A Spectator's
Notebook• I once met Professor Gilbert Murray briefly in, I think, the Reform Club. He was very old and delicate, and I noticed that what ever he was doing, he kept his mittens on. He was greatly revered. I was young at the time, and thought him to be, in character if not ihi intellect, an almost flawless fellow. Among other things, be was twice presi dent of the Society for Psychical Research. The other day I glanced at the Society's Proceedings dated January 1973 and read there a most interesting account by Dr Eric Dingwall, the anthropologist and expert on matters abnormal. The piece was called ' Gilbert Murray's Experiments: Telepathy or Hyperaesthesia? ' and was prompted by an article last year by Professor Eric Dodds, the classicist, and another former president of the Society. Dr Dingwall is very very polite, but says, of Professor Dodds's account of Gilbert Murray's famous telepathic or thought-reading experiments of the 1910s and 1920s, that Dodds "seems , to have been somewhat careful to avoid trying to meet the arguments for hyperaesthesia and indeed seems hardly to be aware of them."
The trouble is that if " hyperaesthesia," which is to say in this case exceptionally acute hearing, rather than 'telepathy is indeed the explanation then it looks as if Professor Gilbert Murray 0.M. was a fraud. Dr Dingwall skates over this nicely, writing, "I think lit very unlikely indeed that Murray was a conscious fraud when doing these tests, but then people thought it very unlikely that Wise was a forger and a thief, that Dawson was a fraud over the Piltdown skull and numerous other persons whom I could mention." The idea that Gilbert Murray may have possessed "unconscious auditory hyperaesthesia " (i.e. he did not know that he was hearing very acutely), suggested by Professor Dodds, requires, says Dr Dingwall "some modification." The fact is that Gilbert Murray himself was well aware of such hearing, actually addressing the Society Itself on the subject, saying " examples of professional hyperaesthesia or at least of specially acute responsiveness are as common as blackberries." Q.E.D. as far as I can see. Murray heard. was not telepathic and was a fraud.
Formidable ambassador
I went the other day to a lunch given by Edward Du Cann for Mr Michael Comay, the Israeli Ambassador. After lunch the Ambassador made quite the wittiest, frankest and most elegant speech I have heard from a diplomatist for a long time. Lounging back on his heels, he regaled the company — in that distinctive gravelly voice — with a long series of jokes, generalisations, aphorisms, and profundities; and he singularly omitted any excessive flattery of his hosts. I liked particularly his crack about the new United Arab Command — "We're not worried. N9thing divides the Arabs like Arab unity." But what was most interesting of all was his analysis of Israeli thinking on the current Middle Eastern situation. Clearly, he wanted peace; but clearly, too, he would not accept an imposed peace. The period dominant in Jewish minds, he explained, was not that of the Six Day War, but that of the few weeks before the war when "We were stripped of any illusion that somebody from outside would bail us out." Any peace therefore, must be guaranteed not by outsiders, but by the Middle Eastern Powers themselves: "the partners to the war must be the partners to the peace." Anyway, the Ambassador went on, outside Powers shouldn't consider the present situation to be too bad: it is "as stable as it could be short of peace." The only claim he was prepared to make on Britain was a claim of interest. No doubt, he observed, Balfour, when he promulgated his famous declaration about the Jewish right to a national home, had justice and morality in mind, but he was also considering Britain's long range interests. "Though those interests have changed, the interest in Israel remains. If Israel wasn't there I think the British and Western Powers would find that their positions and interests in the Middle East would have long been swept away by Arab radicalism and Soviet imperialism. The regimes in Amman and Beirut would also quickly disappear." Altogther, a formidable proponent of the Israeli cause.
Hear, hear
It was good also to see three very prominent British Jews praise King Hussein's brave article in the Times. Lord Goodman, Sir Marcus Sieff and Sir Siegmund Warburg followed up Hussein's article with a brief but telling letter recording "the deep impact made on us" by the King of Jordan's words. They note the "historic implication" of the King's statement that Jordan and Egypt "accept not only the presence of an Israel but an Israel enclosed behind secure and recognised borders," and they say, rightly, that "no opportunity should be lost to implement its meaning and spirit."
Parliamentary vandals
The ways of Parliament and government can be very strange. Can there be any vandalism now being perpetrated worse than that being done by Members of Parliament, and not prevented or even resisted bY the Department of the Environment than the excavations now being dug in Palace Yard, Westminster? Surely not. Bulldozers and mechanical diggers are tearing to pieces the site of the Star Chamber, the earlier site of the palace of 'Edward the Confessor, and possibly also the site of the palace of King Canute.
It is difficult to think of any English site more worthy of archaeological investigation and, thereafter, preservation. It is also difficult to think of any modern purpose at all which could possibly justify the destruction now taking place.
It is impossible to conceive of any worse reason than the actual reason, which is to build a car park for 'Members of Parliament. One of the silliest policies of recent years has been the encouragement of cars in central London through the provision of garages, parking spaces and the like. Office developers should have been forbidden to provide parking space rather than have been forced to make such provision. Bombed sites and other temporarily open spaces should have ben left Wild, or turned into gardens, rather than let out to firms like National Car Parks Limited. And Members of Parliament should have set a good example by not driving to the Commons to work. The idea that there should be a car park on the surface of Palace Yard is bad enough; that the Yard should be excavated and the archaeological site destroyed is vandalism of an indefensible kind. MPs tell me that they need to have a car park because of the lateness of their debates. This is no reason for a car park. It is a reason for debating less, or, alternatively, for debating in the morning and the afternoon and not all through the night. If they must debate late, then let them go 'home by taxi or by all-night public transport. At all events, they should stop the car park, and pay due heed to their and our heritage.
Ulster UDI?
William Craig's proposals for a Dominion of Ulster will be popular enough among that growing section of British opinion which would be only too happy to wash its hands of the entire Irish dimension, to withdraw British troops, and to leave the Irish to stew in their own bile juices. It is not surprising that Brian Faulkner moved swiftly to disown Craig and to declare that he could no longer regard Craig as a member of the Unionist party. Craig is the Neil Blaney of Northern Ireland. The two men are both Ulstermen. Their religion may divide them; but their dislike and distrust of London — and Dublin — may pull them together. Craig's UDI talk will elicit a sympathetic response in England from the extreme left and the extreme right. It may do some good, in that it may induce a sense of sobriety and responsibility among the rest, all of Whom now look in their ways to be moderate.
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