A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK R. MORRISON no doubt knows what will
go down with his constituents at Lewisham, but I doubt whether his strictures on the British Press in connection with the European Assembly at Strasbourg will much impress wider circles. Mr. Morrison, of course, does not like the Press. He would, no doubt, protest on occasion that he loves it, but his attitude in the debate on the appointment of the Royal Com- mission on the Press (which gave the Press so much better a character than Mr. Morrison meant it to have) was decisively revealing. His complaint now is that British newspapers misrepre- sented the attitude of the Labour section of the British delegation at Strasbourg. In particular it misrepresented "a conversation in which I was scrupulously polite and Mr. Churchill was not." But suppose Mr. Churchill's version is "a conversation in
which I was scrupulously polite and Mr. Morrison was not "; which shall the world believe ? That perhaps in reality matters very little. What is interesting is Mr. Morrison's present attitude towards Stras- bourg. The Labour Party was notoriously tepid beforehand about the whole business, and the speeches from British Government speakers at the Assembly itself do not seem to have convinced other delegations of their enthusiasm. In the same issue of Tuesday's Manchester Guardian which reported Mr. Morrison's speech at Lewisham I note a passage (in an article on France and Germany) recording the general disappointment of the French at "what they felt was Britain's lukewarm support of the Council of Europe. Many Frenchmen had seen the Council of Europe as affording the only solution to the German problem. They found neither acceptance of their view amofig the British Labour representatives at Strasbourg nor any readiness to give the authority and powers to the Council which would enable it to attempt a solution such as they envisaged." I hope the French are wrong ; but I am not very sure that they are.
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