IN THE MATTER of Burgess and Maclean the good sense
of Ministers continues steadfastly to abandon them. Lord Read- ing, replying for the Government in the House of Lords debate on Tuesday, referred acidly to the people who had been dining out freely on reminiscences of all they knew about the two men • in the days when they were still in the Foreign Office. 'It would have been much more in the public interest,' he said. `if those people had come forward and told the Foreign Office during the time when that information could have been put to proper use.' It is all very well to issue a general invitation to informers, but what would they actually think in the Foreign Office, or any other office, about a letter like this? : To the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. .
DEAR SIR,
Mr. Bingo, who is employed in your office, came to dine with me yesterday evening. In the course of the evening he not only became decidedly drunk, but, on leaving the house, tripped over the cat. He then embraced me effusively, greatly to my wife's, and my own, annoyance. Other people who know Mr. Bingo inform me that he has indulged in this kind of behaviour many times in the past. I have further made it my duty to ascertain from the barman at my club, of which' Mr. Bingo is also a member, that Mr. Bingo not uncommonly consumes as many as four glasses of gin and tonic before a meal.
I trust you will put this information to proper use.
I am, etc.,
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