So much for one particular newspaper report, which had nothing to distinguish it from other telegrams and news, and which millions of people must have read and believed.
Every one of the readers of these lines will be able to recall other instances of the same kind. I have before me as I write extract after extract of that sort. In one, Roulers has been retaken; in another, Lille is reoccupied; in another (a much earlier one), the Germans are at Pont Oise.
Sometimes these accounts appear in long and detailed descriptions proceeding from the pens of men who are fairly well known in Fleet Street, and who have the courage to sign their names.
There has, perhaps, never been a great public occasion in regard to which it was more necessary that men should form a sound judgment, and yet there has certainly not been one in our time upon which the materials for such a judgment have been more confused.
The importance of a sound public judgment upon the progress of the war is not always clearly appreciated. It depends upon truths which many men have forgotten, and upon certain political forces which, in the ordinary rush and tumble of professional politics, are quite forgotten. Let me recall those truths and those forces.
The truths are these: that no Government can effectively exercise its power save upon the basis of public opinion. A Government can exercise its power over a conquered province in spite of public opinion, but it cannot work, save for a short time and at an enormous cost in friction, counter to the opinion of those with whom it is concerned as citizens and supporters. By which I do not mean that party politicians cannot act thus in peace, and upon unimportant matters. I mean that no kind of Government has ever been able to act thus in a crisis.
It is also wise to keep the mass of people in ignorance of disasters that may be immediately repaired, or of follies or even vices in government which may be redressed before they become dangerous.
It is always absolutely wise to prevent the enemy in time of war from learning things which would be an aid to him. That is the reason why a strict censorship in time of war is not only useful, but essentially and drastically necessary. But though public opinion, even in time of peace, is only in part informed, and though in time of war it may be very insufficiently informed, yet upon it and with it you govern. Without it or against it in time of war you cannot govern.
Now if during the course of a great war men come quite to misjudge its very nature, the task of the Government would be strained some time or other in the future to breaking point. False news, too readily credited, does not leave people merely insufficiently informed, conscious of their ignorance, and merely grumbling because they cannot learn more, it has the positive effect of putting them into the wrong frame of mind, of making them support what they should not support, and neglect what they should not neglect.
Unfortunately, public authority, which possesses and rightfully exercises so much power in the way of censorship—that is, in the way of limiting information—has little power to correct false information. The Censor receives a message, saying that at the expense of heavy loss General So-and-So’s brigade, composed of the Downshires and the Blankshires, repelled the enemy upon such-and-such a front, but that three hundred men are missing from the brigade at the end of the action. If he allows this piece of news to go through at all he must even so refuse to allow any mention of the names of the regiments, of their strength, of the place where they were fighting, and the numbers of those who are missing.