A GENERAL & THE CENSORSHIP

Evening Star, Issue 16675, 6 March 1918, Page 6

A GENERAL & THE CENSORSHIP

SIB lAN HAMILTON'S GRIEVANCE A remarkable letter, written by Sir fan Hamilton, Commander-in-Chief of the Vllied Forces at the Dardanelles, is printed for fat first time m tho volume of his despatches which, » just published ('lan Hamilton^De snatches from the Dardanelles,' Newnes 16d net). In it he states that his cable messages were altered and garbled at Heme •- Prom my individual point of view a hideous mistake has been made on the correspondent side of tho whole of this Dardanelles business. Had we had a dozen good newspaper correspondents here the vital life-giving interest of these stupendous proceedings would have been brought right into the hearths and homes of the 'humblest. people in Britain. Instead of that, I wrote; cables, of which I may at least say they are descriptive as 'far a* official phraseology will permit, and they are turned "by some miserable people somewhere into horrible bureaucratic cliches or dead languages—i.e., "We have made an appreciable advance." "The situation remains unchanged " ; and similar phrases. As for information t-o the enemy, this is too puerile altogether. The things these devils produce are all read and checked . by competent Staff officers. To think that it matters to the Turk whether a certain trench was taken by.the 7th 'Royal Scots or the 3rd Warwickß is really like children playing at secrets.