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Exploring the Variety of Random
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and lifelong disablement and those who, less seriously crippled, are
yet unable to obtain employment in ordinary commercial or industrial
life. As to the former class, the duty of the State is clear: they must
be suitably maintained for the rest of their lives at the State's
charges. With regard to the second class, I do most sincerely hope
that they will not be thrown into the world with a small wounds
pension and left to sink or swim as fortune and their scattered
abilities may dictate. It is for us to remember that these men have
given their health and strength that we might live in safety and
peace, and we shall be covering ourselves with infamy if we fail to
make proper provision for them.
As I have already said, they do not want charity. They want work,
and I venture to here make an earnest appeal to the public to take
up the cause of these men with all its generous heart. First and
foremost, such of them as are capable should be given absolute
preference in Government and municipal offices, where there are
thousands of posts that can be filled even by men who are partially
disabled. Every employer of labour should make it his special duty to
find positions for as many of these men as possible: there are many
places in business houses that can be quite adequately filled by men
of less than ordinary physical efficiency. Most of all, however, I hope
the Government will, without delay, take up the great task of finding
a way of setting these men to useful work of some kind. In the past
much has been done in this direction by the various private agencies
which interest themselves in the care of discharged soldiers. A war
of such magnitude as the present, however, must bring in its wake a
demand for work and organisation on a scale far beyond private
effort; and if the disabled soldier is to be adequately cared for, only
the resources of the State can be equal to the need.
Are we doing enough, I ask again, for the gallant men who have
served us so well? There are those who fear that, comparatively
speaking, the war has only just begun. However this may be, the
tale of casualties and disablement rises day by day at a terrible pace,
and there is a growing need to set on foot an organisation which,
when the time comes, shall be ready to grapple at once with what
will perhaps be the most terrible legacy the war can leave us.

CHAPTER IV
THE PERIL OF THE CENSORSHIP

War brings into discussion many subjects upon which men differ
widely in their opinions, and the present war is no exception to the
general rule.
Amateur and expert alike argue on a thousand disputed points of
tactics, of strategy, and of policy: it has always been so: probably it
will be so for ever. But the censorship imposed by the Government,
on the outbreak of war, has achieved a record.
It has earned the unanimous and unsparing condemnation of
everybody. Men who have agreed on no other point shake hands
upon this. For sheer, blundering ineptitude, for blind inability to
appreciate the mind and temper of our countrymen, in its utter
ignorance of the psychological characteristics of the nation and of
the Empire, to say nothing of the rest of the world, the methods of
the censorship, surely, approach very closely the limits of human
capacity for failure.
When I say "the censorship" I mean, of course, the system,
speaking in the broadest sense. It matters nothing whether the chief
censor, for the moment, be, by the circumstance of the day, Mr. F.E.
Smith or Sir Stanley Buckmaster. Both, I make no doubt, have done
their difficult work to the best of their ability, and have been loyally
followed, to the best of their several abilities, by their colleagues.
The faults and failures of the censorship have their roots elsewhere.
Now to avoid, at the outset, any possibility of misunderstanding, I
want to make it absolutely clear that in all the numerous criticisms
that have been levelled at the censorship, objection has been taken
not to the fact that news is censored, but to the methods employed
and to the extent to which the suppression of news has been
carried.
I believe that no single newspaper in the British Isles has objected
to the censorship, as such. I am quite sure that the public would
very definitely condemn any demand that the censorship should be
abolished. Much as we all desire to learn the full story of the war, it
is obvious that to permit the indiscriminate publication of any and
every story sent over the wires, would be to make the enemy a
present of much information of almost priceless value. Early and
accurate information is of supreme importance in war time, and
certainly no Englishman worthy of the name would desire that the
slightest advantage should be offered to our country's enemies by
the premature publication of news which, on every military
consideration, ought to be kept secret.
This is, unquestionably, the attitude of the great daily newspapers in
London and the provinces, which have been the worst sufferers by
the censor's eccentricities. They realise, quite clearly, the vital and
imperative necessity for the suppression of information which would
be of value to the enemy, and, as a matter of fact, the editors of the
principal journals exercise themselves a private censorship which is
quite rigid, and far more intelligently applied than the veto of the
official bureau. It would surprise a good many people to learn of the
vast amount of information which, by one channel or another,
reaches the offices of the great dailies long before the Press Bureau
gives a sign that it has even heard of the matters in question. The
great retreat from Mons is an excellent instance. It was known
perfectly well, at the time, that the entire British Expeditionary Force
was in a position of the gravest peril, and it is, perhaps, not too
much to say that had the public possessed the same knowledge
there would have been a degree of depression which would have
made the "black week" of the South African War gay and cheerful by
comparison, even if there had not been something very nearly
approaching an actual panic.
But the secret was well and loyally kept within the walls of the
newspaper offices, as I, personally, think it should have been: I do
not blame the military authorities in the least for holding back the
fact that the position was one of extreme gravity. Bad news comes
soon enough in every war, and it would be senseless folly to create
alarm by telling people of dangers which, as in this case, may in the
end be averted. The public quarrel with the censorship rests on
other, and totally different, grounds.
That a strict censorship should be exercised over military news
which might prove of value to the enemy will be cheerfully admitted
by every one. We all know, despite official assurances to the
contrary, that German spies are still active in our midst, and, even
now, there is—or at any rate until quite recently there was—little or
no difficulty in sending information from this country to Germany. No
one will cavil at any restrictions necessary to prevent the enemy
anticipating our plans and movements, and if the censorship had not
gone beyond this, no one would have had any reason to complain.
What may perhaps be called the classic instance of the perils of
premature publication occurred during the Franco-Prussian War of
1870-71. In those days there was no censorship, and France, in
consequence, received a lesson so terrible that it is never likely to be
forgotten. It is more than likely, indeed, that it is directly responsible
for the merciless severity of the French censorship to-day.
A French journal published the news that MacMahon had changed
the direction in which his army was marching. The news was
telegraphed to England and published in the papers here. It at once
came to the attention of one of the officials of the German Embassy
in London, who, realising its importance, promptly cabled it to
Germany. For Moltke the news was simply priceless, and the altered
dispositions he promptly made resulted in MacMahon and his entire
force capitulating at Metz. Truly a terrible price to pay for the single
indiscretion of a French newspaper!
It is not to be denied that to some extent certain of the "smarter" of
the British newspapers are responsible for the severity of the
censorship in force to-day. In effect, the censorship of news in this
country dates from the last war in South Africa. Some of the English
journals, in their desire to secure "picture-stories," forgot that the
war correspondent has very great responsibilities quite apart from
the mere purveying of news.
The result was the birth of a war correspondent of an entirely new
type. The older men—the friends of my youth, Forbes, Burleigh,
Howard Russell, and the like—had seen and studied war in many
phases: they knew war, and distinguished with a sure instinct the
news that was permissible as well as interesting, from the news that
was interesting but not permissible. Their work, because of their
knowledge, showed discipline and restraint, and it can be said,
broadly, that they wrote nothing which would advantage the enemy
in the slightest degree.
In the war in South Africa we saw a tremendous change. Many of
the men sent out were simply able word-spinners, supremely
innocent of military knowledge, knowing absolutely nothing of
military operations, unable to judge whether a bit of news would be
of value to the enemy or not. Their business was to get "word-
pictures"—and they got them. In doing so they sealed the doom of
the war correspondent. The feeble and inefficient censorship
established at Cape Town, for want of intelligent guidance, did little
or nothing to protect the Army, and the result was that valuable
information, published in London, was promptly telegraphed to the
Boer leaders by way of Lourenço Marques. Many skilfully planned
British movements, in consequence, went hopelessly to pieces, and
by the time war was over, Lord Roberts and military men generally
were fully agreed that, when the next war came, it would be
absolutely necessary to establish a censorship of a very drastic
nature.
We see that censorship in operation to-day, but far transcending its
proper function. It was established—or it should have been
established—for the sole purpose of preventing the publication of
news likely to be of value to the enemy. Had it stopped there, no
one could have complained.
I contend that in point of fact it has, throughout the war, operated
not merely to prevent the enemy getting news which it was highly
desirable should be kept from him, but to suppress news which the
British public—the most patriotic and level-headed public in all the
world—has every right to demand. We are not a nation of board-
school children or hysterical girls. Over and over again the British
public has shown that it can bear bad news with fortitude, just as it
can keep its head in victory. Those of us who still remember the
terrible "black week" in South Africa, with its full story of the horror
of defeat at Colenso, Magersfontein, and Stormberg, remember how
the only effect of the disaster was the ominous deepening of the
grim British determination to "see it through": the tightening of the
lips and the hardening of the jaws that meant unshakable resolve;
the silent, dour, British grip on the real essentials of the situation
that, once and for all, settled the fate of Kruger's ambitions.
Are Britons to-day so changed from the Britons of 1899 that they
cannot bear the truth; that they cannot face disaster; that they are
indeed the degenerates they have been labelled by boastful
Germans? Perish the thought! Britain is not decadent; she is to-day
as strong and virile as of old and her sons are proving it daily on the
plains of Flanders, as they proved it when they fought the Kaiser's
hordes to a standstill on the banks of the Marne during the "black
week" of last autumn. Why then should the public be treated as
puling infants spoon-fed on tiny scraps of good news when it is
happily available, and left in the bliss of ignorance when things are
not going quite so well?
From November 20th, 1914, up to February 17th, 1915—a period of
three months of intense anxiety and strain—not one single word of
news from the Commander-in-Chief of the greatest Army Britain has
ever put into the field was vouchsafed to the British public. For that,
of course, it is impossible to blame Sir John French. But the bare fact
is sufficient condemnation of the entirely unjustifiable methods of
secrecy with which we are waging a war on which the whole future
of our beloved nation and Empire depends. The public was left to
imagine that the war had reached something approaching a
"deadlock." The ever-mounting tale of casualties showed that, in
very truth, there had been, in that silent period of three months,
fighting on a scale to which this country has been a stranger for a
century.
Will any one outside the Government contend that this absurd
secrecy can be justified, either by military necessity or by a well-
meant but, as I think, hopelessly mistaken regard for the feelings of
the public?
We are not Germans that it should be necessary to lull us into a
lethargic sleep with stories of imaginary victories, or to refrain from
harrowing our souls when, as must happen in all wars, things
occasionally go wrong.
We want the truth, and we are entitled to have it!
I do not say that we have been deliberately told that which is not
true. I believe the authorities can be acquitted of any deliberate
falsification of news. But I do say, without hesitation, that much
news was kept back which the country was entitled to know, and
which could have been made public without the slightest prejudice
to our military position. At the same time, publication has been
permitted of wholly baseless stories, such as that of the great fight
at La Bassée, to which I will allude later, which the authorities must
have known to be unfounded.
It is not for us to criticise the policy of our gallant Allies, the French.
We must leave it to them to decide how much or how little they will
reveal to their own people. I contend, with all my heart, that the
British public should not have been fobbed off with the studiously-
guarded French official report, with its meaningless—so far as the
general public is concerned—daily recital of the capture or loss of a
trench here and there, or with the chatty disquisitions of our amiable
"Eye-Witness" at the British Headquarters, who manages to convey
the minimum of real information in the maximum of words. It is
highly interesting, I admit, to learn of that heroic soldier who
brained four Germans "on his own" with a shovel; it is very
interesting to read of the "nut" making his happy and elaborate war-
time toilet in the open air; and we are glad to hear all about German
prisoners lamenting the lack of food. But these things, and countless
others of which "Eye-Witness" has told us, are not the root of the
matter. We want the true story of the campaign, and the plain fact is
that we do not get it, and no one pretends that we get it.
Cheerful confidence is an excellent thing in war, as well as in all
other human undertakings. Blind optimism is a foolhardy absurdity;
blank pessimism is about as dangerous a frame of mind as can be
conceived. I am not quite sure, in my own mind, whether the
methods of the censorship are best calculated to promote dangerous
optimism, or the reverse, but I am perfectly certain that they are not
calculated to evoke that calm courage and iron resolve, in the face
of known perils, which is the best augury of victory in the long run.
Probably they produce a result varying according to the
temperament of the individual. One day you meet a man in the club
who assures you that everything is going well and that we have the
Germans "in our pocket." That is the foolishness of optimism,
produced by the story of success and the suppression of
disagreeable truths.
Twenty-four hours later you meet a gloomy individual who assures
you we are no nearer beating the Germans than we were three
months ago. That is the depths of pessimism. Both frames of mind
are derived from the "official news" which the Government thinks fit
to issue.
Here and there, if you are lucky, you meet the man who realises that
we are up against the biggest job the Empire has ever tackled, and
that, if we are to win through, the country must be plainly told the
facts and plainly warned that it is necessary to make the most
strenuous exertions of which we are capable. That is the man who
forms his opinions not from the practically worthless official news,
but from independent study of the whole gigantic problem. And that
is the only frame of mind which will enable us to win this war. It is a
frame of mind which the official news vouchsafed to us is not, in the
least degree, calculated to produce.
In the prosecution of a war of such magnitude as the present
unhappy conflict the public feeling of a truly democratic country such
as ours is of supreme importance. It is, in fact, the most valuable
asset of the military authorities, and it is a condition precedent for
success that the nation shall be frankly told the truth, so far as it can
be told without damage to our military interests.
Mr. Bonar Law, in the House of Commons, put the case in a nutshell
when he said that—

"He had felt, from the beginning of the war, that as much
information was not being given as might be given without
damage to national interests. Nothing could be worse for the
country than to do what the Japanese did—conceal disasters
until the end of the war. He did not say that there had been any
concealment, but the one thing necessary was to let the people
of this and other countries feel that our official news was true,
and could be relied upon. He wondered whether the House
realised what a tremendous event the battle of Ypres, in
November, was. The British losses there, he thought, were
bigger than any battle in which purely English troops were
engaged. It was a terrible fight, against overwhelming odds, out
of which British troops came with tremendous honour. All the
account they had had was Sir John French's despatch. Surely
the country could have more than that. Whoever was in charge,
when weighing the possible damage which might be brought
about by the giving of news, should also bear in mind the great
necessity for keeping people in this country as well informed as
possible."

That, I venture to think, is a perfectly fair and legitimate criticism.

The battle of Ypres was fought in November. Mr. Law was speaking
in February. Who can say what the country would have gained in
recruiting, in strength of determination, in everything that goes to
make up the morale so necessary for the vigorous conduct of a great
campaign, had it been given, at once, an adequate description of the
"terrible fight against overwhelming odds" out of which the British
Thomas Atkins came with so much honour?
The military critics of our newspapers have, perhaps, been one of
the greatest failures of the entire campaign. One of them, on the
day before Namur fell, assured us that the place could hold out for
three months. Another asserted that the Russians would be in Berlin
by September 10th. Another, just before the Germans drove the
Russians for the second time out of East Prussia, declared that
Russia's campaign was virtually ended! Besides, all the so-called
"histories" of the war published have been utter failures. Personally,
I do not think the nation is greatly perturbed, at the present
moment, about the conduct of the actual military operations. No one
is a politician to-day, and there is every desire, happily, to support
the Government in any measure necessary to bring the war to a
conclusion. We have not the materials, even if it were desirable, to
criticise the conduct or write the history of the war, and we have no
wish to do so. But we desire to learn, and we have the right to learn,
the facts.
It has always been an unhappy characteristic of the military mind
that it has been quite unable, perhaps unwilling, to appreciate the
mentality of the mere civilian who only has to pay the bill, and look
as pleasant as possible under the ordeal. And I suspect, very
strongly, that it is just this feeling which lies at the root of a good
deal of what we have had to endure under the censorship. In its
essence, the censorship is a military precaution, perfectly proper and
praiseworthy, but only if applied according to the real needs of the
situation. Quite properly the military mind is impatient of the
intrusion of the civilian in purely military affairs, and I have no doubt
whatever that that fact explains the gratifying presence—in defiance
of our long usage and to the annoyance of a certain type of
politician—of Lord Kitchener at the War Office to-day. But military
domination of the war situation, however admirable from the military
point of view, has failed to take into sufficient account the purely
civilian interest in the progress of the war and the extent to which
the military arm must rely upon the civilian in carrying the war to a
successful conclusion.
Our military organisation, rightly or wrongly, is based upon the
voluntary system. We cannot, under present conditions, obtain, as
the conscriptionist countries do, the recruits we require merely by
calling to the Colours, with a stroke of the pen, men who are liable
for service. We have to request, to persuade, to advertise, and to
lead men to see their duty and to do it. To enable us to do this
satisfactorily, public opinion must be kept well informed, must be
stimulated by a knowledge of the real situation. When war broke
out, and volunteers were called for, a tremendous wave of
enthusiasm swept over the country. The recruiting organisation
broke down, and, as I have pointed out, the Government found
themselves with more men on their hands than they could possibly
train or equip at the moment. Instead of taking men's names, telling
them the exact facts, and sending them home to wait till they could
be called for, the War Office raised the physical standard for recruits,
and this dealt a blow at popular enthusiasm from which it has never
recovered. Recruiting dropped to an alarming degree, and, so
recently as February, Mr. Tennant, in the House of Commons, despite
the efforts that had been made in the meantime, was forced to drop
a pretty strong hint that "a little more energy" was advisable.
Now the connection between the manner in which the recruiting
question was handled, and the general methods adopted by the
censorship, is a good deal closer than might be imagined at first
sight. Both show the same utter failure on the part of the military
authorities to appreciate the psychology of the civilian. Psychology,
the science of the public opinion of the nation, must, in any
democratic country, play a very large part in the successful conduct
of a great war; and in sympathetic understanding of the temper of
the masses, our military authorities, alike in regard to the censorship
and recruiting question, have been entirely outclassed by the
autocratic officials of Germany. I do not advocate German methods.
The gospel of hate and lies—which has kept German people at fever-
heat—would fail entirely here. We need no "Hymns of Hate" or lying
bulletins to induce Britons to do their duty if the needs of the
situation are thoroughly brought home to them.
But we have to face this disquieting fact, that, whatever the
methods employed, the German people to-day are far more
enthusiastic and determined in their prosecution of the war than we
are.
That is a plain and unmistakable truth. I do not believe the great
mass of the British public realises, even to-day, vitally and urgently,
the immense gravity of the situation, and for that I blame the
narrow and pedantic views that have kept the country in
comparative ignorance of the real facts of the situation.
We have been at war for eight months and we have not yet got the
men we require. Recruits have come forward in large numbers, it is
true, and are still coming forward. But there is a very distinct lack of
that splendid and enduring enthusiasm which a true realisation of
the facts would inevitably evoke. Priceless opportunities for
stimulating that enthusiasm have been, all along, lost by the
persistent refusal to allow the full story of British heroism and
devotion to be told.
We can take the battle of Ypres as a single outstanding example.
The full story of that great fight would have done more for recruiting
in a week than all the displayed advertisements and elaborate
placards with which our walls are so profusely adorned could achieve
in a month!
Sir John French's despatch, as a military record, bears the hall-mark
of military genius, but it is idle to pretend that it is a literary
document calculated to stir the blood and fire the imagination of our
countrymen. Admirable in its firm restraint from the military point of
view, it takes no account of the civilian imagination. That is not Sir
John French's business. He is a great soldier, and it is no reproach to
him that his despatch is not exactly what is required by the urgency
of the situation. Moreover, it came too late to exercise its full effect.
Had the story of Ypres been given to the public promptly, and in the
form in which it would have been cast by a graphic writer who
understood the subject with which he was dealing and the public for
whom he was writing, we should probably have been better off to-
day by thousands and thousands of the much-needed recruits. The
failure to take advantage of such a glorious opportunity for the
stimulation of enthusiasm by purely legitimate means, convicts our
censorship authorities of a total failure to appreciate the mentality of
the public whose supposed interests they serve.
And as with successes, so with failures. It is the peculiar
characteristic of the British people that either a great victory or a
great disaster has the immediate result of nerving them to fuller
efforts. We saw that in South Africa: it has been seen a hundred
times in our long history. Let us turn for a moment to the affair at
Givenchy on December 20th. Sir John French's despatch makes it
clear that the repulse of the Indian Division on that occasion was a
very serious matter, so serious, in fact, that it required the full effort
of the entire First Division, under Sir Douglas Haig, to restore the
position. Yet, at the time, the British public was very far from fully
informed of what had happened: much of our information, indeed,
was derived from German sources; and these sources being
naturally suspect, the magnitude of the operations was never
realised.
There may have been excellent military reasons for concealing, for
the moment, the real position, though I strongly suspect that the
Germans were quite as well informed about it as we were. But there
could be no possible reason for concealing the fact from the public
for a couple of months, and thus losing another opportunity of
powerfully stimulating our national patriotism and determination.
 CHAPTER V
THE PERIL OF THE PRESS BUREAU

It is one of the curses of our Parliamentary system that every piece

of criticism is immediately ascribed to either party or personal
motives, and politicians whose conduct or methods are impugned,
for whatever reason, promptly assume, and try to make others
believe, that their opponents are actuated by the usual party or
personal methods.
At the present moment, happily, we have, for the first time within
our memory, no politics; the nation stands as one man in its resolve
to make an end of the Teutonic aggression against the peace of the
world. In the recent discussion in the House of Commons, however,
Sir Stanley Buckmaster, head of the Press Bureau, upon whom has
fallen the rather ruffled and uncomfortable mantle discarded by Mr.
F.E. Smith, seems to have interpreted the very unanimous criticism
of the censorship as a personal attack upon himself. As a brilliant
lawyer, of course he had no difficulty in making a brilliant reply to a
fallacy originated entirely in his own brain.
In very truth the personality of Sir Stanley Buckmaster concerns us
not at all. He is a loyal Englishman. He does not originate the news
which the Press Bureau deals out with such belated parsimony. No
one blames him for the fact that the nation is kept so completely in
the dark on the subject of the war. If it were possible for Sir Stanley
Buckmaster, personally, to censor every piece of news submitted to
the Press Bureau, there would, I venture to think, be a speedy end
to the system—or want of system—which permits an item of
intelligence to be published in Edinburgh or Liverpool, but not in
London; and that the speeches of Cabinet Ministers, reported in our
papers verbatim, would be allowed free passage to the United States
or to the Colonies. I wish here to do the head of the Press Bureau
the justice to say that he is an Englishman who knows his own mind,
and has the courage of his own convictions. Yet that does not alter
the fact that the Press censorship as a system has worked unevenly,
with very little apparent method, and with an amazing disregard of
the best foreign and colonial opinion which, all along, it has been our
interest to keep fully informed of the British side of the case.
When the subject was last before the House of Commons, some
very caustic things were said. Mr. Joseph King, the Radical member
for North Somerset, moved, and Sir William Byles, the Radical
member for North Salford, seconded, the following rather terse
motion:

"That the action of the Press Bureau in restricting the freedom

of the Press, and in withholding information about the war, has
been actuated by no clear principle and has been calculated to
cause suspicion and discontent."

Now it will be noted that there is, in the first place, no possibility of
attributing this motion to political hostility. Both the mover and the
seconder are supporters of the Government, not merely at the
present moment, as of course all Englishmen are, but in the ordinary
course of nightly political warfare. Mr. King did not mince matters.
He roundly charged the Press Bureau with exercising inequality,
particularly in denying the publication in London of news permitted
to be published in the provinces and on the Continent. He pressed,
too, for the issue of an official statement two or three times a week.
This, of course, has since been granted, and it is a very decided
improvement. Mr. Joynson-Hicks, from the Conservative benches,
very truly emphasised the fact that the people of this country want
the truth, even if it meant bad news, and added that they also
wanted to hear about the heroism of our troops and the valorous
deeds of any individual regiments.
Sir Stanley Buckmaster, in reply, denied somewhat vehemently that
he had ever withheld, for five minutes, any information he had about
the war, and asserted that nothing had ever been issued from his
office that was not literally and absolutely true.
Now, as I have said, Sir Stanley Buckmaster's hide-bound
department does not originate news, and cannot be held responsible
for either the fullness or the accuracy of the official statements.
When Sir Stanley Buckmaster tells us that he has never delayed
news I accept his word without demur. But when he says nothing
has been issued from his department which is not "literally and
absolutely true," then I ask him what he means by "literally and
absolutely true"? If he means that the news which his department
has issued has contained no actual misstatements on a point of fact,
I believe his claim to be fully justified. If he means, on the other
hand, that the Press Bureau, or those behind it, have told the nation
the whole truth, he makes an assertion which the nation with its
gritted teeth to-day will decline, and with very good reason, to
accept. To quote Mr. Bonar Law's words again: "from the beginning
of the war as much information has not been given as might have
been given without damage to national interests." To such full
information as may be given without damage to national interests
the nation is entitled, and no amount of official sophistry and hair-
splitting can alter that plain and demonstrable fact.
Mr. King, in the resolution I have quoted, charged the head of the
Bureau with exercising inequality as between different newspapers.
Now this amounts to a charge of deliberate unfairness which it is
very difficult indeed to accept. The House of Commons, in fact, did
not accept it. None the less, the fact remains that not once or twice,
but over and over again, news has been allowed publication in one
paper and refused in another, not merely as between London and
the provinces, but as between London newspapers which are,
necessarily, keen rivals. In support of this assertion I will quote one
of the strongest supporters of the Government among the London
newspapers—the Daily Chronicle. There will be no question of
political partisanship about this.
After quoting the views of the Times and two Liberal papers—the
Star and the Westminster Gazette—the Daily Chronicle said:
"The methods of the Censor are, certainly, a little difficult to
understand. There reached this office yesterday afternoon, from
our correspondent at South Shields, a long story of the sinking
of vessels in the North Sea. It was submitted to us by the
Censor, who made a number of excisions in it. The telegram was
returned to us with the following note by our representative at
the Press Bureau:

"'The Censor particularly requests that South Shields be not

mentioned, though we can state "from our East Coast
correspondent."'

"In the meantime the evening newspapers appeared with

accounts of some occurrences in which most of the deletions
made by the Censor in the Daily Chronicle report were given!
The Censor made the following remarks and excisions in the
'copy' submitted to him by the Daily Chronicle representative at
the Press Bureau:

Excisions in "Daily Chronicle" Where the Forbidden Passages

Report Appeared
"Please do not mention that this Shields occurred in the
came from South Shields." reports Star (three times),
(Note by the Censor.) Evening News (once), Pall
Mall Gazette (three times),
Globe (three times), Evening
Standard (three times),
Westminister Gazette (once).
"Within twenty miles of the Star report stated: "The
mouth of Shields harbour"— trawler was sunk thirty miles
(passage eliminated). E.N.E. of the Tyne."
"Landed a cargo of fish at This identical phrase, or its
Grimsby." ("At Grimsby" was effect, appeared in the Star,
eliminated.) Pall Mall Gazette, Globe,
 Evening Standard,
Westminister Gazette.
The North Shields trawler was
"Landed by North Shields
mentioned by the Star, Pall
fishing steamer. ("North
Mall Gazette, Globe, Evening
Shields" eliminated.)
Standard.
"Bound for Blyth." ("Blyth" This phrase appeared in the
eliminated.) Star, Pall Mall Gazette, Globe,
and Evening Standard.
From the Daily Chronicle A Central News telegram
Special Correspondent. from Paris ran as follows
(passed by Cable Censor):
Paris, August 27th. Paris, Thursday
The Ministry of War issued this The following official
afternoon the following note: communiqué is issued to the
"In the region between——" Press at 2.15 this afternoon:
(here the the Censor has cut "In region between the
out a short passage) "our Vosges and Nancy our troops
troops continue to progress." continue to progress."

"Thus we were free to mention the offending passage on the

authority of the Central News Agency, but not on that of 'our
own correspondent'! What can be more ridiculous than this?"

The importance of the last portion of the Daily Chronicle article lies
in the fact that we have here a clear case of mutilation of the French
official despatch, which the French papers even were free to publish!
The Daily Chronicle also mentioned another case in which its special
correspondent in Paris sent a long despatch giving, on the authority
of M. Clemenceau, a statement published in Paris, that the 15th
Army Corps gave way in a moment of panic. The Censor refused
permission to publish it, but another journal published a quotation
under the heading: "French Soldiers who wavered: Officers and Men
punished by Death."
I ought, in fairness, to say, in passing, that the instances quoted
above took place before Sir Stanley Buckmaster assumed control of
the Press Bureau, and that no responsibility attaches to him in
respect of any of them.
Now, bad as has been the effect of the censorship on public opinion
at home, it has been even worse abroad, and particularly in the
United States, where the German propaganda had full play, while the
British case was sternly withheld. The American Press has not
hesitated to say that our censors were incompetent and
discriminated unfairly between one paper and another. This was
untrue in the sense in which it was meant, but it was certainly
unfortunate, to put it mildly, that the news of the declaration of war
was allowed to be issued by one New York journal, and withheld for
seven hours from the Associated Press, which represents 9,000
American and Canadian newspapers. It was, perhaps, still more
unfortunate that even the speeches of Mr. Asquith and Sir Edward
Grey on the subject of the declaration of war should have been
similarly delayed. Why? Telegraphic reports of these speeches were
held up for four days by the censors at cable offices and were then
"censored" before they were despatched. I ask, could mischievous
and bungling stupidity go farther than this?
Here is another case. In one of his speeches, Mr. Asquith, on a
Friday night in Dublin, announced that the Indian troops were, that
day, landing at Marseilles. The speech, and the statement, were
reported next day in the London newspapers. After the publication
of this, the Press Bureau forbade any mention of the landing of the
Indian troops!
In the House of Commons, on September 10th, Mr. Sherwell
exposed another instance of the ridiculous vagaries of the unequal
censorship. In the Daily Chronicle, he said, there was published a
brilliant article by Mr. Philip Gibbs—who was with me during the first
Balkan campaign—describing the actual operations of Sir John
French's army up to the last few days. That article was published
without comment and without criticism in the Daily Chronicle, yet
the cable censor refused to allow it to be sent to the New York
Times. Again why?
It is, or should be, the function of the Press Bureau not merely to
supply the public with accurate news, but to make sure that false or
misleading reports are promptly suppressed. The reason for this is
obvious. We do not wish to be depressed by unfounded stories of
disaster, nor do we wish to experience the inevitable reaction which
follows when we learn that we have been deluded by false news of a
great victory. Whatever may be the raison d'être of the Press
Bureau, it is assuredly not maintained for the purpose of assisting in
the circulation of utterly futile fiction about the progress of the
campaign.
Again: Are we told the truth?
Early in January a report—passed of course by the Censor—
appeared in practically every newspaper in the country, and probably
in thousands of papers in all parts of the British Empire, announcing
the capture by the British troops of a very important German
position at La Bassée. The engagement was described as a brilliant
one, in which the enemy lost heavily; circumstantial details were
added, and on the face of it the news bore every indication of being
based on trustworthy reports from the fighting line. It is true that it
was not official, but the circumstances made it so important that,
inasmuch as it had been passed by the Censor, it was naturally
assumed by every newspaper editor to be accurate. A few days later
every one was amazed to learn, from official sources, that there was
not a word of truth in the whole story! Yet the Censor had actually
passed it for publication. And so the public pay their halfpennies to
be gulled!
I say, without hesitation, that this incident casts the very gravest
reflection on the discretion and efficiency of the whole censorship.
To permit the publication of an utterly baseless story of this nature,
is simply to assist in hoaxing the public and the crying of false news.
We await the next hoax. We may have it to-morrow. Who knows?
The Censors in the matter are on the threshold of a dilemma. If the