A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THERE can hardly be five decent people in the country who will dissent from the Duke of Portland's strictures on the conduct of a section of the daily Press of this country during the recent visit of King Leopold to Welbeck and his brother to London. Not content with dragging the names of the King and the Count of Flanders and the Duke of Portland's two daughters into speculations on matrimony which, for all I know, may have considerable probability or none at all behind them, but are equally offensive to decency in either case, the representatives of a handful of papers between them distinguished themselves by a series of achieve- ments of which the principal, as enumerated by the Duke in his letter to The Times, were—invasion of the compartment reserved for the King on the journey from King's Cross to Retford, uninvited attendance at service in the private chapel at Welbeck, attempt to enter the house while the Duke and his guests were at luncheon. But the Duke need not have written to The Times. The papers themselves, with their despatch of special correspondents to Welbeck, and the despicable hash-up of rumours and surmises and denials and unanswered interrogations which they thought it consonant with their reputation to print, have written their own condemnation on their faces. The King of the Belgians had come to this country on a private visit. No one could be surprised if he decided it should be his last.
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