23 APRIL 1954, Page 6

A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK T HERE has been a good deal of

comment in London on the Daily Worker's failure, on Tuesday morning, to make any mention of Mrs. Petrov, whose adventures were given banner headlines in all the other newspapers. There was an almost exact precedent for this situation five years ago, when the destroyer Amethyst made her dramatic dash down the Yangtse to freedom. Occasions when the interests of the Cause are dramatically and conspicuously set at nought were, I should have thought, just the moments when its followers most needed up-to-the-minute guidance on the Party Line, and it seems a bit hard on the Daily Worker that the remote control of its editorial policy should work at such a laggard tempo.