A Spectator's Notebook
OF THE discussions on the Wolfen- den Report in the press and on the air, that put out by Granada the day after the Report appeared was much the sanest—in spite of the incoherent discussion at the close, in which Mrs. Jean Mann contrived not only to look like one of those advertisements for Mazawattee Tea, but also to sound 'as eminently Victorian. The most lunatic commen- tary on the Report, by the same token, appeared in the Daily Mail. I am gradually being forced to the conclusion that nobody in the Mail ever pokes his nose outside Fleet Street; never, I fancy, was a popular newspaper so completely insulated from the facts of life. It imagined, until the Altrincham affair blew the gaff, that its readers would not tolerate criticism of the Queen; and to judge by its Wolfenden leader, it appears to believe that they are still living under the spell of James Douglas—that their spiritual adviser is Mr. John Gordon. The Report, the leader said, 'should not prevent the country from saying that it will have nothing to do with proposals consent- ing to legalised degradation in our midst.' Coming from the Mail, which had been wallowing in the Confidential case, and whose stock-in-trade is stories of vice and crime, that is good.
IN ALL SERIOUSNESS, the Express gave these two quotations from 'a sample survey' of MPs' reactions to the Report :
Dr. Reginald Bennett (Gosport): There is no point in making it an offence in any circum- stances if it is going to be legal for older people.
Brigadier 0. L. Prior-Palmer (Worthing): When divorce was made easier there were more divorces.
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