A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THERE will be general relief that the long-drawn ordeal of Nurem- berg is over at last—the end synchronising, by a strange coinci- dence, almost to an hour with the conclusion of the Peace Conference in Paris (though the Conference was not concerned, of course, with peace with Germany). Goering's suicide will secure him a halo in his own country, and seems to have won him a good deal of involuntary admiration here. The details of how the prisoners spent their last hours—volunteered, apparently, by one of the prison officials— were, I suppose, inevitable, but we could well have been spared them. And there was something utterly indecent about an interview with Frau Goering about whether she was going to retain her surname, and what she was going to tell' her child about the child's father. All this is the result, not of inherent journalistic vice, but of newspaper competition. Every paper and every news agency wants to outdo every other. Normally that is all to the good and the public is well served by it, but it may result on occasion in grave lapses from decency. Most papers would be willing to enter into a self-denying ordinance in such matters, but it would not be easy to put into clear words the heads of a reasonable agreement. It would be well worth while to attempt that, all the same. To revert to Nuremberg, the unanimity with which the House of Commons applauded the Prime Minister's assurance that there would be no film of the actual execu- tions, and his expression of his own hope that still photographs of the dead bodies would not be published, was notable and welcome.
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