A Spectator's Notebook

When. Isaw that Nixon had decided to offer an edited version of a transcript of the Watergate tapes, a bell rang. The President tried cl:esperately to come to terms with the Senate investigating committee by agreeing to Provide Senator Ervin's committee with a written summary of the evidence on the tapes. If Nixon was willing to do this, why had he been so reluctant to release the relevant tapes themselves? I now ,remember two or three Americans — Nixon men at the time — Who said that the real reason why he could never have the tapes played was nothing to do With the security considerations or high-flown Matters of presidential privilege. It was, instead, the vast amount of bad language on them, This strikes me as an entirely plausible heXplanation. The greatest affairs of state can

ang upon such apparently flimsy reckonings. If it is true that Nixon fought to preserve the Privacy of aretapes to keep from the American public knowledge of the language

habitt.olly uses about politics and poll!icians, then he may well have been wise to issue a blue-pencilled version to the Senate committee. The American public, which has PUt up with all the terrible revelations of Political and financial corruption surrounding the presidency, may have refused to put up With a President whose language would shock every God-fearing household in the country.

illuest language At the weekend I listened to a conversation ,,hetween an English lawyer soon to visit New rork and a Manhattan businessman of Irishbemocratic Boston, Massachusetts origins. The Englishman was coolly — very coolly — saying that he found nothing exceptionally odd or outrageous jn Nixon's behaviour, that American politicians — and indeed all politicians—had been doing those kinds of thing ever since politics was politics and politicians were politicians, and that as far as corruption Went the Ted Kennedy who cheated at exams and panicked, if not worse, at Chappaquidick was no better than Nixon. , This was too much altogether for the 8os?n Irish-American from Manhattan, who blew up with as splendidly vituperant a piece Of anti-Nixon invective as I have yet heard, sustaining a flow of the bluest language such 4s Nixon — or LBJ, who was no mean practitioner in this regard — could never have equalled, the gist of which was that Nixon was worse than Genghis Khan. At the end of it I said, "But you can't get rid of Nixon. That's the trouble. Whichever of You is right, it is obvious the United States Would be better off without him. The constitution is no good. Or it isn't worked. If Congress used its powers to withhold funds, then it could get rid of him without im'leaching him." , The English lawyer and the Manhattan nusinessman agreed with my notion, although Personally I do not think it holds water. But certainly there ought to be a swift and relatively painle(Way of getting rid of a Nixon.

issingei, perhaps

Can there have been a, recent time when the World's leaders have been more lacking in Moral authority and weight than they are now? Brezhnev persecutes Russia's dissident ntellectuals. Nixon is straw. Chairman Mao,

we presume, is moribund. The Europeans haggle constantly among themselves and with the world outside. Is there even a sufficient diplomatic skill to hand? No name springs readily to mind. The United Nations is a talking-shop in which no one pays attention. What hope is there? There are no sound grounds for hope of a lasting peace. What glimmerings of light, then?

Precious little. Kissinger, perhaps.

Our own Sir Alec, as honest broker? Regretttably, not a chance that I can see. The Israelis do not trust the Foreign Office, which is still affected by fond remembrances of its old Arabist yearnings. Indeed, who does trust the Foreign Office, as opposed to the Foreign Secretary, and apart, of course, from its masters in the Elysee and the Quai d'Orsay?

Stickless in Westminster

Harold Lever is recovering well from his stroke, as those who have seen him lately will realise. His intellectual vigour is as great as ever — shown by his virtuosity in arranging the swift dispatch of funds to Israel: no 'even-handedness' about the Treasury's permission, whatever the Foreign Office may be doing about arms. He uses a stick, however, to get about. He was sitting in the Commons, his stick beside him, when John Cronin. the Labour MP for Loughborough, came up and joined him. tronin is a consultant surgeon, at fifty-seven a couple of years younger than Lever. He is one of that quite large group of members confidently regarded by their colleagues as those who dye their hair. Cronin, so I am told, was so incensed at Harold's use of a stick, that he seized it, took it between his hands, brought it down over his knee, and broke it. He then walked away, leaving Harold Lever astounded and stickless in Westminster.

Secret of death?

I commend Dr Bernard Dixon's science column on page 543 this week, in which pays tribute to the courage of a scientist in drawing attention to the potential danger of his work. The Medical Research Council's molecular biology research establishment at Cambridge, sited alongside the new Addenbrooke's Hospital is one of the most scrupulous and favoured of all laboratories. It was here that the so-called "secret of life," the double helix structure of the genetic determining DNA, was worked out. Several Nobel prize winners work there. It is often thought that if cancer is to be defeated, it will be defeated through the fundamental molecular biology research being undertaken there. Now, it is suggested by Dr Edward Ziff, an American in Cambridge, that some of the work being done may increase, not decrease, the risks of cancer. Genetic engineering may be able to produce DNA hybrids which could permit the transmission of viruses causing cancer in animals to man. For a more expert summary than I am capable of, see Dr Dixon. For Dr Ziff's own warning, see this week's Neu, Scientist, which Dr Dixon edits.

Nicholas Tomalin — journalist's journalist

Nick Tomalin was the first of my friends to be killed in action. I have been acquainted with several reporters and photographers who have lost their lives covering wars and riots and disorders, but none was a friend away from the stories and the foreign bars. Nick was, and when my wife telephoned me at the office with the news I was shocked and grieved. He was one of us, and one of the best of us as well.

I suppose the brilliant and sympathetic way he disentangled Donald Crowhurst's tragic voyage was his best piece of work; but the fact is that he was incapable of going anywhere or handling any story without distinctiveness; and Usually he handled assignments with distinction. He would not have

taken it amiss, I think, to be described as a•journalist's journalist.

He was often in the public eye, but he preserved intact the privacy of his own life. In this, as in other ways such as his keen in telligence and absence of false self-conceit, he was the antithesis of the 'show-business' type

of journalist personality. What he exhibited in public was his work, no more, no less. He did not put himself up for exhibition. This, I think, gave his best stuff a decent solidity. He was, of course, very much part of the fashionable NW1 scene, the. life as recorded by Mark Boxer in the Marc cartoon in the Times. But he was a good deal more than this. Harry Evans, his editor, quotes in the Sunday Times Nick's celebrated crack, "The only qualities ,essential for real success in journalism are ratlike cunning, a plausible manner, and a little literary ability". He had these — indeed he had more than a little literary ability — but he also had something else: distance, perhaps, an ability to stand back and see things for what they were without utterly despising the people who had made them that way.

He preserved within himself a kernel of identity which he would never give up or away. He came initially from immigrant stock: his grandfather, I think it was, came here as a refugee and made a fortune founding the Jaeger woollens firm. Nick was never sure how Jewish he was, and he had the kind of honesty that would recognise this, admit it and talk about it. It is awful that he died violently and too early by far, in a foreign place; but in its way it is something that he died immediately and in the company of

Israeli soldiers. He leaves his wife. Claire — novel-reviewer for the Observer — four children, and friends. He leaves us indelibly stained with his vivid memory.