27 OCTOBER 1944, Page 4

Government Departments—their ways. Apropos of my reference last week to

the Irishman in the last war who made money by laying mines for the Germans while his brother made money. fishing them up again for the English—just like Government Departments— a reader not unknown in the publishing world writes that there is plenty of truth in the jest. In the last war (while the Irish brethren were doing well with their mines) he published a review which one Government Department helped to finance, while another silentlY seized and destroyed all the copies it could find. That was what

happened then. Could it conceivably happen now? JANts.