11 MARCH 1955, Page 5

TREASON?

THE Attorney-General's remark in the Commons this week, that it should not be assumed that if Winnington and Shapiro, the two Daily Worker correspondents, returned to this country the arm of the law would be too short to reach them, has a sound legal basis. The question of whether North Koreans were the Queen's enemies is one of fact and does not depend on the existence of any declaration of war, still less on whether the North Korean State was a recognised legal entity. There may be a subtle distinction between a de jure war and a de facto war for some purposes; but from the point of view of the English criminal law a war is a war and those who give aid and comfort to people who are fighting against Her Majesty's Forces are traitors.