User:Otherthinker/Joseph Gabriel Starke

Professor Joseph Gabriel Starke QC (16 November 1911—24 February 2006) was an Australian barrister and legal scholar and the last surviving member of the League of Nations secretariat.

Early life and education
Joseph Gabriel Starke was born in Perth, Western Australia on 16 November 1911 the second son of Phillip Starke a businessman of Russian origin.

Starke attended the Perth Modern School and his contemporaries included H C Coombs and Paul Hasluck. He was fluent in French and was awarded a gold medal by the Alliance Française; his facility in French was later to be a factor in his work for the Leaue of Nations.

Winning an exhibition at the age of 16, he was one of the first students to attend the University of Western Australia Law School. He was graduated Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws by the University of Western Australia. He was elected Rhodes Scholar for Western Australia in 1932.

Starke read civil law at Exeter College, University of Oxford and was graduated a Bachelor of Civil Law with first class honours and was the Viverian scholar for 1934.

League of Nations
Just before his final exams, he became ill and, after the examination period, he went to Majorca for recuperation. At the suggestion of a Polish woman author he met there, Starke went to Switzerland in 1934. He used his Vinerian scholarship for post-graduate studies at the Institute of International Studies in Geneva. Here he met an Australian historian, Duncan Hall at whose suggestion Starke joined him in the opium section of the League of Nations secretariat in 1935. Soon, he was transferred to the credentials committee which considered the recognition of the Spanish Government as a result of the [League_of_Nations#Spanish_Civil_War|military coup against the Republican government].

He then worked in the legal section until World War II ended the day-to-day activities of the League in 1940.

Whilst at the League, Starke was influenced by C. Wilfred Jenks, later to be "one of the International Labour Organisation's most distinguished directors." Joe Starke also made contact with Dr Herbert Vere Evatt "who was seeking information on minorities and human-rights questions" and conducted some research for Evatt who was then on the High Court. Starke also collaborated with Stanley Melbourne Bruce, Australia's representative to the League as High Commissioner, London. .

In 1939, he had been called to the Bar in England by the Inner Temple and he returned to London where he practised for six months before returning to Australia.

Starke was to become the last surviving member of the League of Nations' Secretariat.

Barrister
Starke went to the Sydney Bar in 1941. He was admitted to the Victorian Bar in 1943 and, in 1971, to the Australian Capital Territory Bar.

In 1943 he offered himself unsuccessfully for pre-selection as a Senate candidate for the United Australia Party in New South Wales.

Personal and family life
On 1 June 1943 at Temple Emanuel, Woollahra, NewSouth Wales, Starke married Irma Sadie Myslis of Double Bay.