IN HIS LETTER to the editor this week, the editor
of the Daily Express refers to 'our good relations with the Security authorities.' The reason, I sus- pect, why Fleet Street so rarely attacks the whole ridiculous Security system in this country is that the man they deal with—the man to whom stories are submitted, and by whom they are approved —is so charming and popular that nobody would wish him ill (much the same is true of theatre censorship, in relation to the present Lord Chamberlain). But things have come to a fine pass, I would have said, when an editor actually boasts of his newspaper's good relations with a body whose operations would constitute a serious threat to the freedom of the press, were they not so often so patently ridiculous—as, for example, they were over the story of the Dam-Busters; and as they have been recently over the towers at Hatfield. This is not to suggest that there is no longer any need at all for Security; my point simply that it has extended its tentacles far farther than is now necessary, and is reluctant ki with- draw them. Had a less agreeable man been appointed to handle press relations, I suspect that its pretensions would long ago have been firmly dealt with.
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