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‘acked at last R. MORRISON Nh} Roce “I did not imply that there 15 & regular and systematic week- by-week check-up of all Foreign Office officials. . . . Indeed, I do not think that the Department . deserves such a check-up.” With such complacencies the Socialis. Government. in the _course of months, went out of office. and in July last Mr. Nutting. Tory at the Foreign Office, at long last announced that the diplomats had been sacked, When, however, he was asked to set up a fact-finding comm-s- sion to inquire into the dis: appearance of Maciean and Burgess he turned it down with the assurance that “inquiries are continuing.” ‘Sympathetic’ FENHOSE Jatter - dav inquiries. pressed on the Government. must have borne fruit; for last October Lord Reading, Joint Under-Secretary with Mt, Nut- ting, announced in the Lords:- “Much information about “ Naclean has come to light sinc gs disappearance which was no ig the possession of the Foreig Omce at the time he wee Monstrous appointed head of the American Depariment in October 1950. “I, is now known, for example, that on more than one occasion before hig disappear- ance Mr. Maclean made remarks suggesiing he was a Communist or sympathetic to Communism.” An interview ™M™T had taken the Foreign Office 17 months to. declare itself on associations of the diplomats which the Foreign Office should have known before the men vanished and which the Daily Express had made clear from the start. And indeed, from the start, the Daily Express inquiries were unceasing. In the course of those inquiries this newspaper obtained an innocuous interview with Mrs. Melinda Maclean, the American-born wife and closest jiiving link of the vanished diplomat, The interview was based on the mot unimportant news, issued by \he Press Asscciation, that Mrs, Maciean was leaving Eng- land for good. The Daily Telegraph obtained an inter- view with Mrs. Maclean in similar terms. But against the Daily Express toe furies were un- _ leashed. There ere public charges of faking. of nvasion of privacy, and there ere ¢alls for a curb on this ewspaper's unquenchable Rxtiiberanece, Lady Violet Bonham Carter, a prominent figure in the Liberal Party, per- suaded The Times to lend its authorily to thls propaganda. In answer to all this came the declaration :— “The Datly Express does not propose to be deflected from the publication of news because it causes displeasure.” When, therefore, three weeks ago. Mr, David Lawrence, & distinguished political com- mentator. propounded his certainty in 240 American newspapers that Donald Mac- lean was in Moscow, the Daily Express published his expert therm, views—and, to foot its offer of the reward. ND today the offer still stands. The . Daily Express will, relentlessly and remorselessiy, pursue its course to aid authorily | in the search for Maclean and Burgess. The Daily Express will with- stand all pressures when it secks to serve the public interest. And, make no mistake, it is in the public interest that those absconders should be tracked down — and their defection measured. That two men rich in the secrets of the Foreign Office should be able to ee these shores and remain unaccounl- able to British Authority is | roof of a monstrous weakness 1 the security safeguards 9 e British people. The weakness must be pr agnosed, and remedied. ep — _.