GOVERNMENT AND PRESS
Snt,—The realistically unhysterical attitude of your leading article, "Government and Press," is welcome and timely. Too frequently such comments can be roughly divided into two unhelpful classes: those coming from sources which regard all cases like the warning to the Daily Mirror to be heinous contraventions of Press freedom and crystal-clear proof of arbitrary Government action ; a,1 those com- ments, gently worded and idealistically intentioned, which hardly seem to take into account the exigencies of this present war. The point sorely required making that "To assume that whenever a Government takes action against a paper the Government must necessarily be wrong is to obliterate all distinction between liberty and licence." In my first category would go the letter concerning the Daily Worker in which your correspondent surprisingly asserts that the Worker would have a "tremendous influence among the workers." To write in such a fiercely dishonest way is mischievously foolish. The question is simply, as you say, "Whether after fourteen months' suppression the suspension of the Daily Worker should be perpetual." It seems to me that any intelligent person is bound to wonder uneasily whether our traditions of Press freedom cover any • manner or degree of newspaper irresponsibility, and even if they do whether we can afford in present circumstances stubbornly to defend them at the possible risk of losing the war.—Yours, &c.,
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