A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK A FTER considering all the evidence there
is available, and with- out making contact with any of the parties concerned, I find the Prime Minister's defence of his Minister of Health in the matter of the latter's talk with American journalists convincing. Various interesting questions arise. Should British correspondents in America and American correspondents in Britain keep in personal touch with individual Ministers of the respective countries ? The answer is plainly Yes. Were the four American correspondents who offered hospitality to Mr. Bevan doing something reasonable and proper ? I should say, Certainly. Clearly in such a case no state- ments should be attributed to their guest, and great discretion should be shown in using, even impersonally, any information or ideas they may have got from him. What seems to have happened is that the correspondents cabled, purely for the instruction of their editors at home, an assessment of the political situation here as they gathered it from Mr. Bevan, mid by some mischance part of this at least got into print. I have seen nothing so far to suggest that Mr. Bevan was at all to blame ; to say that he should never talk about any public question except housing or the National Health Service is absurd. What the Americans no doubt wanted to discover was the general outlook of a notoriously Left Wing member of the Cabinet. And no doubt they discovered it.
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