PRESS FACILITIES

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 123, 19 February 1944, Page 8

PRESS FACILITIES

Protests Over Limitations From Beach-head LONDON, February 17. Editors in London provincial and Empire newspapers and news agencies at a meeting in London, resolved to protest to the War Secretary, Sir James Grigg, against new conditions imposed on "war correspondents in the Anzio beach hea ■ unan j moug ] y re solved to ask the Minister: (1) To restore immediatelv the facilities for the transmission of messages by radio; (2) to specify the charges against correspondents and to state' by whom and on what evidence these charges were made. The meeting further declared. The imposition of censorship other than lor security is contrary to the public ..interest and should be removed forthwith. In the House of Commons today a former editor of a London newspaper, Mr. A Beverley Baxter, asked the Secretary for War about the censorship position in Italy. He wanted to know why correspondents’ dispatches from the Al 'zio beach-head were being held up, and what was meant by “censorship for policy. Sir James Grigg told Mr. Baxter that he was making inquiries, and that tie would report to the House as soon as he could. . , Views In Washington.

Asked to comment on the ban on the direct .transmission of news dispatches from the Anzio beach-head, Mr. Stimson, United States Secretary, said that General Maitland. Wilson was the best judge of the situation and held lull responsibility; . He said that reports from the Anzio beach-head'had been over-pessimistic in recent days. The enemy had tried hard to cut up the beach-head forces but had been unable to do so. The Allies had superiority in the air, and in tanks, artillery, and anti-tank guns. ■ Mr. Stimson appealed for a more balanced view of the operation and said that on the main front the Allies held the initiative. Meanwhile, Mr. Elmer Davis, director of the Office of War Information, declared that he was protesting to the army. “We fully realize the requirements of military security, but the public are entitled to a full and most rapid supply of news consistent with security, and the public certainly are not getting much news from the beach-head.” He added that the British Minister of Information doubtless had already taken up the matter with the British military authorities. '

NOW A MYSTERY Who Remains In Monastery (Received February 18. 9.30 p.m.) LONDON, February 17. Cassino monastery is now shrouded in mystery, says Reuter’s corresponded; with the Fifth Army. Four hundred Germans are known to have fled after the first intensive bombardments, but there is no way of learning who now occupies the ruins. One woman from the monastery said the Germans before leaving locked in the Italian civilians. According to some reports, 5000 civilians—half the population of Cassino — also some monks, are still among the buildings. The top story appears to have been blown off during the bombing, leaving a ragged, uneven outline, but, it is wrong to get the impression that the monastery is blown to pieces. It is still, a solid pile, though badly mauled and wiped out as an effective enemy strongpoint. Fifth Army units were withdrawn to a safe distance during the bombardment. There is not yet any suggestion of occupying the monastery. Field-Marshal Kesselring has made a statement denying that there were any German troops in or near the Benedictine monastery. His statement added: “When the Vatican several months ago approached me with a request not to include the monastery in military operations, I agreed, and forbade German troops to enter it or its immediate vicinity. The claim that the monastery was fortified is an outrageous lie.” A message from Washington says tha’ the Apostolic Delegate, the Most Rev erand Amleto Cicognani, speaking on behalf of the Vatican, denied a statement attributed by the Press to the Allied High Command to the effect that the territory of the Papal villa at Castel Gandolfo was “saturated with Germans and therefore subject to bombing.” Archbishop Cicognani said that Cardinal Maglione informed him that no German soldier had been admitted witnin the borders of the neutral Pontifical villa. The National Catholic Welfare conference recalled that the Pope opened the villa to 15,000 victims of bomb ings. and added that the recent bomb, ings of Castel Gondolfo had resulted in several hundred deaths and the evacuation of many others. . cassinoTibrary Survived Other Disasters “If the Germans have, as they state, removed the library of Monte Cassino to the Vatican, this great collection of books and manuscripts may yet survive the perils of the present day, just as it has come through the troubles of earlier centuries, even though the monastery itself may be destroyed,” says a release from the Turnbull Library, 'Wellington. “In the very comprehensive ‘Memoirs of Libraries.” by Edward Edwards, published in 1859, there are some interesting notes on Monte Cassino, which, so he says, had more than its share of the vicissitudes of the times in which it was founded. Monks who had seen the pious founder carried to his grave lived to see their monastery ruined by the Lombards. It was in the restored edifice that the first collection of books was slowly gathered, to be for the most part laid waste by the Saracens in 884. What was saved —by removal of these early treasures, was almost entirely destroyed by fire twenty years afterward.

Changes and Calamities.

“When the monastery was again rebuilt, it entered on a new series of changes and calamities —in the course of which earthquake added its ravages to those of fire and sword —-but the library continued to make progress through them all. In the eleventh century the monks of Monte Cassino became famous for the industry with which they transcribed, not only the theological and ecclesiastical MSS. they had amassed, but also Homer, Virgil,'Horace, Terence; the Idylls of Theocritus; the Fasti of Ovid ; and not a few of the historians of Greece and Rome. The copies thus made were widely disseminated.’ “At the time that Edwards was writing, the middle of the nineteenth century, the library was said to possess 800 volumes of MSS., mostly of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and a wonderful' collection of charters and records, including 100 diplomats and Papal bulls, beginning with the year 744. The most ancient manuscript was Origen’s ‘Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans,” of the year 569. “A, brief account of later date, in the Encyclopedia Britannica, says that at the dissolution of the monasteries in 1866 Monte Cassino was spared, because mainly of a remonstrance - of English wellwishers of United, Italy, and the monastery became a national monument, with ■,t-he .monks "