CLUES IN THE PRESS

Evening Star, Issue 25893, 10 September 1946, Page 5

CLUES IN THE PRESS

War Censorship Secrets HI .

Germans Were Painstaking

Readers

Some Censors' Headaches

(By Rear-Admiral GEO. P. THOMSON, Chief Censor.) (Exclusive to ' Star.')

Throughout the war the British Press had, no more painstaking readers than the Germans. It was from British newspapers (often very small ones) that the late William Joyce—Lord Haw Haw—gained those odd items, such as the fact that Mudford town clock was under repair, with which he tried to build up the idea that he knew everything that was going on in Britain.

Some cases of what the enemy couldlearn from our Press were obvious. For instance, to publish too much about measures to combat the fifth coliimn was merley to keep the enemy agent warned of the steps being taken

against him. , But often the inferences that could be drawn were far from obvious, and were sometimes seen by neither the journalist who, wrote an article, nor the censor who passed it.

For instance, if the Germans read that John Brown had been convicted in the Blankham police court of an offence against war-time factory regulations, they might learn that this former farming area was now a centre of war industry.

Therefore, editors were asked to submit to censorship reports of prosecutions of this kind if there was any doubt about the extent of the pre-war industrialisation of the district concerned.