ON THE FACTS so far revealed, there seems to be
something very odd about the case of Colonel Scotland. Last July the colonel's agents submitted to the War Office for clearance before publi- cation the MS of a book called The London Cage, based largely On his war-time experiences as an intelligence officer at an interrogation centre for important German prisoners of war. After several weeks the War Office informed Colonel Scot- land's agents that the book could not be published. A pro- tracted correspondence and various interviews failed +o reveal to which part of the book, or on what grounds, the War Office objected. A question in the House of Commons elicited the fact that publication of the whole would constitute a breach of the Official Secrets Act. There the matter seems to have rested until a few days ago two police officers visited Colonel Scotland's flat armed with a search warrant and confiscated all the notes and documents on which his book was based. Colonel Scotland—whose action in submitting the work for approval was entirely proper—insists that it contains nothing that is any longer secret; and if there are certain passages which the security police feel—rightly or wrongly—ought to be suppressed, it would surely have been only fair to explain their reasons to the authdr and ask him to resubmit the MS after making suitable modifications. To treat a retired officer, who was thought fit to be entrusted with secret duties-in two world wars, as though he were a purveyor of hashish or porno- graphy is surely going' rather far; and if the action taken by the security authorities is in fact less unjustifiable than it appears, it is high time they said so. They have, after all, been sitting on the MS for more than six months.
Previous page
