Ai-xi-mum the reddest face in Fleet Street on Tuesday was
The Times's, I fancy that all the newspapers blushed—or if they did not, they °light to have. Here was a major political crisis, which had blown up in full view of the political correspondents (emergency Cabinet meetings had made it obvious there must be trouble of some kind); but only one 'correspondent, Guy Eden, of the Daily Sketch, had thought it worth his while to put two and two together to make minus one ('sharp divisions could Jead to at least one resignation'); and he had no idea of what the crisis was all about—the five possible causes of the row which he mentioned were wildly off the mark. I cannot help thinking that this is only another indication of the way in which editors have lost touch with the outside world. The editor of today is a cypher; the names of two of them only are known outside Fleet Street—Sir William Haley and Hugh Cudlipp of the Mirror; and the others, I imagine, are as little known to Ministers as they are to the public. The News Chronicle does not even bother to have an editor. This may account for its lamentable performance, trying to explain the resignations the next morn- ing; but to judge by the newspapers' failure to diagnose the flight of straws in the wind, others might follow the Chronicle's example without much loss.
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