The announcement that Mr. Frank Owen, editor of the Evening
Standard, was to preside at last Sunday's Trafalgar Square meeting called to demand a diversionary offensive in the interests of Russia interested me considerably, for some ten days earlier a leading military critic had said to me, "You'll find in the Evening Standard today the best statement I've seen yet of the case against a diversionary offensive. (The article in question embodied not the paper's own views, but something, if I may say so, even more authoritative, those of Igor Sikorsky, the well- known American aircraft-designer, who was emphasising the dangers of a premature offensive without overwhelming air- superiority.) But what interested me much more was the announcement that Mr. Owen did not in fact preside at the meeting because he was called up for the army. It may be no more than a coincidence that this should have happened just before the Trafalgar Square meeting was to take place, and when Lord Beaverbrook, the proprietor of the Evening Standard is absent in America, but such coincidences need watching. If the Government is sincere in saying it means to keep the newspapers going it will not start calling up their editors. There was, I believe, some oversight about applying for Mr. Owen's reser- vation, but that, of course, could be put right in Whitehall in two minutes.
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