Gods & Neighbours

Barney Roberts

Gods: Kings that made laws, first broke them; Gods by teaching us religion first, first set the world at odds. (1)

The religious term ‘God’ is the name for the proper object of reverence… There must be something that we value more than everything else, … it is sacred to us. It is a thing for which ‘in practice we have an absolute reverence. So we talk of a man ‘worshipping’ money, or fame; or even ‘making a god of his belly’ ..The true object of any man’s religion is that which he values absolutely……In this fundamental sense, every man has a religion and if the object of his practical worship is the wrong one, … then he practises a false religion … It cannot … give wholeness and satisfaction to his personal life.” (2)
John Macmurray.

Neighbours: Love worketh no ill to his neighbour (3)
“If you’re a neighbour to a neighbour who is bad,
you must learn to suffer what is bad. But if you are
neighbour to a neighbour who is good, more and more
reciprocal good do you both teach and learn.” (4)
Come tomorrow:
“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats.” (5)
XX
All my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears
Today of past Regrets and future Fears –
Tomorrow? – Why, Tomorrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday’s Sev’n Thousand Years.
XXXIII
Then to the rolling Heav’n itself I cried,
Asking, ‘What Lamp had Destiny to guide
Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?
And – ‘A blind understanding!’ Heav’n replied.
LXXIII
Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Wouldjiot we shatter it to bits – and then
Remould it nearer to the Heart’s desire! (6)

Gods & Neighbours

Gods and Neighbours is an attempt to examine the situation, as I see it, of a world in turmoil; a world where destinies of all people are affected by the whims and manipulations of rich and powerful nations and individuals, ambitious and inspired people and politicians, with normal human frailties.

Apart from Theistic and pantheistic gods, I shall be referring to the graven images, the material things – money, power, fame, etc – which we tend to worship above all else, once our bodily comforts are satisfied.

As Neighbours, I refer to all people on this planet as being subject to the obligations of humanity. There is no place on Earth where any person can feel totally isolated from the effects of pollution on land, in air or water, or is safe from political interference from outside their community: such are the self-supporting tribes of the Amazon Valley, the forest dwelling people of Borneo, and the few Aboriginal communities who yet strive to remain separate from other societies. They are all our neighbours.

I am anxious to define reasons why people are suffering the continuing slaughter and destruction caused by wars and famine and pestilence, situations we all deplore, yet seem, so far, powerless to control.

The Forgotten People

In 1871, Walt Whitman wrote an essay, Democratic Vistas, decrying America’s “hollowness of heart.” Despite “unprecedented materialistic advancement,” he said the US. had become socially, morally, intellectually superficial, that people lived in an “atmosphere of hypocrisy”; that “the work of the New World is not ended but only fairly begun.”

Since that was written, the USA (and other countries) have made great technological advances in all areas such as space exploration, engineering, farm and domestic equipment and, notably, war machines. A trebled world population brought with it massive improvements in methods of transport and consequently travel and communication. Forestry, exploration, mining, agriculture, and development of huge factories all over the world have caused hitherto unheard of problems with soil, water and air pollution.

We are told the world has progressed faster this twentieth century than at any time in its history. But we are left wondering what do we mean by “progress.” A percentage of the world’s population have benefited greatly from these changes while another larger percentage have suffered considerably. So while undoubted progress has been made in science, engineering and manufacturing, the human situation must not be discounted.

It was concern for welfare of the individual’s spiritual and physical needs which was the base for the main, lasting, religious philosophies from Buddhism in the 6th century’ BC. to Christianity and Islam: all of them based on the ethics of one or another holy person. The teachings in all cases emphasise the needs of the poor and oppressed, but it seems that amongst those of us who profess a religion, the vase majority secretly worship, first, their god of greed. – As Tolstoy once said, “Yes, we will do almost anything for the poor, anything but get off his back.”

To portray one’s responsibility to others, I suggest we look upon all humans as members of one family, and imagine what we would do in our own particular family if it were our responsibility to tell our children at the dinner table, that there wasn’t enough food to go around. Would you – would any one of us do what we practise in a Capitalistic society, grab what we need for ourselves and leave what is left for the strongest and smartest to consume. Of course not, yet this is exactly what we do in our family of nations. Old Mother Hubbard is a slight improvement. Remember?

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe
She had so many children she didn’t know what to do
So she gave them all broth without any bread
And smacked them all soundly and put them to bed.

Some child of ours may even be rude enough to suggest there was plenty of bread in the other room (in our bedroom!). So What! we would snap at them, and afterwards secretly dispose of the surplus by burying it in a mine shaft, or throwing it in the sea, to maintain export price parity.

It has been said so often it is a cliche, but I say it again: the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer; this is a continuous and growing trend in the world community. While we applaud the continued growth of the GNP. improved export income, lower inflaiion rate, and all the tiresome economic

and political indicators which are supposed to tell us how well we are doing, there are no regular reports, no indicators to measure the scale of poverty in our own country or in the world. We get the occasional item of news which tells us something like this: “there is, on average, in Somalia, one child dying of starvation even’ three minutes” and on the local scene: “it is estimated that the number of children living on the streets in Sydney and Melbourne has trebled in the past five years.”

The point I’m trying to make is that our street kids, and the people in Somalia, or Haiti, or any of those countries where whole communities are suffering severe deprivation (to the point where three million could die of starvation this year) are ignored when it comes to defining their country’s economic rating. They are written off, rather than being registered as a debit on society, even in a democracy. But as Dr. Muzaffar, Malaysian scholar and executive member of the Asian Human Rights Commission says: “…the existing international system is totally undemocratic…the stark fact is that 85% of the world’s income is in the hands of a mere 23%; of the world’s population. This in a new world order that promises to celebrate the spirit of human freedom.” (7)

There are many examples of leaders in government or industry, often in Third World countries, taking advantage of their position to amass fortunes for their immediate family and friends, with little regard for their own people: such a one is President Mobutu of Zaire. Susan George writes: “Zaire today means 2,500 immensely rich families and 27 million who are desperately poor.” (8). “The debt of the country is 5 billion dollars and coincidentally, that is the estimate of how much General Mobutu and his family have stolen from Zaire.” (9) She lists the many luxurious chateaux and palaces, (in Europe and Zaire) ships, aeroplanes, cars (53 Mercedes), and the percentage rakeoff Mobutu takes from exports.

From the beginning of colonialism, the “Third World” countries which were naturally rich in minerals, tropical fruits and vegetables, and exotic plants and timbers were exploited by the invaders. The lifestyles of the various Aboriginal people, who were regarded as economically, socially and mentally backward, were disrupted; strange beliefs and religious were foisted on them with disastrous results.

When the English, at the peak of their colonial power, began shipping convicts out to Australia, even the most virtuous of the migrants who came to settle in New Holland or Van Diemens Land, while they may have found physical violence against the Aboriginals abhorrent, they saw little wrong in acquiring their lands, banishing them from their tribal hunting and living areas, and felt aggrieved when the natives reacted against them.

The general attitude of the invaders was overbearing and arrogant. These wandering, “stone-age” tribes, who owned no land, must be shown the sins and stupidities of their ways. They must accept the laws of the white invaders and taught the Christian doctrine. It was regarded as acceptable practice at the time, with their ships and superior ways of killing people, to invade any country anywhere in the world and exploit its natural wealth. It was part of the Christian European culture to attempt to establish their nation as the supreme power through colonialism. For centuries, some Western European seaboard countries like Portugal, Spain, France, Holland and England had competed with each other to establish trading posts and colonies in Asia, Africa and the Americas as well as the tropical islands.

I found it enlightening, and frightening to read about the Australian Aboriginals in two encyclopaedias, both printed this century. In one I read that: – “The natives belong to the Papuan negrostock, probably the lowest as regards intelligence in the whole human family. They…are of medium size and inferior muscular development, the legs being weak and slender. …The women are not nearly as well developed as the men. …In the settled parts of the continent, they are now few and inoffensive, and rapidly dying out. They have no fixed habitations; …their religious condition is of the lowest kind; they practise polygamy, and, it is believed, occasionally resort to cannibalism.” (10)

The Children’s Encyclopedia tells us: “The strange wandering race that has come down from the long ago. The people who lived in Australia when white men arrived, the Aborigines, were of such a primitive type, so few and scattered and migratory from place to place, that they have not been a difficulty. No one could say that they really occupied the land. They numbered about 300,000 scattered over a continent almost as large as the United States of America. There are now about 50,000 full-blooded Aborigines, who remain a primitive people. As a remnant of very early mankind, they are interesting to the student of human progress, but they are not a serious problem. On the other hand.

Australia has been peopled by a white race predominantly of British origin -daring, energetic, and independent. …the Australian people have proved, are proving, and will prove themselves conquerors.” (11)

They are not a serious problem! What magnanimity! Compare the above with a quote from Backhouse: …”they (Aboriginals) exceeded the Europeans in skill, in those things to which their attention had been directed from childhood. …There is similar variety of talent and of temper among the Tasmanian aborigines (sic) to what is to be found among other branches of the human family…” (12). Almost two centuries after the usurping of the Aborigines’ land in Tasmania, our politicians are still not prepared to admit any previous wrongdoing, enough to even consider Aboriginal land rights.

J. E. Calder, a tough bushman, explorer, one-time Surveyor General, said of the native tribes of Tasmania a hundred and thirty years ago: …” few, I hope, will begrudge the lime expended on the perusal of this paper, who understand the duties of a man to his fellows, and the consequent necessity of atoning for long neglect, even at this late hour, by future attention to their wants, for we cannot by mere maintenance in life repay the debt we owe a race whom we have forcibly dispossessed of everything but mere existence. Other duties we are bound to take … to arrest the evils that are fast working out their extinction.” (13)

It would be well for all of us to consider people other than ourselves for a change; to look at past history and the ongoing relations we have had and are having with the indigenous people, particularly those in Australia (naturally, Tasmania is included); people who, until we arrived two hundred years ago, had survived some fort}’ or fifty thousand years inhabiting this continent.

The attitude that we, of the present generation, bear no responsibility for anything that our ancestors did in the past to the Aboriginals is, in effect, an unconscious admission of guilt, which if expressed would destroy the image of superiority of white over black that we cherish.

The invading white races whether in Australia, Africa, America or Asia regarded the land, the wilderness, as something to be exploited. The wealth of the various European nations was built upon exploitation. In my childhood we were taught a little about these “quaint”, backward people, who had no religion.

I was interested to read in Peter Matthiessen’s Indian Country the following: One thing we know which the white man may one day discover.. Our God is the same God. You may thing now that you own Him as you may wish to own our land. But you cannot. He is the body of man. And His compassion is equal for the red man and the white. The earth is previous to Him. And to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator. The white too shall pass -perhaps sooner than other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in you own waste. When the buffalo are all slaughlered, the wild horses are tame, the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills, blotted by talking wires, where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the eagle? Gone. And what is it to say goodbye to the swift and the hunt, the end of living and the beginning of survival?” (14)

When I gave Indian Country as a birthday present, I wrote this poem:

Why Peter Matthiessen’s Indian Country? Why indeed?
A remembrance, a token, a gift you would concede
to express my love, but something more
it could precipitate a willingness to explore
more fully our past, acts of arrogance one person to another.
It may help us search for truth, in each and all of us
to recognise, admit, that we have wronged a sister and a brother. (15)

Unemployment

E. F. Schumacher was certainly not the only person who could foresee the problems we were inexorably heading for in the Western Democracies, long before we were aware of them. When he wrote Small is Beautiful a 3% level of unemployment was regarded as unacceptable. Now we talk of a 10% or 12% level, or even 40% “youth unemployment.” As a political response (not philanthropic 1 would suggest) both panics of our Federal Parliament, with an early election in mind, rushed out new and generous ways of heading off unemployment by devising special job-training schemes. These, no doubt, subsequently will be financed by continuing the recent policies of privatising science industries, selling off commonwealth and state owned property. different tax systems, cuts in arts grants, education, health, anything to finance “job-training”: educating our youth to be artisans, to learn crafts and computer skills, at a time when thousands of factory workers, fitters and turners.

electricians, mechanics, teachers, nurses, computer and keyboard operators, et cetera are made redundant, because of the drive for continued efficiency.

I was interested to hear, a few weeks ago. a rebroadcast of part of a Trans-Pacific Satellite Education Discussion, which included Australia and New Zealand. The-US. compere told us that schools there were somewhat underfunded and that was one good reason why High Schools received money from industry to teach Capitalism, as it is affected by the latest technological advances, to all students. What the study of Capitalism replaced neither 1 nor the dissenting questioner from Auckland was able to ascertain, but I made a guess when the compere said, “Thank you Auckland. Now we turn to New Zealand, a questioner from Wellington.”

Cutting tariffs seems to be the popular thing to do now. to encourage our local factories, like footwear and clothing, to increase their efficiency, or alternatively, to cut down on quality. There is apparently little chance of competing with imported goods, from Asia, particularly.

Market forces can dictate that the boot factory in Hobart or Adelaide, or a clothing factory in Launceston or Bendigo must either drop their prices, cut wage levels, or cut production of a certain line, or retrench employees, because a similar article can be produced somewhere in Asia and marketed here at a lower price. Market forces can put a carpet factory in Tasmania out of business because children in Afghanistan or some other Asian country are used as slave labour to produce a beautiful carpet for a give-away price These children are victims of market forces strategy.

Instead of attending school, they are forced to spend years as slaves, until they either go blind or die, or are no longer of use, and cast aside like surplus sheep or apples to rot in holes in the ground. But don’t imagine the parents of these children are heartless. -They have the same feelings for their offspring as any mother or father in our country. They too are victims of the market forces strategy. They are caught up in a brutal world economy, which places profit margins above human values in order of importance.

In order to produce some article at a competitive price transnationals search for third world countries which can supply cheap labour and materials, which will allow for large corporate profits; profits which often are secured in tax havens, away from normal taxation demands. Clever lawyers are constantly working

on new means of helping people and businesses to launder money and dodge lax. It is regarded as good business practice to beat the system, to leave the financing of government services to honest, or not so ‘clever’ people and employees on PAYE.

Peter Mares, produper-presented extraordinaire, on radio RN’s Indian Pacific tells of the production of Nike sports shoes, one of the business success stories of the past decade. “It is a US company but it licences production to South Korean firms, that in turn move the labour-intensive component … off short to lower-wage countries such as Indonesia … a survey of Nike-licences factories in Indonesia showed that in 1991, the average basic wage for an experienced female worker was US82 cents per day.” (16)

Fast Train to “Progress” and a look at Ladakh
We are told that Aboriginals have lived in Australia for up to fifty thousand years. It is a very long time compared with the two hundred years since the British arrived at Botany Bay and raised the Union Jack.

Detrimental changes to the environment caused by development of large cities, agricultural and industrial practices have taken place in the last two hundred years. The same could be said about most of the countries colonised by European powers in the last few centuries.

Perhaps it is a characteristic of the European achievers – the polar explorers, the climbers of mountains, the colonisers – that nervous, restless arrogance, which doesn’t sit easily with the passionless peace and imperturbability of nirvana.

It is incredible to think that so much of the planet’s fertility has been destroyed in this century; that so many people have suffered and died in misery, because lands which supported them for centuries have been turned into deserts. We still look upon our way of life as the only way. Even Mr. Hewson says – “We are Green. We are all Green, so long as it doesn’t get in the way of “progress.”

There’s that word again! We are on a fast train going to some unknown destination. Through the windows we see the blur of children with swollen bellies, women and men with soulful, puzzled expressions, standing in a desert

of death, where once there were paddocks of grain and busy families working to the rhythm of scythes and sickles.

Some passengers on the train throw themselves out the window. The elite in the front carriage, with every possible luxury, work out new ways to make the train go faster, pass on urgent messages: “Do this” – “Do that” – At the other end of the train there are people crowding into back carriages and wanting to know – “Where are we going?” – “Why are we travelling so fast?” – “How do you stop this thing?”

Perhaps there is another way, a better way. We need to stop and look, and listen to all those voices of the past; to evaluate exactly what we have done, what we are doing.

How far have we progressed? Perhaps the questions should be asked – What is progress? Is progress leading us to a better life?

The whole of history is set out before us to learn from, or to ignore. There is one fact we must appreciate; the speed of change has increased considerably. It has taken all those centuries since Homo sapiens came down out of the trees until 1950 for the population to reach 2.5 billion. In 40 years, the population has doubled to 5 billion.

It is probably difficult for any child born in the last forty years to appreciate how life has changed for all people, except a tiny minority of indigenous tribes, who have managed to remain separated from the changes that have swept the world.

An excellent example of social change and how it has affected people is described in a book recently published, called Ancient Futures. It tells of the people and land of Ladakh in the Himalayan region of Kashmir. Ladakh is half as big again as Tasmania and has a population of about 130,000. For sixteen years, the author, Helena Norborg-Hodge, has been spending half of each year there, studying the language, the people, and their way of life. When she first went there she found a “primitive” society, isolated from the rest of the world socially, politically and geographically. Basic needs were provided locally. Salt, brought in from outside, was bartered for. Money was not required except occasionally for luxuries. The author points out: “In the West, frugality conjures up images of old aunts and padlocked pantries. But the frugality you

find in Ladakh, which is fundamental to the people’s prosperity, is something quite different. Using limited resources in a careful way has nothing to do with miserliness; this is frugality’ in its original meaning of ‘fniitfulness’: getting more out of little.” (17)

“Before I went to Ladakh, I used to assume that the direction of ‘progress’ was somehow inevitable, not to be questioned. As a consequence. I passively accepted a new road through the park, a steel-and-glass bank where a two-hundred year old church had stood, a supermarket instead of the corner shop, and the fact that life seemed to get harder and faster each day … Ladakh has convinced me that there is more than one path into the future and given me tremendous strength and hope – In Ladakh. I have known a society in which there is neither waste nor pollution, a society in which crime is virtually nonexistent, communities are healthy and strong, and a teenaged boy is never embarrassed to be gentle and affectionate with his mother or grandmother. As that society begins to break down under the pressures of modernisation, the lessons are of relevance far beyond Ladakh itself.” (18)

“Western society today is moving in two distinct and opposing directions. On the one hand, mainstream culture led by government and industry moves relentlessly towards continued economic growth and technological development, straining the limits of nature and all but ignoring fundamental human needs. On the other hand, a counter-current, comprising a wide range of groups and ideas has kept alive the ancient understanding that all life is inextricably connected. – We still have an opportunity to steer our society toward social and ecological balance. Under the surface even such seemingly unconnected problems as ethnic violence, pollution of the air and water, broken families, and cultural disintegration are closely interlinked.” (19)

Home planet
Yes, we still have an opportunity to steer our society towards social and economical balance. After having read the book Home Plant perhaps we could get a better perspective of our Earth by taking a close look at the photographs taken from space, and the words written by the astronauts.
Home Plant was the best collection of photos of our Earth, I have seen, taken from Space. It puts our earth in perspective. It makes me realise how tiny, how unimportant in the scheme of life I am, and you, and he, and she, and more importantly, all those who have taken a part of the earth’s bounty for themselves to exalt their puny stature; they too are even more insignificant. Jacques-Yves Cousteau writes in his forward: “Like most fathers, by clear star-studded skies I used to take each of my two little boys in my arms for a glimpse at infinity. The splendour of the unreachable silenced their chatterboxes for a few seconds. They raised their arms and closed their little fingers in a futile attempt to grasp one of the twinkling sparks that dot our dreams. The little fellows obeyed the command reported by Ovid: “God elevated man’s forehead and ordered him to contemplate the stars.” (20)
Many of the space explorers have commented on their experiences. There is one common to all, they have seen the earth as a fragile living unit; a family of people live there; it is a planet of beauty and wonder; it is our home, and our children’s, and our children’s children if we can preserve it for them.
Sigmund Jahn, a German, said: “Before I flew I was already aware of how small and vulnerable our planet is; but only when I saw it from space, in all its ineffable beauty and fragility, did I realise that humankind’s most urgent task is to cherish and preserve it for future generations.” (21)
And two cosmonauts from USSR on returning: (Andriyan Nikolayev): “The weather was foul, but I smelled Earth, unspeakably sweet and intoxicating. And wind. How utterly delightful; wind after long days in space.” (22)
And Georgi Shonin: “I was so happy to see the ground, already a little covered by the first fluffy snow. I wanted to fall into it, hug it, and press my cheek to it.” (23)

And Oieg Markarov in his preface: “… all the differences and difficulties can be overcome, and the right words can be found, when we are united by a common important goal – a goal that is really so simple – We hope that everyone will come to share our particular cosmic perception of the world and our desire to unite all the peoples of the Earth in the task of safeguarding our common and only, fragile and beautiful home.” (24)
These are words from people who have looked at us from the outside, at where and how we live, at what we are doing with our planet.
They are words and sentiments dismissed as precious and altruistic idealism by egotists and pragmatists who prefer not to be bothered with other people’s problems. It has been easy to shut ourselves away from neighbours, to dismiss the wretchedness and horror of other people’s problems as of no concern of ours. But it is not as easy as it was in the past. This could be regarded as one of the great compensations of the age of technology. The trials and tribulations of our neighbours are being brought into our living rooms, on radio, on television, in our everyday reading. Countries which, a hundred years ago, were weeks away from us, are hours now, or minutes.
War and Peace
Because of my experiences, I have developed a simple philosophy which I want to share with you. It is a philosophy which has always directed my thoughts towards following, as well as 1 can, a pathway (here I shall use the aims and ideals of the Tasmanian Peace Trust) a pathway to a more just and more caring society, to a world free from threats, violence, war and oppression, to a community free from the cancers of poverty, homelessness and unemployment.
I am sure most of us hanker for world peace and understanding rather than contention. Our problem is to recognise and to accept the cost of attainment, and of endeavouring to support where possible the recognition, and exposure of some of those things which are the source of controversy.
Any society which is denied freedom of speech, worship or movement, which is ruled by an absolute power, or which suffers extreme poverty, is already halfway to war. Any society, which enjoys affluence and social harmony and is

threatened by another society which has neither, is ready to defend itself, by war if necessary.
The greatest cause of wars throughout history has been a personal drive for power by an individual. Power and Greed, inseparable, undesirable human characteristics, are often found in intelligent and cunning brains.
Wherever there is a large oppressed group in society, there is room for a clever Hitler, Stalin or Heineke to see potential for almost unlimited power. At first, it is difficult to distinguish between them and the genuine patriots like the Nicaraguan priests, Caspar Garcia Laviana and Ernesto Cardenal, denied by their Pope, yet fought and spoke proudly to the end, for their oppressed people.
Ever since the Second World War, even during it, while USSR loses were mounting up to the estimated 20 million dead, the West did everything possible to breed hatred against the Communist regime, rather than show understanding for the unbelievable costs of the war; Reagan even branding the people of USSR as ‘evil’.
Now that the heat is off the arms race, and all those countless billions have been spent on military purposes – $2.5 billion a day for years – it is not really a surprise to see that the USA and the various States of the old USSR are in chaos financially. Both sides are left with a tremendous economic, industrial and social dislocation, after years of concentrated spending, in spite of diplomatic pressures constantly pushing arms sales to the developing world. (The USA actually doubled its arms exports in 1990).
At the end of the Gulf War (“from which the US General Accounting Office, recently reported that the US actually made a profit” (25), Bush was euphoric, describing the outcome as a great victory for peace on earth. (I wonder if there were a God to hear him when he prayed with Billy Graham for help and guidance).
After the war, after the euphoria has worn off, after the cut down in military spending, there is room on the media for internal problems; sex scandals, muggings, unemployment and social unrest. I read somewhere that there were more people murdered in USA during those weeks of the Gulf War than there were US service personnel killed in action; understandable when one considers

the kind of stand-off weaponry’ used by USA. There is no doubt that scientists researching and developing “morally acceptable” ways of killing people have been outstandingly successful. When I think of the weapons we had in the ’39-45′ war and compare them with those used by the American sin Iraq, they were as different, as ours would be if compared to the bows and arrows of the early Britons. Fuel air “fire” bombs were used to burn soldiers out of trenches and shelters, especially designed to explode into a huge fire mass, ignite the air, incinerate anything, anyone within range. A photographer, Kenneth Jarecke, took a photograph of an Iraqi soldier shockingly burnt in his vehicle. It was republished in People magazines in a two-page spread with comments: – “The widely respected newspaper (The Obsemer) was swamped with readers’ letters calling the photo ‘appalling’ ‘tasteless’ and ‘exploitive in the extreme’. Journalist, Harold Evans, former editor of The Times, defended the use of the picture as a necessary shock. “This photograph,” he said, “did something to redress the elusive euphoria of a high-tec war”. (26)
War is a terrible thing!
Sales of expensive military arms and equipment are always lucrative export earners for some nations while draining others of sorely-needed cash. In the end, the manufacture of armaments results in a dead loss. Arms make wars possible. Wars produce nothing but misery and debt.
With the destruction of the so-called Communist system in the USSR and Eastern Europe, the real costs of the cold war became apparent; inefficient transport supply systems, factories, in urgent need of repair, and environmental destruction and pollution of air, soil and water. While unemployment was close to zero, the essential freedoms of the individual: freedom to speak out, to move about, to worship, to write, to read or study what one wished, to form discussion groups – these freedoms had been denied them, a denial that destroys the spirit, the soul of the individual.
It was a shock to some to find that the ‘communist’ countries were run. in the main, by a rich hierarchy, largely segregated from their people, with access to the best schools, universities, hospitals, hotels, theatres, shopping centres and recreational facilities, while the bulk of the people lived under severely disciplined, austere conditions. In their Manifesto of the Communist Party 1848 Marx and Engels obviously didn’t take into account the truth of William

Pitt’s expressed opinion that – unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it – Maybe that would be a characteristic of all political visionaries seeking altruistic and idealistic philosophies. Maybe Professor Robert Scalapino is right: “Perhaps the defining difference between Marxism and liberalism is that Marxists believe in the perfectibility of a class, hence of individuals, whereas liberals believe there is a quotient of evil in all men, hence power must always be limited.” (27) – “a quotient of evil in all men”, – as depressing a thought as William Pitt’s judgement on “power”!
There is another way, other than by war, to get to a distant place John Bunyan called Beulah. There are no steps to climb; no roads to follow. All you know, there is a light shining dimly through the dark. You have one inseparable companion, Conscience, it will answer all your questions, direct you always, often on the hard roads, but if you have faith in Conscience, and courage to accept its advice you should move slowly towards the land of Beulah. But slowly. On the way, there are innumerable hurdles to jump.
Haves and Havenots
Because people in varying climates and countries have different needs and desires, lifestyles are different, but generally money is regarded as the ultimate payment for services rendered. A rich person has historically been regarded as of some importance so it is common for people to live, act or dress (not necessarily in Italian suits or dresses from Paris) in a way that will give the impression they are well-off. This desire to be rich has been immoderately encouraged by creating human gods with pagan philosophies; sportsmen (women only rarely) can earn millions, not counting any other on-the-side millions for advertising toothpaste and pet foods; their ultimate worth is then measured by the number of Mercedes or Ferraris parked under their mansion in some foreign country.
These images are envied by certain of the proletariat who, if they are past the age to be champion basketballers, and can’t make it into the Legislative Council, will do anything to entrepreneur their way into the top set, and in passing become occasional members of the Melbourne Club. Such is the power of the Money God!
It is a strongly held belief by those who “make it” one way or another than the answers to all our problems can be solved by using a mathematical formula; first we hear those hackneyed cliches, “we’ve gotta kick-start the economy”, “we gotta get things back on track an’ moving again:”, “let’s have us a level playing field”, then privatise everything for efficient production, which breeds a viable business community, which returns profit margins, which allows for more jobs; so down the line until finally when the directors and executives have been cared for, (and the shareholders if they are lucky), right down to the ordinary elector, and:
to the farmer sowing his corn
that keep the cock that crowed in the morn
that waked the priest all shave and shorn
that married the man all tattered and torn
that kissed the maiden all forlorn
that milked the cow with a crumpled horn
that tossed the dog
that worried the cat
that killed the rat
that ate the mail
that lay in the house
that Jack built.
But guess what! In the meantime. Jack had gone broke and the house never quite got finished, and all of those other things never quite happened either. And nobody knew why until they read that bit in The Financial Review October 8th 1990 about the cost of the pilot’s dispute and found that Sir Peter Abeles of TNT only took an extra $10.000 for the previous year to make his earnings for the year $5,134,999; and the collective directors’ fees rose from $31 million to $36 million a rise of 16%, while shareholders’ funds dropped down from 24% to 16%. So says The Financial Review.
And this is the substance of my main declaration. The money god is a false god. Put another way – the worship of money cannot give wholeness and satisfaction to one’s personal life. On the contrary, the worship of money will surely displace worthy sentiments from one’s consciousness.
Money is legitimate tender for work performed or for some article produced for sale; there can be no argument about that; it is necessary in order to live in

reasonable comfort, to give a feeling of security. However, it is not the only acceptable payment for services rendered. There is such a thing as work satisfaction. And he or she who has found this is indeed fortunate. It is something no money can buy. My father, who spent his life farming, only rarely having a holiday, except travelling in his mind with characters he was reading about in his spare moments, often said: when you can’t tell the difference between work and leisure, you’re at peace with the world. And so he was.
One of the most soul-destroying jobs anyone can have is to work every hour of every working day on a production line; or on in the same mechanically boring job, in a large office, for instance, staring at one of the flickering dozens of computer screens. It is only recently that factory bosses have been listening to reports of the severe effects on physical and mental health caused by these work practices, and trying to do something about it.
Nobel Prize winner, Albert Camus is quoted as saying: “Without work, all life goes rotten, but when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.” (28) So we have a double problem: firstly, that work is necessary – secondly, that soulless work must be avoided in the long-term. When an admission is made that efficiency and technology are more important than people, it must surely be time for all of us, particularly the executives and legislators who make the decisions, to look critically at where we have gone wrong. A lot of the most soul-destroying work, the constant assembly-line work, which is simple, boring and repetitive, is done by women. A lot of these women are employed on what is known as a Seasonal-permanent basis: My son, Bruce wrote a poem about it:

You’re seasonal permanent/which means you’re permanent
so long as you’re in season/with the fruit and beg.
But it you go off/or the fruit does,
well then you’re out of luck/and out of work,
so you ‘II cut out all the blemishes/and won’t complain about the rot
and while your legs might ache/from standing
your wrists and elbows start demanding/your work has got to stop,
you don’t because/you ‘re seasonal-permanent,
your shelf-life isn’t guaranteed/beyond a phone call;
your use-by date is flexible/and as the boss reminds you,
like repack from the freezer/permanency
could be just a thaw away (29)

In a democracy where the lavish style of living is obvious – expensive cars, 4-wheel drives, boats, big houses, high living – there is a natural urge for young people to want to be a part of it, an incentive to somehow, anyhow go for the goal of opulence, at any cost. If they have developed this urge, and happen to have been born with a higher than average intelligence, the way is open to them – political science, commercialism, law, political economy, medicine – all attractive alternatives leading to a profession or an executive job in business or politics. And that’s where things happen; where big decisions are made; where moral standards tend to be secondary to expediency.
The worship of money has, to a frightening degree, replaced high moral standards. Yet strangely many of the most guilty mammon worshippers profess religion; surely a vain attempt by them to appease a guilt complex. Did you see millionaire, George Bush going to church with Billy Graham to ask God for guidance before going ahead with his decision that meant: “…in 43 days of hostilities, Iraq was bombarded with half as many bombs again as rained down on Vietnam in eight years of the war in Indochina?” (30) Have you heard the President pontificating on how he was going to “crack down on drug-peddlers?” But still the drug industry is a billion dollar business. The homeless, the hopeless, the sick-at-heart are out there in their millions, spending on drugs what relief money they can get, or what they can steal from people who can’t afford guard dogs and fortresses.
Is it time we legalised the growing, sale and use of drugs, including heroin and hashish, through licenced producers and distributors? At least it would wreck the viability of one of the most ruthless criminal cartels run by drug baron billionaires.
Ever-circling satellites record elegies and threnodies, monotonously, for the starving millions, for the rape of the forests; the birds, the animals and people who lived in them; lamenting land erosion, desertification, the consequent exodus of traditional farming people to live, to starve, to die in filth and poverty in shanty towns on city verges. We hear of unscrupulous corporations exporting to the Third World, food, medicines and chemicals banned for sale in the West. We think about swollen bellies and soulful eyes; with a feeling of dismay and helplessness, we donate a few dollars to a charity and forget those

people were our neighbours. We forget we are tied to an ogre of progress. We must forget or we’d go mad.
It is disturbing enough to hear of local workers being made redundant by installation of new technology, and the hysterical caterwauling of those who think they knew, to the tune: “Efficiency is, what we want – Efficiency -Efficiency – Both in the town and on the farm – Efficiency will do no harm – It’s what we’ve got to have you see – to make a clever coun-ter-eee.”
But there’s more to come. I remember the first time I walked from Forty Lakes Peak to The Walls of Jerusalem, I kept thinking, now I’ve got a clear run, and sure enough there would be another lake to go around, another ridge to cross. But it was worth it in the end. You should have sat with me on the shoulder of Ml. Jerusalem and looked down over Lake Salome, past The Temple, The Great Wall, Ml. Ophel, through Herod’s Gate to the wild and beautiful Centreland beyond. Just hang in for a bit, as my grandkids say.
Leaving aside the massive problem of radioactive waste disposal, let’s look at one other way the Western democracies exploit poverty-stricken countries of the Third World. Hazardous waste includes all those nasty, poisonous left-over materials after manufacture and sale; plastics are one of them. If you happen to live in a “clean” environment, say in the US, where strict laws govern waste disposal and protect the health of local people, the hazardous materials are collected separately. When sorting, there are laws requiring masks and protective clothing to be worn. Contractors are paid huge sums to export millions of tons annually to poor, mostly Asian, countries for recycling or disposal. 1 believe there is a law prohibiting import of hazardous material into the Philippines, but (15 million tons altogether) 6 million tons of plastic were disposed of there in 1991. In Indonesia, whole families, completely unprotected, for a pittance, sort through the waste, which European, American and Australian consumers have discarded, passing on the trash for others to worry about.
It is not easy to resolve these problems the way things are. Most of us try not to throw our wastes in our neighbours’ back yards. We accept local, State and Federal laws, but interference from a World Authority is yet anathema. Then there is the vexing problem of blackmail from polluting companies, which, if pushed too hard, threaten to move on to somewhere else where labour and power are cheaper, where pollution laws are not so strict. But let’s be fair;

these companies are under pressure from outside: cut costs or else. This “level playing field” that pollies talk about is a fiction; there’s no such thing. Life is ups and downs. And what’s this about playing? – “at least 2,000 foreign companies, most of them American, have set up shop on the Mexican side of that border. Wages in the US … average nine or ten dollars an hour and in Mexico you pay 66 cents an hour.” (31)
No Jobs?
“No jobs?” she said. She had come in with two bags of groceries and two whingeing children, to find him sitting there, watching the box. “What d’you reckon!” he said, not looking around. The first few months he had been optimistic. That grew into a depression. Now it was an anger, not just with circumstances, but with her too. She had the marks to prove it. “I’ll get some lunch,” she said. She remembered her grandfather telling her about the last depression, how he had gone ‘on the track’. Now there was television!
Myself when young
Myself when young did eagerly frequent Doctor and Sage and heard great Argument About it and about: but evermore Came out by the same Door as in I went (32)
There are times in early mornings, looking from my workroom window, I watch the sun appear over Medwin’s Hill – or The Cape, depending what time of year – watch golden light spill honey over the green valley.
Sometimes, I see me, as a child, walking with quick steps beside my father on our way to the stack for a load of hay. He carries a hay rope looped over one arm, twirling the loose ends around and around with his other hand. The stack is oblong, lovingly constructed: wide at the eaves, high roofed, and thatched with rushes from the creek. He is well-known as a stack maker, no stack of his is ever seen leaning or propped with posts.
The whole process of making hay was one of careful management: cutting with a horse-drawn mower, windrowing with a dump-rake, forking into cocks (each one made to shed rain); when cured the hay was loaded on to wagons by a gang of men with pitch-forks, and carted to the stack. Each winter a section was cut

in the stack with a hay-knife. Cattle several paddocks away would raise their heads to the scent of hay drifting to them on the wind. If they started bellowing, my father would say, as if they could hear and understand, “All right – be patient, I won’t be long.”
I find it is not strange that these pictures come so clear and often. I may be slashing rubbish in the orchard, or gardening, or cutting wood; it is as if I had opened a book on my life at a certain page.
My father told how he often dreamed he could run on a road or across a paddock, at first his feet just touching ground, then run easily in air. I have been told it is a sign of inward harmony, contentment of mind. That, I could well believe. He was one who lived his eighty-six years close to the earth: his first years at a small country rectory at Woodrising in England; aged seven, he came with his parents and ten siblings to his father’s new parish to settle at Woodrising in Tasmania. Afterwards he married and bought the farm at Flowerdale, where he spent the rest of his life, rarely moving from it, working until his death in 1958.
His was a life of calm acceptance of whatever situation faced him. His wife, my mother, shouldering most of the worry, worked tiiclessly to bring up their five children through the great depression of the thirties, always with home grown food to spare, and hand-me-downs, patched and reworked clothes we children took for granted. Toys and playthings were what we thought up, made up on the farm. Nothing was wasted.
Life was filled with small things; catching tittle-brats, or mountain trout with a bent pin on a string, lying fiat on our bellies on the big log in the creek below the railway-line; or blackfish or eels, the odd brown trout in the river, picking buckets of mushrooms, catching rabbits; always there were rabbits: “Get me a rabbit, someone,” our mother would say, “for dinner”. We would go off with the dog and rifle, or a spade to dig one out of its burrow. Drifting across the river, came sounds of other children.
Sometimes, from my hill, 1 am one of the mob of kids out there by the ivy stump, or gathering mushrooms which came up overnight, or picking blackheart cherries, or laurel berries, for laurel and apple jam.

Sometimes I am, with the others, listening to our mother reading some novel or other, sculpturing pictures in my mind of Lavengro, or a Labrador doctor, or Amyas Leigh in his ship at the mouth of the Orinoco. Perhaps it was the sound of her voice, and the knowledge that we all, that I, the child, was there, protected from the dark of night, or from a September rain outside, behind the faded blind, which left me knowing, that I belonged.
When it was time we’d go to bed; my father, early, with his candle, to read a page or two from a bedside book: maybe Pope or Ruskin, Thoreau, or Well’s Outline of History – enough to glean a thought to carry with him through the following day.
His was an uncluttered life: a tireless worker, he never failed to find something to wonder at: the living soil, or birds, animals, clouds, stars, winds; something to cause him to reach at night for Darwin’s On Humus and the Earthworm, or mother’s First Studies in Insect Life in Australasia, or some volume – maybe Chambers encyclopaedia.
In his later years, he loved to watch the night sky for a glimpse of a satellite circling our planet. How he would have loved to watch for Uri Gargarin’s Vostok 1 in April ’61. But then he was already three years dead.
He had a favourite swimming hole: a long, wide section of the river downstream from the railway bridge, with a gravel bottom, no deep holes; a place where I was taught to swim by a father who held two fingers only under my chin and walked beside me while I threshed and floundered.
When I was older at haytime in the summer holidays, we would all go swimming, to cool off at the end of the day’s work; for us more fun than work. At the end of the hay season, Hong and 1, following the practice of our two older brothers, would take our sickles to cut cocksfoot grass that grew in hedgerows and beside the road. Apart from bringing in pocket money, we enjoyed the work: cutting, binding, harnessing Bonnie in the sledge to pick up all the sheaves, to bring them home to thresh by hand on a canvas rug with a homemade flail. We’d clean and weigh the seed and calculate the return we’d get from Lewis’s store.
After three years at High School, one on the farm and three years as a bank clerk, I joined the army and within a year. I (one of thousands), was captured

by the Germans in Greece. We lost personal identify, we were numbers, overcrowded, underfed, pushed around like animals from Megara to Corinth, to Athens and in cattle trucks to Salonika, Belgrade and Maribor.
At times now, when all my world is sleeping, except for the occasional sound of a night jar, or the bark of possum, or the rhythm of quiet breathing by my side, I find myself staring at an ancient tree outside the window, and beyond to an infinity of stars; and for a moment I am back in Maribor, back to another life long gone. I lie in a prison bed in a tiny room which stinks of stale man smells, with a score or more of the countless thousands tossed together by a storm of fearful uncertainty, flotsam from foreign lands, cast up as a family in a strange environment. It is there in Maribor, that the young soldier, who is me, stares into the blackness of a different night, and returns in mind, full circle, to all the peace and beauty and the people in the valley where I was born, where I have lived forever.
Back in the bad days at Maribor, I, at least, learned about real values, that “a friend in need is a friend in deed”: something all of us needed – at times, desperately. I learned that the jingle my father used to quote was true: “For wilful waste makes woeful want,/And I may live to say,/ Oh! how I wish I had the bread/That once I threw away.” I learned frugality and the true meaning of generosity; I learned that I must fight against egocentricity and selfishness and above all greed; and that trust breeds trust and hate breeds enemies for life.
When I was back in Maribor in 1979, I stood on the bridge that spans the Drava River, the bridge over which I walked to work for weeks in winter, all those years ago, and wrote this poem:
Marburg is once more Maribor/The Drava mirrors images brighter than they were/I recall it only as a pit of cold in my stomach/Not as I see it now. I recall the freeze of’42/ The prodding branches of the trees stiff with frost/The barbed-wire taut between the posts. Men herded in like sheep/Baaing bleating dying like sheep in cold corners/Snow banked against the latrine; sleet on the river/Lips chipped, hands blue and numbed/-Marburg is once more Maribor, the Drava mirrors images/Brighter than they were. Darkness adds its weight/Forgotten light pressed out explores the edges of the cloud/As if the river used the sacrificial blood of war/The black-spired church the trees.
mountains running/Blue and distant, shore to shore/For peace/Marburg is once more Maribor.” (33)
I left the camp at Maribor. Twelve of us were sent to Eichberg to work in an isolated farming area where I spent three years as a forest and farm labourer. Hours of work were long and demanding, living conditions were primitive: locked up at nights, sleeping twelve men in a room five metres by three, with winter temperatures down to thirty degrees below zero. But within a year, we had regained weight and health, thanks to the regular fortnightly handout of Red Cross food parcels and, although limited, good local organic vegetables. Our values had changed: food, cigarettes, clothes, paper and pencils, were items to own, or barter for.
We worked as Austrian peasants had worked for centuries, detailed to various jobs on a large state farm: to the stock sheds, fields or forest. One detailed to the byre, several times brought us a bucket of colostrum or beestings, the foremilk of a calving cow, which the locals pronounced unclean, and which we relished as a custard.
The urine from the stock sheds, which drained into a huge underground pit, was sprayed out on pastures after pun ping by hand into wooden tanks on horse or bullock wagons. The pit, covered with saplings, held the soiled straw-bedding and muck piled in heaps of composting material, which was forked on to flat-tray wagons, by barefooted women, and spread by us on fields to be cropped. Then, there were two men, two women and two prisoners caring for thirty/forty head of stock. (Now, probably, one or maybe two with machines would do it all).
In this rural village, except for the prisoners and the guards in army uniform, it was difficult to believe that a war was on out there spriiewhere. Often, an Austrian, too old for war, would sing an aria 1 knew by ear; it was not uncommon, on a pleasant summer evening, to see and hear an older man at his front door thumping out folk music on his accordion: and even1 Sunday at certain times, the Church was filled with country people singing. In Eichberg. when our chores were done. Sunday was our day of rest, a day of washing, mending clothes and gear, writing home, wishing to God we could be with our families again – dreaming.

We accepted easily their ways of work: scythes and sickles, old-style ploughs and harrows, harvesting maize cobs by hand into baskets on our backs, working the homemade cider press, relishing the fresh apple-juice. And in the forest: felling, cutting, snigging logs with horses or bullocks.
The village people were friendly and generous, despite the propaganda that was fed to them about their enemy. They were strangely happy with their work, and by nature unsophisticated; the men would turn aside to piss, the women squat behind the nearest shrub. They couldn’t understand what obsessed the Australians and New Zealanders, from the other side of the world, to want to fight in a war with a country they had no quarrel with. “Do you like fighting in wars?” we were asked.
Then, and thirty five years later when I returned to the village, I was treated as a person, a friend, one who has been away and come home again.
But there, too, technology has displaced people-power. Machines do all those labour-intensive jobs, but haven’t yet been taught to speak, to make jokes, to laugh, to help someone in trouble. When there is a celebration in the village, the machines will sit, sulking in their sheds. But celebrations don’t happen as often as they did in these Austrian villages; many of the young people have gone to live another kind of life in Wien-Neustadt, Graz or Hartberg, where they have thousands of neighbours they have never met.
I was wrong to image that Austria may have remained unaffected by the forces which had entirely revolutionised agricultural practices as I had experienced them in my youth at Flowerdale. I had returned to buy a farm in the valley where I was born, and married an army nursing sister, who also desired peace, security, a small place of our own, where we could build a life and family away from the uncertainties and horrors of war.
We were blissfully happy, despite hard work and poverty, denying ourselves luxuries which today are regarded as essential to even the meanest way of life -we had no inside toilet, cold water only in tanks, no hot water system, bags for floor coverings, no sink or washing machine – the kind of living that at least 40% or about two billion poverty stricken neighbours of ours in the world today would accept as heaven on earth. But we were well fed and clothed, warm and contented, working eighty, ninety hours a week, and loving every minute of our freedom to do. to be and then rearing a family of four.
There are times now, when all is set in place: when I, an old man. look out my workroom window and see what is: the valley where I was born, changed, yet still the same: river, paddocks, animals, and trees my father, brothers, sons, their wives, or we have planted. We have all left our mark.
“I am pleased that Jean and I had to struggle as our parents had done. It taught us to determine values. It helped put in perspective life and death, love and hate, beauty and ugliness, joy and sadness, hope and despair, tolerance and bigotry. It gave us not some imagined view of Utopia, an imagined heaven on earth, but a reality to know that a cold and hungry body needs warmth and food, that kindness breeds kindness, that all things living thrive on care and love and understanding. It gave us a smattering of native wisdom and the capacity to laugh at ourselves and each other.” (34) It helped us to decide which gods to worship; some lead us on the paths of righteousness, some into dens of iniquity. The last word to The Preacher.
“Vanity of vanities,” saith the Preacher, “vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” and “The sleep of the labouring man is sweet” and “Be not righteous over much; neither make thyself over wise” (35)
As for Neighbours: the world weeps for neighbourliness; whether neighbours live in the furthest corner of the globe from us, they are yet our neighbours. But here a warning from a great American poet:

“My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.” (36)
And from another local, not-so-famous poet, another Neighbours:
She is his neighbour
his over-the-back-fence neighbour
He sees her from his window at the clothes-line,
laying up the flat-washed sheets, her mouth bristling with pegs.
He hears her working in her garden
behind the paling fence which they are both
determined shall not fall down
(Each post they’ve propped with four-by-twos).
They don’t talk or see each other, much,
but one of her marrows sent an envoy,
a hollow crunchy stem over a battened
post, to flower and fruit on his side,
a yellowed breast.
He’s trained a passion-vine
(a Ned Kelly)
between the palings. (37)
1.Mrs Aphra Behn (1640-W) The Golden Age Stanza 4 1st English female professional writer Served Charles
II as spy in Antwerp!
2.John Macmurray Kiligion in Transformation This Changing World p 256 Readers Union 1945
3.New Testament Romans 13/10.
4.Menander (342-292 BC) Fragments -553
5.T S Eliot Wane Land.
6.Rubaiyat of Omar Kha>-yam (d 1123AD) Edward FilzGerald (1809–83) Collins
7.Chandra Muzaffar 24 Hours Supplement Gold or God F.d Peler Mares Feb VI p 32
8.Susan George A Fait Worse Than Debt Penguin ’88 p 110
9.ibid p 106
10.Popular Encyclopedia Vol I p 409
11.Children’s Encyclopedia Vol 4 P 2446
12.Backhouse and Walker William Nicollc Oats Blubber Head Press’Aus Socy Friends
13.1981 Note 79. Backhouse I843pp 148-9
The Native Tribes of Tasmania 1 E Caldcr 1875. facsimile cd Fullers Bookshop 1972 p 115
The Indian Country Peter Malthicsscn Collins Flamingo I9S4 pp 21/22
Barney Roberts 16 Aug VI
Peter Mares 24 Hours Supplement Kd Peter Marcs Fcb ^92 HTiy p8
Ancient Futures Learning from l.adakh Helena Norberg-Hodgc Random Century. Rider 1992
ibid pp 1 & 4
ibidpp 180
Jaques-Yves CoustMU Foreword The Home I’lanel V^i Kevin W Kelley for the ass.x- .’!’ Space Mxplorcrs
Macdonald Queen Anne Press, Addison-Weslcy I*ubli5hing Company 19SS
Sigmund Jahn ibid p 127
Andnyan Nikolaycv ibid p 127
Oe«-xgi Shonin ibid p 127
Olcg Makorav Preface ibid
Professor Andrew Mack 24 Hours Supplement Hd I’t-tcr maics Fch ‘l>2 HKir\\-*!’ p)7
The Real Face of War People Maga/jnc 24 April ^1 &uide fioctt cover double page plMCO
Prof Robert Scalapino 24 Hours Supplement Kd Peter M.iies !-eb^2 wu-/o/r i» u\il:r\’ pi’
Albert Camus as quoted by H F Schumacher GtntJ H’t>tk Ah.kus. Sphere Hooks l(J^l’ p -i
Bruce Roberts Captive to the /Vr«cv.vj Fixxl Prcscr\’ers I ‘nion l1^^ .sViiv»»M/-/Y’nMm-‘i/ p 12
Peter Marcs 2-t Hours Supplement lid Peter Mare% Fcb ”’2 JOn ‘ p s
Sus;m George 24 [tours Supplement Hd Peter M.iK^ K’b ll’2 .N’t m il’tnLit lnkr p'(‘
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam No XXVII (;i«. 6 rtUne)
Barney Roberts Manbor on IhcD,.,*;, T F A \V Anlh..| //••’,• 7,,./.n- ]’>S(I Fd J. mm \\otxllxnv p 55
Barney Roberts Gone Rusk Ed Roger McDonald. Soliloquy in Cathedral Country. 1990. p.145.
Old Testament Ecclestastes. Ch1, V.2 & Ch 5. V. 12 & Ch 7. V16.
Robert Frost Mending Wall Pocket Hooks Simon & Schuster inc. Poems 1973 30th Ed.
Barney Roberts Stones in the Cephissus Melaleuca Press. 1979 Neighbours p.1.