2 DECEMBER 1932, Page 6

A Spectator's Notebook

T is natural enough that individual members of the I Cabinet should have held different views about the desirability of paying the American debt instalment, and not unnatural. that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should .be among those-most reluctant to see the payment made. But from all I hear the Treasury has been rather over-assiduous in string-Pulling in Fleet Street. Daily papers were urged on no account to give the impression that this country meant to pay—rather, for preference, to suggest that it would not. The business of responsible papers is to form their own views and state them, not echo the Cabinet, much less a single Department, whose views in this matter differ from those of most others.

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