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; \Share | . Of the suilt HE Forelgn Office deserves every bit of the drubbing it is now receiving over the Burgess-Maciean scandal. But it should not stand alone in the dock. Why exonerate the db- gooders who helped prolong the conspiracy silence.?...Why charge t! bupeaucrats and Jet the buMblers go? on't let’s forget the selj-appointed arbiters of “good taste” in the news~ papers. Always, always remember the champions of Melinda Maclean. their example carries a fearful warning to ali who love Jiberty. Fourteen months after the diplomats disappeared —the Sunday Observer printed a virulent attack on newspapers which, it complained, had been invading Mrs, Maclean‘s privacy ab her home in Surrey, And the worst offender, it seems, was the Daily Express, whose crime had bedn to ask Mrs, Maclean abdut her coming move Swibzerland and then prigt what she said. A once the army tf do-gooders moved ih. Hpaded by a distif- guished Liberal, Lady 1 Viofet Bonham Carter, they | flooded the Press with letters tn defence of Mrs. Maclean. Declared Lady Violet: “The duty of a free Press is to protect the freedom of the individual citizen from both persecution and misrepresentation.” Note that last astonish- ing word, Just where, in fact, did the misrepre- Sentation lie? rs, Maclean at this tinje was still represent- ing herself as a completely infmocent party. Dobs anybody question that she was living @ lie? Is it dot now plain that she Had connived at her husband's treason and was planning to quit the West herself? But the intervention of the ~ do - gooders effective, . There can be no doubt that it strengthened the Foreign Office initsdeter- | mination to say and do nothing. No doubt either that it helped to avert a} full-scale prove into sepurity arrangements the Foreign Service—wi! what resulting damage Ao thq national interest it is impossible to calculate, was | { N Paper wants to inttude on private grief, Buf in responsible news- : the {atmosphere of piblic - anxiety created by ithe Foreign Office's silence it was not only proper for the flewspapers to waich Melinda Maclean. in the absence of adequate official security checks — spectacularly shown up later by her easy fit from Switzerland—it was their duty to do so. For the government af a democracy will go slothful and rot if the newspapers fail to maintain perpetual ‘ vigilanee. The folly of the do- gooders was that they were ready to let national security be stifled by polite manners, . Tf such well-meaning idealists had their pray. denfocracy and freqdom woyld be done to deafh by thr carnest, sincera and deddiy soft scruples,