rankings of Prime Ministers of Australia}}
Despite his many accomplishments both at home and abroad, Bruce's post-prime ministerial career was not well known in Australia, and most still harboured memories of his harsh anti-union legislation and his government's landslide defeat in 1929.{{sfn|Lee|p=173}} His public persona was one of an aloof man, too English for Australia in style and bearing.{{sfn|Australian Dictionary of Biography}} Upon his death in 1967, ''[[The Age]]'' of his hometown Melbourne remarked that "for most Australians, he is little more than a shadow."{{sfn|Stirling|pp=459–460}} Bruce spent much of his life and career in the United Kingdom, the country that conversely held him in high regard, but never forgot his Australian roots and for much of his career was a tireless advocate for its interests. In contrast to his image as a member of the British aristocratic elite, he spent much of his later career working for solutions to the problems facing the world's poorest.{{sfn|Stirling|pp=458–461}}

Bruce was high-minded and ambitious in setting an agenda{{spaced ndash}} as prime minister he pursued complex and aspiring schemes of economic, social and administrative development, including grandiose solutions to the problem of industrial relations and an egalitarian reworking of the British Empire. In his diplomatic career he pursued better treatment for the Commonwealth and programs through the League of Nations and United Nations that would address world questions of pressing social and economic concern, culminating in his most ambitious work to eliminate world hunger through the Food and Agriculture Organization. The Australian government even nominated Bruce for the [[Nobel Peace Prize]] in recognition for these efforts.{{sfn|Henderson|p=352}} Yet his schemes frequently bordered on the idealistic, and he was frequently disappointed at the limited degree to which he could practically implement his ideas. As Bruce himself would concede in later life, he was overly ambitious by nature and "forever buying into things that aren't really my concern".{{sfn|Stirling|p=488}} But despite his lack of public recognition in Australia, peers and historians have long recognised the abiding impact Bruce had both as prime minister and internationalist, leading his successor as Chancellor of the Australian National University Sir [[John Cockcroft]] to conclude in 1962 that Bruce was "probably the outstanding Australian of our time".<ref>{{cite news|title=Forgotten Man|newspaper=Sun Herald|date=15 April 1962|page=2}}</ref> The ''Melbourne Sun'' agreed with the assessment, stating upon his death that Bruce was "probably the least remembered but the most extraordinary of our Prime Ministers".{{sfn|Stirling|pp=459–460}}