Adventures in Journalism

by Philip Gibbs

As far as the five war correspondents were concerned, we had no other desire than to record the truth as fully as possible without handing information to the enemy, and to describe the life and actions of our fighting men so that the nation and the world should understand their valor, their suffering, and their achievement. We identified ourselves absolutely with the armies in the field, and we wiped out of our minds all thought of personal “scoops,” and all temptation to write one word which would make the task of officers and men more difficult or dangerous. There was no need of censorship of our dispatches. We were our own censors.

That couldn’t be taken for granted, however, by G.H.Q. They were not sure at first of our mentality or our honor. The old tradition of distrust between the army and the rest was very strong until the New Army came into being, with officers who had not passed through Sandhurst but through the larger world. They were so nervous of us in those early days that they appointed a staff of censors to live with us, travel with us, sleep with us, read our dispatches with a mass of rules for their guidance, and examine our private correspondence to our wives, if need be with acid tests, to discover any invisible message we might try to smuggle through.

We had to suffer many humiliations in that way, but fortunately we had a sense of humor and laughed at most of them. Gradually also—very quickly indeed—we made friends with many generals and officers commanding divisions, brigades, and battalions, broke down their distrust, established confidence. They were surprised to find us decent fellows, and pleased with what we wrote about the men. They became keen to see us in their trenches or their headquarters. They wanted to show us their particular “peepshows,” they invited us to see special “stunts.” Their first hostility evaporated, and was replaced by cordial welcome, and they laughed with us, and sometimes cursed with us, at the continued restrictions of G.H.Q., which forbade the mention of battalions and brigades (well known to the enemy) whose heroic exploits we described.

For some time G.H.Q., represented by General Macdonagh, Chief of Intelligence, under whose orders we were, maintained a narrow view of our liberties in narration and description. Hardly a week passed without some vexatious rule to cramp our style by prohibiting the mention of facts far better known to the Germans than to the British, whose men were suffering and dying without their own folk knowing the action in which their sacrifice was consummated.

The heavy hand of the censorship fell with special weight upon us during the battle of Loos. General Macdonagh himself used the blue pencil ruthlessly, and I had no less than forty pages of manuscript deleted by his own hand from my descriptive account. Again it seemed to us that the guiding idea behind the censorship was, to conceal the truth not from the enemy, but from the nation, in defense of the British High Command and its tragic blundering. That was in September of 1915, and we became aware at that time that the man most hostile to our work was not Sir John French, the Commander-in-Chief, but Sir Douglas Haig, at that time in command of the First Corps. He drew a line around his own zone of operations beyond which we were forbidden to go, and the message which conveyed his order to us was not couched in conciliatory language. It was withdrawn under the urgent pressure of our immediate chiefs, and I was allowed to go to the Loos redoubt during the progress of the battle, with John Buchan who had come out temporarily on behalf of The Times.

The tragic slaughter at Loos, its reckless and useless waste of life, its abominable staff work, and certain political intrigues at home, led to the recall of Sir John French and the succession of Sir Douglas Haig as Commander-in-Chief.

For a time we believed that our doom was sealed, knowing his strong prejudice against us, and in the first interview we had with him, he did not conceal his contempt for our job. But with his new responsibility he was bound to take notice of the increasing demand from the British government and people for more detailed accounts of British actions and of the daily routine of war. It became even an angry demand, and Sir Douglas Haig yielded to its insistence. From that time onward we were given full liberty of movement over the whole front, and full and complete privileges, never before accorded to war correspondents, to see the army reports during the progress of battle, and day by day; while Army Corps, Divisions, and Battalion headquarters were instructed to show us their intelligence and operation reports and to give us detailed information of any action on their part of the front.

The new Chief of Intelligence, General Charteris, who succeeded General Macdonagh, devoted a considerable amount of time to our little unit, and in many ways, with occasional tightening of the reins, was broad-minded in his interpretation of the censorship regulations. It may be truly said that never before in history was a great war, or any war, so accurately and fully reported day by day for at least three years, subject to certain reservations which were abominably vexatious and tended to depress the spirit of the troops and to arouse the suspicion of the nation.

The chief reservations were the ungenerous and unfair way in which the names of particular battalions were not allowed to be mentioned, and the suppression of the immense losses incurred by the troops. The last restriction was necessary. It would be disastrous in the course of a battle to give information to the enemy (who read all our newspapers) of the exact damage he had done at a particular part of the line. Nothing would be more valuable to an attacking army than that knowledge. In due course the losses became known to the nation by the publication of the casualty lists, so that it was only a temporary concealment.

With regard to the mention of battalions, I am still convinced that there was needless secrecy in that respect, as nine times out of ten the German Intelligence was aware of what troops were in front of them, along all sectors. Scores of times, also, mention was made of the Canadians and Australians, where no reference was permitted to English, Scottish, Irish, or Welsh battalions, so that the English especially, who from first to last formed sixty-eight per cent of the total fighting strength, and did most fighting and most dying, in all the great battles, were ignored in favor of their comrades from overseas. To this day many people in Canada and the United States believe that the Canadians bore the brunt of all the fighting, while Tommy Atkins looked on at a safe distance. The Australians have the same simple faith about their own crowd. But splendid beyond words as these men were, it is poor old Tommy Atkins of the English counties, and Jock, his Scottish cousin, who held the main length of the line, took most of the hard knocks, and fought most actions, big and little. Anybody who denies that is a liar.