Sm,—The Spectator has returned—and we are told, in an almost
casual note, that the suppression of the weekly Press by a piece of ministerial bluff "calls for the strongest protest." In the circumstances, the protest does not seem to have been very strong. Surely we might have been told: (1) if any protest was made to the Government, other than "questions" in the House of Commons, at this altogether unprecedented attack on the liberty of the Press ; (2) if The Spectator is a member of the trade association that concurred in the suppression; (3) why no protest was made in the course of the two broadcasts by the five editors. The fact that newspapers unaffected by the ban afforded you the courtesy of their columns is surely no answer to an administrative stroke that recalls one of the worst features of the totalitarian regimes of the Continent—one, moreover, that seems to add weight to the fear that "it can happen here."—Yours, &c., E. ROYSTON PIKE.
Tim berscombe, Esher.
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