Mac Ball

This article about a book, and about the man whose life the book describes, is not in any ordinary sense a book review. The recently published volume is called W. Macmahon Ball: Politics for the People. The author is Ai Kobayashi, whose research and writing have been conducted at Melbourne University’s quaintly-named School of Historical and Philosophical Studies. Her book is published by the rising Melbourne firm Australian Scholarly Publishing, already recognised for its outstanding design and elegant production.

As for the book’s subject, if any Australian qualifies for full biographical treatment, it is “Mac” Ball (1901–86): how many of us, for example, have suddenly been called upon to represent before the world not only Australia, but the entire British Commonwealth? In a different mode of celebrity, who could compete with Mac as a performing public intellectual? His Australia in the Pacific talks swept all else off the ABC at Sunday lunchtimes.

Right here at the outset, let me state the firm view that this book is an important task carried triumphantly to fulfilment: congratulations from an old publisher, and one, at that, who knew Mac Ball as a valued and intimate friend for forty years.

Yet there remain certain piquancies, and even perplexities, to which now we turn.

Many would say that the pinnacle of Mac’s international eminence (referred to above) was his service, with the rank of Australian Minister, on the Allied Council for Japan. This was the body which advised the American Caesar, General Douglas MacArthur, in his autocratic occupation government of a crushed and humbled Japan, directly after the Second World War. Is it not curious that the only biography of Mac, so many decades later, should come from the pen of a Japanese, Ai Kobayashi? Odd, perhaps; but much stranger questions arise.

How is it that (so far as I know) no Australian scholar, author or publishing house has previously attempted such an eligible—such a tempting—project? Year after year they offer us processions of “Lives”: lives of other writers, politicians, policemen, killers, drug pedlars, entertainers, war heroes, racehorses, and obscure provincial trade union leaders. Between their covers, hard or soft, most of them appear fleetingly in our attention in their inevitable stages, from launching and hype, through the “remainder” and “reduced” tables in the bookshops, back to the paper pulp mills from which they came. But no Mac Ball.

Most pointed question of all: how possibly could Melbourne University Press have let a book about one of its own most famous and interesting alumni escape from campus to be snapped up by a commercial publisher lurking just down the road? Given a modicum of intelligent sales-promotion, it would have sold well, promptly recovered the costs of issuing it, and soon shown a profit on a second printing. So finance could not have been the reason for its non-appearance under MUP’s famous “angel” symbol.

The riddle turns to high mystery when it is recalled that those now responsible for MUP’s governance would probably not be sitting now in their (presumably) comfortable chairs, had it not been for the herculean labours, back in the 1950s and 1960s, of a former Chairman of the Press Board of Management. His devotion averted certain shipwreck, bankruptcy and extinction. The comfy chairs would simply not be there, nor would MUP itself. That Chairman was Melbourne University’s Foundation Professor of Political Science. His name was Macmahon Ball.

From its establishment in 1922, on the microscopic capital of 300 pounds, MUP early achieved remarkable recognition for the quality of its output of about six books a year—some of them little more than pamphlet size. Especially under its first full-time Manager, Frank Wilmot (the poet “Furnley Maurice”), MUP was fully accepted by both Oxford and Cambridge university presses as a worthy, if junior, member of the world scholarly publishing team. Wilmot undoubtedly created in Melbourne University a general sense that, in MUP, it was nurturing a jewel of great future value; and moreover, that its little organisation was well run. At all events, Council twice provided some modest financial help when the Press asked for it; most years trading showed a small surplus.

Wilmot died in 1942, and was succeeded by Gwyn James, then a Lecturer in Melbourne’s History School, but tracing back ultimately to the University of Birmingham. Several contemporary academic historians have told me that he was a prickly colleague whose translation to the Press greatly added to the tranquility of their working day.

James’s publishing talents were high—an expert practitioner at every stage of a book’s creation, from manuscript to finished copy. But his management and administrative talents were almost a negative quantity, especially in finance. Under him, MUP’s activities inflated like a cane toad; the bank overdraft floated away like an untethered balloon; his unfortunate personality drove loyal, long-serving staff to madness and resignation.

The University Registrar, experienced and tough-minded old Frank Johnston, was a member ex officio of the Press Board of Management, and saw that the parent university’s edicts to curb the Press’s runaway bank overdraft were producing no effect. With painful memories of an earlier university financial scandal, he canvassed the immediate liquidation and closure of the Press. His position was both strong and strategic, for he was also a member of the university’s all-powerful Finance Committee.

Mac firmly believed that universities had a proper role in publishing distinguished scholarly books. The ship that the Registrar was prepared to scuttle, Mac was determined to salvage. His first plan tried to retain Gwyn James and all his high skills; his salary would remain unchanged, his title would be changed to “University Publisher” but, as with all other Press staff, he would from now on report to a newly-created “Director”. This was too much for Gwyn’s pride, and one must feel for him. He resigned at once in a letter of great dignity.

Thus, when Mac’s ship put to sea again, one senior officer was absent from the bridge, and the captain was a nervous and inexperienced master, often steering by the seat of his pants. Yet it won through. The overdraft changed steadily from a sinful scarlet to a new and acceptable shade of black. Reassured that Mac still sat in the Chairman’s seat, eminent scholars (and important institutions) continued to offer their manuscripts.

Himself an avowed liberal mild-left-leaner, Mac was from time to time entrusted with important national responsibilities by both the conservative government of Robert Menzies, and by the Curtin–Chifley government which followed it. Early in the Second World War, Menzies confided to Mac the delicate task of control of Australia’s propaganda wireless broadcasts to South-East Asia, and analysis (in various languages) of the reverse traffic.

Labor’s Foreign Minister, Bert Evatt, sent him on very sensitive personal missions in South-East Asia, which was then in the turmoil of decolonisation. (These trips were sometimes spiced with real danger. Years later, with excited shining eyes, Mac would tell of the bullet that passed right through the fuselage of an unarmed Douglas commercial aircraft flying over Indonesia.)

In December 1947 the moderate socialist prime minister of the Republic of Indonesia, Sutan Sjahrir, paid an official but low-key visit to Australia. Mac, then back at Melbourne University, asked him privately to dinner. Six of us (I think) sat down in a private room among the subdued Edwardian elegance of Oliphant’s Ritz restaurant in Lonsdale Street (alas, long gone). There was no entourage, no “minder”, no inhibiting “security” presence lurking. It was a revelation of “Mac the Diplomat” in action. Their earlier meetings had made them true friends with deep mutual sympathies and shared humour.

It was a hot and steamy Melbourne night, and the diners one and all reached gratefully towards the proffered tall, frosty glasses of beer—Sjahrir included. With a brashness I cringe now to recall (I was about twenty-three) I stretched a warning finger towards the guest of honour: “Hang on! You can’t drink that! You’re supposed to be a Muslim!”

His eyes twinkled as, without a word, he quaffed deep and thirstily, and leaned over to me. “Allah is very understanding,” he murmured mischievously.

Mac well understood all the rules and usages of diplomacy, the protocols of foreign offices, the prescriptions of international law. But he preferred the subtler field of personality, the less formal ground where mind met mind. Here he made use of the natural advantages of his quiet yet authoritative voice, the gracious gesture and (not least) his impressive bearing, his handsome grey-maned countenance. (One day I heard the grumble of a Melbourne professor whom Mac, with exquisite urbanity, had just bested in the Professorial Board: “The trouble with bloody Mac is that he looks like an ancient Roman senator.”)

The close empathy between Mac and Prime Minister Ben Chifley more than once saved the situation when relations with the increasingly erratic Bert Evatt threatened to explode. One day, while I was having a cup of tea in Chif’s private office, after he had moved into Opposition, our chat turned to Mac. (I was surprised that Chifley should have known that we were friends.) After the exchange of many an amusing anecdote, Chif summed up: “Well, all I can tell you is that I liked the cut of Mr Ball’s jib.”

That was indeed about the size of it: You liked the cut of Mac’s jib. Or you didn’t.