‘It is true that Christianity is not bound up with any particular race or culture. It is neither of the East or of the West, but has a universal mission to the human race as a whole…’

– Christopher Dawson

Recent Events held by the Centre:

• Tasmanian Launch of Tony Abbott’s Book ‘Australia: a History’ at Parliament House, Hobart, Tasmania, Tuesday 9th December, 2025

• Launch of the Dawson Centre in Melbourne with a lecture by Archbishop Julian Porteous on the topic of ‘How can we renew Western Civilisation given the challenges we face?’ at St Peter’s Church, Parish Centre, Toorak, Victoria, Wednesday 12 November, 2025.

Sign up for the Director’s Newsletter

Director’s Newsletters

• DIRECTOR’S NEWSLETTER – DECEMBER 2025
  by The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies
  December 16, 2025
  It was a great night on Wednesday 12 November for the Dawson Centre’s Melbourne Launch, with the event at capacity. I am very grateful to Fr Dean Mathieson for hosting us at St Peter’s Parish Centre in Toorak. Archbishop Julian Porteous delivered an engaging address on the importance of the Christian faith for arresting the decline of western civilisation and in particular the need to defend religious freedom. Declining birthrate in the West One particular contemporary issue that very clearly and tangibly demonstrates this decline and which is starting to receive some limited attention in the mainstream media is that of collapsing … Continue reading DIRECTOR’S NEWSLETTER – DECEMBER 2025 →
• DIRECTOR’S NEWSLETTER – NOVEMBER 2025
  by The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies
  December 16, 2025
  In this newsletter I want to draw your attention to continuing efforts to undermine religious freedom in Australia. The Allan Labor Government in Victoria has recently introduced a Bill into parliament to significantly lessen the supposed ‘safeguards’ around the so-called Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017, which legalised assisted suicide and direct killing of those meeting certain medical criteria. The proposed Allan Government amendments seek to make what was fundamentally bad legislation even worse. These amendments would allow ‘registered health practitioners’ to initiate discussions about assisted suicide or direct killing with those suffering significant illness, which is currently prohibited primarily because … Continue reading DIRECTOR’S NEWSLETTER – NOVEMBER 2025 →
• DIRECTOR’S NEWSLETTER – SEPTEMBER 2025
  by The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies
  December 16, 2025
  A BLAST FROM THE PAST Dear Reader, I’m grateful to the new Director, Alex Sidhu, for offering me a curtain call by appointing me guest editor of the September newsletter!  After eight months of retirement, it’s pleasant to be engaged once again in the Dawson Centre’s business before returning to the equally pleasant joys of being master of my own time.  I shall remain a member of the committee however, and greatly value that ongoing connection.  I begin this newsletter by paying a compliment to Alex.  He has had a very difficult year.  His principal and challenging goal has been to find funding to enable … Continue reading DIRECTOR’S NEWSLETTER – SEPTEMBER 2025 →
• DIRECTOR’S NEWSLETTER – 4 August 2025 
  by The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies
  December 16, 2025
  Dear Readers, I want to thank you again for your patience over the last six months as attempts were made to secure the future of the Dawson Centre. There are still many challenges ahead but I am pleased that we are now moving to resume the regular operations of the Centre. In particular I am pleased to announce that we are currently working on finalising dates for the next Colloquium to be held in Melbourne in 2026, (details will follow in the coming weeks).  In my first newsletter as the Director of the Dawson Centre I wanted to share with … Continue reading DIRECTOR’S NEWSLETTER – 4 August 2025  →
• ‘Wokery’ its Origins and Objectives – a Work in Progress 
  by The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies
  November 6, 2023
  6 November 2023 Dr Ian McFarlane  Introduction – Define Woke  As this study is essentially a journey from the real to the unreal in an attempt to make sense out of the nonsense this illustration taken from Hesse’s Steppenwolf is an appropriate motif for the paper.  Although I refer to Wokery as an Ideology throughout this paper, this is just for convenience as given the deep inconsistencies within the propositions we are presented with one should properly describe Wokery simply as a Phenomenon of our era. At times their reasoning is so obscure and riddled with meaningless jargon I am … Continue reading ‘Wokery’ its Origins and Objectives – a Work in Progress  →
• The Voice Campaign and our loss of trust in institutions
  by The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies
  September 26, 2023
  26 September 2023 Philip Crisp The Voice referendum to be held on 14 October would make the most significant change to our Constitution in its history. It is timely to remind ourselves of the principles of liberal democracy articulated in the west during the Enlightenment period, as well as the roles of institutions supporting those principles. The principles remain sound, but the institutions are failing us because they have lost focus on their proper purposes.
• After the Referendum
  by The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies
  September 13, 2023
  13 September 2023 Professor Matthew Ogilvie  When goodwill and unity prevail, the best people will have the most prominent voices. When ill will and divisiveness prevail, the loudest voices will be those who seek division and revenge.  I fear that the ‘Voice’ campaign has divided our nation. Whichever way the referendum goes, if we can heal from the divisive experience (and I emphasise ‘if’) it will take years.  
• 2022 COLLOQUIUM RESTROSPECTIVE
  by The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies
  February 19, 2023
  First published in the Christopher Dawson Centre Newsletter, July 2022. To subscribe, please fill out this form. We don’t send too many newsletters, rather fewer with content rich, thought pieces intended to spark conversation and community. Last Saturday’s Colloquium was the big event of our year.  It lived up to our expectations and indeed soared beyond: all papers were well and evenly matched in their force and relevance.  
• Reclaiming the Christian Intellectual Tradition 
  by The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies
  November 14, 2022
  This talk was delivered by Christopher Dawson Centre‘s Director, Dr David Daintree, at the first official Sydney dinner held on 27th October 2022 at The Royal Automobile Club of Australia. Lovely of you all to turn up tonight at what is the Dawson Centre’s first official venture beyond Tasmania and ‘the Athens of the South’.  I thank you all from my heart, but my warmest thanks must go to Sophie York and Naomi Spinks.  Sophie for her precious friendship and passionate energy on behalf of Christian civilisation; Naomi, as assistant director of the Centre, for her loyal dedication as our … Continue reading Reclaiming the Christian Intellectual Tradition  →
• Freedom for me, but not for thee
  by The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies
  October 13, 2022
  13 October 2022 Professor Matthew Ogilvie  This week, the Federal Labor government announced that it would expend significant resources to repatriating members of the Islamic State. While these IS members are presumed to be noncombatants by virtue of their sex and ages, they have been part of an evil organization that raped, tortured and murdered its way through the Middle East. Its victims included Yazidis, Christians and homosexual people. The situation is so serious that Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton expressed grave concerns after an ASIO briefing,1 and local MP Dai Le spoke of the hurt the repatriation would cause members … Continue reading Freedom for me, but not for thee →
• Christopher Dawson and the Intellectual Roots of Campion College Australia  
  by The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies
  October 5, 2022
  by Karl Schmude This article appeared as a Guest Editorial on 6 October 2022, in the Christopher Dawson Centre Newsletter. To subscribe, please fill out this form. We don’t send too many newsletters, rather fewer with content rich, thought pieces intended to spark conversation and community. As one of the world’s foremost historians of culture, Christopher Dawson saw the centrality of education to the process of cultural transmission – the ways in which a society passes on its inheritance of learning and memory as an expression of its cultural identity. 
• WHY CATHOLICS ARE SUITED TO POLITICS  
  by The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies
  September 9, 2022
  31 August, 2022 Professor Matthew Ogilvie  Recently, a friend involved in politics spoke about an unpleasant situation. I shared my advice, which I thought would be midway between Machiavelli and Mother Teresa.  My friend’s face lit up in amazement. He said that he ‘was given the exact same advice in the same words by [a former government minister who is Catholic]!’ Then he asked, ‘What is it with you Catholics and politics?’ 
• RESTORING TERRITORY RIGHTS BILL 2022 
  by The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies
  August 9, 2022
  Mr Julian Leeser (Berowra), 2 August, 2022: This is not the first time I’ve risen in this place to speak on this matter. Every few years, the old arguments are dusted off and freshened up and someone wants to raise the flag on this issue or thinks the numbers might finally be in their favour to turn the tables. In the last parliament I said that I rose with a heavy heart; today the weight is doubled. I’m sad that we are fighting what I sense will be a losing battle. I think that, in time, we will look upon … Continue reading RESTORING TERRITORY RIGHTS BILL 2022  →
• Letter to the Editor
  by The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies
  June 29, 2022
  Re: Article: ‘Exposing the ‘modern green religion’Catherine Sullivan Note that all references and links in this article were viewed on 23rd May, 2022 or 18th June, 2022. I am writing to express my shock and unease at an article published on the website of the Catholic Archdiocese of Tasmanian describing a presentation from Professor Ian Plimer to the Christopher Dawson Centre.  I did not attend the presentation but trust that the article was an accurate summary of the presentation.
• PRO-ABORTION REACTIONS – NO SURPRISES
  by The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies
  June 29, 2022
  BY PETER FLEMINGJune 2022 At the time of writing, it has only been twenty-four hours since the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the Roe v Wade determination of 1973, and two predictable consequences have come to pass.
• The Australian Catholic Church, the Bishops, the Catholic Weekly and Russia and Ukraine
  by The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies
  June 3, 2022
  Dr Robert Tilley, Catholic Institute of Sydney  30 May 2022 DisclaimerI want to make it clear that though I work at the Catholic Institute of Sydney, the opinions expressed herein are mine and not, as far as I know, shared by the Institute or for that matter anyone else who works at the Institute. The opinions and arguments are mine and mine alone. 
• The Feminine Genius in The Lord of the Rings
  by The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies
  February 6, 2022
  Catherine SheehanFebruary 2022 The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien is a story all about “fair love”. It is a story about the beauty, goodness, and grandeur of sacrificial love.  In this presentation I will examine the three main female characters in LOTR in light of what St John Paull II called the feminine genius. 
• Psychopathy and the Origins of Totalitarianism
  by The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies
  January 27, 2022
  December 25, 2020, James Lindsay  Many of the greatest horrors of the history of humanity owe their occurrence solely to the establishment and social enforcement of a false reality. With gratitude to the Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper and his important 1970 essay “Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power” for the term and idea, we can refer to these alternative realities as ideological pseudo-realities. 
• The Case Against Abortion
  by The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies
  December 16, 2021
  The New York TimesOPINIONROSS DOUTHATThe Case Against AbortionNov. 30, 2021 A striking thing about the American abortion debate is how little abortion itself is actually debated. The sensitivity and intimacy of the issue, the mixed feelings of so many Americans, mean that most politicians and even many pundits really don’t like to talk about it.
• On Zoe’s Law
  by The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies
  December 10, 2021
  10 December, 2021By Peter Fleming The Crimes Amendment (Zoe’s Law) Bill 2019 in New South Wales is seen by some in the Pro-Life movement as a pathway to the recognition of the human rights of aborted foetuses. Let us hope so. 

Following his installation as Archbishop of Hobart on 17 September 2013 the Most Reverend Julian Porteous signaled a determination to advance the Catholic Intellectual Tradition within the Archdiocese and beyond.  He took steps to establish the Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies, in honour of a man who is considered to have been the greatest English-speaking Catholic historian of the twentieth century.

Who was Christopher Dawson?

‘Secularization of culture is seen in its most striking form in the Communist State, where alone as yet the elimination of religion has been carried to its logical conclusion.  Nevertheless, the same tendency exists elsewhere; in fact, it permeates the whole outlook of modern civilization.  The average man lives more totally in the State than in the past, and even when he is not consciously hostile to religion, he no longer conceives it as a vital activity which must hold its central place in human life and society.’

Christopher Dawson (1889-1970) was brought up an Anglican, converted to Roman Catholicism in 1914, and is principally known for his powerful defence of the vital role of the Christian religion as a major strand of Western culture.  The aim of the Centre named after him is ‘to promote awareness of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition and Cultural Heritage as essential components of human civilization’.

About our logo

The Centre’s device is a candle, signifying Reason, set within the Cross, the symbol of Faith.  The open book contains the motto of Oxford University – Dawson’s alma mater – Deus Illuminatio mea, the opening words of Psalm 27 (‘the Lord is my Light and my Salvation; whom then should I fear?’)

About Us

DIRECTOR:  Alexander Sidhu
Head Office:  Melbourne, Victoria  
Email:  director@dawsoncentre.org

GOVERNING BOARD MEMBERS:

President His Grace Archbishop Julian Porteous

Vice President Dr David Daintree

Treasurer Mr Ron Ward

BRISBANE SATURDAY 1 JUNE

Seminar and dinner in collaboration with the Australian Classical Education Society. The keynote speaker will be Andrew Kern, founder and president of the US Circe Institute.  

BOOK HERE

COLLOQUIUM 2024

The 2024 Colloquium will be on SATURDAY 6 JULY

Topic:  Authentic Humanism and the Crisis of Culture

The after-dinner speaker this year will be Emeritus Professor Steven Schwartz AM FASSA, formerly Vice-Chancellor of three universities (Brunel, Murdoch and Macquarie) and currently Senior Fellow of the Centre for Independent Studies.

BOOK HERE

21 July, 2022

Last Saturday’s Colloquium was the big event of our year.  It lived up to our expectations and indeed soared beyond: all papers were well and evenly matched in their force and relevance.  

Putting to one side for a moment our due sense of triumph on the conclusion of an intensely engaging conference, I cannot fail to observe that much was said there had the power to depress and sadden us.  The awful truth is that when ten experts in their several fields talk about freedom of speech and religion today, a certain gloom settles upon their audience: traditional rights of expression and even the law itself are yielding to the power of wokery in western countries. 

Not only is free speech curtailed, but being merely suspected of harbouring inappropriate thoughts can be dangerous.  Jobs have been lost, livelihoods destroyed, for the expression of errant ideas.  ‘Sadly, you can say what you like around the kitchen table at home’, said former Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Trigg in 2017.  ‘Sadly,’ mark you!  Can this really be happening?  Do many of our nation’s leaders and law-enforcers actually regret that intimate conversation within the family circle cannot be placed under surveillance – yet – and duly corrected or even penalized?  Sadly it appears to be so.  A totalitarian impulse within certain sections of western democratic society looks to be well entrenched, a longing to control, a nostalgia for the powers to which the privileged have always felt themselves entitled.

So much for sadness and depression.  Confidence and optimism overwhelm gloom, and the sun shines more brightly when you can see more clearly what you have to face and have an informed hope of winning the war, even if some skirmishes don’t go our way.  For a start, most of those present at the colloquium have firm confidence in the Grace of God and the certainty of final victory.  Another source of encouragement was the opinion expressed by several speakers that the gulf between actuality and delusion has widened now almost to breaking point, and that the whole woke myth based on the false creed that you are what you think you are will sooner or later implode under the sheer weight of its own nonsense, as ordinary people wake up, speak out and take strength from each other.  

I suppose the longing to see our dreams come true is a perfectly normal human tendency, particularly among children.  But its continuation into adulthood seems to be a peculiar weakness of our own times, helped along perhaps over the last several decades by those sweet, beguiling words of Walt Disney:

‘Makes no difference who you are,

Anything your heart desires will come to you…

…When you wish upon a star

Your dreams come true.’

Brought up on that sort of thing, as so many of us have been, it’s easy to believe that we can be male or female, black or white, or that unborn babies are not really human, or anything else we want –  and that mere wishing can make it so.

For the first time we videoed everything and will soon upload all presentations to our YouTube channel.  The proceedings will also be published in book form later this year.

BOOK HERE

The Ninth Dawson Centre Colloquium,

Saturday 6 July 2024

Authentic Humanism and the Crisis of Culture

The Italian Club,

77 Federal Street, North Hobart

8.45            Session 1

                  David Daintree

9.00            Session 2

                  Karl Schmude

                  A Transcendent Humanism: Recovering the Vision of

                  Christopher Dawson 

9.45            Session 3

                  Bella d’Abrera

                  Undoing Australia: how the Australian Nation is being

                  Dismantled, One Statue at a Time

10.30           Tea Break

11.00           Session 4

                  Lucas McLennan

                  Western Perspectives in the Australian Curriculum

11.45           Session 5

                  Anna Krohn

                  Christian Paideia: For the Hearth and Road

12.30           Session 6

                  Richard Brown

                  Teaching Authentic Humanism in schools – is it possible? 

                  An educator’s view

1.15            Lunch

2.00            Session 7

                  Anna Walsh

                  Without Hindrance or Fear of Reprisal: the attitudes and

                  experiences of NSW and Victorian doctors with a

                  conscientious objection to abortion

2.45            Session 8

                  Matthew Solomon

                  The Salvation of the West: A return to the Enlightenment 

                  or the Embracing of Tradition?

3.30            Tea Break

4.00            Session 9

                  Natalie Kennedy

                  Cultivating a Posture of Awe and Wonder

4.45            Session 10

                  Archbishop Porteous 

                  T.S. Eliot and the Future of Western Culture

6.00             Pre-dinner drinks

6.30            Dinner with guest speaker Prof Steven Schwartz

‘DWARVES ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS…’

‘It is true that Christianity is not bound up with any particular race or culture. It is neither of the East or of the West, but has a universal mission to the human race as a whole…’

– Christopher Dawson

 ‘Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarves sitting on the shoulders of giants, for we see more and farther than they, not by the sharpness of our own eyesight or the loftiness of our bodies, but because we are raised up and lifted on high by their colossal greatness.’                                          

– John of Salisbury

The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies
Contact Details

DIRECTOR:  Alexander Sidhu

Head Office:  Melbourne, Victoria

Postal Address:  
Telephone:  
Email:  director@dawsoncentre.org

About our logo

The Centre’s device is a candle, signifying Reason, set within the Cross, the symbol of Faith.  The open book contains the motto of Oxford University – Dawson’s alma mater – Deus Illuminatio mea, the opening words of Psalm 27 (‘the Lord is my Light and my Salvation; whom then should I fear?’)

About the CDC

Following his installation as Archbishop of Hobart on 17 September 2013 the Most Reverend Julian Porteous signaled a determination to advance the Catholic Intellectual Tradition within the Archdiocese and beyond.  He took steps to establish the Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies, in honour of a man who is considered to have been the greatest English-speaking Catholic historian of the twentieth century.

Who was Christopher Dawson?

‘Secularization of culture is seen in its most striking form in the Communist State, where alone as yet the elimination of religion has been carried to its logical conclusion.  Nevertheless, the same tendency exists elsewhere; in fact, it permeates the whole outlook of modern civilization.  The average man lives more totally in the State than in the past, and even when he is not consciously hostile to religion, he no longer conceives it as a vital activity which must hold its central place in human life and society.’

Christopher Dawson (1889-1970) was brought up an Anglican, converted to Roman Catholicism in 1914, and is principally known for his powerful defence of the vital role of the Christian religion as a major strand of Western culture.  The aim of the Centre named after him is ‘to promote awareness of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition and Cultural Heritage as essential components of human civilization’.

MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE

• Senator Jonathan Duniam
• Ms Kate Eagles
• Mr Zachary Golus
• Ms Diana Hutchinson
• Dr Chris Middleton
• Professor Haydn Walters
• Dr Christine Wood

INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD

• Mrs Lucy Beckett
• Dr Peter Cunich
• Prof Jim Gaston
• Dr Sam Gregg
• Prof James Hitchcock
• Prof Bob Kennedy
• Mr Ferdi McDermott
• Revd Dr Bill Miscamble CSC
• Dr Glenn Olsen
• Prof Tracey Rowland
• Mr Karl Schmude

Dismissed by some academics as a trade war, and by Australians of the John Pilger persuasion as a conflict irrelevant to Australia’s national interest, the Great War was nevertheless embraced by the majority of Australians of Faith – Catholic, Protestant and Jewish – as so personally involving them that some 416,000 of them out of a population of slightly fewer than five millions volunteered – there were no conscripts – to fight for God, King and Country. It was certainly an ‘unnecessary war’ – the phrase used by Churchill to describe the Second World War – but once started it had to be won. We now know what defeat for the British Empire would have meant – irrespective of any involvement by Australia – because we know what a German peace treaty looked like: the 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk cost Russia one third of its population, half of its heavy industry and 80% of its coal and energy resources. The first Treaty term for Britain at the hands of a victorious Germany would have been the confiscation of the Royal Navy, which had kept the peace in international waters for over a hundred years (after all, the British confiscated the German High Seas Fleet in 1918 – and that would not only have affected Australian maritime trade, would not only have seen an extension of Germany’s territorial acquisitions in New Guinea but would also have left the Pacific wide open for Japanese expansion and the potential envelopment of Australia). The First World War had to be won every bit as much as Part II of what was essentially the same conflict in 1939-1945.

None of that was probably foreseen by the eager young men who rushed to the recruiting depots in 1914 and 1915. What they could see, however, in those first few tragic weeks of August, was the methodical murder of 4,723 Belgian civilians (including over 600 in Dinant market place alone – lined up, executed) as the Armies of Von Kluck, Von Bulow and Von Hausen trampled neutral Belgium in fulfilment of the Great German Staff’s Schlieffen Plan. Australians of that day had no more taste for bullying than they have today.

But it is not my intention tonight to detail that wearisome progress through Gallipoli and the Western Front from 1915 onwards. I would like to focus first on 2017, the worst and darkest year for the inhabitants of the Australian Continent. In that year alone some 22,000 Australians were killed in battle and 50,000 were wounded: Bullecourt I, Bullecourt II, Messines, Passchendaele – these were the killing fields across France and Flanders. Twenty-two thousand grieving families. For the past 17 years or so, as you well know, the Australian Armed Forces have been engaged in the bloody conflicts of the Middle East and, out of a population now numbering more than 25 millions, 41 Australian soldiers have been killed in action – 41 too many, but 22,000 in a single year! And what was gained from that sacrifice? Retirement from Bullecourt, necessitating a second go; partial success at Messines; and a 7 km advance at Passchendaele. It was the darkest period of Australia’s history.

Ah! But in October of that dreadful year, far from the soggy battlefields of Europe, this darkness was split by a single lightning flash, far out in the Negev Desert where an advance of 7km within a single hour etched the name of Beersheba in the annals of Australian History. Except that few Australians have ever heard of it and modern school curricula have ignored it for decades. It was of course the charge of Harry Chauvel’s Light Horse at Beersheba.

It had been a typical Light Horse approach march, over several nights through waterless terrain, 40 minutes of the hour in the saddle, 10 minutes leading, 10 resting, and dawn had found them seven km to the south-east of Beersheba. Chauvel knows that he must take Beersheba on this day, the 31^st October 1917, otherwise General Allenby’s Third Battle of Gaza will fail like General Murray’s first two in March and April. Chauvel must also find water for his parched horses at the town wells before the German engineers can blow them up, or fill them in, as the Philistines did when Abraham died – three of those wells, you may remember, were re-discovered by Isaac, and when a fourth was dug out again an agreement was struck with Abimelech, King of the Philistines, Isaac naming it ‘Shebah: therefore the name of the city is Beersheba unto this day’ (Genesis, 26). The timing of Chauvel’s attack will depend on the neutralisation of a strong point, Tel El Saba, on his right flank, which proves a tougher nut to crack than envisaged but which finally succumbs to the gallantry of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles and elements of the 1^stLight Horse Brigade, notably the 3^rd Australian Light Horse Regiment from Tasmania and South Australia. It is now 4.30 pm, the sun sinking into the heat haze, the mosque in Beersheba a white smudge in the gathering gloom. Behind him, Chauvel’s British Cavalry, equipped with swords, are keen to advance. The Australians only have their 18-inch bayonets. But the Australians are closer and time presses. Imperturbable as always, Chauvel turns to Major General Hodgson, commanding the Australian Mounted Division, and says in that quiet voice of his, ‘Put Grant straight at it’. Brigadier-General Grant, from Stawell, Victoria, lines up 800 horsemen, the 4^th Regiment from Victoria on the right, the 12^th from New South Wales on the left: ‘Walk-March!’ – well that doesn’t last long, they’re into the trot, then the canter and, as shrapnel bursts overhead, into a full and frenzied gallop, the horsemen yelling and brandishing their bayonets, the horses catching the excitement, sensing the water in the distant wells…. The Turks blink. These horsemen are not dismounting 800 yards away, rifle shot range, to advance as usual on foot, they’re galloping on, irresistibly, too fast for the Turks to lower their gun sites, leaping over the trenches, then dismounting to round up 800 Turks at bayonet point, while others race into town to stop the engineers blowing up the wells: the horsemen are exhausted, 31 killed, but they’re on the road to Jerusalem. And the horses get their water.

It’s been a long ride, for horse and man, all the way from the Suez Canal, across the Sinai Desert after the big fight at Romani in August 1916 and the classic encirclement battles of Magdhaba, Rafa, First Gaza – even longer for those who, dismounted, were called in to reinforce the decimated ranks on Gallipoli, where Chauvel commanded the crucial Left Section at ANZAC – Pope’s Hill, Quinn’s Post, Courtney’s, Steele’s, the C.O. of the 15^th Battalion asserting that of all the generals he knew the coolest and calmest under fire was Harry Chauvel. But they’re back in the saddle again, 12 – later 15 – proud Regiments, each of three squadrons, each squadron of four Troops, the Troops consisting of four-man Sections, one man to hold the horses, three to fight with rifle and bayonet – mounted infantry, highly mobile, searching out the land like Johsua en route to Jericho, like the Long Range Desert Group and the SAS in the next war. ‘The Jews,’ wrote the Official Historian, ‘grew fond of these big men on their big horses, discovering that beneath their terrible aspect they were gentle and chivalrous young men’, often dismounting to place refugees, even PoWs, in their own saddles.

 As illustrative of this ‘terrible aspect’ we have the following Beersheba vignettes: Trooper O’Leary of the 4^th galloping 80 yards ahead of his squadron, leaping the Turkish Trench and charging right on into the town, where he is found an hour-and-a-half afterwards seated on a German field gun, which he had galloped down, with six Turkish gunners and drivers taking it in turn to hold his horse; then there is Staff Sergeant Cox who, on noticing a machine-gun being hurriedly dismounted from a mule, dashes at the party and bluffs them into surrendering along with thirty others; or Trooper Bolton, who single-handedly chased a field gun being drawn by six horses under the command of a German officer – Bolton has lost his rifle in the charge but he picks up a revolver and, the German refusing to halt, Bolton shoots at point-blank range only to produce a misfire, so with the butt-end of the revolver he knocks the German out of the saddle and forces the Turks to return with the gun; or Trooper Scott, his thigh broken in the charge, refusing to fall out and insisting that if he couldn’t fight he could lead some horses back to safety, five of which he delivers, fainting as he is lifted from the saddle. As a captured German officer was to put it, ‘We did not believe that the charge would be pushed home. I have heard a great deal of the fighting quality of Australian soldiers. They are not soldiers at all; they are madmen.’

And this so-called ‘chivalrous’ aspect? Certainly Theodore Herzl’s settler Jews were relieved by Allenby’s advance into Palestine, but their joy was if anything exceeded by that of the Christians of Eastern Palestine, who found themselves liberated when the 3^rd Light Horse Regiment under Colonel Bell (from Tasmania and South Australia, remember) took the town of Es Salt. Unfortunately, however, the further probe, a raid on Amman to the east, failed and the Light Horsemen found themselves withdrawing by goat-track in rugged terrain, dispirited Christians, even Muslims, holding their stirrups or, as needed, being lifted into their saddles. ‘Never mind Allah!’ exclaimed one irritable light horseman to an old man who was beseeching a ride for his wife; ‘she’s fallen off twice, and I’m tired of her. Why didn’t you teach her how to ride? However, up she goes for the last time!’

Jerusalem. ‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not’ (Luke 13.34). It was the 9^th December 1917, 39 days after the charge at Beersheba which facilitated it, that Allenby’s entry to Jerusalem took place, the C-in-C not swaggeringly mounted as when, in 1908, the German Kaiser had entered through a gateway especially driven for him through the great stone walls, but on foot via the Jaffa Gate, humbly, like that other arrival nineteen hundred years before, meek and sitting on a colt, the foal of an ass. ‘It is doubtful,’ writes the Official Historian, ‘if a single man of European origin entered Jerusalem for the first time untouched by the influence of the Saviour. Christ met each man on the threshold of the city; each man as he entered was purified and exalted. The influence, perhaps, was not lasting. War is not a Christian mission. But for a brief spell at least the soldier’s mind was purged of grossness, and he knew again the pure and trusting faith of his early childhood.’

Finally comes the climactic Battle of Megiddo. Two courses are open to the C-in-C. First, to break through the enemy lines in the east, clear Gilead and then head for Deraa. Secondly, to smash through on the coast, ride hard up the Plain of Sharon, cross the Mt Carmel-Samaria saddle, then swing east along the Esdraelon Plain between Galilee and Samaria to Beisan on the Jordan River, which would carry mounted men across the lines of communication of two Turkish armies, the 7^th and 8^th, whilst holding down the 4^th east of the Jordan. Allenby chooses the second course. It is the reverse of the Beersheba attack, with a feint inland and an assault on the coast. For this reason he deploys Chauvel’s mounted troops, now augmented with British and Indian formations, in the Jordan Valley – for the Turks have learned to expect that wherever the Light Horsemen are, that will be the Schwerpunkt, the main point of the attack. For the Light Horsemen this does mean sweltering in the malarial Jordan Valley throughout the long, hot summer of 1918, while the Turks build up their forces inland without significantly reinforcing their lines on the coast. But now the genius of the plan is revealed, thanks to the meticulous planning and organisation of Chauvel and his staff, as he night marches three whole divisions right across the Turkish front to hide them in the olive groves and orange orchards on the coast, leaving only the ANZAC Mounted Division facing the Turks in the Valley, along with 15,000 dummy horses made of canvas and wood to fool the German airmen, while Jewish and West Indian troops march and counter-march to raise the Valley’s dust and Lawrence’s Arab agents ostentatiously place orders for huge supplies of horse feed east of the Jordan.

D-Day is the 19^th of September 1918. Harry lets it be known that the Australians will hold a race meeting on this day – a race meeting in the Valley, how Australian! At 0430 Allenby’s guns open up on the coast, the British infantry punch holes in the unreinforced Turkish lines, and Chauvel’s cavalry are through the gaps, riding hard up the Plain of Sharon, then swinging north-east over the Mount Carmel-Samaria saddle to debouch at Megiddo into the Jezreel Valley, the Armageddon of the Bible, the Armageddon of 1918, surprising the German Commander-in-Chief at his Nazareth HQ, Liman von Sanders, who escapes in his staff car – and his pyjamas. Chauvel’s horsemen are now across the communication lines of two Turkish armies, the 7^th and 8^th, cutting them off from their rear echelons, while east of the Jordan the 4^th Army, harried by Lawrence of Arabia, joins the retreat northwards. ‘What about Damascus?’ asks Allenby. ‘Rather’, says Chauvel, man of few words.

Damascus is to be another encirclement deal, but when Brigadier-General Wilson, commanding 3^rd Light Horse Brigade, views the rugged country surrounding the city’s beautiful green enclave, he gambles on a short cut, straight through the heart of the city, which at 0630 next morning finds a Major Olden, commanding a squadron of the 10^th Light Horse from Western Australia, on the steps of the Town Hall bluffing the City Governor into believing that the city is already surrounded: ‘I welcome the British Army’, says the Emir, fatalistically, but the Horsemen have no time for ceremony (they will leave that to the splendid entry of Lawrence’s Arabs) and are out the northern gate on the Homs Road heading for Aleppo. Damascus, Homs, Aleppo, names tragically familiar today, but these ANZACs leave cities intact, hospitals functioning, refugees protected, prisoners-of-war cared for. Regarding this land of the medieval crusaders, the Official Historian writes, ‘no soldiers rode nearer to the Christian precept to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with their God than these seemingly careless young light horsemen.’ The Turks give up, eleven days before the Armistice on the Western Front. Never in the First World War has there been a more far-ranging and complete victory than this of Allenby’s in the Middle East, ending 400 years of Ottoman rule, to the immediate benefit of Jews, Armenians and Arabs, amongst others, and paving the way for the creation thirty years later of the modern State of Israel, still the only democracy in the Middle East. And throughout, as Allenby himself acknowledges, it has been Chauvel’s Light Horse which has been the main striking force, the only force indeed to have fought from start to finish, Suez to Aleppo.

Sir Harry Chauvel, GCMG, KCB, was the first Australian to be promoted to Lieutenant-General, the first to be given command of a complete Corps, 34,000 horsemen, a cavalry force surpassing Napoleon’s and never seen since, but unique too because as well as Australians and New Zealanders Chauvel commanded British troops, Indians, French, Africans, Sikhs, Hong Kong Chinese, West Indians, Jews and Egyptians – the only other Australian to command such a multi-national force being our former Governor General, Sir Peter Cosgrove, commanding the International Force East Timor. But what sort of fellow was Harry Chauvel? Quiet, reserved, almost shy, yet a strong disciplinarian from his Boer War days, his HQ always forward with his men. A man of strong Christian faith, as I shall make clear later, but perhaps I should begin with his brilliant horsemanship, dating from his earliest years on the family farm in northern NSW, then riding to boarding school in Queensland and leading the Queensland Mounted Rifles in South Africa. An eye-witness describes the occasion when General Sir Edmund Allenby arrives in his staff car to inspect the ANZACs, mounts the horse provided for him and then, to the astonishment of all, turns round in his stirrups to hit the mare over the rump, a most un-Australian performance. You can see that the mare doesn’t like it, as head down she’s off pig-rooting into the dust, taking with her Allenby’s Chief of Staff, a Royal Marine who’s all at sea on board another horse which follows in the General’s wake. But like the true stockman that he is, Sir Harry rides them down, hoping that the General won’t fall off, ropes in the delinquent Marine, and with due dignity the official cavalcade enters the parade ground. And the man from Snowy River never shifted in his seat / It was grand to see that mountain horseman ride, as Banjo Paterson wrote, Harry’s chum at Sydney Grammar School.

‘Therefore’, as Isaiah wrote, ‘the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion: and everlasting joy shall be upon their head.’ It might have surprised the veteran Australian and New Zealand horsemen riding with Sir Harry Chauvel through Palestine a hundred years ago to be hailed as ‘the redeemed of the Lord’ but it would not have surprised Sir Harry. Descended from a French Huguenot family who had fled religious persecution in the France of Louis XIV, Sir Harry proved to be a worthy wielder of the sword during the liberation of Palestine from 400 years of Ottoman rule (indeed Jerusalem has been ruled by Islam for eleven of the last thirteen centuries). Strong in his Christian faith, as I said, Harry served for 25 years until his death in 1945 as a Churchwarden at Christ Church South Yarra, where you can see the sword he gifted to the Church, and, for almost as long, as a Lay Canon at St Paul’s Cathedral, where in the left-hand aisle, you can see the plaque which records how ‘his Christian regard for his men continued undiminished during the years of peace’. In 1938 he was to resign on principle from his leadership of the ANZAC Day March in Melbourne because the RSL had decided to remove the Christian element from the ANZAC Day Service (shades of political correctness even back then): ‘We are a Christian nation’, he declared, ‘and ought not to allow ourselves to be persuaded to eliminate all Christian semblance from a ceremony which we of the League have done our best to make a national occasion’. Throughout the Palestine campaign, Harry carried a Bible in his saddle-bags, protected by stout wooden boards. How he loved the biblical names: Beersheba, Mount Carmel, Samaria, Nazareth, Jezreel. Mount Gilboa, Gilgal, Gilead, the Sea of Galilee….As for his Chaplains, they had a field day, fossicking amidst the ancient ruins and enthusing in their sermons on the faith of every Biblical hero from Abraham down.

Allow me to discourse for a moment on Army Chaplains, some of the notable Padres of the Great War, the men – they were all men – whose mission it was to at least keep the soldiers in touch with the God of their Sunday School days. There was ‘Fighting Mac’ Mackenzie, the former boxing champion converted under the Salvation Army, who was very much a front-line hero on Gallipoli, his slouch hat riddled with bullet-holes because he would insist on conducting proper burial services within range, even within sight, of Turkish snipers. Then there was the equally famous Padre S.E. Maxted, killed whilst caring for the wounded in No Man’s Land during the carnage of the Fromelles attack, the costliest day in the history of the Australian Army. Working under fire, equally, were Padre Gilbert of Queenstown, Tasmania, and the Reverend J.J. Kennedy of Myrtleford, Victoria. At Hill 60 on the Peninsula, Chaplain Gillison and his mate, former clergyman Corporal Pittendrich, were both mortally wounded while trying to pull helpless men away from the scrub fires started by shell-fire, and then there was that other redoubtable Tasmanian clergyman, Lieutenant Bethune, from Hamilton, who had joined the 3^rd Machine Gun Company and, in the absence of a Chaplain aboard the troopship ‘Transylvania’ en route for France, had preached a sermon about the soldiers’ need ‘to help right a great wrong’ with its memorable peroration, ‘With our dear ones behind, and God above, and our friends on each side, and only the enemy in front – what more do we wish for than that?’. Even more memorable was the written order he was to issue to his Machine Gun Section on the 13^th March 1918 as the Allied line apprehensively awaited the expected German onslaught. Objecting to his CO that his mate’s Section was being allocated to a suicidal position, Bethune felt it only consistent that he should take on the task and, after explaining to his own Section his belief that the mission was hopeless, he called for volunteers (they responded to a man) and wrote out an order for each of them which became famous along the whole Western Front, as follows:

1. This position will be held and the Section will remain here until relieved.

2. The enemy cannot be allowed to interfere with this programme.

3. If the Section cannot remain here alive, it will remain here dead, but in any case it will remain here.

4. Should all our guns be blown out, the Section will use Mills grenades and other novelties.

5. Finally, the position, as stated, will be held.’

And in all humility, may I add a commendation of our Chaplains in Vietnam, especially the Roman Catholic Padres, the likes of Gerry Cudmore and Father Tinkler, who trudged along beside us through padi, rubber and jungle.

We Australians have nothing to apologise for in this liberation of the Middle East from autocratic Islamic rule, buttressed as it was by a brutal European militarism, however temporary that proved to be. What has not been temporary is the foundation and continued existence of the State we may once again call Israel, prophesied as it was in the Balfour Declaration just two days after the charge at Beersheba. Both Jews and Christians may see in that liberation a fulfilment of Biblical prophecy. Even those apparently careless young men of the Australian Light Horse could see at the very least a fulfilment of their war aim, a reward for their sacrifice. For sacrifice it was, not least for their wonderful horses, not one of which came home. One hundred and two years ago, in fulfilment of prophecy, the Australian Light Horse helped to restore old Jerusalem. In doing that, and in concert with their AIF colleagues on the Western Front, they defeated a dangerous enemy. But in so doing they also placed a burden of debt upon all Australians today, for whether our ancestors were here 60,000 years ago, or whether some of us arrived, as it were yesterday, we all of us equally owe our freedom to that unsurpassed generation of 1914-1918 who suffered to build a better Australia. But as for that New Jerusalem, when the tabernacle of God will be with men and they shall be his people, that is a prophecy yet to be fulfilled. ‘We are a Christian nation’, declared Harry Chauvel. Could we be so again? Not through war and suffering – though who could rule that out forever? – but through an even more thorough obedience to God’s commandments so that we might have right to enter in through the gate into that City, to be greeted by Him who is the root and offspring of David, and the bright and morning star. Even so, come Lord Jesus.

A Politically Correct Dictionary and Guide

by Dr Kevin Donnelly with illustrations by Johannes Leak,

Connor Court Brisbane, 2009.

ISBN: 978-1-925826-72-2

(purchase copies at kevindonnelly.com.au).

Spoof dictionaries and reference books have delighted us for nearly 150 years since the appearance of Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary in the late nineteenth century.  The one I’ve enjoyed most so far has been playwright Alex Buzo’s A Dictionary of the Almost Obvious(1998).  Buzo’s tart but delicious humour spares nobody, though New Zealanders, South Australians and sensation-seeking media practitioners come in for the harshest treatment.  A couple of my favourite entries are these:

Backflip.  Any perceived change of heart or mind, any degree of flexibility, any change of policy occasioned by revelation of new facts, but above all any kind of personal growth and maturing.

Bitser.  A mongrel in Oz, but a gambling term in Kiwese.  E.g. ‘The horse dropped did, so all bitser off,’ said the bookie.

In the interest of decency, I won’t quote Buzo’s wonderful entry on Kant.  Interested readers are encouraged to look it up for themselves.

It is against this background that I approach the pleasurable task of reviewing my friend Kevin Donnelly’s latest book.  At the outset an obvious difference between the two is that Buzo wrote primarily to amuse, though he was clearly engaged emotionally with some of the issues that particularly irritated or vexed him.  

By contrast, Donnelly’s book is driven in the first instance by a kind of righteous anger about some of the delusional follies of modern thought (I use the term loosely), yet he knows how important it is to sugar the pill, charmingly and wittily.  So we’re dealing here with a serious book, a critique of modern life, couched in and relieved by some very entertaining language. 

After a foreword by Peta Credlin and the author’s own introduction, the book falls into two principal parts, the first a dictionary of 218 entries and the second a collection of seven essays on the impact of PC in various departments of our lives. 

One of the things that impressed me about the first part, the dictionary proper, was its fairness.  Entry 45 Cultural appropriation, for example, provides a definition and reports the views of individuals so crisply that, if read out of context, one would not have any sense of the writer’s own viewpoint.  132 Marriage, to my mind, was also exemplary in its statement of the current range of opinions, without overtly ruling in favour of one or the other.  The same thing may be said of the articles on Patriarchy, Safe Schools and Sexuality. 

Even-handedness is all very well, but you can’t keep it up for ever, especially in the face of the kind of mass mania that has so transformed public life.  In his long article 197 TransphobiaDonnelly can no longer contain himself: this whole gender thing is a nonsense so breathtakingly crazy as to make the Emperor’s New Clothes actually look chic, and our author doesn’t pull his punches.  There are other peculiar dogmas of our time that we might describe as self-satirising:  no effort required, just summarise them and their hilarious absurdity speaks for itself.  Good examples are 199 Trigger Warnings and 210 Whiteness.

Deliberate humour may play a secondary role in this serious work, but it’s there all the same, and in abundance.  The following entries are particularly good fun: 49 Deaf as a Post, 59 Dunny man, 113 In bed with a wog, 148 Nip in the air, 150 Non-animalist language.  

On the debit side I thought 133 Meme could have been clearer and I would like to have seen a definition of the prefix Cis-.  In origin it’s a Latin preposition meaning ‘on this side’ (its opposite is ultra) but I struggle to understand terms such as cisgender.  Perhaps that’s the point – they may not be susceptible to rational understanding.

The book’s second part, comprising essays on Political Correctness and the cultural-Left’s so-called ‘Long March through the Institutions’, nicely unites the various strands.  For me the most charming was The Past is a Foreign Country, reflections on growing up in the 50s and 60s.  The concluding essay (What’s to be done?) sadly but inevitably falls short of offering a sure remedy – apart from just mockery.  And mockery may turn out to be our best defensive weapon: after all, the mind that succumbs to PC ideas is essentially a humourless one.  It cannot bear mirth.  But the capacity to smile and laugh is one of the distinguishing marks of our humanity and in the long run, at least, it will prevail.  Johannes Leak’s splendid illustrations lend support to that campaign too.  I warmly recommend this book as a powerful aid to social recuperation!

David Daintree