Sir: During part of the war and prior to my
elec- tion to Parliament. I held a security appointment connected with ensuring that the movement and manoeuvres of ships in the Home Fleet should re- main secret. 1 can, therefore, at least evaluate some of Colonel Lohan's problems, especially as, unlike myself, and perhaps unfortunately for him, he seems to have worked in such an undisciplined atmosphere that he was able to take D Notices to a West End luncheon appointment and to discuss them there with a journalist friend. Of one thing I am sure, and that is that had I given utterance in print and in speech on Tv and elsewhere in the rather emotionally self-justifying way in which Colonel Lohan has expressed himself ever since the Daily Express cable-vetting article 'appeared, I would, whatever the rights or wrongs of the case, have been instantly removed from my post without ever being given the chance of resigning. For, I would have been considered far too garrulous and forthcoming for involvement in work impinging on national security.
If, which I find it hard to believe, the Prime Minister has unfairly criticised Colonel Lohan, he is much too fairminded and essentially kind a man to allow the incident to pass without letting it be known that he too shares humanity's weaknesses —an example which you, sir, and others who so_ constantly malign Mr Wilson, might decently follow. I often think of the SPECTATOR as it used to be in the days of my friend Wilson Harris, with its dignity and fairminded attitude to opponents, and then I wonder if I am reading the same paper today.
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