During WW 11 , journalist Hugh Milner , left , was interviewed by Security in Australia after he wrote to Ernest Hemingway, seen here on dust jacket of the famous writer’s biography, by Denis Brian, Grove Press, New York, 1988.
From an uncertain source , an old postcard tucked away in a cigar box has revealed an intriguing story involving “Kiwi spies”, an outstanding orator , Ernest Hemingway ,“ the Fairy Godmother of Malaya” mining deals and Australian journalists in Asia before World War 11 .
While recently trying to put some order into my ephemera files , assembled over decades , I pulled out the cigar box and studied the mixed contents with the aid of a magnifying glass . A worn real photo postcard , showing a contemplative man with a pipe , see top , attracted my attention. I vaguely recall having acquired it at a swap meeting in Adelaide or perhaps from a Brisbane antique shop which had turned up some treasures over the years , including an early 20th century booklet about Portuguese Timor- issued by Sydney investors - who said Timor workers were paid a pittance , so low , if paid to Sydney paperboys there would be a protest. That unusual publication went to the late Darwin historian Peter Spillett who wrote about Timor .
There was a penned inscription on the front of the postcard ... To a grand wanderer , from Hugh Milner , Singapore. Dec. 1938.
BY PETER SIMON
On the back were two discernible pencilled in names and addresses : A. H. Huntley, c/- J.B. David , Singapore and Mr Len Law , Carlton Hotel , Timor . Almost illegible were the names Nicol Thompson and H. Young, YMCA.
Hugh Milner , the person in the postcard , it was discovered , had been a journalist in pre – war Singapore , mentioned in WATCHING THE SUN RISE : Australian Reporting of Japan , 1931 to the fall of Singapore , by Jacqui Murray .
During WW11 , a letter Milner wrote from Rabaul, New Guinea, to Ernest Hemingway, describing American military activity in the Philippines and Australians fighting in New Guinea , was intercepted under wartime censorship and security . [Hemingway covered the Sino-Japanese war from Hong Kong in 1941 and in 1942 left his Cuban villa to cover the war for Collier’s] As a result of the letter , Milner was questioned in Sydney and Security reported that he was no risk, loyal, there being no further need to check him out.
On the other hand , Milner’s brother , Ian Milner , became the subject of close attention by a considerable number of security organisations and the subject of a paper about the so-called Kiwi Spies , by Dr Aaron Fox , entitled : The Pedigree of Truth : Western Intelligence Agencies versus Ian Frank George Milner and William Ball Sutch . It contains the following excerpt:
One of the many intriguing Cold War mysteries centres on the enigmatic figure of Ian Frank George Milner. Was Milner, a New Zealand Rhodes Scholar, Australian Government and United Nations diplomat, and an academic based first in Australia and then in Czechoslovakia, falsely accused of being involved in espionage with the Soviet Union as part of the anti-communist hysteria which gripped Western democracy in the 1950s? Or did he indeed pass secrets to the Soviets while in Australia in the 1940s, before defecting with his wife to Czechoslovakia in 1950? Mirroring as it does certain aspects of the Alger Hiss perjury trials in America, the defection of the British diplomat Donald Maclean, and the treachery and defection of the British Security Intelligence Service (SIS, otherwise known as MI6) officer H. A. R. ‘Kim’ Philby, the Milner case is a classic example of Cold War intrigue.
Milner’s guilt or innocence has long been debated in Australia. Robert Manne in The Petrov Affair, Richard Hall, in his provocatively-titled biography of Milner, The Rhodes Scholar Spy, and Desmond Ball and David Horner in Breaking the Codes: Australia’s KGB Network 1944-1950, have all concluded that he did indeed pass top-secret documents to the Soviet Intelligence Service. Milner’s reputation has been vigorously defended by left-wing Australian historians Frank Cain and Gregory Pemberton, both of whom emphasise the absence of any conclusive proof of his guilt. David McKnight, in his award-winning study of ASIO, Australia’s Spies and Their Secrets, preferred to leave the final verdict on the Milner case to the assessment of Soviet and British intelligence service archives by ‘independent historians’.
MILNER’S DENIALS
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Dramatic Darwin Airport Petrov scene *
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Dr Fox’s highly detailed account contains further information about Milner ... In 1954, following the defection of Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov, senior intelligence service officers with the Soviet Embassy in Canberra, the Australian Royal Commission on Espionage was established. On the evidence of the Petrovs’ testimony, and the Venona decrypts, the commission concluded that Milner’s access to classified documents while in Canberra ‘gave rise to grave suspicions as to the use he made of them’. This allegation, even ‘making all allowances for the impact of the “cold war” and suspicions as to my residence and University job “behind the Iron Curtain”’, came as a severe shock to Milner. In a ‘Personal Statement’, which he signed in Prague on 1 March 1956, he denied, to the best of his recollection, ever having met ‘Klod’[ said to have been a Soviet Australian spymaster , identified as Kiwi born member of the CPA, Walter Seddon Clayton ; it was alleged Ian Milner , known as BUR, was a member of the Klod Ring ] , or having divulged ‘confidential official information to any unauthorised person’. He did not waver from this stance right up to his death in 1991.
DR SUCH CASE
Dr “ Bill” Such , teacher, economist, writer, diplomat, highly influential public servant and social policy analyst , an associate of Milner’s , was charged in New Zealand under the Official Secrets Act 1951 with obtaining information which would be helpful to the enemy, following a series of meetings with an official of the Soviet Embassy in Wellington. It was a sensational trial which resulted in him being acquitted .
The father of the two Milners , Frank, a noted New Zealand educator , fervent imperialist , described as a legend in his own lifetime , rector of the esteemed Waitaki Boys’ High School , attended the 1921 Pan Pacific Educational Conference in Honolulu and wowed his audience with brilliant oratory ; an American journalist dubbed him “the silver-tongued orator from the South Seas. ” Tempting offers were made for him to take up positions in the US and advance his career . All were turned down because of the mental instability of his wife and daughter. In l933 , at the International Convention of 9000 Rotarians , in Boson , he received a “wonderful ovation” after a speech.
On a visit to England he was introduced to the Queen and the Prince of Wales . A leading Australian journalist and editor , Douglas Brass , a Waitakian himself , remarked on the oratorical powers of Milner senior: “ I have heard a lot of famous men on the platform ; the only ones who come near Frank Milner for playing surely and sensitively and eloquently on an audience were Churchill and Soekarno ( the Indonesian president ) ...”
In 1983 , controversial Ian Milner wrote MILNER OF WAITAKI : Portrait of the Man, a detailed study of his father, who was a driving force in Kiwi secondary education . In a review of the book by W.L. Renwick it was said that when it became known that Ian Milner was writing the life of his father there was a question in the minds of some , whether out of respect for his father’s memory he might fudge some issues. These foreboding had been mistaken as he had produced a distinguished biography . Ian Milner, the reviewer said , had shared a great deal of the burden of the mental instability of his mother and sister with his father, during years when “father and son became separated by deepening ideological opposition .”
Dr Fox wrote that in 1939 , when Ian Milner returned home from overseas ,having studied at Oxford and made trips to Russia and Germany , studied in two American universities , been involved in a lecture tour of the Pacific coast under the auspices of the American Friends of China , highlighting the plight of the Chinese fighting the Japanese , which attracted the attention of the FBI, it was of great concern to his father that his son was still on the extreme Left and in the heart of the most radical set at Victoria College – Prof. Beaglehole, Dr. Sutch and “ all the Bolshies...”
Research into the names on the back of the postcard resulted in more surprising information. In particular , there was mention of a court case in which a person was described as the “ Fairy Godmother of mining ventures in Malaya.” Never did discover the identity of the “grand wanderer” to whom the journalist had sent the postcard .
FOOTNOTE: The burly police officer with the arm bar on the throat of the Russian guard at Darwin was the late Greg Ryall ; when he was a senior officer in Darwin he had a truncheon hanging on the wall . When I suggested he had used it to subdue troublemakers , he firmly stated that when he was young he never needed a weapon in any fight . Reporter Ross Annabell, recently mentioned in the ongoing Jim Bowditch biography , covered the rescue of Mrs Petrov from her guards at the airport and his account of that momentous event has appeared in the Little Darwin blog and in much greater detail in the NT Police Museum and Historical Society journal, Citation.
