BUT I CONFESS I do not know what alternative procedure
to suggest. To relax all restrictions would be one answer; but the way Ministers behave when their guard is down is not encourag- ing. There have recently been the cautionary examples of an interview by a Sunday Express reporter of Mr. R. A. Butler, after the news of Mr. Macmillan's succession to the Premiership; and a still more extraordinary interview granted by the Premier himself to William Hickey, of the Daily Express, which appeared last Monday. It is odd, to say the least, that a Prime Minister should invite a gossip-writer home for a cosy chat; and the chat itself was odder still. ` "Tell me, Mr. Hickey," he said with a smile that showed his teeth, "why doesn't Lord Beaverbrook like me any more?"' Ah, fickle, fickle, naughty Lord B.1
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