If the Ministry of Information has not in fact committed
a deplorable gaffe in the matter of its "Butter for Goering" communication to the Press, it is highly desirable that it should make that clear, for on the face of it the affair looks singularly unfortunate. On October 5th, on the strength of information supplied by, and publicly attributed to, the Ministry, the daily Press in this country displayed prominently, with appropriately cynical comment, a statement to the effect that while Marshal Goering was telling the Germans they could not have both guns and butter, he him- self, Dr. Goebbels, and other Nazi leaders, had been receiving every week parcels of Danish butter from a Bradford wool firm. Why, if they wanted Danish butter, they did not get it from Denmark was not quite clear, but it was incredible that the Ministry of Information would ever dream of launching such a story on the world without making sure of its accuracy in every detail. And there was, in fact, abundant detail. The name of the exporter, Mr. Arthur Hentzen, the method and route of transport, and much else, were given. But now in The Times appears a long statement by Mr. Hentzen, agreeing that he did, quite openly and with no sort of impropriety, send parcels—nine parcels—of butter weekly to Germany to personal friendi and to a couple of civil servants, one of whom happened to be called Goering, but was quite certainly not Field-Marshal Goering. None of them seems to happen to be called Goebbels. Mr. Hentzen alleges that when he called, by appointment, at the Ministry of Information to present the facts he was not received. The Ministry may have a good answer to all this. If so, it is high time we heard it.
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