The man who is not afraid of danger is not a hero, but a psychopath.

Australia objects to the mini-skirt not on moral but on economic grounds. Australians are no prudes and the lovely, healthy, sporty Australian girls have no reason to hide their knees and thighs. However, the mini-skirt is disastrous for the wool-trade.

Was he joking? Was he being sarcastic? Aggressive? Impertinent? Or just courteous? There was no telling from his impassive face. What a country, he thought despairingly. In Russia you always knew. If a man made a stern face he was threatening; if he was laughing uproariously, he was joking.

When a wicked and unworthy subject annoyed the Sultan of Turkey or the Czar of Russia, he had his head cut of without much ceremony; but when the same happened in England, the monarch declared : "We are not amused".

Long before the word Zionism was uttered for the first time, old religious Jews came from all over the world to die in Jerusalem. It is the finest place to die in - it has always been acknowledged. It has a joie de mourir quite its own.

The Art of Conversation could not die in Australia; it never lived. Television did not kill it; there was nothing there to kill.

There are many non-intellectual countries; Australia is one of the few anti-intellectual ones.