25 NOVEMBER 1949, Page 5

Mr. Dalton is the latest Minister to sink to the

silly recreation of gibing at the Press. It might have been supposed that his own contact with the Press on one notorious occasion would teach him some discretion in that field at any rate. But no. "The Press," he told a Darlington audience on Sunday, in now familiar jargon, "speaks for its plutocratic paymasters. It is not representative. What you read in the editorial columns and the tendentiously selective headlines is not the truth ; it is the gloss on the truth which it is convenient for the proprietors to put across." And so on, down to "Mr. Gladstone (or perhaps it was Mr. Bright) said that the platform will always beat the Press, and I believe it is so." It depends, I suggest, who is on the platform. Not all Chancellors of the Exchequer have been Gladstones.