An authentic explanation of a phrase in current usage is
always welcome. One of the memories that might have been revived when Lord Riddell died the other day was the so-called troupe of " trained seals " collected round him when he " liaisoned " between the British Delegation and the Press at the Washington Naval• Conference in 1921. The term, apparently of American, coinage, sprang into currency without any obvious authorship, and I always imagined it applied to the correspondents (quorum pars baud magna fui) as a whole. Not so, it appears. There is a distinction. The New York correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, describ- ing the impressive array of novelists, film authors and others detailed to report the Hauptmann trial for various papers, adds, " these temporary journalists are universally' called ' trained seals ' by working newspapermen because they must be fed with news by hand, as a trainer gives bits of fish to performing seals in a music-hall." So- there it is. Lord Riddell certainly bestowed his piscatorial fragments with a lavish hand.
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