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R. MORRISON N replied: “I did not imply that there is a regular and systematic week- bycweek check-up of ali Foreign Office officials. . . . Indeed. I do not think that the Department . deserves such @ check-up.” With such complacencies the Socialist Government. in the course of months, went out of office; and in July last Mr. Nutting. Tory Under-Secretary 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 Maclean and Burgess he turned it down with the assurance that “inquiries are continuing.” ‘Sympathetic’ TRAVHOSE latter - dav inquiries. pressed on. the _ Government. must have borne fruit; for last Oclober Lord Reading, Joint Under-Secretary with Mt. Nut- ting, announced in the Lords:— “Much information about M Naclean has come to hght sinc: ifs disappearance which was no i ‘the possession of the Foreig! 1 sal at une ume ne wat——SMonstrous appointed head of the American Depariment in October 1950. “Jt is. now known, for example, that on more than one occasion before his disappear ance Mr. Maciean made remarks suggesting he was a Communist or sympathetic to Communism.” An interview 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 {rom the start. And indeed, from the start, the Daily Express inquines were unceasing. In the course of those inquiries this newspaper obtained an innocuous interview with Mrs. Melinda Maclean, the American-born wife and closest living link of the vanished diplomat. interview was leaving Eng- land for good. The Daily elegrapn obtained an inter- view with Mrs. Maclean in similar terms. But against the Daily Express the furies were un- _ deashed, There sere public charges of faking. of Invasion of privacy. and there ere calls for a curb on this ewspaper's unquenchable xuberance. Lady Violet Bonham Carter, a prominent figure in the Liberal Party. per- suaded The Times to lend its authority to this propaganda. In answer to all this came the declaration :— “The Daily Fayre does not propos, to flected from he publication of news because it causes displeasure.” When, therefore, three weeks ago. Mr. David Lawrence, ® distinguished political mentator. propounded = his certainty 240 American newspapers that Donaid Mac- lean was in Moscow, the Daily Express published his expert views—and, foot them, its offer of the reward. ND today the offer still stands. The . Daily Express will, relentlessly and | remorselessiy, pursue its course to aid authority Tn 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 secreis of the Foreign Office should be able to flee these shores and remain unaccount- able to British Authority is roof of a monstrous weakness if tbe security safeguards of e British people. "The weakness must be pr agnosed, and remedied.