There is a temptation, in weeks such as this one, to retreat into the comforts of abstraction, to speak of markets as though they were weather and of statutes as though they were sermons. The Herald will not yield to it. Three concrete questions sit upon the desks of the kingdom's public men this morning, and they deserve concrete answers.

The first is the price of gas. Don Alejandro Cordoba has counselled restraint, and his counsel is, in the main, wise; the record of improvised interventions in fuel markets is not encouraging, and the Crown Council would do well to examine the Cardenal's proposal for targeted relief before reaching for grander instruments. Restraint, however, is a discipline of the comfortable as well as the prudent; it is easier borne in a heated library than in a cold kitchen. The subsidies must be real, and they must arrive before the May statement, not after.

The second is the detention, abroad, of two correspondents who hold our passports. Upon this question the Foreign Minister has spoken with the firmness that the occasion required, and the Leader of the Opposition has, to her credit, associated herself with that firmness. The Herald does the same. We note, without relish, that the defence of press freedom abroad is strengthened when it is also practised at home, and we commend that observation to every bloc in the Chamber.

The third is the public-order clause now before the Corts. Don Rafael's meditations have their place in the culture, but a statute is not a meditation, and vague language in a criminal provision is a standing invitation to mischief by whatever constable happens to be on duty. The advisory council's thirty days will pass quickly; let its report be precise.

Restraint, then, where restraint serves the household; firmness where firmness serves the correspondent; precision where precision serves the citizen. The Almarian constitution asks no more of its servants, and the Herald asks no less.