During a search and discovery tour of op shops in the North Queensland town of Ingham a recently written book on the American journalist and author Ernest Hemingway was bought and subjected to a rapid read .
By Peter Simon
In the l950s , when I was a copyboy and later a cadet reporter on The Sun newspaper , Sydney , Hemingway and his terse writing style was popular among journalists . One worldly reporter , older than I ,with a dazzling blonde girlfriend , had been to Spain , where Hemingway served as a war correspondent, and even had one or two bullfighting posters , the ultimate link with Ernest who wrote about the topic , receiving both the Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize for literature in the 1950s.
Another reporter I knew , who lived in a sparsely furnished flat , used the mantelpiece as an extension of his bookshelves on which were a collection of paperbacks , some Hemingways .
Early advice I was given as a cadet reporter was to keep everything tight ; every story, I was informed , could be told in the first three paragraphs , this to meet the demands of tabloid journalism . The guts of a story also helped sub editors prepare a last minute breaking event inserted in a small space, or in the STOP PRESS .
On reading INFLUENCING HEMINGWAY People and Places That Shaped His Life and Work , by Nancy W. Sindelar , published by Rowland and Littlefield, USA and UK, 2014, I was surprised to learn that when he was at high school writing for the school magazine,Trapeze, the journalism teacher, Fannie Biggs, ran the classroom like a rotating newspaper office and taught students that the there were three criteria in writing good articles... the first , tell the whole story in the first paragraph .
The instruction to young Hemingway was reinforced when Hemingway went to the Kansas City Star as a cub reporter where the house style manual emphasised short sentences , short paragraphs and vigorous English.The author quotes Hemingway as saying his seven months on the Kansas newspaper with its house style rules were the best advice he ever received for writing .
Over the years, I have collected Hemingway books, newspaper clippings, watched documentaries about him and viewed the movies based on his stories . A most unusual link with Hemingway turned up in my disorderly collection of odds and ends, research resulting in the following condensed article .
During WW II , 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 ll.
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 [above] showing a contemplative man with a pipe , 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 and author 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. 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.
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, 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 volume 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 .
Hemingway was mentioned recently on Magnetic Island when talking to Dr Clive Stead who had been to Cuba and visited the writer's residence from whence he made many fishing trips, resulting in the Old Man and the Sea ,for which he received the Pulitzer Prize.
