More generally, Quadrant became a rallying point for Australian intellectuals who rejected the prevailing leftism and the perverse but comfortable notion that principled liberalism required an anti-anticommunist posture. Around it grew a pattern of activity involving seminars and lectures and dinners and committee meetings—as well as close friendships and intense rivalries. (When it was eventually disclosed in the 1960s that the Paris congress, and through it the Australian association of Quadrant, had been funded secretly by the CIA, our general inclination was not to condemn but to congratulate the CIA for having been smart enough to give us the wherewithal to do what we wanted to do in any case—and then not to interfere or to impose conditions. The secrecy was regrettable, but we didn’t live in a perfect world and it had been a condition for the thing being done at all.)