* * * The degeneration of the B.B.C. news bulletins
is progressive and deplorable. That the news service is being deliberately used by the Ministry of Information for disguised propaganda I hesitate to believe. It would be little to the credit of the Ministry to be responsible, for example, for the cheap jibes at the expense of the enemy by which the news service now so regularly and so unworthily distinguishes itself. Its sarcasms and inflexions, moreover, are very definitely mischievous, in that by imputation and inference they ascribe to the Government a Policy which there is fortunately every reason to believe the Government would repudiate. Is it true, to take the most salient instance, that the R.A.F. is concerned solely with mili- tary objectives in Germany? That, it has always been under- stood, was the policy of the Air Ministry and the Cabinet. If so, what is to be said of the announcement that Coventry would hear with special gratification of the latest heavy raid by the R.A.F. on Hamburg? Is that really what the stricken city wants to hear? I don't know, and I take leave to doubt whether the B.B.C. knows either. But if we have now em- barked on a policy of reprisals let us be told so by the Prime Minister or the Secretary for Air, not have it unofficially but all too plainly hinted by some B.B.C. announcer.
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