25 SEPTEMBER 1953, Page 6

A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

THE va et vient of the past few days has almost reduced the Iron Curtain to the status of a bedroom door in a French farce. Hardly has it closed on Mrs. Maclean when a Korean pilot pops through it, followed—according to rumours which seem to tax even American credulity—by M. Beria. As I walked back from luncheon I was trying to fit these engrossing developments into the sort of pattern for which we commentators have a weakness when I saw Marshal Stalin getting into a taxi outside a pet-shop and thought it wiser to abandon this particular form of_mental effort.