Why must the Censor act thus? Because this information would be of the utmost value to the enemy. The enemy, remember, does not ever quite know what is in front of him. Indeed, the whole of military history consists in the story of men who are successful because they can gauge better than other men the forces which they have to meet.
Now if you let him know that on such-and-such an occasion the force that he met upon such-and-such a front was a brigade of infantry, and if you let him know its composition, and if you do this kind of thing with regard to the army in general, you end by letting him know two things which he particularly wants to know, and which it is all your duty to prevent him knowing. You let him know the size of the force in front of him, and you let him know its composition.
Similar reasons make the Censor hide from the enemy the number of men missing. The enemy knows if he has taken in prisoners wounded and unwounded two hundred and fifty men, and, for all he knows, that is, excepting the dead, your total loss; but if you publish the fact that you have lost a thousand men, he is accurately informed of a weakness in your present disposition, which he otherwise would not suspect.
All this action of the Censor is as wise as it is necessary, but in the face of false news he is in another position. In the first place, it is difficult for him to judge it (unless, of course, it concerns our own particular forces). In the second place, it may not concern matters which the enemy can possibly ignore. For instance, in this example of the supposed investment of Cracow. The Russians were certainly approaching the place. The news might conceivably be true. If it were true, the enemy would already be amply acquainted with it, and it would be of a nature not to aid him, but to discourage him. But the news was, in fact, untrue, and, being untrue, its publication did not a little harm.
Now, how are we to counter this danger? How is the plain man to distinguish in his news of the war what is true from what is false, and so arrive at a sound opinion? After some months of study in connexion with my work upon the three campaigns, I may be able to suggest certain ways in which such a position should be approached.
In the first place, the bases of all sound opinion are the official communiqués read with the aid of a map.
When I say “the official communiqués” I do not mean those of the British Government alone, nor even of the Allies alone, but of all the belligerents. You must read impartially the communiqués of the Austro-Hungarian and of the German Governments together with those of the British Government and its Allies, or you will certainly miss the truth. By which statement I do not mean that each Government is equally accurate, still less equally full in its relation; but that, unless you compare all the statements of this sort, you will have most imperfect evidence; just as you would have very imperfect evidence in a court of law if you only listened to the prosecution and refused to listen to the defence. Now, these official communiqués have certain things in common by whatever Government they are issued. There are certain features in them which you will always find although they come from natures as different as those of a Prussian staff officer and a Serbian patriot.
These common features we may tabulate thus:
(a) Places named as occupied by the forces of the Government in question are really occupied. To invent the occupation of a town or point not in one’s own hands would serve no purpose. It would not deceive the enemy and it would not long support opinion at home. Thus, when Lodz was reported occupied by the Germans in the middle of December, all careful students of the war knew perfectly well that the news was true.
(b) Numbers, when they are quoted in connexion with a really ascertainable fact, and with regard to a precise and concrete circumstance, are nearly always reliable; though their significance differs, as I shall show in a moment, very greatly according to the way they are treated. Thus, if a Government says, “in such-and-such a place or on such-and-such a day we took three thousand prisoners,” it is presumably telling the truth, for the enemy who has lost those prisoners knows it as well as they do. But estimates of what has happened in the way of numbers, where the Government issuing the estimate can have no direct knowledge, are quite another matter. These are only gathered from prisoners or from spies, and are often ridiculously wrong.