A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
COMPLAINTS of the censorship's excessive zeal are common enough, and natural enough, but there seem to be times when the eminent persons who conduct that institution prefer sleep to wakefulness. The Daily Mail of Wednesday gave extracts from what it reasonably enough headed " Astonishing Broadcast to America," delivered by Lord Wedgwood the evening before. Among the things Lord Wedgwood had to say were that the British Administration in Palestine " don't like Jews, and there are enough anti-Semites and crypto-Fascists still in Great Britain to back up the Hitler policy and spirit." America was invited to take over the Palestine mandate from Great Britain: " Can you take on the job from our enfeebled hands? " And so forth. Now it is all very well to listen to this kind of thing when delivered to an audience in Great Britain and comment indulgently that " We all know Jos," but to cry stinking fish in America is not a diversion calculated to cement friendship conspicuously. The censor, it appears, passed the script unaltered. The B.B.C., I am glad to see, has since admitted, and expressed regret for, its lapse.
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