UNDER THE BLUE PENCIL.

Otago Witness, Issue 2413, 31 May 1900, Page 56

UNDER THE BLUE PENCIL.

HOW THE MILITARY CENSOR DOES • HIS WORK.

(By Alfred XLcxkear,.)

The history of the war is written, so far, in vanished telegrams.. Such accounts of the various engagements as, in the public interests, have not come through would •have been found, «t the other end of the cable, to have been punctuated with a big " bully " blue pencil, the sign of punctuation more commonly taking the form of a etop — a—' full stop."

The. gentleman who, in the spirit of true classical revenge, dropped his cachet oi deatfli into the maw of the monster on the Bridge of Sighs was much more sure of retribution than the eager, restless, warstained '-correspondent, anxious to establish himself at- the post of duty, was sure of vindication at the shrine in Fleet street or Whitefriars. When he handed in his .■war pictures he had-, no assurance that they .would go through. Not that these war pictures .by the pen, as distinct from the pencil, covered much paper. An official ukase first limited press messages to 400 words per day (per man, and when fighting began, and the great pulse of the nation at shome beat swift with the fever of anxiety for possession of every possible detail, the word-limit was struck at 200 words. Thus .the possibility of feeding the national curiosity was in inverse ratio" to the importance pf the event to be described. Further, no correspondent was permitted to profit by Jhis daring or his activity ; but the despatches of all were dumped into a common heap of paper messages. Before this kopje of cablegrams sat the telegraphist, and 'he began the work of transmission at /the top of the cairn, which 'was probably ."With the despatch ot the latest comer. Thus .was the race unto the slowest. The man .•who sought through ingenuity, such as .working' up his account by sending a section from the battlefield, a second section jfrom the nearest post town, and a third by •train parcel to Capetown, to work round the military" censor ran 'the risk of being court-martialled. As a matter of fact, one correspondent . who thus trebled his 200jvford allowance became the punishable subject of a punitive inquiry.

MILITAB.Y B.TJLB.

But the object of the writer, who has tried it, who has been through the cenfior's fire, who has groaned under the Nasxnyth hammer of t)he Blue Pencil, is not to inveigh against the military censorship as a means to the protection of the army against the enemy by concealing the strategy, the intentions, or the resources of the general from his watchful opponents at the ," other side of the hill." The censorship is now established at Capetown. Now, belind the selection of Capetown officially as the headquarters of the military or telegraphic censorship there is a story of conflict. Capetown Castle is to South Africa what the Hor.«e Guards, London, is to the rest of the British Empire. It is a military oligarchy, which, in touch with Government House and the High -Commissioner, possesses, indeed, what the Horss Guaids does not enjoy, both military and ch'il authority. In fact, the civil is dominated by the military. -The work of the jpots office and the cable ofilce is now being controlled by t/lie military authorities, and the public stands, hat in hand, scraping the ground with its fore toe, and bowing and decently deferring to mild hopes for the best. No man knows when he hands in a telegram that it will ever reach its destination^* under pressure of military work, and no young lady at home can be sure that the 'letters of her sweetheart will reach her" unopened. Upon thia benevolent despotism, jn.-

spired at headquarters, Sir Alfred Milner nods approvingly, because he has really no power to will the thing otherwise. But it is, it must be remembered, the reign of the sword and not of the pen, . which, in this case, must lie modestly beside its feeding bottle, 'the ink-pot. Diplomacy, for the time, has to drop its head, whether of the new or the old type, and leave destiny to be helped upon its way by a son of Mars.

The head censor sits in the cable-office, or, anon, a room of the post office, at the receipt of censurable custom. He has no direct or indirect interest in the cable shareholders, or the post office, or in the press correspondent anxious to justify his existence to those who have employed him, or in the private, if complete, letter- writer, who is full of stories from the field, and of lively comments upon its generalship, and has committed to the mail an epistle of gossip. With his mine] thus unbiassed the Military Censor brings to his work an unclouded intellect, and his big bully blue pencil slashes away at its holder's discretion.

CArETOY^N OASTIE.

The military centre of South Africa is Capetown Castle, which, by a perha-ps curious coincidence, in view of the present war, is an old Dutch stronghold. It belongs to a type of African fortress which is shared by the Portuguese, and bespeaks the early navigators of both Powers. But over each now, from Elmina southwards, the British flag floats, sign of the 'rising of 0, greater Power, with more determined navigators,, and it waves over countless stories of conquest, "of suppressed tyranny, and of romance in war.

But we appear to have held Capetown Castle with a vague idea that we might have some day to give it up, and hence the economic folly of spending any more money upon it, either for paint or whitewash. As you walk about its labyrinthine | tortuosities there is the clammy malaria of ages about one, the smell of- Dutch reek f com dungeons which, if discoverable, . would doubtless disclose the mouldy bones of long departed prisoners of undiscoverable identity. ' Such i& Capetown Castle, and it is here that our military oligarchy holds sway, under Lieutenant-General Sir F. Forestier- Walker, as resident Comman-der-in-Chief, and that Lord Stanley, M.P., erstwhile chairman of the Kitchen Committee of the House of Commons, as Military Censor, has dictated the daily news menu i of the war all over South Africa. The Military Censor is assisted by &uch officers as are eligible to lend a hand. Some of these gallant gentlemen are very young, and hold office really rather as soldiers of fortune, who " came out " on the promise of war, dressed in a mere cravat of interest, from headquarters in London. They enjoy an arbitrary sway, exercised with true imperial nonchalance. Their demeanour is imperturbable. Nothing shakes their sangfroid. , Each relieves the otk_er at the post of duty from the starting of the 24 hours day to* the end thereof, and each endeavours to better the instruction of the others. In fact, the battle of Glencoo did. as much damage, in one sense, to the victors as the more historic massacre of Glencoe did to its own authors.

EVILS OF THE CBXSOSSHIP.

The worst feature of the Military Censorship has, however, in the fact that a censored message is not at the discretion of the sender. The sender never sees his despatch after it enters a censor's closet. There is, indeed, something really mysterious in the fate of the message. What became of it the wartrailed writer is not permitted to know. What is taken out of it he does not learn; and if it is emasculated, and reaches its destination a mere skeleton disjointed, there is nothing to save ifc or its author from the severer and more permanent censorship of the receiver, lashed into anger by the supposed breakdown or lack of energy of his representative at the front. More frequently the despatch is withheld or altogether burked. In that case ~the correspondent becomes a source of anxiety, alike 'to employers and friends at home. But hs is without compensation. He cannot explain by private message, for private messages also are censored, and it is a law unto the censor himself that no man shall criticise his disci etion and get. his. criticism through. The censor is quite right !

THE CAMP CBXSOB

How Capetown Castle has become the Star Chamber of South Africa is a little interesting as a f_tory. When Lord Mothuen reached Orange Biver and took over the command he permitted his movements to be mentioned by the correspondents as a whole. Up to that time the very existence of a camp on the Orange River was a sealed legend of the censorship. No correspondent was even permitted to mention his whereabouts. Nay, he lied to bani&b. the word soldier from his written vocabulary. But Lord Methuen broke the veil of this excessive punctiliousness. He talked freely of his Kimberley relief column, and some "pretty me&rages were thus flashed south from Orange Paver. But, alas ! they were stopped at Capetown. After this had gone on for a few days Capetown Castle put out its guns, and assumed its starchiest manner. Jt felt vhat it* authority iis to the strictness of the censorship was being challenged. It sent at once to General Buller, and a remonstrant message to Lord Methuen followed. This laid down with characteristic vigour the restrictions imposed by the Military Censoirj at Capetown, announced that henceforth even " mail matter and private letters mu^t also be read by the tamp censor, and after another familiar snap the message closed. It was signed " Buller.",

Thus had Capetown Castle triumphed. All censors upon the spot were to be subordinate to Ihe capital. After his defeat on the road to Stormberg General Gptncre permitted graphic accouncs oi the march to be telegraphed from his camp, with tlfe remark, " I cannot, of course, be 'oiire they will get Ij3yond Capetown." When Lhe&e reached the chief cen&or he and his .subordinates funned themselves into a sort oi

Committee in Lunacy to consider the state of General Gatacre's mind. They then sat as a Junta of Public Safety. How much London got for its share can never be known until the correspondents returning home are able to compare what was received with what was passed by General Gatacre.

PLEASANTRIES OF THE CENSORSHIP.

I recall some pleasantries of the censorship. Naturally, the military mind is entrenched in a certain punctiliousness. The correspondent in the field does not always cable 1,0 the paper or news agency named in his War Office license, and I remember a press censor at the front — a most amiable and considerate gentleman — who himself ran all over the camp to find the author of a telegram who cabled to one address while being licensed to communicate with another. The mysteries of Si. Martin' s-le-Grand in relation to " code '' addresses were explained to the bewildered officer, but though in the end the correspondent got through, it was to leave upon the Military Censor's mind a suspicion that the despatch had been really intended for Pretoria, and not for London at all. Telegraphing in cypher, however, wa's sternly forbidden, and I remember an amusing incident between a Welsh gentleman and a cable office clerk. The correspondent, wiring home privately, wrote as follows: " Righto (meaning ' J am well'). Phone N'il-grecht" (meaning " telephone " to a certain friend's home). But the clerk insisted that this was a cypher message, which might mean information intended for the enemy. I recall a young pnd stalwart censor who had been something in the Rhodesian Light Horse, and was " taken on " to fill a turn as press censor. That he was a bold young man — as became, indeed, one who had obeyed the nod of the great Imperialist, Cecil Rhodes — is seen, I think, in a personal experience of my own. He actually blue-lined the only pertinent sentence in an interview with Mr Trout Bartley, M.P. for Islington, then a traveller of pleasure and distinction in the colony and hot from Pretoria, where lie had chatted with Oom Paul. Mr Bartley made this characteristic point at the expense of the President. " Whab," I asked, " did Kruger say to you?" "Well," replied the lion, member, "he didn't say anything. He never does say anything. He simply sits, smokes, and spits." The censor struck out all this on the ground that it was disrespectful to the President of the South African Republic. At Orange River I found that the officers of the 9th Lancers were growing I beards : and I made a playful paragraph of it, failing permission to wire war news proper, hinting that Piccadilly would not .know its own neroes in their new disguise. This the censor would not pass, 011 the ground that " iv is trifling with the cable. " Another reminiscence, and I have done. A eoriesporident at Orange River, anxious to get a message through, was told he must take it to the censor at De Aar. At De Aor the censor would neither accept it nor reject it, and advised the- man to go on to Beaufort West, 12 hours south by rail, where- there existed no censor. Ai, Beaufort West the correspondent was advised to go to Victoria West. In the end be dashed for Capetown, got rid of his message, took steamer the same day for Durban, went up to Estcourt, got taken prisoner, and is now in captivity in Pretoria. — Sunday Sun.