There are some passages in the despatch of the very
able ashington correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, printed n Wednesday, to which serious attention should be paid. 'siring of the popularity which Lord Halifax has already r-quir,d among American journalists he observes that the new rn' .,,ador had "suffered from the fact that before he arrived most of the information about him seems to have been pro- vided by those politically opposed to him," and adds that all members of the late Conservative Government have equally suffered from the fact that an influential group of American Editorial writers and commentators are apt to take their intel- lectual cue from Left Wing British opinion. The correspondent further observes "before the war, and to a certain extent since, British lecturers here and British writers in American papers have carried their political feuds to the American public." There is no doubt about the truth of this, and it is unfortunate in the extreme. When Mr. Eden last visited America systematic attempts were made to depreciate him in articles in American papers from the pen of a certain British Left-Wing journalist then in the United States. There are Left- Wing journals and reviews in New York to which British Left-Wing writers, whose influence in this country is confined to a limited circle of political sympathisers, have ready access. Such writers are, of course, as much entitled to express their views as Mr. J. A. Spender or Mr. Garvin, but in America they are assumed to be expressing representative British views, not British Left-Wing views. It is hard to see what is to be done about it, but the effect, as I say, is unfortunate.
* *
Previous page
