A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK T HE prospect of a United Nations Conference
(it has opened at Geneva this week) on the Freedom of the Press including 67 nations, some of them represented by between thirty and forty dele- gates and advisers, is a little shattering. But it must be remembered that whereas in this country freedom of informilion, to which there is hardly any impediment at all, seems a simple matter, there is immense leeway to be made up in dozens of States in Europe and outside it. Whether it will be made up is a doubtful question. The conference will no doubt try to secure the adoption of some form of convention embodying principles which its signatories undertake to observe. What is imperative is that journalists shall have full freedom to acqUire and impart all information they consider of public interest without official interference except on such grounds as national security. Everyone will wish well to the conference, but ideas of freedom differ so radically—in the case of governments, not neces- sarily in the case of peoples—in eastern and western Europe, to say nothing of other continents, that the prospect of securing an agreed convention of any value seems remote. The head of the British delegation, Mr. Hector McNeil, Minister of State, is particularly well qualified for this particular mission, having himself been a journalist by profession.
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