A Spectator's Notebook
I WAS DELIGHTED to see Admiral Sir William James raising the question of censorship under the Official Secrets Act in The Times the other day. Nothing is more infuriating than the way in which nameless and faceless men in the back rooms of White- hall spend months over harmless manuscripts in their self- justifying endeavours to see that they are either mutilated or not published at all. I know someone who has written a biography of a famous sailor, largely based on material collected from standard British, German and American histories, biographies and autobiographies. His manuscript had the blessing of the Director of Naval Intelligence, but in the course of time it fell into the hands of the bureaucrats in the back rooms, who saw fit to recommend its banning because it mentioned certain events which had taken place—forty years ago! Happily this author was a man of experience, and his book is being pub- lished. But if he hadn't known the ropes, three years' work might have been jettisoned and its subject left in obscurity. This bureaucratic excess of zeal is peculiarly futile, and even harmful, because all that the author who suffers at its hand has to do is to publish his book in Ainerica—uncensored. I agree with Admiral James that the Privy Councillors who are to examine security procedures now applied to the public services should look into the matter of censorship. a
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