(c) All official communiqués of whatever Government conceal reverses, save in minor points. They are wise to do this because there is no need to tell the enemy more than he may know of his own success. Reverses are not actually denied. They are omitted. Witness all omission of Lemberg from Austrian or German communiqués and, until somewhat late, of Tannenberg in Russian, of Metz in French official accounts.
Those are the three points which all the official communiqués have in common, and by bearing them well in mind we can often frame an accurate picture, in spite of the apparent contradiction and confusion which the reading of several communiqués one after the other produces.
For instance, the Germans are trying to cross the Bzura River according to the Russian communiqué of Saturday. Next Wednesday the Russian communiqué says, “Two attempts to cross the Bzura at such-and-such places were repelled”; while the German communication says, “Our troops succeeded in crossing the Bzura River at such-and-such a village and established themselves upon the right bank.” In such a case the reader will be wise to believe the German communiqué and to take it for granted that while the Russians have repelled certain other attempts of the enemy to cross, this attempt has succeeded. But if the Germans go on to say, “The Russians retired after suffering losses which cannot have been less than twenty thousand,” that is no news at all. It is obviously conjecture.
The various Governments issuing the communiqués have acquired certain habits in them which are worth noting if one is attempting to get at an accurate view of the war, and these habits may be briefly described as follows:
The British Government publishes short notes of advances made or of positions maintained, but very rarely refers to the losing of ground. It publishes casualty lists, which are, of course, not complete till very long after the events wherein the casualties were incurred. It supplements the short communiqués, and this by a more or less expanded narrative written by an official deputed for that purpose and giving accounts, often graphic, but necessarily of no military value; of no value, that is, for following the campaign. For if these narratives were of that kind the object of the censorship would be defeated.
The Belgian Government at the beginning of the war allowed very full accounts to go through and permitted the presence of correspondents at the front itself. That phase is now over and does not immediately concern us.
The French Government is by far the most reticent. It occasionally mentions the capture of a colour, but it publishes no casualty lists, no account of the field guns taken by French troops, and only now and then hints at the number of prisoners. It is, however, minutely accurate and even detailed in helping us to locate the fluctuations of the front, and by the aid of the French communiqués we can follow the war upon the map better than by the aid of any other. In its control of the Press the French General Staff is absolute. There has been nothing like it before, and it has been perfectly successful. You will see whole columns cut out of the newspapers in France and left blank, so certain are the military authorities of that country that the most vigorous censorship is vital to modern war. There is lastly to be noted in connexion with the French communiqués, especially after the first two months of the campaign, a remarkable frankness with regard to the occasional giving of ground by their own troops. The theory is that the enemy will know this in any case, and that as the position is secure, details of the sort though adverse, lend strength to the general narrative. In all this it must be remembered, of course, that the French Government, and, at this moment, the French Army, is far more powerful than any newspaper proprietor or other capitalist, and it is well for any nation at war to be able to say that.
The Russian Government is accurate, and, if anything, a little too terse in what it communicates to the public, but its censorship is far less strict than that of the French or even the English. Thus during the fighting round Lodz in defence of Warsaw at the beginning of December, correspondents from Petrograd were allowed to telegraph the most flamboyant descriptions of an immediately approaching German retreat which never took place. But, I repeat, the official Russian news is sober and restrained and accurate to a fault.
When we turn to the enemy’s communiqués, we note first that the Austro-Hungarians are rare, insufficient, and confused. They are of little service, and may almost be neglected. But the German ones are numerous, extended and precise, and it is our particular business to judge them accurately if we are to understand the war, for when or if they tell the truth it is from them that we learn what would otherwise be hidden.
Well, in my judgment, these official German communiqués are in the main remarkably exact, and I believe it is possible to say why they are so exact. The German General Staff makes war in a purely mechanical fashion. It gravely exaggerates, as do all modern North Germans, the calculable element in human affairs. It is what used to be called “scientific.” It is obvious that if you get a reputation for exactitude your falsehood, where it pays you to tell the falsehood, will be the more likely to work. The remarkable general accuracy of the official German communiqués cannot be due to any other object. It cannot be due to a mere love of truth, for the same Government deliberately circulates to its own provincial Press and to certain neutrals stories which cannot in the nature of things be true. Nor is this inaccuracy the result either of haste or of stupidity, it is very intelligent and obviously deliberate.