A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THE Daily Express started the week by announcing, under a headline, " The Press is in Danger," that the Government's policy over newsprint will--if there is a further cut in the allocation to newspapers—mean censorship. It expanded this into " Censorship of the right to report the proceedings of Parliament. Censorship of the duty to report the course of justice. Censorship of the need to report the world crisis emerging from the Korean battle. Censor- ship of opinion." I don't know how you censor a duty or for that matter how you censor a need, but the pardonably overwrought prose made the Express's meaning clear enough. I can't help feel- ing, however, that Monday morning's issue was not the one in which to be quite so organ-mouthed. The only reference I could find to he course of justice was a story—headed " David Niven Clashes • ith Fellow-Judges : Should the Girls Wear a Hat ? "—which, with wo generous pictures to illustrate it, filled nearly two-thirds of the itorial space on page 3 ; it gave a round-by-round account of he Daily Express Holiday Fashion Parade at Folkestone. Two ther photographs, on pp. 2 and 5, occupied between them rather ore space than " The Spectator's Notebook " does ; one was aptioned " U.S. Heiress Weds Negro Social Worker," the other ' Sunday Tennis for a Countess-to-be." I am sure that Lord Beaver- ook takes the world crisis very seriously, and I would like to tsualise the whole staff of the Daily Express worrying themselves ick over how to find space for all its many implications. But hen I try to do this, it is no good ; I only get a blurred, transient • ision of Miss Barbara Goalen wearing a small but hideous hat nd projecting towards deep mid-wicket a long, cool, vacuous tare.
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