London Letter HAS BRITAIN PRESS CENSORSHIP?

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 157, 31 March 1937, Page 11

London Letter HAS BRITAIN PRESS CENSORSHIP?

Bookstall Agency Action

FURTHER ECHOES OF THE ABDICATION

(By J. A. Mui.gan and G. S. Cox.)

[By Air Mail.] London, March 31

During the months which preceded the constitutional crisis last year, a striking feature—much commented on abroad —was the extreme reticence of the English Press. While American and other journalism was devoting its main headlines to one story, it was impossible to find a mention of it in English papers, even in the most lurid. In the Dominions, one gathers, it was much the same with, in places like Canada which see a lot of the American Press, embarrassing results. Not all of this British censorship was voluntary. Journalists complained of their messages out of the country being retarded. The American news magazine “Time” appeared so regularly with about four pages missing that it became a standard joke. In all this there was a great deal to be said on the side of good taste; but there is no doubt that this secrecy made the crisis more sudden, more unavoidable, and more serious. There is news this week of what seems to be the first attempt to set up a trade censorship of news. London has now two “news magazines” on the model of “Time,” imitating it in style, backward running sentences and brevity. They are “Cavalcade” and "News Review,” and they fail to be good only because they lack, unlike “Time,” an efficient news service. This week “Cavalcade” published a paragraph denying that the present King is suffering from an illness. Immediately three big agencies who control bookstalls throughout the country refused to handle this issue of “Cavalcade,” and, we understand, said further that the refusal covered any future issues which might contain sensational stories of the kind, even if the journal was occupied in denying them. As a policy, this has its serious side.

“I Found No Peace.” This heading—so aptly descriptive of the world to-day—is the title of a book just published by Webb Miller, ■the famous American journalist. First ito record the outbreak of the Abyssinian war, he was one of the few men who correctly and consistently prophesied Italy’s swift victory; and the close of his book tells of Spain where he entered Toledo soon after it was captured and penetrated Oviedo. Writing usually from ithe dictator’s side—he has met and interviewed, them all—his judgments are none the less acute and valuable. He sees in Spain (in the beginning little more than the privileged classes taking fright) now war, wellorganised, ruthless, leading inevitably to a Fascist success. As we write, the insurgent forces are closing in on Madrid and it will need another miracle, more striking even than that of last November to save it now. The new campaign is obviously well-planned, highly mechanised conducted for the most pant by regular Italian forces—that is officially admitted in England. The news which we have from there describes Madrid as “the queerest city in the world,” a city desperately short of food, ithe long queues that wait all night for bread, bombed and machine-gunned from the air, long-range batteries now opening fire—but through it all a queer sort of apathetic courage ithat never changes and seems able to endure all things. The evacuation of Madrid has gone on steadily and nearly all the relief organisations from this country have devoted themselves to this task; but its magnitude is appalling. Meanwhile those that survived Malaga are drifting north and the problems of feeding and supporting these multitudes is immense, enough to tax any Government, apart from t lie necessity of carrying on a war. Something like 100,000 people fled from Malaga to be bombed and shelled from the sea as they poured along the coast road. (One is dubious of all atrocity stories —this one was reported by three right-wing correspondents and Reuters). So it goes on—after Madrid, Valencia and after that Catalonia and the Asturias. General Franco, interviewed, claims to expect more resistance from the latter than from Catalonia. In England Now.

Generally if a war —outside one’s own country—goes on long enough, the public’s reaction is to forget about it. It was so with the Abyssinian war; people in this country, unlike the Dominions, gradually accepted an Italian success as inevitable, and were helped in this by a popular Press which consistently represented the war as not being England's affair. It is so in England now with Spain. Nobody—-not even the most extreme right wing—really likes the “Italian invasion” which is going on. There are uneasy mutterings even in quarters naturally sympathetic to the insurgent cause. Nobody likes the way in which produce in territories occupied by the rebels is conscripted and sold to Germany, Italy, or Portugal. (Last week two ships loaded with iron-ore, British owned, were captured by the insurgents, and re-directed to Germany.) Nobody likes, either, the alarming stories which are coming from the navy in Gibraltar, of forts and batteries at Ceuta and Tetuan which could close the Straits.

But in spite of all this, England as a whole is mainly pleased to feel itself remote from the trouble that is going on. This is the attitude of tlie Beaverbrook and Rothermere Press, who between them influence —though not as much as they would like to think —about 10,000.000 readers in England every day. It is also the attitude officially adopted by the Government, of course. Miss Eleanor Rathbone. M.P. for the British Universities, was formerly chairman of the Friends of Abyssinia Society, now of the Friends of Spain. It is a melancholy parallel. Who’s Who in Europe.

Outside Spain, the protagonists seem to be jockeying for position a little uncomfortably. The German-Italian renewal of the Locarno talks is on the old lines of trying to break the RussoFrench Pact and settle the west of Europe for as long as is suitable. There is less sympathy every day in this country for Germany—Ribbentrop’s latest threatening and very unambassadorial outburst worried the Conservatives because it touched on the sore point of colonies Parliamentary- re.‘ietion< were far from subdued. There is also talk in London —arising out of the latest French loan—of support coming from the United States, not only financially but also of moral

and diplomatic pressure, to reinforce the two Western democracies. Rumours of a Rooseveltian conference are probably exaggerated. Against American friendliness must be set a good deal of unconcealed cynicism, particularly on the subject of war debts. The recent proposal of a scheme for wardebt payment to America was reported by the three leading American journalists in London as “the first step to borrow some more.”

But, generally, Wall Street, though the armament boom and the shortage of metals suits her and has sent prices there, as here, rocketing up, is uneasy about the position of her main markets in Europe, several of which—like Germany—have practically suspended payments. and others, like Britain and France, are no longer regarded as stable. This business uneasiness may lead to some political action, though not probably iu the grand WoodrowWilson manner—rather more subtly.