Britain's Deadly Peril: Are We Told the Truth?

by William Le Queux

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.