The Press: Sag in the Art

"You will come to your end either upon the gallows or of a venereal disease," William Gladstone was said to have cried to his great political rival. Retorted Britain's Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli: "I should say, Mr. Gladstone, that depends on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."

That the once-proud art of political invective in Britain has sadly sagged was demonstrated last week. Taking dinner with the New York Herald Tribune's European Columnist Art Buchwald, Labor Party Leader Hugh Gaitskell relieved himself of a few mild pokes at Prime Minister Harold Macmillan: "I personally don't trust Mr. Macmillan. My own personal opinion is that Mr. Macmillan is an actor, and I think all this publicity is dragging British politics to its lowest level." Buchwald's column quoting Gaitskell was printed in the Herald Tribune's European edition, but not in the U.S.

As it developed, the outraged party was not Macmillan, but Gaitskell himself. Cried he: "This is the grossest travesty of what I said in endeavoring to explain to him—not, I fear, with much success—how our party system differed from the American." After some coaching by his editors, Buchwald grudgingly apologized: "I am sorry that anything I have written should have given offense to Gaitskell, for whom I formed a high regard. I was writing as a columnist and not as a political commentator. I did not think for one moment that anyone would take the article literally." But to inquiring press colleagues, he insisted: "I stand by my interview." And on the basis of that insistence, the Herald Tribune made tentative plans to run the offending column in the U.S. this week.