PRESS PROBLEM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 234, 3 October 1935, Page 7

PRESS PROBLEM.

Journalists Will Not Go Near Front Line. COMMUNICATION DIFFICULTY. LONDON, October 2. Sir Pereival Phillips, the "Daily Telegraph" correspondent at Addis Ababa, reports that if hostilities begin in Abyssinia there will be no means of keeping the outside world promptly and accurately informed of their progress. The northern armies are taking up positions nearly 500 miles from Addis Ababa and are without telegraph lines or eflicient wireless to keep them in touch with the capital. It will take days to receive the scantiest official bulletins, s and weeks for detailed accounts of the fighting to trickle through by courier services. A few aeroplanes will be used to maintain contact between the Emperor and his chiefs, but these will ndt be available to journalist observers, because' none will be allowed anywhere near the combatant troops.

The Abyssinian Government already has warned 00 war correspondents and photographers now assembled in Addis Ababa not to expect permission to go to the front. A few may be permitted to accompany the Emperor if he establishes field headquarters, but probably he will select sites near the frontier capitals a long distance from the front.