Over the years, many books have been sighted containing margin notes , underlining, bracketing of text , question and exclamation marks , crude comments about people of note , opinions both derogatory and favourable for the overall work . While this amounts to defacing , a heinous crime against the printed word, it nevertheless can make for interesting reading and speculation about the person guilty of such a wretched act .
Recently, a friend dropped off two books , one the biography of thirsty New Zealand poet ,typographer, publisher and author Denis Glover , the other with the catchy title Libels, Lampoons and Litigants Famous Australian Libel Cases , by Graham Fricke, Q.C., ex libris the Sunshine Coast Regional Library Service . A rapid read of the Kiwi muse contained much of interest , but no tampering with the text .
In the case of Fricke's book , it proved a great read because the cases mostly involving newspapers and familiar plaintiffs including Communist author Frank Hardy (recalling an earlier case involving his Power Without Glory ) , John Gorton , Juni Morosi , poet and author Hal Porter, flamboyant American politician King O'Malley , journalist Wilfred Burchett , NSW Premier Jack Lang , another great Labor figure, Tom Uren who boxed in Darwin and was captured by the Japanese in East Timor.
While not extensive , a pencil had been used to tick and underline text . The only margin note was in the chapter dealing with WWll clashes Labor Minister for Information Arthur Calwell had with the Sydney Daily Telegraph and the Australian Newspaper Proprietors' Association over censorship .
While not extensive , a pencil had been used to tick and underline text . The only margin note was in the chapter dealing with WWll clashes Labor Minister for Information Arthur Calwell had with the Sydney Daily Telegraph and the Australian Newspaper Proprietors' Association over censorship .
Calwell , Fricke wrote, had a love hate relationship with the press...Even as a backbencher , he vilified the press as being 'owned for the the most part by financial crooks and...edited for the most part by mental harlots ', and described Sir Keith Murdoch as a 'fifth columnist ...a megalomaniac '.
One of those with whom he clashed was the managing editor of the Packer Daily Telegraph , Brian Penton . Fricke described the combatants thus : Penton was as pertinacious as Calwell and the conflict between them was rather like the meeting of an inexorable force and an immovable object .
When Penton arranged in 1942 to go to America on a lecture tour , Calwell tried to stop the trip ; in parliament he asked questions suggesting Penton was going to the US to avoid military service . Penton, in print , called Calwell a blackguardly coward and called on him to repeat the allegations outside parliament so that he could be sued .
On becoming responsible for wartime censorship , Calwell rejected the claim that newspapers could be relied upon to act responsibly and patriotically . In April 1944 R. A. Henderson , of the Sydney Morning Herald , chairman of the Australian Newspaper Proprietors' Association , attacked the censorship system during a speech . In it he mentioned an article in the United States Congress on a report that Australia had cut 90,000 men from the armed forces in l944.
Calwell considered it was against national interest to disclose the reduction of military strength. He and the director-general of the Department of Information , E.G. Bonney , decided that Henderson's speech should be censored (From the Little Darwin file is inserted Bonney's bookplate. Bonney (1883-1959) , a journalist and public servant , son of an American draftsman , had worked as a compositor in Dunedin, New Zealand ; director of the Australian News and Information Bureau , New York , 1948-l951. )
The Sunday Telegraph responded by running a front page story with a large blank space under photographs of Calwell and Henderson . Calwell responded by suspending several newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph. When the paper attempted to publish another edition with blank spaces they were confiscated by Commonwealth police officers, one photographed pointing a gun at a newspaper truck driver
The newspapers obtained a High Court injunction restraining the censorship authorities from interfering with publication . Calwell attacked the High Court, there was call to sack Calwell , who responded: 'There is no real patriotism in the Australian press. There are more fifth columnists in newspaper officers than in any other part of Australia.' In the margin next to this paragraph in the book is the vertical comment- PROBABLY TRUE .
Calwell invoked censorship powers when 900 Japanese prisoners of war attempted to escape from the Cowra detention camp in NSW , more than 100 killed, most shot by guards , 36 committing suicide . He considered publication of details would lead to reprisals against Australian prisoners in Japan . Despite this , the Daily Telegraph published details of the event and he attacked the paper in parliament . The paper responded by saying it had not defied censorship and completely obeyed the censor's instructions .
It called him a dishonest , calculating liar and challenged him to sue . Penton was sued, the action eventually discontinued . (Author Xavier Herbert was no fan of Brian Penton , saying he had made highly derogatory remarks about his l938 novel Capricornia.)
Another case of interest in the book involved artist, fashion designer and dominatrix , Gretel Pinniger , known as Madam Lash , who threw parties in Sydney's plush Palm Beach attended by many notables . In 1975 she sued the Sun over a claimed defamatory article which meant she was " a vicious, violent , ill -tempered woman without self-control who would whip and injure another person without cause or reason and was offensive and disreputable . "
One such vase belonged to the late Margaret Vine of Magnetic Island . Her pet dog , Ponsonby, photographed in Brisbane, with the Ms. Lash vase in the background .
What Australia clearly needs today is an Amazonian Madam Lash to unmercifully flog with cat-o'-nine tails corny television show hosts and shock jocks . We have a list to help that dear madam in her mission , possibly a disgruntled ex- member of the male chauvinist Liberal Party .
