Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Politikistoj-humoristoj-esperantistoj

Cxu vi konas humoran politikiston/diplomaton esperantistan? Mi persone konatigxis kun Ambasadoro Ralph Harry kaj Urbestro Jay Tilleman Williams sed nur la unua skribis libron humoran: 
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10060805-the-diplomat-who-laughed 
 
Cxe la fino de la artikolo oni vidas ke la libro estas trovebla cxe la reto...cxu en la angla...Estas ankau' Esperanto eldono: La Diplomato kiu Ridis.  Sed la ligilo ne funkcias nun.
Jen la plej longa biografio de Ralph Harry, skribata de la filo, John Harry.

Benign master of diplomacy

October 24 2002

Ralph Harry helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and wrote the first draft of the ANZUS treaty.
Ralph Lindsay Harry, AC, CBE Australian diplomat 1917-2002
"Fifty years ago a young Mr Ralph Harry sat down with the NATO Treaty and quietly drafted what was to become the ANZUS Treaty," began a story in The Financial Review September last year. By then Ralph Harry was 84 and the last living member of the group of diplomats and politicians who negotiated ANZUS.
The Department of Foreign Affairs was launching a volume of ANZUS documents and the man whom The Financial Review called "the unsung hero of the ANZUS pact" was guest of honour. He explained that, using the NATO treaty as a guideline for what he thought Australia would be able to get away with, he wrote the ANZUS Treaty and then set it aside.
The documents, continued The Financial Review, "record that after returning from talks with the US representative, Mr John Foster Dulles, the then secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Mr Alan Watt, said in Mr Harry's presence that the US was prepared to look at a draft.
"'What a pity we don't have a draft. I think we could be in business,' Mr Watt had said. At this point Mr Harry produced his draft, like the proverbial rabbit from a hat. The rest, as they say, is history."
Harry, who has died aged 85, was recognised by his peers and political masters as a consummate professional diplomat with a mastery of the conventions and methods of diplomacy and politics. Having acted for a period as director of ASIS, he was also known as a skilled intelligence analyst and cryptographer. Little escaped his gaze and, to the discomfiture of many, nothing he observed was ever forgotten.

Underlying these formidable formal skills, however, was a life-long emotional commitment to the betterment of his fellow men and women through the promotion of international law and institutions. There was little he did or said that did not have this aim.
Ralph Lindsay Harry was born in Geelong, Victoria, on March 10, 1917, the youngest of four children - his siblings were Egbert, Millicent and Marjorie - of Arthur Hartley Harry and the former Ethel Roby Holder.
Arthur Harry was at the time a senior classics master at Geelong College, one of Victoria's oldest and finest public schools. The family's circumstances were modest and Harry was brought up to be frugal, reticent and hardworking, with a reverence for academic achievement and the value of education.
Harry's father moved to Launceston in 1922 to become classics master, then headmaster, of Launceston Grammar School. He wanted to build a house for his family in Launceston; the family in the meantime went to Adelaide to live with Ethel's mother, Lady Holder, the widow of Sir Frederick Holder. Sir Frederick was a journalist and preacher who became premier of South Australia and, as a consequence of his deep involvement in the federal movement in Australia, was appointed speaker of the first federal parliament in 1901. He died suddenly during a parliamentary debate in 1909.
He was to become the most prominent role model in Ralph Harry's life. Harry attributed his commitment to public service to his grandfather's example of tireless commitment to church and state and was, throughout his life, proud of all that Holder had achieved.
The family was reunited in 1923 after the completion of Arthur's house in Mowbray Heights, on the banks of the Tamar River. Harry became a student at Launceston Grammar School in 1924 and was dux of his class in each of his years there. He also represented his school in football and athletics.
Although Harry was a brilliant mathematician, his father's poor financial situation, and the bursaries that classics distinctions provided, required him to follow the non-science stream. Another result of his family's straitened circumstances was poor early nutrition, which badly affected his eyesight.
Harry left school in 1934 after receiving the school's award for the best all-round scholar, sportsman and leader, and a general university scholarship. He sat for the Commonwealth Public Service exam and came first in Tasmania and second in Australia.
During his undergraduate studies in law he worked as a clerk in the Hobart ordnance stores. He also became deeply involved in the Presbyterian church and the Australian Christian Students' movement, and was a member of the University Student Representative Council.
Harry graduated with first-class honours in law in 1938 and was awarded the Tasmanian Rhodes Scholarship. He arrived in Oxford to undertake his BA in early 1939, after working his way to England in a cargo boat.
As a Rhodes scholar, Harry was expected to contribute to the sporting life of the college and found his niche in rowing. He became captain of boats at Lincoln and was invited to trial for the Oxford blue boat, but declined. With the onset of war in Europe increasingly likely, he wanted to concentrate on finishing his degree.
Harry made a quick visit to Amsterdam and The Hague in the summer of 1939 for a World Christian Youth Movement congress and was there when Germany invaded Poland. In letters to his family, he recounted how he had stood in the deserted Hall of Justice of the Palace of Peace, established after the 1914-18 war. It was August 29, 1939, the day on which the Dutch government mobilised its armed forces, and he swore that, "I, for one, would not lose faith in the ultimate triumph of peace and justice for which the Palace of Peace has been, and shall again be, in the centre."
He spent the rest of his life working to realise that ideal. He maintained a profound belief in the banishment of all forms of war, poverty and oppression, but rather than simply state high principle, he recognised the need to devote himself to specific spheres where he felt able to make a change.
These included the promotion of collective security between nations through the UN, the foundation and development of regional groupings in the economic and security area, the development and enforcement of international law, particularly in trade, the rights of refugees and human rights and the promotion of education. He was always willing to consider new and radical ideas.
Harry completed his degree in 1940 and after an unsuccessful attempt to join the British army returned to Australia to join the recently formed Department of External Affairs. In 1942, he joined the AIF, in which he served as an officer and intelligence analyst until 1943, mostly in New Guinea. He was then recalled to the department to be posted to the Australian High Commission in Ottawa, Canada, where he worked from 1943 to 1945.
In 1945 the San Francisco Conference was convened to agree on the Charter for the United Nations. Harry was attached to the Australian delegation, led by Dr H.V. ("Doc") Evatt and participated in the processes by which the UN was formed. In 1948 he became an Australian delegate to the UN - that same year Evatt was elected president of the UN General Assembly.
During this seminal period, Harry worked on the establishment and development of the International Atomic Energy Commission; weapons disarmament in the UN Commission for Conventional Armaments; the establishment, on behalf of Australia, of the US-Australia Air Transportation Agreement, under which Australia was granted the air routes to North America now enjoyed by Qantas; the deliberations on the formation of the state of Israel and the UN Commission on Human Rights, chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt.
Harry's proudest accomplishments were his substantial contribution, in the UN commission, to the drafting and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and his role in persuading the United States to make available to Australia, and a small group of other nations, radio-isotopes for medical research and clinical application. All of this was achieved while he was barely 30 years old.
After a further period in the Australian embassy in Washington, DC, he returned to Canberra in 1949. The following few years saw intense activity in Australian foreign affairs. Decolonisation and independence had arrived in India, Pakistan, Ceylon, Burma and Indonesia; the communist revolution occurred in China in 1949; war in Korea broke out in 1950 and French control in Indochina was being disputed. Percy Spender, Australia's minister for external affairs from 1949-51, promoted the need for a strategic alliance between the US and Australia and Harry was co-opted into his negotiating team with instructions to prepare the first draft of the ANZUS treaty. After intensive negotiation the treaty was signed in September 1951 and remains one of the underpinnings of Australia's security and defence position.
Harry's first diplomatic mission was as consul-general and UN representative in Geneva from 1953-56, followed by his appointment as Australian commissioner in Singapore from 1956-57.
In 1957, on the basis of his intelligence work in the AIF and external affairs, Harry was asked by Richard (later Lord) Casey, who had succeeded Spender as minister for external affairs, to investigate and report on the structure and operation of the recently formed Australian Security Intelligence Service (ASIS). He moved to Melbourne late in 1957 to begin work on the report, which recommended substantial changes in the financing, operating structure and accountability of the service. He agreed to replace the then director, Alfred Brookes, and to remain director during the reconstruction period. He completed his term in 1960.
Such was his concern for the security of ASIS that his connection with it was only revealed with the publication in 1989 of the book Oyster, an expose by Brian Toohey and William Pinwill of the Australian security intelligence apparatus. Not even his family had been aware of his involvement and he kept no records of ASIS in his personal papers, unlike Casey, who maintained an extensive political diary of his intelligence involvement.
From 1960 until his retirement in 1978 Harry continued to serve Australia with distinction in many senior posts. He led Australia's delegations to many UN conferences including those on labour, health, trade and development and economics.
He also led Australia's delegation to the Third UN conference on the Law of the Sea which resulted in the adoption of a wholly revised Convention on the Law of the Sea. In that conference he became the chairman of the committee on dispute resolution and played a decisive role in the success of the treaty negotiation. He was also given responsibility within the Department of Foreign Affairs (as it had become) for the management of Australia's Antarctic policy and treaty relationships.
Harry was Australia's ambassador to Belgium and the European Community from 1965-68; to South Vietnam during the war years of 1968-70; to the Federal Republic of Germany from 1971-75, and to the UN as Australia's permanent representative from 1975-78.
After his retirement he was invited by Sir Garfield Barwick to become the director of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, and served in that role until 1981. He was appointed CBE in 1963 and AC in 1980.
Throughout his life Harry maintained an interest in the international language Esperanto. Ignoring the sceptics - including those in his own family - he was an active evangelist for the Esperanto cause, and a prolific Esperanto writer, conference-goer, lexicographer, translator and administrator. He was a committed promoter of the potential of an international language to bring down the barriers of suspicion and intolerance between nations.
He wrote several books on Esperanto, as well as The Diplomat Who Laughed (1983), his first book, which he hoped would "do something to combat the peril of beastly seriousness in the diplomacy of the '80s", The North Was Always Near (1995) and No Man Is a Hero (1997).
Harry was curious, careful, kindly and studious. He was a fine bridge player, a keen gardener, cook and preserver, as well as a passionate devotee of cryptic crosswords and mathematical puzzles. He continued to follow international affairs and was regularly consulted on the history of Australian diplomacy and foreign affairs.
Harry's wife Elsie died in 1994. He is survived by his three children, John Harry, Penny Clarey and Virginia Braden Woolley and their families.
John Harry

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