The Observer's handling of figures, to which I made some
refer- ence last week, leaves me more confounded than ever. I pointed out that, in alleging that in the 30-month period January, 1947, to July, 1949, British payments out under various heads amounted to £935,000,000 against an intake from various sources of £541,000,000, the Observer had ignored altogether an intake of fully £1,000,000,000 from American, Canadian and other credits. Sir Arthur Salter made the same point in a letter which the Observer published last Sunday. The omission was tacitly omitted .and a rapid but all too patent shift of ground followed. It was never intended, the paper explains, to take everything into account, and after restating outgoings as £1,500,000,000 and intake as £1.664,000,000 it rounds off the whole with the general comment: " The fact therefore remains that the resources we have sent out of this country since the war almost exactly balance those we have received." Quite apart from the question whether a difference of a modest L164,000,000 constituteg an almost exact balance, this " since the war " (the italics were mine) is something completely new. There was not a word about it i4 the original article which dealt most specifically with the period January, 1947, to July, 1949 (except that in one case the Observer, really very disingenuously, substituted January, 1946, for January; 1947, the figures for that period suiting its argument better). 1 should, like to hear the auditors who boggled at the Overseas Food Corpors.;, tion's accounts on all this. It is no pleasure to criticise the
Observer, but figures really ought to be treated with some respect: * * * *
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