the times | Monday June 13 2022 29
Leading articles
must always take into account. Clarence House
has not denied the report, and neither has it
conveyed any conspicuous alarm at the prospect
of the prince being mired in political controversy.
The royal family and their close advisers must
be wary about a creeping politicisation of the
monarchy. Prince William crossed that boundary
in his address at the party at the palace this month,
using the jubilee celebrations to express views on
climate change. Praising the work of “visionary
environmentalists”, the Duke of Cambridge said:
“The pressing need to protect and restore our
planet has never been more urgent.”
It does not matter that the cause of environ-
mental concern is widely espoused by policy-
makers and opinion formers. The proper place for
these sentiments is in public debate, not on great
civic occasions. There is a reason for this.
Very few policy initiatives come without trade-
offs, and it is the task of elected governments to
make difficult judgments about where these
should lie. If the world is to move to a more sus-
tainable pattern of consumption, this will involve
paying more for renewable sources of energy.
There may be an overwhelming case for this, but
it would be irresponsible to maintain that there
are no costs involved. And households of modestmeans, rather than princes born to great privilege,
will be the ones making the greatest sacrifices.
William has, in the main, shown a surer touch in
his public duties than this single address suggest-
ed. His sentiments are sincerely held, but this was
still an intrusive misjudgment. His speech could
not but appear to be an exhortation at a time when
household incomes are under severe pressure.
Prince Charles gives tacit indications that as
monarch he will know to avoid controversy, but he
has not shied from it before. Some of those causes
are humanitarian and some, such as his lobbying
for homeopathy, have no merit. But both the first
and the second in line to the throne need to show
care in not using their hereditary privilege as a
pulpit.
Monarchies in Europe are scarce. Only seven
have survived continuously since 1850, and none
has done so outside Scandinavia, the Low Coun-
tries and the United Kingdom. In every case, the
royals have adapted to a purely ceremonial role.
That is much to the good. In attending both sol-
emn and joyous occasions of state, the Queen has
given a sense of historical continuity and national
cohesion. These precious intangibles will be dilut-
ed if her successors become just another type of
politician, while lacking electoral legitimacy.Officials in the purportedly independent republic
of Donetsk — in truth an outpost of Russian
imperialism — charged the men with being
mercenaries and causing the deaths of civilians.
The procedure bore all the hallmarks of a show
trial on trumped-up charges. There was no way
that this illegitimate body, in a parody of due pro-
cess, would come to a verdict based on evidence.
Both men have been in Ukraine for years, and
Aslin holds Ukrainian nationality. They were
fighting in the country’s just war of self-defence as
part of its armed forces. They were not mercenar-
ies, and it is a linguistic sleight-of-hand for Russia
to use this term in referring to Ukrainian soldiers
who are foreign nationals. They were lawful com-
batants and are entitled to the status of prisoners
of war. This provides them with protection from
prosecution for taking part in hostilities.
The laws of war provide no protection for the
conduct of war crimes but this was not the basis of
the prosecution of the two Britons, and neither is
there any suggestion that they have participated
in such actions. The charges against them appear
to have consisted entirely in their fighting as partof Ukrainian forces. Even if war crimes had
formed part of the indictment, the men would still
be entitled to a fair trial, which the illegitimate en-
tity of Donetsk demonstrably does not provide for.
It is urgent that an international campaign be
mounted to ensure that these men live. The appeal
should not be couched in the language of mercy or
clemency because the entire judicial process that
has convicted them is bogus. The men should not
have been tried in the first place, and there is a
legal obligation on the occupying Russian forces
to treat them humanely as prisoners of war.
In time, Russia’s conduct in Ukraine will itself be
judged. Its targeting of civilian centres, including
hospitals and schools, is not an accident but part of
a deliberate strategy also employed in the conflicts
in Chechnya and Syria. It may seem futile to
invoke legal criteria against Vladimir Putin’s rogue
regime, but it is vital. As the great 18th-century
Swiss theorist of international law Emmerich de
Vattel wrote: “Let us never forget that our enemies
are men.” The necessity of justice in conflict must
be upheld against those who systematically
violate the law of nations.Scientists conducting field work in the jungles
of Venezuela have found that baby parrots learn to
communicate by babbling to themselves. The
squawks, growls and whistles have no inherent
meaning but replicate the sounds the baby parrots
hear from adults and in the wild. The process is
similar to the way human babies first fit together
syllables in meaningless streams of sound.
We shouldn’t count on the prospect of a real-life
Dr Dolittle, however. Though parrots can repeat
words, they do not have the faculty of language.
Only humans, of all species, can convey an infinity
of thoughts by combining meaningless sounds toform complex grammatical units. And perhaps it
is just as well that baby parrots do not become
masters of complex grammatical rules, as even
human toddlers are.
The cat in Saki’s short story Tobermory, who is
taught to speak and then recounts the indiscre-
tions of the assembled house party, stands as an
awful warning. Scientists do not know how the
faculty of language emerged, but Charles Darwin
hypothesised plausibly that its origins were akin to
birdsong. And it is a tantalising finding that the
mechanisms by which babies learn to speak are
not unique to our species.Princely Politics
The monarchy’s resilience rests on its having adapted to a purely ceremonial role.
The Queen’s heirs should scrupulously avoid political controversy
The Queen, whose Platinum Jubilee the nation
and Commonwealth celebrated this month, be-
came yesterday the second longest-serving mon-
arch of a sovereign country in history. Only King
Louis XIV of France, who reigned from 1643 to
1715, has exceeded her longevity. She has managed
to retain popularity through immense social
changes, in part because she has stood above par-
tisan politics. It is an example that her heirs should
strive to emulate, but they risk falling short owing
to recent interventions in policy debate.
The Times reported on Saturday Prince
Charles’s criticism of the government’s plans to
send to Rwanda migrants who arrive in Britain il-
legally. “He said he thinks the government’s whole
approach is appalling. It was clear he was not im-
pressed with the government’s direction of travel,”
our source said. The prince expressed particular
discomfort about the potential for the plans to
overshadow the Commonwealth heads of govern-
ment meeting this month in Kigali, the Rwandan
capital, where he will represent the Queen.
There is no doubting the passion on either side
of the asylum issue. The prince’s trenchantly held
opinions were, to be sure, vented privately rather
than as part of a public address, but the potential
for word to get out is a factor that senior royalsShow Trial
The death sentence for two Britons fighting in Ukraine is a travesty of justice
War is brutal, but it is not limitless. That, at least,
is the obligation placed on contending parties by a
body of international humanitarian law. This
includes the Geneva conventions, setting out how
soldiers and civilians should be treated during
conflict, including the obligation to treat prisoners
of war with humanity. In its unprovoked assault on
Ukrainian cities, Russia has wantonly violated the
rule of law by deliberately targeting civilians. Its
forces and proxies have now gone a stage further
in sentencing two British men, Aiden Aslin and
Shaun Pinner, to death for fighting in Ukraine’s
armed forces.
The men have a month to appeal. If successful,
they will face 25-year jail terms. Their treatment is
a travesty of justice. If the death sentence is carried
out, it will be a war crime. The British government,
the international community and the public
should put all possible pressure on the Russian
authorities to ensure that this barbarous sentence
is revoked.
Aslin and Pinner surrendered last month in the
siege of the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, the
last stronghold of Ukrainian forces in the city.Talk Talk
Baby parrots utter nonsense sounds to themselves much as human infants do
Babies babble. Every parent notices this, and it is
an important part of child development. In his
influential book The Language Instinct, the
cognitive scientist Steven Pinker likens the
babbling to being “given a complex piece of audio
equipment bristling with unlabelled knobs and
switches but missing the instruction manual”. The
unversed user will probably fiddle the knobs
aimlessly to see what happens.
Similarly, the baby will adjust the sounds it
makes by moving its muscles, as a prerequisite of
soon replicating the speech of its parents. And
human babies are not the only species to do this.UK: Legislation to change the Northern
Ireland protocol is introduced.
Middle East: The European Commission
president begins a three-day visit.
With the naked eye
the little bird’s jerky
movements could
just be discerned
against the
backdrop of the
pebble beach, yet
through binoculars it was extremely hard to
locate. At last, there it was: a ringed plover,
moving in characteristic stop-start fashion
and searching for insects and small
crustaceans among the shingle and stones.
Then, another movement, the merest flicker:
a single downy chick was following its
parent, its body a ball of grey and white
thistledown, its feet impossibly large. Like
their cousin the lapwing, adult ringed
plovers will let a wing droop to feign injury
and lead predators away from their chicks.
melissa harrison
In 1983 the US spacecraft Pioneer 10 crossed
the orbit of Neptune to become the first
man-made object to leave the major planets
of the solar system behind.
Peter Scudamore,
pictured, eight-time
champion jockey, 64;
Ban Ki-moon, UN
secretary-general (2007-
16), 78; Dame Christine
Beasley, chief nursing
officer, Department of
Health (2004-12), 78; Kenenisa Bekele,
athlete, three-time Olympic champion in the
5,000m and 10,000m and former world-
record holder, 40; Kathy Burke, comedian,
actress, Harry Enfield and Chums (1994-98),
and theatre director, Once a Catholic (2014),
58; Mark Byford, BBC deputy director-
general (2004-11), 64; Dame Sarah
Connolly, mezzo-soprano, 59; Prof Geoffrey
Crossick, social historian, chairman, Crafts
Council, vice-chancellor, University of
London (2010-12), 76; Tim Duffy, chairman,
M&C Saatchi UK (chief executive, 2004-10),
59; Prof Janet Hemingway, entomologist,
director, Liverpool School of Tropical
Medicine (2001-19), 65; Raymond Jolliffe,
Lord Hylton, longest-serving crossbench
member of the House of Lords, 90; Dame
Brenda King, attorney-general, Northern
Ireland, 58; Lord (Tom) King of Bridgwater,
Northern Ireland secretary (1985-89),
defence secretary (1989-92), 89; Sir Clive
Lewis, lord justice of appeal, 62; Sir Li Ka-
shing, businessman, former chairman of CK
Hutchison Holdings, 94; Malcolm
McDowell, actor, A Clockwork Orange (1971),
79; Mairead McGuinness, European
commissioner for Financial Stability,
Financial Services and the Capital Markets
Union, 63; Luca de Meo, chief executive,
Renault, 55; Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director-
general, World Trade Organisation, the first
woman and the first African to serve in this
post, 68; Sir William Proby, chairman,
National Trust (2003-08), 73; Colin Skellett,
chief executive, Wessex Water, 77; Peter
Truscott, chief executive, housebuilder Crest
Nicholson, 60; Marcel Theroux, novelist,
The Paperchase (2002), 54; Roger Whiteside,
chief executive, Greggs (2013-May 2022), 64;
Sir Andreas Whittam Smith, founding
editor, The Independent (1986-94), 85.
“Courage is doing what you’re afraid to do.
There can be no courage unless you’re scared.”
Eddie Rickenbacker, American First World
War pilot, Quote Unquote (1977)
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