The World Cup in cricket was a great result for Australia. 

Big games turn on character.  This team has it, and it has character as a team.  It is obviously very well led and coached.  You can tell that from their demeanour on and off the field.  The captain, coaches and selectors deserve all the praise they are getting. 

I cannot recall a better run outfit wearing my colours than the squad that has just won the World Cup.  I can recall disasters – under people like Langer or Michael Clarke. 

And the previous winners were infected by an arrogance that still showed itself in the denigration of Cummins – who is in my view the model for captain of the Australian cricket team.  Which makes him about the most important person in Australia.  (The white ants are as helpful as the RSL on Vietnam veterans.)

The final was set up by the three quicks and the best fielding in the competition.  (The semi-final was in my view decided on fielding.)  I think the selectors have struck the right balance in both bowling and batting.  Zampa is now a strike bowler, as good as any.  Smith and Marnus give the batting test match ballast, and Marnus and Warner set the tone for fielding.  The scene was set precisely to suit Marnus in our innings.  He is just the foil for hitters off the leash like Maxwell or Head.  When the third wicket fell, Ian Smith called the reaction of Head and Marnus one of ‘absolute courage.’ Marnus would be about the first bloke I would pick. 

And every team needs cheer leaders and talismen.

Good luck to all of them.  This is what Australian cricket is capable of and what we should get.  And what our children should grow up with.

The national footy codes, with the exception of the Matildas and, on a good day, the boys, can just look on and weep.

Finally, a word for those gentlemen at Lord’s who insulted those wearing my colours – you have not, and you never will, put a team in the field as good as this one of mine.

World Cup

The World Cup in cricket was a great result for Australia. 

Big games turn on character.  This team has it, and it has character as a team.  It is obviously very well led and coached.  You can tell that from their demeanour on and off the field.  The captain, coaches and selectors deserve all the praise they are getting. 

I cannot recall a better run outfit wearing my colours than the squad that has just won the World Cup.  I can recall disasters – under people like Langer or Michael Clarke. 

And the previous winners were infected by an arrogance that still showed itself in the denigration of Cummins – who is in my view the model for captain of the Australian cricket team.  Which makes him about the most important person in Australia.  (The white ants are as helpful as the RSL on Vietnam veterans.)

The final was set up by the three quicks and the best fielding in the competition.  (The semi-final was in my view decided on fielding.)  I think the selectors have struck the right balance in both bowling and batting.  Zampa is now a strike bowler, as good as any.  Smith and Marnus give the batting test match ballast, and Marnus and Warner set the tone for fielding.  The scene was set precisely to suit Marnus in our innings.  He is just the foil for hitters off the leash like Maxwell or Head.  When the third wicket fell, Ian Smith called the reaction of Head and Marnus one of ‘absolute courage.’ Marnus would be about the first bloke I would pick. 

And every team needs cheer leaders and talismen.

Good luck to all of them.  This is what Australian cricket is capable of and what we should get.  And what our children should grow up with.

The national footy codes, with the exception of the Matildas and, on a good day, the boys, can just look on and weep.

Finally, a word for those gentlemen at Lord’s who insulted those wearing my colours – you have not, and you never will, put a team in the field as good as this one of mine.

A political row in England erupted when a sacked Minister accused her Prime Minister of breaching a secret deal between them.  She says that to secure her support in his bid for the top job, she extracted promises from him about government policy – relating, say, to the government of Northern Ireland. 

Neither would or could allege that any such agreement could be binding in law.  But it is said be binding in honour – that is, morally binding.

But how could this be so?  A Minister of the Crown is in a position of trust.  He or she must act in good faith, and avoid assuming obligations to others that might conflict with the obligations of their office.  And they must account candidly to the public for the way they discharge their duty.

They cannot do that if they have subjected themselves to an obligation to another as to how they will conduct their office which they cannot divulge to the public.

And that is before you get to the question: Why did the deal have to be secret?

Ministers of the Crown must have the confidence of Parliament and the King.  They are obliged by their office to give true counsel to the King – that is, they are obliged to give such advice as they consider best suited to the nature of the case.  And they must candidly account for the way they discharge such obligations. 

Ministers fail in discharging those obligations if they undertake obligations with third parties about the way they will perform them in a way that precludes them from revealing such undertakings to other people.

Of course compromises and deals are the stuff of politics – but not when they have the consequences referred to above.

The deal referred to in the press was said to have been made between one Minister and another.  Imagine the uproar if the other was not a Minister, but Rupert Murdoch, Arthur Scargill, or Vladimir Putin.

That these considerations go unremarked shows how far we have fallen.

Recent events in the Middle East are shocking, but they are not novel in our history. 

We did not have to wait for Stalin, Hitler or Mao to see sheer depravity.  We saw it in the nation that thought it was the most civilised in Europe, and therefore the world, in 1792 in France, in what are called the September Massacres. 

The French were threatened from outside and inside.  Here are extracts from Carlyle, The French Revolution.

So sit these sudden Courts of Wild-Justice, with the Prison-Registers before them; unwonted wild tumult howling all round: the Prisoners in dread expectancy within.  Swift: a name is called; bolts jingle, a Prisoner is there.  A few questions are put; swiftly this sudden Jury decides: Royalist Plotter or not?  Clearly not; in that case, Let the Prisoner be enlarged With Vive la Nation. Probably yea; then still, Let the Prisoner be enlarged, but without Vive la Nation; or else it may run, Let the prisoner be conducted to La Force.  At La Force again their formula is, Let the Prisoner be conducted to the Abbaye.—‘To La Force then!’  Volunteer bailiffs seize the doomed man; he is at the outer gate; “enlarged,” or “conducted,”—not into La Force, but into a howling sea; forth, under an arch of wild sabres, axes and pikes; and sinks, hewn asunder.  And another sinks, and another; and there forms itself a piled heap of corpses, and the kennels begin to run red.  Fancy the yells of these men, their faces of sweat and blood; the crueller shrieks of these women, for there are women too; and a fellow-mortal hurled naked into it all! …….

Man after man is cut down; the sabres need sharpening, the killers refresh themselves from wine jugs.  Onward and onward goes the butchery; the loud yells wearying down into bass growls.  A sombre-faced, shifting multitude looks on; in dull approval, or dull disapproval; in dull recognition that it is Necessity.  “An Anglais in drab greatcoat” was seen, or seemed to be seen, serving liquor from his own dram-bottle;—for what purpose, “if not set on by Pitt,” Satan and himself know best!  Witty Dr. Moore grew sick on approaching, and turned into another street.—Quick enough goes this Jury-Court; and rigorous. The brave are not spared, nor the beautiful, nor the weak……

In the dim Registers of the Townhall, which are preserved to this day, men read, with a certain sickness of heart, items and entries not usual in Town Books: “To workers employed in preserving the salubrity of the air in the Prisons, and persons “who presided over these dangerous operations,” so much,—in various items, nearly seven hundred pounds sterling.  To carters employed to “the Burying-grounds of Clamart, Montrouge, and Vaugirard,” at so much a journey, per cart; this also is an entry.  Then so many francs and odd sous “for the necessary quantity of quick-lime!”  Carts go along the streets; full of stript human corpses, thrown pellmell; limbs sticking up:—seest thou that cold Hand sticking up, through the heaped embrace of brother corpses, in its yellow paleness, in its cold rigour; the palm opened towards Heaven, as if in dumb prayer, in expostulation de profundis.  Take pity on the Sons of Men!—Mercier saw it, as he walked down “the Rue Saint-Jacques from Montrouge, on the morrow of the Massacres:” but not a Hand; it was a Foot,—which he reckons still more significant, one understands not well why. Or was it as the Foot of one spurning Heaven?  Rushing, like a wild diver, in disgust and despair, towards the depths of Annihilation? Even there shall His hand find thee, and His right-hand hold thee,—surely for right not for wrong, for good not evil! “I saw that Foot,” says Mercier; “I shall know it again at the great Day of Judgment, when the Eternal, throned on his thunders, shall judge both Kings and Septembers……

But the Constituted Authorities, all this while?  The Legislative Assembly; the Six Ministers; the Townhall; Santerre with the National Guard?—It is very curious to think what a City is.  Theatres, to the number of some twenty-three, were open every night during these prodigies: while right-arms here grew weary with slaying, right-arms there are twiddledeeing on melodious catgut; at the very instant when Abbé Sicard was clambering up his second pair of shoulders, three-men high, five hundred thousand human individuals were lying horizontal, as if nothing were amiss.

But of course, the horror got so much worse when the government orchestrated the killing in what is known as the Terror – which led I think to the term ‘terrorist.’  That just about tipped Carlyle over the edge.

One other thing, or rather two other things, we will still mention; and no more: The Blond Perukes; the Tannery at Meudon. Great talk is of these Perruques blondes: O Reader, they are made from the Heads of Guillotined women!  The locks of a Duchess, in this way, may come to cover the scalp of a Cordwainer: her blond German Frankism his black Gaelic poll, if it be bald. Or they may be worn affectionately, as relics; rendering one suspect?.   Citizens use them, not without mockery; of a rather cannibal sort.

Still deeper into one’s heart goes that Tannery at Meudon; not mentioned among the other miracles of tanning! “At Meudon,” says Montgaillard with considerable calmness, “there was a Tannery of Human Skins; such of the Guillotined as seemed worth flaying: of which perfectly good wash-leather was made:” for breeches, and other uses. The skin of the men, he remarks, was superior in toughness (consistance) and quality to shamoy; that of women was good for almost nothing, being so soft in texture! —History looking back over Cannibalism, through Purchas’s Pilgrims and all early and late Records, will perhaps find no terrestrial Cannibalism of a sort on the whole so detestable. It is a manufactured, soft-feeling, quietly elegant sort; a sort perfide!   Alas then, is man’s civilisation only a wrappage, through which the savage nature of him can still burst, infernal as ever?  Nature still makes him; and has an Infernal in her as well as a Celestial.

In France the issue involved crown and caste.  In the Middle East, God and the tribe are there.  Third parties in all.

But the misery blights mankind.

You may be aware of my fondness for Tony Tanner on Shakespeare.  He was taught by Philip Brockbank.  Brockbank wrote a book Players of Shakespeare.  RSC leaders talk of some great characters.  There is a follow up. 

The book is immensely instructive.  Shakespeare was in business to entertain.  This is from the people who do the entertainment.  Why have not we seen it before?

I will leave it to the Melbourne Shakespeare Society to look at some characters in detail, but here are some morsels.

Brockbank:

The life of a part, as distinct from its significance, is the prime responsibility of the actor, and actors have traditionally been suspicious of theory or analysis, ascribing the creation of character in performance to decisions instinctively made, perceptions unconsciously arrived at, fine discriminations mysteriously achieved.  ‘Analysis,’ said Michael Redgrave, ‘does not come easily….’

So it is in my profession – and we might wonder why actors do not make more of theirs.  But suspicion of analysis dos not mean not being ruled by the text – and studying it with religious zeal.

Patrick Stewart on Shylock:

Shylock and his kind are outsiders, strangers, feared and hated for being different.  They belong to the world’s minorities.  They are, as the laws of Venice state, alien, stamped by that world to be always vulnerable and at risk; therefore survival is paramount….But however important Jewishness and antisemitism are in the play, they are secondary to the consideration of Shylock the man; unhappy, unloved, lonely, frightened and angry….Shakespeare created a portrait of an outsider who happened to be a Jew.

When Donald Sinden was offered the part of Malvolio, he said the part was tragic.  His director thanked God.  At the end of his essay, Sinden says suicide is the only option for Malvolio.  Comedy often entails cruelty.

Michael Pennington sees Hamlet as born in the wrong time and place:

…alongside the evident generosity and grace in the man, there was now a strong current of violence, particularly toward the women in his life, aggravated by a sense of betrayal , and sadly misdirected towards them rather than toward his real enemy….A deep concern for the past runs through him and he never speaks of the future.

The final essay is by David Suchet on Caliban.  Suchet was obviously ferociously bright and a keen analyst of the text.  Caliban is seen as less than human and rudely dispossessed of his native land by someone of superior force.  Empire builders saw the natives as monsters.  Suchet is guided not just by the language, but its sound.

This discovery led to my playing Caliban at times dangerous and at times childish, but at all times totally spontaneous… Caliban has learned that being obedient he will be safe.  But when anybody else should ever come to his island again, he certainly will not even try to befriend them – he will kill on sight.

Well, as Babe Ruth said, when he had knocked one into the bleachers – ‘How do you like them apples?’

The insight of this playwright into us is endless.

And it is with us here now.

Elsewhere, I said this about false dilemmas.

A dilemma occurs in an argument when one party is driven to a position of having to choose between two courses that are both unattractive. It is like having two pieces attacked by one piece in chess – being forked – or being snookered: whichever way you try to get out, you are in trouble.

A dilemma is false if it says there are only two choices when there are more. What you generally get is that if you do not do A, you will have to go with B, which will be truly awful. The truth is that there are other possibilities, but you face an attempt to induce you to believe that you have no real choice. Naturally, it is a weapon of choice among politicians.

As often as not, people say that you have to choose between two factors when you do not. In his history From Dawn to Decadence, the French–American author Jacques Barzun wrote: ‘True opera is a kind of music rather than a kind of play’. Putting to one side the question of what a false opera might look or sound like, opera is both music and drama; the joining of the music and drama defines what opera is. We do not have to make a choice about what we like more or regard as the more important. This is one occasion when you might truly say that it all depends on how it goes on the night.

When the United Nations published a report on the crisis of climate change, one notorious sceptic said the question was whether the report involved ‘science’ or ‘politics’. It of course involved both – the conclusions of science called for political action. It is simply wrong to say that the writer could only enter into one category at a time.

The footy match fallacy is different.  It says that if you go to a footy match, you must support one team over the other.  Why not just enjoy it – or shoot through if you don’t?

We see a lot of this kind of thinking, and instruction and propagandising, at the moment in the appalling suffering of humanity in the Middle East – as Europeans in their selfish imperial way are wont to describe that part of the planet that they so badly interfered with.  People who have no connection with either side – oui ce’st moi – are urged by both to join them – and then denounce the other.

Thanks, but no.

One problem – and there are many – is that such an invitation entails an obligation to make moral and political judgments that are at best left to God.  And I don’t think He’s in.  But almost all on the two competing sides think that He is in.  Except that there are at least two versions of Him.  And they are very different.  They just don’t get on.  In truth, they hate each other.  But unlike the even more fallible Roman or Greek gods, each of these Gods claims to be the only one.  And although the ancient gods took an active part in wars, they did not start any wars.

And moral and political mayhem on earth is the inevitable result.

Together with the butchering of history.

Another problem is that people take sides by reference to their faith or ancestry – or both.  And neither warrants a sensible approach to dealing with others of different ancestry or faith.  No war is good, but tribal and religious wars are the worst.

The result is that each side claims to be a victim of the West, and that the history of their suffering somehow makes them more vulnerable and more in need of protection than the other.  And what is fondly called ‘freedom of speech’ is banished to the corner of the room.

But because history has become mangled, the most distorting issue is how far back you go in assessing or apportioning blame – if that is what you have in mind.

For some time, the common law had a simple but closed view on how to deal with allegations of negligence.  The old law was that any negligence on the part of the plaintiff was a complete defence.  Then parliament intervened, and the court was required to assess the degree of negligence of either party in the case. 

That exercise in traffic accident cases at Petty Sessions was hit and miss, but these ‘crash and bash’ cases helped me to fend off the bank manager in my first few years at the Bar.  And they were instructive in revealing the limitations under which mere mortals purport to apportion blame among themselves.  Was this any more than licensed gaming? 

Well, they were nearly all over in about half an hour.  An affidavit of the repairer, two amateur witnesses cross-examined by two equally amateur barristers, $20 on the brief – to be paid months or years later, if you were lucky – and a brief summation from the bench: ‘On balance, I think his version may be a bit more likely than yours  Work out the costs.  Call the next case’.  Justice of the people by the people. 

(On one memorable day, the plaintiff and defendant could not agree on which intersection the accident occurred at – so His Worship – who was wont to bring a cut lunch with him on to the bench in a brief case – found that it took place at a third!  I wonder now if that finding would be enough to classify His Worship as an ‘activist.’)

Well, the alternative – all or nothing at all – was unthinkable.  As it should be in any assessment of conflict like that currently raging in the Middle East.  It is one thing to adjudicate upon the blame of two drivers at an intersection.  It is altogether a different to purport to adjudicate upon the blame of two peoples at war, or the justice of two competing claims to ownership of land.

We should not therefore overlook the obvious irony in the remark of the great historian Sir Lewis Namier that I referred to the other day:

The basic elements of the Imperial Problem during the American Revolution must be sought not so much in conscious opinions and professed views bearing directly on it, as in the very structure and life of the Empire; and in doing that, the words of Danton should be remembered – on ne fait pas le procès aux revolutions. 

Those who are out to apportion guilt in history have to keep to views and opinions, judge the collisions of planets by the rules of road traffic, make history into something like a column of motoring accidents, and discuss it in the atmosphere of a police court.

But one thing you soon learn in the atmosphere of ‘a police court’ – or a Court of Petty Sessions hearing a ‘crash and bash’ – is the unavoidable truth of the remark of our greatest jurist, Sir Owen Dixon.  ‘Experience of forensic contests should confirm the truth of the common saying that one story is good until another is told….’ (His Honour went on to say ‘but a testator is dead and cannot tell his.’)

Another thing you learn at the bottom of the litigious pile-on is that it is just silly to mumble platitudes that you don’t understand.  Like – ‘The witness is not allowed to say what Smith said…’  That is not a correct statement of the hearsay rule, and it suggests a fundamental lack of understanding of the law of evidence.  It’s like saying ‘You must not refer to an insurer’.  Or ‘You can’t treat with them – they are terrorists!’  Or, ‘If you criticise my government, that means you have it in for my whole tribe.’  (Very sadly, that particular fallacy now looks like being a self-fulfilling prophecy.)

We may however reflect on two aspects of our humanity.  One is that no nation or people wants to be invaded.  Another is that no nation or people wants to be dispossessed of its land.

The peaceful young advocate from Arras, Maximilien Robespierre, might be seen now as the archetypal terrorist, because of his role in implementing the policy of Terror in France in 1793.  This was the man who had resigned as a judge, because he was morally revolted when the law required him to sentence a man to death.  Some of his invocations of terror later would now curdle our blood.  But when in the triumphal dawn of the Revolution, the Assembly of the newly free French voted to go to war to export its glorious ideals, Robespierre, almost alone, opposed the aggression.  He stated what is spellbindingly obvious.  No one likes ‘armed missionaries’.  If you are being raped or bayoneted, you are not minded to inquire of the political or religious motivation of your assailant. 

You might usefully put this to the still unrepentant Messrs Bush, Blair and Howard about another Western disaster in the Middle East – the invasion of Iraq. 

It is something I saw on my only visit to the Kremlin.  ‘That’s the gate he came in by.  And that’s the gate he went out by.’  And the ageing Russian patriot guide was not referring to a second-rate Austrian corporal, but to a third-rate Corsican aristocrat – who left five million dead witnesses as testimony to the cruelty of his ego.

(On our way in to Moscow from the airport, at a distance from the centre about the equivalent of Mooney Valley to the Melbourne GPO, the guide pointed a monument and said: ‘That is where we stopped the Nazis in the Great Patriotic War’.  She did not say – and probably did not know – that Stalin and Hitler had done a deal under which they would – and they did – rape Poland.)

As for being dispossessed of land that your people have held for time immemorial, look not just at our First Nations, but to the almost total dispossession of the original inhabitants of each American continent – by those acting in the name of God, or a European empire that owed fealty to God, or the British Empire, or by the greed and unlimited territorial ambition of a preppy republic that had contempt for inferior races burned into its psyche from birth.

And what enabled all that dispossession?  Military might.  And cold hearts.  And the Word of God.

And did God try to stop it?  No.  To the contrary – He was part of it.

And the problem with God is that He is so absolute, and unrepentant.  And He does have a propensity to take sides.

So, there is rather more to these vanished supremacies – another phrase of Sir Lewis Namier – than a mere footy match. 

And the horror of it all – as predictable as it is inevitable – just passes all understanding.

The footy match fallacy

Elsewhere, I said this about false dilemmas.

A dilemma occurs in an argument when one party is driven to a position of having to choose between two courses that are both unattractive. It is like having two pieces attacked by one piece in chess – being forked – or being snookered: whichever way you try to get out, you are in trouble.

A dilemma is false if it says there are only two choices when there are more. What you generally get is that if you do not do A, you will have to go with B, which will be truly awful. The truth is that there are other possibilities, but you face an attempt to induce you to believe that you have no real choice. Naturally, it is a weapon of choice among politicians.

As often as not, people say that you have to choose between two factors when you do not. In his history From Dawn to Decadence, the French–American author Jacques Barzun wrote: ‘True opera is a kind of music rather than a kind of play’. Putting to one side the question of what a false opera might look or sound like, opera is both music and drama; the joining of the music and drama defines what opera is. We do not have to make a choice about what we like more or regard as the more important. This is one occasion when you might truly say that it all depends on how it goes on the night.

When the United Nations published a report on the crisis of climate change, one notorious sceptic said the question was whether the report involved ‘science’ or ‘politics’. It of course involved both – the conclusions of science called for political action. It is simply wrong to say that the writer could only enter into one category at a time.

The footy match fallacy is different.  It says that if you go to a footy match, you must support one team over the other.  Why not just enjoy it – or shoot through if you don’t?

We see a lot of this kind of thinking, and instruction and propagandising, at the moment in the appalling suffering of humanity in the Middle East – as Europeans in their selfish imperial way are wont to describe that part of the planet that they so badly interfered with.  People who have no connection with either side – oui ce’st moi – are urged by both to join them – and then denounce the other.

Thanks, but no.

One problem – and there are many – is that such an invitation entails an obligation to make moral and political judgments that are at best left to God.  And I don’t think He’s in.  But almost all on the two competing sides think that He is in.  Except that there are at least two versions of Him.  And they are very different.  They just don’t get on.  In truth, they hate each other.  But unlike the even more fallible Roman or Greek gods, each of these Gods claims to be the only one.  And although the ancient gods took an active part in wars, they did not start any wars.

And moral and political mayhem on earth is the inevitable result.

Together with the butchering of history.

Another problem is that people take sides by reference to their faith or ancestry – or both.  And neither warrants a sensible approach to dealing with others of different ancestry or faith.  No war is good, but tribal and religious wars are the worst.

The result is that each side claims to be a victim of the West, and that the history of their suffering somehow makes them more vulnerable and more in need of protection than the other.  And what is fondly called ‘freedom of speech’ is banished to the corner of the room.

But because history has become mangled, the most distorting issue is how far back you go in assessing or apportioning blame – if that is what you have in mind.

For some time, the common law had a simple but closed view on how to deal with allegations of negligence.  The old law was that any negligence on the part of the plaintiff was a complete defence.  Then parliament intervened, and the court was required to assess the degree of negligence of either party in the case. 

That exercise in traffic accident cases at Petty Sessions was hit and miss, but these ‘crash and bash’ cases helped me to fend off the bank manager in my first few years at the Bar.  And they were instructive in revealing the limitations under which mere mortals purport to apportion blame among themselves.  Was this any more than licensed gaming? 

Well, they were nearly all over in about half an hour.  An affidavit of the repairer, two amateur witnesses cross-examined by two equally amateur barristers, $20 on the brief – to be paid months or years later, if you were lucky – and a brief summation from the bench: ‘On balance, I think his version may be a bit more likely than yours  Work out the costs.  Call the next case’.  Justice of the people by the people. 

(On one memorable day, the plaintiff and defendant could not agree on which intersection the accident occurred at – so His Worship – who was wont to bring a cut lunch with him on to the bench in a brief case – found that it took place at a third!  I wonder now if that finding would be enough to classify His Worship as an ‘activist.’)

Well, the alternative – all or nothing at all – was unthinkable.  As it should be in any assessment of conflict like that currently raging in the Middle East.  It is one thing to adjudicate upon the blame of two drivers at an intersection.  It is altogether a different to purport to adjudicate upon the blame of two peoples at war, or the justice of two competing claims to ownership of land.

We should not therefore overlook the obvious irony in the remark of the great historian Sir Lewis Namier that I referred to the other day:

The basic elements of the Imperial Problem during the American Revolution must be sought not so much in conscious opinions and professed views bearing directly on it, as in the very structure and life of the Empire; and in doing that, the words of Danton should be remembered – on ne fait pas le procès aux revolutions. 

Those who are out to apportion guilt in history have to keep to views and opinions, judge the collisions of planets by the rules of road traffic, make history into something like a column of motoring accidents, and discuss it in the atmosphere of a police court.

But one thing you soon learn in the atmosphere of ‘a police court’ – or a Court of Petty Sessions hearing a ‘crash and bash’ – is the unavoidable truth of the remark of our greatest jurist, Sir Owen Dixon.  ‘Experience of forensic contests should confirm the truth of the common saying that one story is good until another is told….’ (His Honour went on to say ‘but a testator is dead and cannot tell his.’)

Another thing you learn at the bottom of the litigious pile-on is that it is just silly to mumble platitudes that you don’t understand.  Like – ‘The witness is not allowed to say what Smith said…’  That is not a correct statement of the hearsay rule, and it suggests a fundamental lack of understanding of the law of evidence.  It’s like saying ‘You must not refer to an insurer’.  Or ‘You can’t treat with them – they are terrorists!’  Or, ‘If you criticise my government, that means you have it in for my whole tribe.’  (Very sadly, that particular fallacy now looks like being a self-fulfilling prophecy.)

We may however reflect on two aspects of our humanity.  One is that no nation or people wants to be invaded.  Another is that no nation or people wants to be dispossessed of its land.

The peaceful young advocate from Arras, Maximilien Robespierre, might be seen now as the archetypal terrorist, because of his role in implementing the policy of Terror in France in 1793.  This was the man who had resigned as a judge, because he was morally revolted when the law required him to sentence a man to death.  Some of his invocations of terror later would now curdle our blood.  But when in the triumphal dawn of the Revolution, the Assembly of the newly free French voted to go to war to export its glorious ideals, Robespierre, almost alone, opposed the aggression.  He stated what is spellbindingly obvious.  No one likes ‘armed missionaries’.  If you are being raped or bayoneted, you are not minded to inquire of the political or religious motivation of your assailant. 

You might usefully put this to the still unrepentant Messrs Bush, Blair and Howard about another Western disaster in the Middle East – the invasion of Iraq. 

It is something I saw on my only visit to the Kremlin.  ‘That’s the gate he came in by.  And that’s the gate he went out by.’  And the ageing Russian patriot guide was not referring to a second-rate Austrian corporal, but to a third-rate Corsican aristocrat – who left five million dead witnesses as testimony to the cruelty of his ego.

(On our way in to Moscow from the airport, at a distance from the centre about the equivalent of Mooney Valley to the Melbourne GPO, the guide pointed a monument and said: ‘That is where we stopped the Nazis in the Great Patriotic War’.  She did not say – and probably did not know – that Stalin and Hitler had done a deal under which they would – and they did – rape Poland.)

As for being dispossessed of land that your people have held for time immemorial, look not just at our First Nations, but to the almost total dispossession of the original inhabitants of each American continent – by those acting in the name of God, or a European empire that owed fealty to God, or the British Empire, or by the greed and unlimited territorial ambition of a preppy republic that had contempt for inferior races burned into its psyche from birth.

And what enabled all that dispossession?  Military might.  And cold hearts.  And the Word of God.

And did God try to stop it?  No.  To the contrary – He was part of it.

And the problem with God is that He is so absolute, and unrepentant.  And He does have a propensity to take sides.

So, there is rather more to these vanished supremacies – another phrase of Sir Lewis Namier – than a mere footy match. 

And the horror of it all – as predictable as it is inevitable – just passes all understanding.

Well, I am reading Carlyle, The French Revolution, again – for the nth time. 

Naturally, I have my favourite passages.  One occurs at the end of volume 1.  A starving populace of Paris, led by the stern women of Les Halles, have marched on Versailles, and got within a room or so of massacring the whole royal family – their main target was the foreign queen.  The family is in truth forced to go to Paris as de facto prisoners by the still hostile mob.  The volume concludes as follows.

Poor Louis has Two other Paris Processions to make: one ludicrous-ignominious like this; the other not ludicrous nor ignominious, but serious, nay sublime.

The next occasion would be when he was brought back to Paris from Varennes – to what we now know would be his inevitable death by guillotine.  That would be his third and last procession.  Decent people do not speak of the unbearable cruelty that the French showed to Marie Antoinette when they beheaded her, to the shrieking adulation of the mob.  (Carlyle is big on ‘shrieking’.)

I have had occasion to refer to this link before.  In one of his early war-time speeches, Churchill referred to the resistance of the Finns to Stalin.

Only Finland – superb, nay, sublime – in the jaws of peril – Finland shows what free men can do.  The service rendered by Finland to mankind is magnificent.  They have exposed, for all the world to see, the military incapacity of the Red Army and of the Red Air Force.  Many illusions about Soviet Russia have been dispelled in these few fierce weeks of fighting in the Arctic Circle.  Everyone can see how Communism rots the soul of a nation; how it makes it abject and hungry in peace, and proves it base and abominable in war.

I do not know, but my guess is that Churchill did not realise that he was citing Carlyle when he extolled the Finns’ resistance to the Russians.  I could believe that he had drunk deeply enough of Gibbon, Macaulay and Carlyle to have them in his blood.

You might think that is just Romance.  It may well be – but in the name of God, I need something to look up to in this sea of melancholic mediocrity.  For example – ScoMo is off to Israel – most probably at my expense – to show his Pentecostal solidarity with God’s Chosen People, and do what he did best – a photo op – with Boris Johnson – a communion of the two worst prime ministers either nation has known.

And each time I come to look back to what we call the French Revolution, I wonder whether the French ever got over their descent into barbarism.  The Germans have.  Russia has not.  Nor I think has the United States.

Nor, since about a month ago, have we here in Australia come to terms with our past. 

And if I had to choose the closest we have got to the sublime, I would nominate Cathy for that win for all of us in Sydney.

Then we must look at how we thanked her.

We can go to the theatre to see a play or an opera.  We can to the MCG to see a footy or cricket match.  In either case, we are going to see some drama – and, usually, the more dramatic it is, the better. 

There is at least one major difference.  In a play or opera, people perform the parts that have been written or composed for them.  The end is already determined.  That is not the case in sport – you don’t know until it is over how it might end – who will win; or if there may be a draw.  That difference alone makes the sporting event more dramatic.  (And, sadly, it means that people may want to gamble on the outcome.)

There is usually one other difference.  Most people going to watch footy or cricket do so because they support, and want to be seen to support, one team in the contest.  There is something both tribal and communal in this – and some of the ritual some still get from religion.  This sense of belonging is usually harmless, but it can get very ugly.  Fortunately, we in Australia usually get spared the worst of the downside.

So, there are major differences in the drama that people expect to get in the theatre or at the MCG.  Their involvement is likely to be far more intensely real in one rather than the other.  And partly for that reason, many more people prefer one kind of drama to the other.

Most people are able to mix, or at least tolerate, patronage of both forms of drama.  Some cannot do so.  Some patrons of the theatre look down on those who go to the footy or cricket.  Many of the latter just have not got round to going to the theatre for any purpose.

Mixing patronage of the two has never been a problem for me.  If you are presented with a smorgasbord, you are in my view a dill if you do not at least sample the lot.  On one day I saw both the Melbourne Storm and Cosi fan tutte.  That may have struck patrons at either show as odd – that was, I think, their misfortune.

The two kinds of drama are very different, but they have something in common.  They involve tests of character – and very public tests.  For all the money and hoopla, someone has to go out and deliver all their acquired skill and magic – when failure will go very hard on all involved.

Now, partly because of age, and partly for other reasons, I will not now go to see many more kinds of either drama live. 

With theatre, as in Shakespeare, you can use three avenues – reading, listening, or watching on television or the big screen.  My preferred course is to listen with the text open in front of me.  Because I do not read music, that access is not open to me with opera.  I can listen or watch.

With twentieth century music, I need time – repeated exposure – to condition myself.  I have recently been doing just that with Britten and Janacek.  And I have been assisted in both with DVD reproductions from the stage of the highest quality. 

More than thirty years ago, Moffat Oxenbould of the AO advised me to see Britten’s Billy Budd at Covent Garden because I should hear an opera in my own language (and the piece was so modern that they had not yet spoiled it.)  That was very good advice. 

Now I have Opus Arte DVDs of Peter Grimes (La Scala), Billy Budd (Glyndebourne), and Midsummer Night’s Dream (Gran Teatre del Liceu).  And just arrived is Jenufa (Asmik Grigorian at Covent Garden). 

Each of these is just about flawless – including the acting (which you must have on this medium).  I cannot recall one person holding the whole show as does Asmik Grigorian.  Each is a play with music made specially for that script.  (And there is a bonus in Jenufa in the Scottish tenor who plays Laca.)  And the three Britten works were written in my language.

It would be silly to say that an Italian gets as much from Hamlet in Italian as I do in English.  And it would be equally silly to say that I get as much from Rigoletto in subtitles as an Italian does in his own language. 

And this issue becomes acute with Janacek, because he studied his own language and moulded the music to match it.  It is as well to remember that when we get a work in translation, we get it trusting in an intermediary – and not as its creator intended it.  It is I think notorious that Goethe and Pushkin – and Dante – do not suffer translation gladly.

Fortunately, I do not have to confront these demons in most sports.  And that is just one reason why I find the sports form of drama so much more compelling and involving than the theatrical forms.  You can savour just some of the other reasons if I reflect back on Peter Thompson at the British Open, Hoad and Rosewall in the Davis Cup, the world titles of Rose and Famechon, the America’s Cup, Cathy Freeman in Sydney – or how just the other day, Sam Kerr and the Matildas changed the world view of a whole generation.  (There was a very revealing photo.  Two hardened AFL coaches had just finished a tough match and had stopped to watch the Matildas on TV.)

And that’s before I get to cricket and footy played by people in my colours.  Then, I am afraid, even Shakespeare and David Williamson have to give way.

Well, these are matters of impression – or taste, perhaps.  But I suspect that Plato would have been with me – he thought that all art was inferior as being just imitation – art as we experience it, was for Plato an illusion, a collection of mere appearances, like reflections in a mirror or like shadows on the wall of a cave.

Tell that to the opener who has just been decked by the first ball of the match – or to the full back who did not adhere to the advice of the Plugger about holding his jersey – and waking up in a very different place indeed. 

Or the Demon supporter on that night in Perth in 2021. 

Or the young Australian barrister who saw Lillee trap that little Knott dead in front to end the Centenary Test.  And watched Thommo put the fear of God into the rest of them.

There are downsides to being Australian – but there up many and great upsides.

Whether the promisor is Almighty God, or His Majesty King George III, promising land to a select few is at best problematic if other people are in settled occupation and enjoyment of the land.  Where do they go now?

But it gets worse when God and ethnic distinctions are involved.  Where one group sees its members as different to those of another, they rarely think they come out of it as the worse off.

So much is clear from the history of Canaan, Australia, and Palestine. 

Since the discussion of any of these is fraught in Australia just now, I will pass over it in silence, and leave it to others.

The following texts command varying assent depending on where in the world the reader is standing.

But of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive.  But you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the Lord your God has commanded you, lest they teach you to do according to all their abominations which they have done for their gods, and you sin against the Lord your God. 

Deuteronomy 20:16-18

And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, then they turned again, and slew the men of Ai.

And the other issued out of the city against them; so they were in the midst of Israel, some on this side, and some on that side: and they smote them, so that they let none of them remain or escape.

And the king of Ai they took alive, and brought him to Joshua.

And it came to pass, when Israel had made an end of slaying all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness wherein they chased them, and when they were all fallen on the edge of the sword, until they were consumed, that all the Israelites returned unto Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword.

And so it was, that all that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai.

For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the spear, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai.

Only the cattle and the spoil of that city Israel took for a prey unto themselves, according unto the word of the Lord which he commanded Joshua.

And Joshua burnt Ai, and made it an heap for ever, even a desolation unto this day.

Joshua 8:24-30

When the posterity of Abraham had multiplied like the sands of the sea, the Deity, from whose mouth they received a system of laws and ceremonies, declared himself the proper and, as it were, the national God of Israel; and with the most jealous care separated his most favourite people from the rest of mankind.  The conquest of the land of Canaan with so many wonderful and so many bloody circumstances, that the victorious Jews were left in a state of irreconcilable hostility with all their neighbours.  They had been commanded to extirpate some of the most idolatrous tribes, and the execution of the Divine will had seldom been retarded by the weakness of humanity.

Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Fight against those who have been given the Scripture and believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid that which Allah hath forbidden by his messenger, and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.

And the Jews say: Ezra is the son of Allah.  And the Christians say: their Messiah is the son of Allah.  That is their saying with their mouths.  They imitate the sayings of whose who disbelieve of old.  Allah himself fighteth against them.  How perverse are they?

They have as lords beside Allah their rabbis and their monks and the Messiah son of Mary, when they were forbidden to worship only one god.

Koran, Surah IX: 29 -31

Long before the rise of Babylon and Athens, the early Australians had impressive achievements.  They were the only people in the world’s history to sail across the seas and to discover an inhabitable continent.  They bred a brave procession of coastal and inland explorers; they were brown Columbuses, Major Mitchells, and even Dr Livingstones, I presume.  The aboriginals who occupied Australia also found, over a long stretch of time, many edible plants, valuable mines which they worked, new medicines and drugs, manufacturing techniques, and a miscellany of resources ranging from the raw materials of their cosmetics to the hidden pools of water in deserts.  They succeeded in adapting their ways of life to harsh as well as kind environments; and several large regions of Australia supported more people in ancient times than they have supported in recent times….

Europeans were now about to enter Australia.  The contrast between the ways of life of the British Isles and the Aborigines was almost the most dramatic contrast in the world.  The British brought so many ideas and goods which Aborigines could not begin to imagine.  They brought all the results of the 10,000-year-old neolithic revolution and they also brought the first results of the new industrial and scientific revolutions.  They brought sheep and shears, horses and harnesses, cattle and pigs, and a variety of dogs and cats.  They brought fruit trees, and tropical and temperate vegetables unknown to Aborigines.  They brought fences and carts and large permanent houses and ocean-going ships.  They brought an ability to distil spirits, brew beer, and make wine, hazardous activities in a continent where alcohol was virtually unknown.  They brought skills in weaving wool, in making linen and leather.  They brought the art of writing and printing, of keeping accounts, of hoarding information in books and food in barrels, kegs and sacks.  They brought thousands of laws, all devised more than 20,000 kilometres away.  They brought firearms, not of high accuracy, but demoralising when first seen and felt……Here was an utter contrast in peoples, for they spoke very different languages, had very different histories, religions, and contrasting attitudes to property plants and livestock.  In their use of the land and technology they were ages apart: in short, even with goodwill on both sides they were incompatible.

Geoffrey Blainey, The Triumph of the Nomad

The basic elements of the Imperial Problem during the American Revolution must be sought not so much in conscious opinions and professed views bearing directly on it, as in the very structure and life of the Empire; and in doing that, the words of Danton should be remembered – on ne fait pas le procès aux revolutions.  Those who are out to apportion guilt in history have to keep to views and opinions, judge the collisions of planets by the rules of road traffic, make history into something like a column of motoring accidents, and discuss it in the atmosphere of a police court.

Sir Lewis Namier, England in the Age of the American Revolution

The God has not been invented who could even dream that any of such issues can be solved by mortals, and many would be happy if we had never invented any God at all.

The Promised Land

Whether the promisor is Almighty God, or His Majesty King George III, promising land to a select few is at best problematic if other people are in settled occupation and enjoyment of the land.  Where do they go now?

But it gets worse when God and ethnic distinctions are involved.  Where one group sees its members as different to those of another, they rarely think they come out of it as the worse off.

So much is clear from the history of Canaan, Australia, and Palestine. 

Since the discussion of any of these is fraught in Australia just now, I will pass over it in silence, and leave it to others.

The following texts command varying assent depending on where in the world the reader is standing.

But of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive.  But you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the Lord your God has commanded you, lest they teach you to do according to all their abominations which they have done for their gods, and you sin against the Lord your God. 

Deuteronomy 20:16-18

And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, then they turned again, and slew the men of Ai.

And the other issued out of the city against them; so they were in the midst of Israel, some on this side, and some on that side: and they smote them, so that they let none of them remain or escape.

And the king of Ai they took alive, and brought him to Joshua.

And it came to pass, when Israel had made an end of slaying all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness wherein they chased them, and when they were all fallen on the edge of the sword, until they were consumed, that all the Israelites returned unto Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword.

And so it was, that all that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai.

For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the spear, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai.

Only the cattle and the spoil of that city Israel took for a prey unto themselves, according unto the word of the Lord which he commanded Joshua.

And Joshua burnt Ai, and made it an heap for ever, even a desolation unto this day.

Joshua 8:24-30

When the posterity of Abraham had multiplied like the sands of the sea, the Deity, from whose mouth they received a system of laws and ceremonies, declared himself the proper and, as it were, the national God of Israel; and with the most jealous care separated his most favourite people from the rest of mankind.  The conquest of the land of Canaan with so many wonderful and so many bloody circumstances, that the victorious Jews were left in a state of irreconcilable hostility with all their neighbours.  They had been commanded to extirpate some of the most idolatrous tribes, and the execution of the Divine will had seldom been retarded by the weakness of humanity.

Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Fight against those who have been given the Scripture and believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid that which Allah hath forbidden by his messenger, and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.

And the Jews say: Ezra is the son of Allah.  And the Christians say: their Messiah is the son of Allah.  That is their saying with their mouths.  They imitate the sayings of whose who disbelieve of old.  Allah himself fighteth against them.  How perverse are they?

They have as lords beside Allah their rabbis and their monks and the Messiah son of Mary, when they were forbidden to worship only one god.

Koran, Surah IX: 29 -31

Long before the rise of Babylon and Athens, the early Australians had impressive achievements.  They were the only people in the world’s history to sail across the seas and to discover an inhabitable continent.  They bred a brave procession of coastal and inland explorers; they were brown Columbuses, Major Mitchells, and even Dr Livingstones, I presume.  The aboriginals who occupied Australia also found, over a long stretch of time, many edible plants, valuable mines which they worked, new medicines and drugs, manufacturing techniques, and a miscellany of resources ranging from the raw materials of their cosmetics to the hidden pools of water in deserts.  They succeeded in adapting their ways of life to harsh as well as kind environments; and several large regions of Australia supported more people in ancient times than they have supported in recent times….

Europeans were now about to enter Australia.  The contrast between the ways of life of the British Isles and the Aborigines was almost the most dramatic contrast in the world.  The British brought so many ideas and goods which Aborigines could not begin to imagine.  They brought all the results of the 10,000-year-old neolithic revolution and they also brought the first results of the new industrial and scientific revolutions.  They brought sheep and shears, horses and harnesses, cattle and pigs, and a variety of dogs and cats.  They brought fruit trees, and tropical and temperate vegetables unknown to Aborigines.  They brought fences and carts and large permanent houses and ocean-going ships.  They brought an ability to distil spirits, brew beer, and make wine, hazardous activities in a continent where alcohol was virtually unknown.  They brought skills in weaving wool, in making linen and leather.  They brought the art of writing and printing, of keeping accounts, of hoarding information in books and food in barrels, kegs and sacks.  They brought thousands of laws, all devised more than 20,000 kilometres away.  They brought firearms, not of high accuracy, but demoralising when first seen and felt……Here was an utter contrast in peoples, for they spoke very different languages, had very different histories, religions, and contrasting attitudes to property plants and livestock.  In their use of the land and technology they were ages apart: in short, even with goodwill on both sides they were incompatible.

Geoffrey Blainey, The Triumph of the Nomad

The basic elements of the Imperial Problem during the American Revolution must be sought not so much in conscious opinions and professed views bearing directly on it, as in the very structure and life of the Empire; and in doing that, the words of Danton should be remembered – on ne fait pas le procès aux revolutions.  Those who are out to apportion guilt in history have to keep to views and opinions, judge the collisions of planets by the rules of road traffic, make history into something like a column of motoring accidents, and discuss it in the atmosphere of a police court.

Sir Lewis Namier, England in the Age of the American Revolution

The God has not been invented who could even dream that any of such issues can be solved by mortals, and many would be happy if we had never invented any God at all.