DIARY
JOHN CASEY The Piltdown Martians will turn out to be a hoax. Let me rephrase that. The puta- tive discovery of fossilised germs in a mete- orite that is alleged to come from Mars will prove to be a product of wishful thinking. All the signs of willed belief are there, and can be tested. There is a disproportion between the slender evidence and the scep- ticism already being expressed by some in a position to judge (e.g. Mr Patrick Moore) and the excited faith of the overwhelming majority — including, it would appear, the great majority of scientists in the relevant fields. Take the paucity of the evidence. It is not certain that the meteorite came from Mars. It is not certain that the traces found are organic. Microfossils of bacteria inside the oldest known rocks are 100 times longer and wider than those identified inside the meteorite. Then there is the test that the 'discovery' fits what people are passionate to hear. Life beyond earth is just what everyone has been looking for. The Americans have been crazy about the idea all this year. The film, Independence Day, has been breaking all records — and now there are the Martian germs. Next, the dis- covery is suspiciously convenient. It is made just when Nasa needs something sensation- al to keep deep cuts to its funding at bay. President Clinton will like something excit- ing and Kennedy-like ('We will land a man on the moon and return him safely to earth') as the election approaches. Until this week a manned mission to Mars looked crazily extravagant. Now it looks inevitable. Belief, anyway, is a matter of will — i.e. faith — more often than ratio- nalists care to admit. It was naive scientists, rather than historians or theologians, who organised the over-promotion of the claims of the Turin shroud, inventing in the pro- cess a whole pseudo-science — 'sindonolo- gy'. The scientists convinced themselves that they could see blood-flows which were in fact non-existent, the impressions of Roman coins on the eyes, thumbs turned inwards through the pressure of nails on just the right nerves. It was all fanciful, but supported by a battery of scientific tests. The same will turn out to be the case with the meteorite. If it all proves bogus, remember that you read that here first. If not, don't.
As a child I travelled on a very slow train (I think it took all of two days and two nights) to Rome. I remember waking up in the morning and noticing just outside the window a bollard, and on the bollard a lizard. Then I lifted up my eyes and saw to my amazement, in distant but clear view, the leaning tower of Pisa. Since then I have visited Pisa at least a dozen times — and have just done so again. You can no longer
ascend the tower — I suppose in case it falls down while tourists are up in it. The climb was anyway frightening for those with no taste for heights. The crazy tilt, the lack of a guard-rail and sometimes the deafen- ing sound of the bells made it a rather unpleasant experience. Each time I visit Pisa I feel that I am seeing the tower for the last time. I am sure that it will suddenly collapse — as did the campanile of St Mark's in Venice at the beginning of the century. The latest idea (I understand) is to support it with steel braces and pour yet more concrete into the foundations. It must be doubtful that this will work. Nothing else has. I wonder if the time is ripe for the proper solution to be put to the city fathers of Pisa. The obvious and only safe thing to do is to dismantle the tower entirely and reconstruct it in a perfectly upright posi- tion. This will preserve it for many more centuries, and will transform it from a curiosity back into what it really is — the most beautiful campanile in all Italy, adorning one of the most perfect cathe- drals. It would also mean that not many tourists would go to Pisa, and one could often have the Campo Santo to oneself. Perhaps the Pisan authorities will not be enthusiastic about this solution.
Men of genius often turn an unre- markable quality of their father into some- thing much more radical and extraordinary. This thought occurred as I read Paul John- son in last week's Spectator. I believe Paul to be touched by genius, and one bit of his article suddenly gave me a sense of where it might come from. Paul was writing of some characteristic pronouncements of his father: 'There was something flashy about Gainsborough, 'It is time Baldwin was put out to grass' and 'Byzantium should never be underestimated'. It all came together for me. For Gainsborough, substitute those splendidly shocking dismissals of Poussin (couldn't paint) and Cezanne (hated women, couldn't paint). For the mild remark about Baldwin, substitute the many superb philippics about John Major. I am not sure about Byzantium, though. 'New Labour should never be underestimated' does not seem quite right. I shall go on thinking.
Ibegan this Diary in Cambridge, and finished it in Tuscany. I am sending it from Siena, where the annual frenzy of prepara- tions for the Palo are underway. The Palo seems to be a substitute for the real patrio- tism of the city state. The city state was Italy's real contribution to politics. Its new contribution may be the break-up of the nation state. The leader of the Northern League, Umberto Bossi, has revived the idea of a secessionist, super-rich, indepen- dent northern Italian state to go under the slightly fictitious-sounding name Padania. This would be an excellent idea for the north, but very bad news for the rest of Italy which battens upon northern efficien- cy. But Bossi's Northern League itself seems about to split up. One of his leading satraps — a self-willed woman called Allot Pivetti — has questioned the secession plan. She wants a federal Italy within the European Union. In reply, Mr Bossi has lit- erally told her that she might as well drop dead; he also proposes to have his followers destroy the transmitters of the 'racist and colonialist' Italian television service. All this suggests that secession is a serious enough idea for people to quarrel over. An exciting prospect beckons — Italy divided in three. The rich north will be the equiva- lent of the old kingdom of Sardinia; the central parts will correspond to the old papal states; and perhaps some Bourbon relative of King Juan Carlos can be per- suaded to take on the Kingdom of the TWO Sicilies.
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