The Moment of Truth For years and years, reading interviews
in the popular Press, one has known that the people interviewed never uttered the precise words attributed to them. The visiting film-stars, the bereaved mothers, the bankrupt, noblemen, the breach of promise plaintiffs, the turbulent vicars, the sacked scientists, the eye-witnesses of disasters—something tells us that they did not say—" afterwards, over a cup of tea " or " speaking from the book-lined study of his country mansion at Uxbridge "- what the reporter says they did. They may have said some- thing like it, but there is a certain patness, an air of prefabri- cation, about the statements attributed to them which smacks, at best, of embroidery. All honour, therefore, to the Daily Express for breaking with a tradition which it has done so much to foster and reporting last week with pellucid and unques- tionable accuracy the words in which Lady Violet Bonham- Carter responded to the newspaper's request for a statement about Mrs. Maclean. They were: " Nothing would induce me to say a word. I loathe the Daily Express."
Previous page
