Notebook
Mr Begin said last week that he sees Beirut as Berlin and the Palestine Liberation Organisation as Hitler and his henchmen hiding in the bunker. It remains to be seen whether the American plan for the evacuation of the PLO can now be suc- cessfully implemented. Others have likened Beirut to the Warsaw ghetto and the Israelis to the Nazis. Such analogies are unhelpful; Charges of anti-semitism continue to be Made against those who oppose Israeli Policy in these terms. And yet the war in Lebanon has made it easier to distinguish
it has sharpened the distinction — bet- ween anti-semitism and criticism of Israeli Policy. As Patrick Desmond writes on the following page, Mr Begin is a terrorist, and his strategy in Lebanon should be viewed in that light. (Mr Yitzhak Shamir, the Israeli foreign minister, is also a former leader of a terrorist group, the Stern Gang.) The Israel of Mr Begin is now quite different from the Israel which existed before he became prime minister. For its first 30 years the state of Israel was governed by people who con- demned the terrorist organisation, Irgun, and distrusted its leader, Mr Begin. David Ben-Gurion described the Irgun as 'the enemy of the Jewish people'. Mr Begin's nationalism is quite different from Chaim Weizmann's vision of an agrarian socialist state. To criticise Mr Begin's Israel is not to be anti-semitic; it is to be anti the influence of Mr Begin, anti-Sephardi perhaps, for the oriental Sephardi Jews are Mr Begin's strongest supporters. We shall continue to condemn anti-semitism, and also to con- demn the policies — when they call for condemnation — for which Mr Begin is responsible.
Marie Lloyd used to sing, `If you ever want to know the time, ask a police- Man'. With all the recent talk of police cor- ruption in the context of the Operation Countryman inquiry, I was amused to discover this week how that song came to be written. In the early years of this century the police at Bow Street in London used to arrest a number of well-dressed gentlemen for being drunk and disorderly. After a sobering night in the cells they were usually released — but not before they had been relieved of the waistcoat watches which they were in the habit of wearing. Since these men would have been embarrassed to admit that they had spent the night in custody, complaints of stolen property were rarely received. But the practice was com- mon enough for someone to write a lyric about it, with which Marie Lloyd would delight her Edwardian audiences. There is no new thing under the sun. It is extraordinary what some people will pay good money to do. Last Sunday, for only £290, you could have had lunch on Concorde many thousand feet above the North Sea, on a flight lasting about two hours. But do not worry if you missed it. On Saturday next week, you can take an 85-minute flight, with Concorde Club Ltd, for £299. (This is rather more than the cost of going in great luxury on the renovated Orient Express from London to Venice.) Or you can wait until 29 August and take a day trip to Israel for £897, visiting at least eight places in Jerusalem and also Bethlehem (`time permitting'). What a wonderful thing is modern travel!
The weekend before last, I spent a few hours travelling free, on a bicycle, around the lanes of east Suffolk. (The only cost was incurred by those who kindly sponsored my visits to a number of local churches, to raise money for the Suffolk Historic Churches Trust.) One of the finest churches is St Peter's, Theberton, where David Frost's rather brief marriage was solemnised. But this church has more in- teresting associations. It has a tablet to commemorate Colonel Doughty-Wylie, who was awarded a posthumous VC at Gallipoli, where a hill was named in his honour. In 1917 a Zeppelin crashed in the village, and its German crew were given a communal grave, in ground which was not consecrated until some years after the war. In the churchyard I saw a number of wine and whisky bottles buried in various places between the graves, with only their necks showing above the grass. I inquired about this seemingly unusual East Anglian burial custom, to be told that they were there 'for the moles'. The idea is that a bottle so plac- ed in a molehill will catch the wind. An eerie whistling noise is produced which, when carried down to the base of the bottle, scares the moles away. Whether they then resurface in another, quieter part of the churchyard I was not told.
There has been a predictable reaction to the disclosure by Dennis Lillee that he and Rodney Marsh, the Australian
cricketers, won £7,500 by backing England to beat Australia in the Test Match at Headingley last year. For those who may wish to be reminded, England were 176 for seven in their second innings at the time the bet was struck, and only 51 runs short of an innings defeat. The bookmakers Ladbrokes were offering 500-1 against an England vic- tory, and Lillee and Marsh staked £15 bet- ween them. This week, almost every former Australian Test cricketer seems to have made a statement deploring the wager. Of course it was unsporting, dishonourable, `shameful' (John Woodcock in The Times), not to say a fairly clear case of conflict of interest. `To back against your own side is degrading enough,' John Woodcock wrote. `When two national heroes do it ... the stomachs of every dinkum Aussie are made to turn over this despite the fact that betting in Australia is a religion.' I am not so sure. It is just because the dinkum Aussies are so obsessed by gambling that they would be likely to appreciate this sort of wager. It would be ludicrous to suggest that Lillee or Marsh would try and 'throw' the match because of such a bet. No one thought that England had the remotest chance of winn- ing; but you don't often get odds of 500-1 in a two-horse race. It was a bet for fun, nothing more; Lillee's only real mistake was to have publicly admitted to it.
Winchester College has its sexcentenary this year. I was sorry to miss the celebrations held at my old school last month, particularly as I was interested to find out what had happened to my contem- poraries, few of whom I see nowadays. To the vast majority of people — who did not benefit from a Winchester education — a Wykehamist is not a very endearing person. He is self-effacing, but complacent about his probably modest achievements; perhaps he has a job as a civil servant or in one of the professions; almost certainly he is con- sidered to be unemotional and rather dull. Sir John Betjeman has made the Wykehamist seem even less attractive: `Broad of church and broad of mind, Broad before and broad behind; A keen ecclesiologist, A rather dirty Wykehamist.' The cleaner sort of Wykehamist is a chap like Lord Bognor who, in Harold Nicolson's Some People, appears as someone who has benefited from the discipline of Winchester. It has taught him `the value of mental and moral balance'. George Lyttleton, in his published cor- respondence with Rupert Hart-Davis, asks: `Why are most of them such prigs? Cripps, Crossman, Douglas Jay all share an in- definable smugness. It [Winchester] is, I fancy, and always has been too close a com- munity, with little fresh air from outside.' It all adds up to a rather unflattering picture, but I suppose one would admit that it has the ring of truth — recognisable in many Wykehamists of one's acquaintance though not, of course, in oneself. I wonder whether the impression is still valid today.
Simon Courtauld
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