◆ SpookStack

Share | _, Of the “ib seems, suilt HE Foreign Office deserves every bit af the drubbing it is ; now receiving over the Burgess-Maciean scandal. But it. should not stand alone in the dock. Why exonerate the de. gooders who helped jo prolong the conspiracy silence, ?.,.Why charge t bureaucrats and let the bulnblers go? on't lets forget the self-appointed arbiters of *“ehod taste” in the news- papers. Always, always remember the champions of Melinda Maclean. For thelr example carries a Tearful warning to all who love liberty. Fourteen. months after the diplomats disappeared —the- Sunday Obpserver printed a virulent attack on newspapers which, It complained, had been invading Mrs, Maclean's privacy al her home in Surrey, And the worst. offender, was the Daily Express, whose crime had bedn to ask Mrs, Maclegn abdut her coming move Switzerland and then prigt what she said. A once the army éf do-gooders moved ih. Hpadéd by a distip- guladhed Liberal, -La Viokit Bonham Carter, they flooded the Press with letters in defence of Mrs, Maclean. Declared Lady Violet: “The duty of a free Press’ is to protect the freedom of the individual citizen from both persecution and misrepresentation.” Note that last astonish- ing word. Just where, in fact, did the “misrepre~ Sentation lie? Mrs. Maclean at this tinle was still represent- ing herself as a completely innocent party. Does anybody question that she was living a lie? Is it now plain that she Had connived aft her husband’s treason and was planning nt Oe to quit the West herself? | But the intervention of | Was | the’ ~ do - gooders” effective. , There can be no doubt | that it strengthened the Foreign Office {nits deter- mination to say and do nothing, No doubt either that it helpéd to avert a full-scale probe into ¢ seturity arrangements the Foreign Service—wi ¥! i what resulting damage fo : thg national interest it is impossible to calculate. Q responsible on private gricf, Bub in the jatmosphere of piblle ; anxmty created by ithe Foreign Office's silence it was not only troper for the newspapers to watch Melinda Maclean. In the adequate official security checks — spectacularly shown up later by her easy flit from Switzerland—it | was their duty to do so. For the government af a democracy will go slothful and rot if the newspapers | fail to maintain perpetual ° vigilanec, The folly of the do- gooders was that they were ready to let national security be stifled by polite Tf such well-meaning idealists had their pray. democracy and tfregdom would be done to death by their carnest, sincera, and deadly soft scruples, absence of | news- — * [paper wants to inthude |