A Spectator's Notebook
ON ANOTHER PACE Brian Inglis has contributed an article on the Black Diaries of Sir Roger Casement. In order to write this article, he has, I think, in- fringed the Official Secrets Act—simply by reading the aarmel•■•••■•••••• latest book on the subject which is freely published in English in France. Under Section 2 (2) of the 1911 Act, he seems to have been guilty of 'receiving' prohibited infor- mation, since he certainly knew that the diaries were covered by the Act, and to receive such information knowingly is an offence. Any Case- ment expert, like Inglis or Rend MacColl, would naturally not miss the chance of examining this book, yet by the fiat of the Home Office, which will answer no questions and supply no reasons to justify its action, the book is apparently forever to be forbidden reading matter for any British subject. It would be difficult, I feel, to find a more damning demonstration of the absurdity of the whole Act than the Home Office's insistence on regarding these fifty-year-old diaries as docu- ments as vital to the safety of the realm as any H-bomb blue print. * *
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