Letters

The “Great Betrayal”

SIR: I would like to add a footnote to the matter of “the Great Betrayal” (October 2010). At the end of the war Australians were sending thousands of food parcels to Britain. On March 26, 1947, Ben Chifley (Prime Minister and Treasurer) moved the second reading of the United Kingdom Grant Bill. He said this Bill was to grant £25 million to the UK “as a contribution towards the costs of war incurred in the Pacific Zone. The UK is labouring under great difficulties today, because in the war it fought with unsparing will the battles of many other peoples as well as its own.”

Chifley pointed out that the huge costs incurred included:

• realisation of £1.5 billion of international investments

• new external liabilities of £3.5 billion

• debt of a further £1.5 billion for the transition from war

• massive losses of industries, homes and shipping

• two-thirds of its export trade sacrificed

By contrast we had suffered no loss of external wealth. “In fact,” said Chifley, “our position is more favourable today than it was before the war.” He went on to point out that we had been able to pay off £60 million of our London debt. Also American troops had injected £100 million into our economy.

On May 28, with bipartisan support, the Bill was carried on the voices. Obviously neither the government nor people thought they had been betrayed by Britain.

To put the size of the grant in perspective the Budget (forward estimates) was £169,249,000 for the following year, so the grant was about 14.77 per cent of the budget. With a Budget this year of $354.6 billion, 14.75 per cent would be $52.3 billion: not even the Parliamentary Superannuation Fund could expect such a generous infusion!

Paul Amos,

Seaford, Vic.

 

SIR: I read with interest the reviews of Augustine Meaher’s The Great Myth of Britain’s Great Betrayal‚ and I cannot allow some of the suggestions that the reviewers report as appearing in the book to pass without a challenge.

It is laudable that the Singapore “Great Betrayal” myth has come under further question and Meaher’s incisive perspective on this national myth is a welcome one, but in demolishing one myth, we need to be careful not to sustain another—the equally tenuous argument that Australian governments between the wars foolishly subscribed to the “Singapore strategy”‚ and failed to make their own defence preparations.

I can only speak for the conservative Lyons government, 1932–39, which I gather has been the particular focus of the author’s criticism. Nothing could be further from the truth to suggest that this prime minister or this government subscribed unthinkingly to such a strategy or that this administration shrank from local defence measures in preparation for future challenges. The Lyons government was sceptical of the Singapore strategy from at least 1934 onwards, when External Affairs Minister John Latham (en route to Japan) personally noted the appalling state of unreadiness of the incomplete base‚ and this scepticism was only strengthened in the years that followed. It was expressed with considerable force, mostly in camera, at the two notable imperial gatherings of the period—the 1935 Prime Ministers’ summit and the 1937 Imperial Conference—and very little faith was put in the continually qualified assurances from London about the reinforcement of any Singapore fortress.

In the meantime, the Lyons government presided from 1933 over five programs of rearmament (a sixth was mooted at the time of Lyons’s death in April 1939) and measures of local defence were at the core of these considerable initiatives—by 1938–39 over 18 per cent of federal government expenditure was on defence spending, an unprecedented figure in Australian peacetime history and one not surpassed since 1945. Lyons had warned of the burden of defence spending in March 1936: “It may cost millions and you will pay those millions cheerfully. First things first, and nothing comes before defence.” This was one promise that he kept, despite his residual pacifism and his commitment to appeasement.

My own work on Lyons and the detailed technical analyses of Andrew Ross on Australia’s industrial development and defence measures between the wars are robust challenges to any lingering, or revived, suggestions that Australia in the 1930s looked to the centre of empire, or anywhere else, for salvation. Australia saved itself, in part by the prudent measures of a government reviled and ridiculed at the time (and since) by its political opponents for the considerable sacrifices required by such spending.

David Bird,

McKinnon, Vic.

 

The Last Intellectual?

SIR: For me, having read Peter Coleman’s absorbing book The Last Intellectuals, the most disturbing feature is to have to acknowledge that as recently as thirty years ago, the people of New South Wales had a person of such talent sufficiently interested to give it a go in state politics and not even make it to premier of the state. Contrast that ability with the intellectual rigour of our current premier whose views on, for example, Christianity and what are popularly called “conscience issues” are close to pre-pubescent, and the Leader of the Opposition who also does not enthuse. Ironically, Mr O’Farrell will probably get the top spot come March next year as the least entitled of all of his predecessors since Bob Carr, with the support of the Fairfax Press who washed his feet for years thereafter, spun his way to victory in the 1990s. Can the overall condition of state politics in New South Wales continue to head south? I prognosticate it can and, on the balance of probabilities, will.

Kenneth Barnes,

Wahroonga, NSW.

 

Faith and Science

SIR: In his letter (October 2010) Paul Monk says, “overwhelmingly, those who profess Christian belief do not do so on intellectual grounds of any respectability, but on the basis of a preference for myths, symbols, rituals and moral traditions for which secular society has, in their judgment, yet to offer satisfactory substitutes” and “the advances of modern science … have removed by degrees any scientific warrant for the dogmas of organised religion, including specifically those of Christianity”.

The first of these statements implies that if most people do not come to faith through a cerebral process then there must be something wrong with what they believe in. It would make as much sense to say that if most passengers don’t choose to enter an aircraft from an understanding of aeronautics then the plane could not be expected to fly. (Also, his assumption about most people’s reason for faith does not accord with my own experience—although I agree it is usually not entered by a process of rational deduction.)

As to the second statement, I rather wonder if Mr Monk has missed the very point that is being made in the gospels. I could not agree more with him when he says that “resurrection is at odds with every known reality of biology”—yet I still believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus and the efficacy of science—and this is not double‑think. I would add that it does not stop at the resurrection. Modern science confirms the gospel‑writers’ own clear belief that it is physically impossible to walk on water, to command the wind and the waves with a word, to cure leprosy with a touch, to turn water into wine—in fact every one of the miracles recorded in the New Testament seems to defy any naturalist explanation. Presumably that is why they were recorded as miracles then—as they would be today.

Has Mr Monk considered if the opposite were true? Consider, for example, if scientists found an African herb that once rubbed on the soles of one’s shoes repelled water so violently that, with some practice, it enabled one to seem to walk on water. Jesus’s parents had fled to Africa. It would explain all. The “miracle” would be exploded! If science could provide a naturalistic explanation for even a small proportion of the reported miracles then it would have exposed the falsity of the conclusion that the gospel‑writers repeatedly drew from them—“Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him” (John 3:2). (Indeed, this was the concession made on behalf of the Pharisees who were hostile to Jesus.)

The proper conclusion to draw from the inability of science to expose the miracles forensically is to say that, to the extent that modern science throws any light on the miracles recorded in the New Testament, it tends to confirm them—for this reason: Science confirms that if the events occurred as recorded, then they remain as firmly miracles today as they were believed to be by those who observed them. Science does not say whether or not they happened as recorded—but neither has it yet exposed the record forensically.

If one starts with the assumption that the miracles could not have happened then it is unsurprising if one ends with the conclusion that they did not—but that is no kind of scientific rebuttal of Christianity.

Recognising the growing need for such a work in a world where Christianity was starting to take off, Luke, the physician, wrote a deliberate and orderly account of the origin of the Christian church in his two‑volume work, his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, the first dealing with the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus and the second with the events that followed it. Luke was a personal companion of Paul’s in some of his travels and had access to eyewitnesses from Jesus’s own time. In his opening he expressly asks the reader to whom it is addressed, to accept the work as a reliable foundation for his faith—his words are, “Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.” Luke’s record substantially accords with other records of the same time and his very detailed account of the travels and adventures of Paul substantially accords with the archaeological record of the times—reflecting a careful attention to accuracy. Had he made it all up then it seems to me that, by now, modern forensic processes would be likely to have exposed that.

I have yet to read a more plausible account for the origin of the Christian church than that provided by Luke—and for this reason it is the very intellectual integrity that Paul Monk says draws him away from Christian faith that draws me to it.

The whole hinge of human history turned around these events—around the words and actions over three years of an itinerant provincial sage—so I find it reasonable to suppose from these consequences that something remarkable might indeed have happened.

Also, I find that the insightfulness of Jesus’s teaching gives credence to his being a remarkable man. Someone had to give us the parables, the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord’s Prayer, “render to Caesar”, and the rest; if not the Jesus recorded then it was someone of great sagacity. But who? I am unable to extricate this teaching in the text from recorded miracles and Jesus’s statements about his own special significance. The confident attempts of the liberal German theologians of the late nineteenth century to extricate them came to nothing. For example, Jesus’s teaching refers directly to the genuineness of his miracles, saying that it will be worse for Korazin and Bethsaida on the day of judgment than for Tyre and Sidon, “for if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes” (Luke 10:13).

Paul Monk’s scepticism seems no different from that of Thomas—“unless … I put my hand into his side …” When Thomas saw the risen Jesus he worshipped him—“My Lord and my God”. And Jesus said, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

I loathe sentimentality, ritual and myth as serious distractions from the substance of faith—although for others, even people of considerable intellect, they seem to help them to express their faith. I still enjoy the music and some of the traditions as anyone might enjoy the familiar things of beauty with which they grew up—yet I would eagerly abandon them were they judged to be impediments to genuine faith. Even if an astronomer held a sentimental attachment to his first telescope for the part it played in bringing him to a love of his science, it would hardly make him an astrologer or diminish the validity of his discipline.

Scripture is far more perceptive than is often given credit. Luke records in Acts 17 an account of Paul addressing the leading intellectuals of Athens at the Areopagus. Paul concludes his address, “For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.” Then Luke records, “When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, ‘We want to hear you again on this subject.’” Clearly one does not need the benefit of modern science to sneer at belief in the resurrection. Paul Monk may conclude that the Athenians were right to do so—but they did not need modern science and it is not the case that modern science has disproved it. Belief in the resurrection of Jesus is an affront to scientism—but not to science.

The physical resurrection of Jesus is the sound foundation of the Christian hope for eternal life for the very reason that Paul Monk identifies and perhaps why he rejects it—because it establishes the mastery of the spiritual over the material.

Ken Harkness,

Sydney, NSW.

 

Progress to Where?

SIR: I notice on the front of Mark Aarons’s book A Family File the following fulsome recommendation by Michael Kirby: “a fascinating tale of love and passion, courage and perfidy, ambition and progressive politics”. It seems to me passing strange that a presumably responsible and judicious observer would choose to describe as “progressive” the political activities of people who did their best to betray their country and would happily have killed their opponents if they had been able to seize power.

Alan Cowan,

Yarralumla, ACT.

 

The Future of the Book

SIR: Regarding Paul Fenton’s letter (September 2010) on Shelley Gare’s article “Death by Silence in the Writers’ Combat Zone”. It is indeed difficult to know how best to remedy such a situation. However, given that sales of electronic books have now, for retailers such as Amazon, overtaken hardcover sales, the future looks somewhat less grim.

However, all those who take pleasure in books as artefacts will understand my despondency. The aesthetic and affective aspects of reading are very important. As a bibliophile of the traditional type, I find most alarming the idea of having to read novelists like Christopher Koch (surely one of Australia’s finest writers) on a screen, despite improvements in the technology. All those who take pleasure in books as artefacts will understand this instantly.

Pauline Farley,

Attadale, WA.

 

Preferential Voting

SIR: There is nothing undemocratic or complicated about preferential voting (Lindsay Brown, Letters, September 2010). It ensures that in a single-member seat system no one can be elected as an MP unless the majority of the electorate so chooses. A majority is not just more votes than anyone else. It is more than half the votes.

First past the movable post is a disgraceful system as it can result in MPs being elected against the wishes of the majority in each electorate and those majorities can pile up to produce huge distortions in the numbers of seats. In 2005, the UK Labour Party got 35.2 per cent of the vote and 356 of the 646 seats in the House of Commons. In other words, two-thirds of the people preferred someone else, but they got a Labour government with a majority in its own right.

We have compulsory voting because it is the duty of citizens in a democracy to choose who governs them. The compulsory marking of preferences follows from the same principle, even if it produces the distasteful choice between the Citizens Electoral Council and the Socialist Equity Party.

Voters are not compelled to follow the order of preference recommended by a political party. If they choose to vote above the line for the Senate or the Victorian Legislative Council, they are endorsing the preference recommendations of their party, but that is not compulsory. They can choose to vote below the line in any order they prefer. It is their free choice. All “preference swaps” are subject to the endorsement of the electorate, and the policies which follow from that endorsement are perfectly legitimate, no matter what debate on their value may follow.

Preferential voting was long advocated by the right side of politics, but now it is that side which complains. Political history tells us why. The Liberal Party, benefiting from DLP preferences, won the following Victorian elections with less than 40 per cent of the primary vote:

1955 37.8 per cent

1958 37.2 per cent

1961 36.4 per cent

1964 39.6 per cent

1967 37.5 per cent

1970 36.7 per cent

That’s six in a row, yet Liberals never complained about preferential voting in those days. The difference? They were the ones getting the preferences! Now that the ALP is winning with Greens preferences, hypocrisy is taking another outing.

Chris Curtis,

Hurstbridge, Vic.

SIR: It is generally supposed that electors vote for the persons they want to see elected. This is questionable on at least two grounds: how many of the 60,000 electors in a constituency know any of the candidates, have ever seen one or would recognise one; and how to explain the “Hate Abbott” propaganda of this last campaign, and the “Hate Howard” and “Hate Hanson” of previous campaigns. It is not just one-sided either—probably only his resignation prevented a “Hate Rudd” campaign.

These campaigns support the view that while a few people actually vote for a person, a very substantial number vote against the representative of a party with whose policies they disagree. Else why do parties throw money into an “anti” campaign?

If valid, this destroys Lindsay Brown’s proposition that our preferential voting system is complicated while a “first past the post” (FPP) system is simple. Reason: a preferential voting system enables voters to express their preferences explicitly. “I would prefer A, but if not him, then B, and if not him, then C” and so forth. As a result, persons who wished for a Green candidate, say, to be elected, could happily give that candidate a “1”, knowing full well that in 149 electorates he had no chance, and that their vote would not be wasted but would be automatically passed on to their next preference.

With FPP, the elector who supports a party other than a major party, or even an elector who supports a major party but wishes to give it a “kick in the pants” is faced with a cruel dilemma. “Do I vote for the candidate of my choice, knowing my vote will be ‘wasted’, or do I vote for a person I don’t want, considering him less ‘evil’ than his opponent”—effectively, “What is the best way to vote against X?” This is no simple and easy matter for the elector. FPP is not a simple system.

Just suppose that our last election had been on an FPP basis, and electors had marked their ballot papers with an “X” where they actually put a “1”. There would have been 66 ALP, 52 Liberal, 23 Liberal National, 6 National and 3 Independent members elected to the House of Representatives, resulting in a Coalition government, 81 Coalition to 66 ALP and 3 Independents. But for the reason given above, this is totally unlikely. The probable result would have been a House similar to the present one, except that the ALP would have won Denison and Melbourne.

Someone said, in respect of FPP in the UK, “There is no greater gamble than a British General Election.” Do we really want to be saddled with that?

Dudley Horscroft,

Banora Point, NSW.

 

Tell Me a Story

SIR: The short stories “Hospital Tour” by Alex O’Sullivan and “Four Coffees” by Paul Blake (October 2010) engage me in separate ways. The defiant, defensive tone of the reluctantly pregnant mother in “Hospital Tour” (point of view here is the story) is skilfully offset against the hospital establishment overly accustomed to typical maternity patients. The father, sulking because his ex-partner refuses to live with him, is gently ridiculed along with the rest of the cast. Both parents prepare unwillingly for the baby until the story moves through a change (which defines the short story, or used to!). When they view their baby on the screen it becomes a reality, an individual, and they are swept off their feet.

“Four Coffees”, also written in an immediate, conversational style, uses a Hemingway-like spareness. It suits a gang of working men. But Blake still spices his prose with a chainsaw “like half a motorbike” and “clusters of school uniforms heading home for the day”. The story covers exploitation, male interaction, a workingman’s culture. It appears to finish without an ending unless you catch Rob’s subtle change of attitude in the last few lines.

This is a more serious and menacing story, but both are eminently readable, concise and visual; and pair nicely for me with feminine and masculine overtones.

Nana Ollerenshaw,

Buderim, Qld.

 

The Sudeten Germans

SIR: In his article “Myth, Reality and Oskar Schindler” (June 2010), Brett Jenik takes Thomas Keneally to task for supposed inaccuracies in Schindler’s Ark. Whilst I do not wish to enter the Oskar Schindler debate, I was somewhat perturbed by the Orwellian phrasing in his three-line summary of the expulsion of the Sudeten German population in 1945.

Isn’t Keneally aware that it was these doings that led to the massive deportations after the war, in which some two and a half million ethnic Germans were dispatched from Czechoslovakia to Germany, with the approval of the international community? These were the fruits of German activities before and during the war.

This “dispatching” resulted in the murder of innocent men, women and children, the plundering of their homes and forced death marches. Not all Sudeten Germans were Nazis. Victims included Sudeten German Social Democrats and Communists who had been sent to concentration camps for their anti-Nazi views and were then sent to Czech labour camps after their release, solely because of their German ethnicity.

To claim that this was done with the full approval of the international community is also untenable. British members of parliament raised the issue in 1945, and even at the time some Czechs were condemning this type of ethnic cleansing. To suggest that the forced and brutal deportation of two and a half million people is somehow defensible because of the war crimes of a section of the population is not only historically inaccurate, but also morally questionable.

M.K. Sander

(via e-mail)

 

Jesus’s Prophecy

SIR: The book, Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations, by Martin Goodman, reviewed in the September 2010 issue by Michael Giffin, seeks to examine the question as to why Rome destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD. The writer concludes that this disaster was not inevitable, but that the Jewish revolt of 66 AD which led eventually to their own destruction was due to the poor administration of an incompetent Roman governor. Further, the author suggests that the new Caesar, Vespasian, needed to be seen as a victorious general in order to support his rise to power. Thus he encouraged his son Titus to gain a quick victory over the Jews.

What the author of the book and the reviewer do not take into account in examining the causes of this war against the Jews is that Jesus had much earlier foreshadowed this very event, which is recorded for us in Luke’s gospel, 21:5–7. There we read (NIV translation):

Some of his disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts dedicated to God.

But Jesus said, “As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.”

“Teacher,” they asked, “when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?”

Jesus proceeds to answer this question in the verses following verse 20:

When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near.

Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those in the city get out, and let those in the country not enter the city.

For this is the time of punishment in fulfilment of all that has been written.

How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! There will be great distress in the land and wrath against this people.

They will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

The Christian Jews in Jerusalem were aware of this prophecy by Jesus and during the early stages of the revolt removed themselves from the city and the surrounding towns to the safety of mountainous region of Petra. In this way they avoided the dreadful events that were to follow.

Thus, from a Biblical perspective the destruction of Jerusalem was inevitable and the early Jewish Christians were aware that this was so. Therefore, no historical account today which provides an explanation limited to an analysis of the external events on the ground is going to provide an adequate review of the causes of the war. The destruction of Jerusalem must be viewed in both its historical and biblical context.

Lewis Larking,

Scarborough, Qld.

Myths of Their Own

SIR: Robert McLaughlin’s “Mythbusters” article (September 2010) denies the rationality and desirability of faith in God. The book he reviews demands, he claims, “a similarly powerful response”. While others no doubt will provide this, to me the response is simple. Faith, in the sense of a desire to know and respond to God, is obviously part of human experience. The publication of 50 Voices of Belief: Why We Are Atheists, not to mention the word atheists itself, evidences this fact.

Faith goes beyond reason, as does that other human faculty, love. Properly applied, faith and love do not contradict reason, but take us where reason alone cannot.

Certainly, a sort of human life is possible without faith, just as a sort of human life is possible without love. Both faith and love, misapplied or distorted, have been responsible for much human suffering. In the case of faith, the discipline of theology tries to purify the pursuit of this human faculty.

Atheists rail against faith and religion with a religious fervour. Why? Personally, I think cricket is pointless, leads to all sorts of problems such as stress, sunburn, absenteeism and apparently corruption, but I don’t feel a need to attack it; somehow I just seem to be missing the faculty needed to respond to it. If a cricketer can be at peace, why can’t an atheist?

John Gerard Nestor

(via e-mail)

SIR: Robert McLaughlin exposes a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of Singer and Hauser of the discourse between Socrates and Euthyphro on the nature of goodness. In the translation I have (Hackett Publishing, translated by Grube, revised by Cooper), Socrates challenged Euthyphro to choose whether something is good (pious) because it is loved by the gods or whether it is loved by the gods because it is good (pious). It is a misunderstanding to interpret the deeds under discussion as having been done at the “command” of the gods. The argument based on Euthyphro is kneecapped by this misunderstanding. (As an aside, how can Peter Singer be called a moral philosopher when so much of his philosophy is immoral?)

Science is nothing more than man’s attempts to understand the wonders of God’s creation and there is nothing schizophrenic in believing that. If I were an atheist, I would not worry too much about God or those who believe in Him. To the believer, no proof is necessary; to the non-believer, no proof is possible. If atheists worry too much about it, God will become like W.H. Mearns’s man upon the stair.

McLaughlin quotes A.C. Grayling: “The paradigm [of rationality] is science, which institutionalizes publicity, repeatability, and peer-review of experiment and test, and is as a matter of strict principle defeasible in the face of evidence.” This elevation of science to these lofty heights of rationality sits uneasily with the irrationality of many scientists on the global warming bandwagon. We Christians are repeatedly humbled by the poor conduct of ourselves and of some of our fellow believers, but scientists and philosophers do not seem so sensitive to their errors and those of their peers.

Frank Pulsford,

Aspley, Qld.

SIR: Robert McLaughlin quotes with obvious approval the alleged fact that: “atheists and agnostics do not behave less morally than religious believers”. This seems to me to call for the invention of a new literary term, for something that is the opposite of plain and obvious fact, reminiscent of the stingy old cook who complained that olives don’t grow on trees. One wonders if the writer has heard of either Nazism or communism.

Hal G.P. Colebatch,

Nedlands, WA.