Not many Americans respect intellect.  Hardly any show anything like the respect for intellect that we see in France and Germany.  Disrespect for intellectuals becomes downright distaste for experts.  These forces exploded under Trump.  He gloried in his own obtuseness and he did not hesitate to treat as idiots people who attended those absurd rallies.  The essayist Emerson saw all this a long time ago.  ‘Let us honestly state the facts.  Our America has a bad name for superficialness.  Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.’  What, then, would Emerson have said of the greatest booster and buffoon of them all?

Well before Emerson, de Tocqueville had commented on the touchiness of the Americans.

But I maintain that the most powerful, and perhaps the only means of interesting men in the welfare of their country, which we still possess, is to make them partakers in the Government…….in America the people regard this prosperity as the result of its own exertions; the citizen looks upon the fortune of the public as his private interest, and he co-operates in its success, not so much from a sense of pride or duty, as from, what I shall venture to term, cupidity.

As the American participates in all that is done in his country, he thinks himself obliged to defend whatever may be censured; for it is not only his country which is attacked upon these occasions, but it is himself.  Nothing is more embarrassing in the ordinary intercourse of life than this irritable patriotism of the Americans.

As I remarked elsewhere:

There is something close to the heart of America here.  The upside is ambition, drive, and personal and communal responsibility; the downside is Salem, McCarthy, and Gordon Gekko.  In some sense, the feeling of communal responsibility and participation does seem to rest well with American patriotism; so does their prickliness if you happen to query in passing something close to American hearts.  The Americans tend to be more committed and involved in America.  The film The Godfather begins with a product of Italian immigration saying ‘I believe in America.’  Australians are not so serious about all this kind of thing, and open discussion, much less profession, is not encouraged.  If they see it in Americans, they might mumble something about people wearing their hearts on their sleeve.

You wonder at times if they will ever grow up.

Bloopers

The US does not need a rerun of the Obama years.

The Australian, 25 January, 2021

There in one sentence is the accumulated venom of Rupert Murdoch.  That is outstanding.  America does not need a re-run of the years in which the ruined US economy was repaired, the disastrous engagement in Iraq was ended, a sane healthcare scheme was introduced and a clever, decent, worldly, stable, rational and entirely honourable man served as President.  They wish that we had four more years of a stupid, vain, bigoted, immoral, boastful, overgrown child as President.

The highpoint of the attack on the ABC as pleaded in the Statement of Claim is as follows.

The ABC and Milligan knew that Porter would be readily identifiable as the subject of the article and that he would ultimately be compelled to publicly respond.  They knew that the allegations by AB could never be proved in any civil or criminal proceeding and despite that they published the article to harm Porter and to ensure that he was publicly condemned and disgraced in the absence of any finding against him.  They were frustrated that they were unable to broadcast AB’s allegations in the November 4Corners as they intended (because they were indefensible) and thus disingenuously published the article without naming Porter in order to give effect to their intention to harm him.  Milligan engaged in a campaign against Porter in order to harm his reputation and have him removed as Attorney-General by her continued publications about him.  She has further continued to defame him in republishing assertions that AB should be believed and other allegations.  The ABC and Milligan published the article making serious allegations of criminal conduct about Porter without any warning to Porter and without any attempt to give him an opportunity to respond.  They selected portions of the dossier to quote in the article for the purpose of making AB’s allegations as credible as possible when there were other significant portions of the dossier which demonstrated that the allegations were not credible.  Milligan did not disclose her close friendship with a friend or friends of AB including persons named on the ABC.  Milligan acted with malice knowing of the impossibility of any finding of guilt or civil liability in the circumstances and believing that a public campaign designed to damage his reputation would be a more effective substitute against Porter in replacement of the process of the justice system.

The popular word for that process is lynching.  Another word is pogrom.  It is the sort of thing we associate with the grosser parts of the Murdoch press – as in their recent pogrom against the Premier of Victoria.

The allegations are made by counsel as good as you can get for this purpose, doubtless on the express instructions from the plaintiff, who happens to be the first Law Officer – and most probably with the knowledge of at least the Prime Minister.

It is curious that the press has not as far as I can see commented on this aspect of the case.  The word ‘libel’ then becomes a kind of coat-hanger for the real charge.  It is about as lethal a charge as you could make against a member of the press.  Against a commercial broadcaster, it could put its licence in play.  It is more deadly for the ABC because the attitude of the government to it is roughly equivalent to the attitude alleged against Louise Milligan to Porter.  It wants the ABC taken out.  It must think Christmas has come very early this year.

The pleading is unusual on two counts.  It is extremely well drawn.  And it is permissibly loaded with evidence because the plaintiff will rely on inferences to be drawn about states of mind from a chain of events.  Most direct allegations of events are on the record – there is no controversy.  There is more than enough to force the defendants into evidence.  (There may even be an application to split the case, but we can put that technicality to one side.  It’s about forty years since I did that.)  More importantly, discovery will produce truckloads of documents that will embarrass the ABC and Milligan – and sources – and urgers, like Malcolm Turnbull.  That embarrassment might drive the ABC to settle – especially if the embarrassment rises up the scale.

All litigation is a form of lottery that few can afford and none can predict.  That uncertainty is made worse here by politics at both ends.  But after fifty years of them, this is how I see libel actions in this country.  Australians treat the press like government.  They need it, but they don’t trust it.  They rely on both, but begrudge them their power.  If they – a jury or a judge – think that the press has behaved reasonably and that the plaintiff more or less deserved it, so be it.  But if they think that the press has gone in too hard, and that the plaintiff has not had a fair deal, they put the press down – with gusto and a very big bang.  I say that as a lawyer who I think still holds the record for copping the biggest libel verdict in the history of Victoria – while acting for the ABC – in a case that we thought we would win.

That is not a happy outlook for Aunty or Louise.

Experienced trial lawyers will have at least two problems with the suggestion that there should be a judicial inquiry into the fitness of the Commonwealth Attorney-General to hold office.

First, even if the complainant were alive and willing to proceed to a trial before a jury, it is extremely unlikely that any police officer would forward the brief to a prosecutor to consider whether a prosecution could proceed based on the reported admissible evidence available.  The reported evidence of the complainant’s mental condition – which apparently led to her being dissociated from reality – would clearly be a factor that all involved in the process of considering any prosecution would need to take into account.  That being so, we need not consider whether a magistrate could, or would have committed an accused to stand trial, whether a jury properly instructed as to the law and admissible evidence could convict, and whether such a verdict could stand on appeal.  (In the case of George Pell, the prosecution cleared every hurdle except the last.)

Secondly, while the fitness for office of a director of a public company may be the subject of judicial findings premised on legal criteria, the fitness for office of the Attorney-General is not.  That issue is political, not legal.  It is resolved politically, not legally.  The relevant process is an election, not a judicial inquiry.  The opinion on this issue of another lawyer is worth no more than mine, or that of my cleaning lady or oncology nurse.

It follows in my view that there is no sensible subject for a judicial inquiry.  There is nothing novel about a person in high office being the subject of unresolved issues of rape.  It is the case with one cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and two justices of the American Supreme Court.

Let me tell you how as a trial lawyer for over fifty years I come to those conclusions.

I am appalled at the level of ignorance of how an inquiry into Mr Porter might proceed – and into what.  I did a very tricky inquiry about thirty years ago that was politically fraught, and for thirty years I presided on a sessional basis over tribunals where the issues tended to be at large.  I am a common lawyer who practised in equity and who has a visceral distrust of the inquisitorial system espoused in Europe – and by any repressive government.

It is a disgusting feeling when as the judicial officer, you have trouble framing the question.  It is like driving on black ice.  In the Fire Brigade disciplinary tribunal, I was dealing with charges framed by lawyers under a statute – too cautious, and lawyerly, but something to hang on to.  In eighteen years hearing tax cases, I was dealing with the decision of a revenue officer to disallow an objection by the taxpayer.  Both could use brutally broad language that would not be allowed in a decently run court of pleading – the whole object of which was to reach an issue of fact for the jury or demurrer for the court.  Even in a case where Jim Merralls QC instructed by Mallesons with David Batt for AMP – on a scheme that looked headed for the High Court – I had to ask counsel for the Crown: ‘Mr Boaden – do you think at some time you might make some passing reference to the terms of the notice of disallowance that you have been sent here to defend – just for old times’ sake?’

I repeat – being left at large in some form of inquisition is anathema to me as a common lawyer.

In the gaming inquiry that I conducted, the issue was whether a U S entity was a fit person to hold a gaming licence in Victoria.  There were statutory criteria, and there was undisputed evidence that the applicant had lied on the record to a U S regulator, but I still had to summon up every day of my twenty one years on the job to crystallize an issue that could allow us to decide the case.  Otherwise, the ocean of litigation could have gone on for years. 

In the end, we were able to ground our decision in plain terms with no reference to legal authority at all.

On the evidence before us, we have come to the conclusion that VLC should not be on the Roll.  In our opinion, the findings of two associations between Mr Lippon and people who have been convicted of criminal offences, and the two acts of dishonesty on his part, are founded on matters of fact that are not substantially in issue.  The implications of those findings and the conduct of VLC in the course of the inquiry are such as to demonstrate that VLC does not meet the requirements of honesty, integrity, and repute which the Act contemplates for those who are to be placed on the Roll.

For our part, we do not think this conclusion requires or will benefit from sustained analysis.  There can be no scale of the relevant considerations such that the issue of satisfaction of the statutory requirements can be the subject of measurement.  In our opinion, the Act contemplates, and this Commission should impose, high standards on those who want to take part in the provision of gaming facilities.  This is because the Victorian people are being asked to take these people on faith.  If we may adopt a phrase used by a distinguished commentator upon American affairs, it is no part of the function of this Commission to start to play with the faith of the Victorian people.  We think that the Victorian people are entitled to expect more, and that the Victorian Parliament has required more, than VLC can offer.

Politicians say that you should not start an inquiry unless you know the answer.  Another reason for having an inquiry is that the issue is such that you must have an answer.  This case is not one of either of those.  People calling for an inquiry acknowledge that there is a significant prospect it will not be able to make a conclusive finding on the allegations of rape.  That incapacity is inevitable.  Where does the inquirer go from there? 

What is certain is that we would get a full rehearsal of the allegations that will appal the family of the dead accuser, sicken the community, and leave the wounded accused maimed for life.  And for what?

The one inescapable problem is that the accused will not be faced by his accuser. The Sixth Amendment to the U S Constitution states that ‘in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right…to be confronted with the witnesses against him.’  That merely states a long standing principle of the common law.  ‘Confrontation and the opportunity for cross-examination is of central significance to the common law adversarial system of trial’ (Lee v R (1998) 19 CLR 94). 

We should be very worried if you or I can be deprived of that fundamental human right merely because the proceeding is said to be an administrative inquiry rather than a judicial determination – when as a result your or my life might be ruined in equal measure by either process.

The truth as it seems to me is that the absence of the accused does not just make any inquiry unfair to Mr Porter – it makes any inquiry simply pointless.  Indeed, of those few who are competent to deal with such an exercise, I wonder who would want the job or take it.

I cannot believe that all those pursuing Mr Porter for political reasons are ignorant of all these problems.  The unfairness hits you full in the face.  I do not like Mr Porter; I positively dislike the Prime Minister; I have no time or respect for either the Liberal Party or the Labor Party; but there was a time when I thought that the ALP would stand up for basic legal or human rights.  That time has apparently passed and those involved should be deeply ashamed of themselves.

I may have added that if it is said that it is undesirable to have an Attorney-General the subject of an unresolved allegation of rape, Mr Porter will find himself in select company – one Cardinal and two Justices of the United States Supreme Court.

Have you noticed a vogue among cricket commentators?  When a batsman – please, God, never a batter – gets out, we sometimes get told that in the opinion of the commentator, the problem is one of ‘execution.’  This apparently means that the fault lay in the manner in which the player sought to play the shot – ‘execute’ it – rather than in choosing the kind of shot to be played.  I wonder about that.  Can we break down the component parts of action sports in that manner?  And if we can, why do we not hear it done in say golf, tennis and football?  Sometimes these verbal fads lead to assaults on language.

Bloopers

An inquiry by a respected former judge or panel of independent experts, looking at the ‘balance of probabilities’ in this case may not be the perfect answer, but it may be the only viable option left available to deliver some closure in this unusual case.

David Speers, ABC, 4 March, 2021

Whatever might be the subject of any inquiry, it is extremely unlikely that the test would be the balance of probabilities.  Even in a civil claim for damages for rape, the standard of proof would be so much higher.

Have you noticed a vogue among cricket commentators?  When a batsman – please, God, never a batter – gets out, we sometimes get told that in the opinion of the commentator, the problem is one of ‘execution.’  This apparently means that the fault lay in the manner in which the player sought to play the shot – ‘execute’ it – rather than in choosing the kind of shot to be played.  I wonder about that.  Can we break down the component parts of action sports in that manner?  And if we can, why do we not hear it done in say golf, tennis and football?  Sometimes these verbal fads lead to assaults on language.

Bloopers

An inquiry by a respected former judge or panel of independent experts, looking at the ‘balance of probabilities’ in this case may not be the perfect answer, but it may be the only viable option left available to deliver some closure in this unusual case.

David Speers, ABC, 4 March, 2021

Whatever might be the subject of any inquiry, it is extremely unlikely that the test would be the balance of probabilities.  Even in a civil claim for damages for rape, the standard of proof would be so much higher.

CULTURE AND VALUES

L Wittgenstein

University of Chicago Press, 1977; quarter bound in vellum, with ‘Wittgenstein’ blocked in red, and fancy paper on boards.

The father of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s father was a wealthy Jewish wool merchant from Hesse.   He converted to Christianity – of the Protestant variety – and married the daughter of a Viennese banker.  Their son Karl was well educated but he took off for America while still a youth.  He returned to Vienna, studied engineering, made a fortune and became one of the leading industrialists of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire.  His wife Leopoldine was also the daughter of a banker. She loved music, as her son Ludwig was to do.  Brahms and Mahler regularly visited the family.  She was Catholic, and Ludwig was brought up as a Catholic.

Karl had the children taught at home until they were fourteen.  When Ludwig left school he was not qualified to go to university.  He was sent to a technical school in Berlin.  He did not like it there, but he got an interest in aeronautical engineering which he decided to pursue at Manchester University. This is not blue ribbon stuff for high scholarship.

Wittgenstein actually played with the beginnings of jet engines, but his interest in engineering led to mathematics and then to philosophy.   Wittgenstein read the Principia Mathematica of Bertrand Russell and in 1907 Wittgenstein went to Cambridge to study with Russell. He spent only five terms there, but that was enough. Wittgenstein enlisted for the Army of Austria in World War I.  At the end of the war, he gave his share of the family fortune to his brothers and sisters.  They were able to use their wealth to escape being murdered by the Nazis. 

Wittgenstein appears to have remained deeply spiritual all his life.  Such a war as the one he fought in must have etched all kinds of things on a mind like Wittgenstein’s.  He was taken prisoner for a time and he had in his kit the manuscript of what would be his first book, Tractatus – Logico Politicus.   He taught at a school for a while and again thought of becoming a monk.  He tried his hand at building design before returning to Cambridge in 1929. He got a Ph.D. – which Oxford and Cambridge looked down on then – for his Tractatus.  He did not enjoy university life.  His rooms at Cambridge were like barracks.  He did not have a single book, painting, photo, or reading lamp.  He sat on a wooden chair and he wrote on a card table.  There were two canvas chairs and a fire-safe for his manuscripts.  This room served as study and class-room.  He kept a cotton stretcher in the second room. 

People were rarely neutral about Wittgenstein. They either loved him or they seriously disliked him.  He was about five feet six inches tall, had given up wearing a tie long ago, and had a gaze with the same transfixing power as that of one of his primary school classmates, Adolf Hitler.

Wittgenstein served his acquired home in the Second World War in hospitals – he had become a British national  After it, he developed what would now be called a cult following.   After a short visit to the United States in 1949 he learned that he had cancer.  He lived with various friends in Oxford or Cambridge until he died in 1951.  He was at peace with himself when he left us.  It says a lot for his character that the lodging in which he stayed at the time that he died was looked after by a landlady. Wittgenstein was in the habit of walking to the pub with her each night.  Wittgenstein would be about the most un-pub sort of person that God ever put on this earth, but he went out with his landlady for the walk and, moreover, would order two sherries.  He would give one to her and, since he did not drink, he would pour his over the flowers. That is not the conduct of a man bereft of humanity. 

Wittgenstein believed that the essence of religion lay in feelings and action rather than beliefs.  The book called Culture and Value is a collection of notes kept as a form of Commonplace Book by Wittgenstein from 1914 to 1951.  It contains observations on music and on the limitation of thought as well as religion.

What is good is also divine.  Queer as it sounds, that sums up my ethics.  Only something supernatural can express the Supernatural.

You cannot lead people to what is good; you can only lead them to some place or other.  The good is outside the space of facts.

This book [Philosophical Remarks] is written for those who are in sympathy with the spirit in which it is written.  This is not, I believe, the spirit of the main current of European and American civilisation.  The spirit of this civilisation makes itself manifest in the industry, architecture and music of our time, in its fascism and socialism, and it is alien and uncongenial to the author.

I am sure Bruckner composed just by imagining the sound of the orchestra in his head, Brahms with pen on paper.  Of course this is an over-simplification.  But it does highlight one feature.

What would it feel like not to have heard of Christ?

Religion as madness is a madness springing from irreligiousness.

Reading the Socratic Dialogues one has the feeling, what a frightful waste of time!  What’s the point of these arguments that prove nothing and clarify nothing?

Amongst ‘Jews’, ‘genius’ is found only in the holy man.  Even the greatest of Jewish thinkers is no more than talented.  (Myself for instance.)

The strength of the thoughts in Brahms’ music.

The spring which flows gently and limpidly in the Gospel seems to have froth on it in Paul’s Epistles.  Or that is how it seems to me.  Perhaps it is just my own impurity ….  But to me it’s as though I saw human passion here, something like pride or anger, which is not in tune with the humility of the Gospels.   All I want to ask – and may this be no blasphemy:  what might Christ have said to Paul? A fair rejoinder to that would be:  what business is that of yours?  In the Gospels – as it seems to me – everything is less pretentious, humbler, simpler.  There you find huts, and poor [the poor in] church. There all men are equal and God himself was a man; in Paul there is already something like a hierarchy;  honours and official positions – that is, as it were, what my ‘nose’ tells me.

For instance, at my level the Pauline doctrine of predestination is ugly nonsense, irreligiousness.

Christianity is not based on a historical truth; rather, it offers us a (historical) narrative and says:  now believe!  But not believe this narrative with the belief appropriate to a historical narrative, but rather:  believe, through thick and thin, which you can only do as the result of a life.  Here you have a narrative, don’t take the same attitude to it as you take to other historical narratives!  Make a quite different place in your life for it.  There is nothing paradoxical about that!

Queer as it sounds:  the historical accounts in the Gospels might, historically speaking, be demonstrably false and yet belief would lose nothing by this:  not, however, because it concerns ‘universal truths of reason’!  Rather, because historical proof (the historical proof-game) is irrelevant to belief.  This message (the Gospels) is seized on by men believing it (i.e. lovingly).  That is the certainty characterising this particular acceptance – as true, not something else.

One might say:  ‘Genius is talent exercised with courage’.

We could also say:  ‘Hate between men comes from cutting ourselves off from each other.  Because we don’t want anyone else to look inside us, since it’s not a pretty sight in there.

I do not believe that Shakespeare can be set alongside any other poet.  Was he perhaps a ‘creator of language’ rather than a poet?  I can only stare in wonder at Shakespeare; never do anything with him.

If Christianity is the truth, then all the philosophy that is written about it is false.

A proof of God’s existence ought really to be something by means of which one could convince oneself that God exists.  But I think that what believers who have furnished such proofs have wanted to do is give their ‘belief’ an intellectual analysis and foundation, although they themselves would never have come to believe as a result of such proofs.  Perhaps one could ‘convince someone that God exists’ by means of a certain kind of upbringing, by shaping his life in such and such a way.  So, if you want to stay within the religious sphere you must struggle.

These are the limits that a great thinker put on the power of his mind when it comes to God (and music). These jottings of Wittgenstein may remind many people of the thinking of God of another great German, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.   What we have here is not just the humility of knowledge, but its distilled wisdom.  In his Commonplace Book, Bonhoeffer had written: ‘Spinoza:  Emotions are not expelled by reason, but only by stronger emotions.’

Mr Porter is the name of a high end on-line shop for men who should know better – including me.  It is also the name of the Commonwealth Attorney-General.  He denies an allegation of rape alleged to have occurred thirty years ago.  The press is all over it – and all over the place with some dreadful flashes of ignorance about the law and due process – common fairness.  The following comments come from discussion I have had with colleagues this morning.  There is some duplication.

I do not know what an inquiry would be expected to achieve – except the sale of more newspapers.

Those pursuing Porter have what Helen Garner called an ‘agenda’.  They are about as sensible as animal rights people.  It’s as if this man must suffer to expiate all the sins committed on women in the past.  That is revolting.

Another difference with the Heydon case is that the victims there were alive and kicking and their allegations could be subject to some kind of test.

There was a worrying reference, I think in The Age yesterday, to the parents of the girl.  They did not want her to proceed with the complaint because, it was reported, they were worried that her mental condition may have led to her claim being embellished.  If that condition was present at the time of the alleged offence, it is very worrying.

I do not like the man at all. But, thank God, that is not the issue.  I feel desperately sorry for him.

A friend of mine said: ‘Kate Thornton’s parents do not think it happened. Her friends do. Obviously nobody can get any closer to the truth and nothing can be done. Hardly seems much consideration is being given to her grieving parents.’

David Speers, who is no dill, referred to a finding ‘on the balance of probabilities.’  That would not apply even in a civil action, and common decency should be revolted by the idea.

The level of ignorance in the press is remarkable.  On any view this is a human tragedy – but that does not mean someone has to do something. That is the great Australian answer in a nation never weaned off government.  Things just happen that leave us powerless. The suggestion that the inquiry be not into the rape allegation but whether he is fit for office – the question only arising because of the rape allegation – is so inane it might be mendacious.

You would hope editors would get commentators to put their comments to a decent lawyer before going public.  Would an inquiry be public or private?  Would it have the power to subpoena witnesses?  Would they put the parents through that pain by calling them – in private or public?  What rules of evidence would apply – to their evidence or that of other witnesses?  Above all, what are the questions that the inquiry will be asked to answer?  And what will be the standard of proof to be satisfied in answering those questions?  If Porter is be cross-examined – by whom and on the basis of ‘evidence’ that cannot be led in the normal way?

The suggestion that an inquiry would give Porter the chance to clear his name is so disingenuous, it looks dishonest.

I conducted a sensitive inquiry with heavy political consequences.  It was very tricky.  It would be a walk in the park compared to this cess pit.

Those making the most noise will suffer the least.

It is all so sad – and yet so familiar.

Extracts from a book of fifty important books or people.  The second of four such volumes.

COLLECTED POEMS

W H Auden

The Franklin Library, 1978; Limited Edition, The Greatest Books of the Twentieth Century.  Bound in green leather, embossed and titled in gold, with ridged spine; gold edges to pages, moire endpapers and satin book mark.

When I was a young boy, but old enough to hear jazz as a distinct form of music, I bought my first LP – ‘Jazz for People Who Do Not Like Jazz.’  All of the poets who feature in this book might attract a similar label, and none more so than Auden.  But it took me some time when I got a bit older to adjust to the proposition that the following poem was addressed to a boy or young man.  This may not have been a rite of passage, but it was at least a hurdle on the path of education.

Lay your sleeping head, my love,

Human on my faithless arm;

Time and fevers burn away

Individual beauty from

Thoughtful children, and the grave

Proves the child ephemeral:

But in my arms to break of day

Let the living creature die,

Mortal, guilty, but to me

The entirely beautiful.

Auden had a dream upbringing and education, and studied English at Christ Church, Oxford.  He was ferociously bright, and would later write critical prose up to the intellectual standard of that of T S Eliot.  His poetry is, though, more accessible to the general reader than that of Eliot.  So, we might suspect, was his personality.  He had a long association with Christopher Isherwood, and he also had a following of acolytes.  The young Stephen Spender was desperate to get the attention of Auden.

‘You must write nothing but poetry, we do not want to lose you for poetry.’  This remark produced in me a choking moment of hope mingled with despair, in which I cried: ‘But do you really think I am any good?’  ‘Of course,’ he replied frigidly.  ‘But why?’  ‘Because you are so infinitely capable of being humiliated.  Art is born of humiliation’, he added in his icy voice – and left me wondering when he could feel humiliated.

That was the kind of preppy stuff that bright young men went on with at Oxford in those days, and it is as well to recall how many of them went clean off the rails.

Here is Auden, perhaps a little out of character, in Roman Wall Blues.

Over the heather the wet wind blows,

I’ve lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose.

The rain comes pattering out of the sky,

I’m a Wall soldier, I don’t know why.

The mist creeps over the hard grey stone,

My girl’s in Tungria; I sleep alone.

Aulus goes hanging round her place,

I don’t like his manners, I don’t like his face.

Piso’s a Christian, he worships a fish:

There’d be no kissing if he had his wish.

She gave me a ring but I diced it away;

I want my girl and I want my pay.

When I’m a veteran with only one eye

I shall do nothing but look at the sky.

Like so many of that ilk, Auden was drawn to the Spanish Civil War, but he would come to see it with an eye as clear as that of Orwell.  He contributed to the booklet Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War, but he did so in a pained way that showed the pain in his own mind.  Still, he did better than some other big hitters.  Ezra Pound: ‘Spain is an emotional luxury to a gang of sap-headed dilettantes.’  Evelyn Waugh: ‘If I were a Spaniard, I should be fighting for General Franco.’  T S Eliot: ‘While I am naturally sympathetic, I still feel convinced that it is best if at least a few men of letters should remain isolated.’  The only thing more limp-wristed than that is an aetherised hand upon a table.

He also had a clear mind on that curious notion, the role of the artist.

Artists and politicians would get along a lot better in the time of crisis [1939], if the latter would only realise that the political history of the world would have been the same if not a poem had been written, not a picture painted nor a bar of music composed.

If the criterion of art were its power to incite to action, Goebbels would be one of the greatest artists of all time.

Tolstoy, who, knowing that art makes nothing happen, scrapped it, is more to be respected than the Marxist critic who finds ingenious reasons for admitting the great artists of the past to the State Pantheon.

Here is an intellectual and Anglican poet on religion.

Luther

With conscience cocked to listen for the thunder,

He saw the Devil busy in the wind,

Over the chiming steeples and then under

The doors of nuns and doctors who had sinned.

What apparatus could stave off disaster

Or cut the brambles of man’s error down?

Flesh was a silent dog that bites its master,

World a still pond in which its children drown.

The fuse of Judgment spluttered in his head:

‘Lord, smoke these honeyed insects from their hives

All works, Great Men, Societies are bad.

The Just shall live by Faith…’ he cried in dread.

And men and women of the world were glad,

Who’d never cared or trembled in their lives.

Auden wrote a luminous and scholarly paper on Melville and others.  In his poem Herman Melville, he said:

Evil is unspectacular and always human,

And shares our bed and eats at our own table,

And we are introduced to goodness every day,

Even in drawing rooms among a crowd of faults;

He has a name like Billy and is almost perfect,

But wears a stammer like a decoration;

And every time they meet the same thing has to happen;

It is the Evil that is helpless like a lover

And has to pick a quarrel and succeeds,

And both are openly destroyed before our eyes.

Later in life, Auden got interested in Tolkien.

Tolkien is a man of average height, rather thin.  He lives in a hideous house – I can’t tell you how awful it is – with hideous pictures on the walls.  I first encountered him in 1926, at a lecture at Oxford.  He read a passage from Beowulf so beautifully that I decided Anglo-Saxon must be interesting, and that has had a great interest on my life.

Auden might remind us of Schubert.  Or, perhaps, Louis Armstrong.  You could just turn him on like a tap.  This gorgeously handsome volume runs to more than 700 pages.  That is a lot of poetry.

Auden died in 1973.  The first poem in this volume is dated December 1927.  The last poem is dated April 1972 and finishes:

Should dreams haunt you, heed them not,

For all, both sweet and horrid,

Are jokes in dubious taste,

Too jejune to have truck with.

Sleep Big Baby, sleep your fill.

In one of the Forewords to his collections, Auden said:

In art as in life, bad manners, not to be confused with a deliberate intention to cause offence, are the consequences of an over-concern with one’s own ego and a lack of consideration for (and knowledge of) others.  Readers, like friends, must not be shouted out or treated with brash familiarity.  Youth may be forgiven when it is brash and noisy, but this does not mean that brashness and noise are virtues.

Auden said that in 1965.  He was not to know that he was speaking of what has become in 2017 the malaise of our time.

‘Sovereignty’ is a loaded term.  Sovereigns are big hitters.  The sovereign is supreme.  There is no one superior.  So when England was subject in some ways to the Church of Rome, its king was to that extent not supreme in his own nation.  Indeed, in scrapping with the barons over Magna Carta, King John became a vassal to Rome.  So when King Henry VIII was prevented by the Church of Rome from attending to an important matter of state – securing succession to the throne – the question for him was – who was preeminent in England – the king or the pope?  He settled the matter in his favour by persuading the parliament to break all ties with Rome by passing a series of statutes for that purpose.  One was naturally called the Act of Supremacy.  It iced the cake with the assertion that England was always known as an ‘empire’.  Now, Facebook is nasty and Mr Zuckerberg is nauseatingly unctuous, but Facebook is not challenging the place of the Commonwealth of Australia in the governance of this nation.  Rather, it is seeking to bring pressure on the government about a law it proposes to make – much as a union might do to an employer seeking to alter terms of employment.  Claims by government ministers that there is an issue about sovereignty resemble claims by employers that a trade union by industrial action is seeking to take over management of the company.  It is just a bit of local colour.  Facebook is well capable of shooting itself in its posterior.  And if it showed that to us on the way out, I would stand and cheer.