• * * Both the Ministry of Information and the
B.B.C. are well aware of the danger of allowing Lord Haw-Haw's half-truths to pass without contradiction. The time factor is of great importance. If the insinuations of Hamburg meet with a rejoinder only twenty-four hours afterwards then the poison will have already begun to circulate ; the antitoxin must be injected at once. It should not be impossible to assemble a small staff of experts sufficiently informed to be in a position to reply to Lord Haw-Haw ten minutes after he has finished his talk. This rejoinder would be sent out on the Home Service between 9.5o and m.o. Mistakes and indiscretions would inevitably be made from time to time, but we must not be paralysed by terror of mistakes. As a Frenchman said to me recently: " You English are so busy taking pre- cautions that you have almost lost the art of taking risks." There are moments, even in civilian life, when one should behave like the ' Ajax ' and the ' Achilles.' Lord Haw-Haw is a pocket-battleship as dangerous as any other. * *
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