Spurling's article under the above title provokes me to ask
why it is that, if the facts he relates have been so for the last ten years, they have not hitherto been expressed in the press.
One of the main purposes of a free press in a democratic country is to discover scandals and to expose them. Either those who control our news- papers were unaware of what was happening, or else they lacked the courage to expose it. In either case they were failing in their duty.
It is untrue to say that journalists are impeded by the laws of libel. Twenty years ago t was a pupil at the Bar in chambers where they specialised in libel cases, and certain popular and hard-hitting papers were seldom not engaged in defending actions for libel so far as t could see. Yet they were none the worse for it, although the law was rather less favourable to such defendants then than it is now. If a newspaper confines itself to facts that it can prove, and expresses them accurately and fairly, it has little to fear.
Junior Carlton Club. Pall Mall, SW I R. L. TRAVERS
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