Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Third of a Century] THURSDAY, JULY 20, 1916. ABSURD CENSORSHIP.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume LXX, Issue 146016, 20 July 1916, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Third of a Century] THURSDAY, JULY 20, 1916. ABSURD CENSORSHIP.

la his interesting book, "From Verdun to tho Vosges," Mr Gerald Campbell, tho war correspondent, protests vigor-, ously against tho virtual exclusion of newspaper correspondents from tho front. Everyone recognises that the publication of anything likely to help the enemy, however remote the probability, should bo banned, but this is supposed to be provided for by the censorship.- Tho excessivo caution of the authorities has" led them to refuse the very substantial assistance that the press could havo offered them through its power over public opinion. After all, overyono.reads the newspapers, and not, as appears to bo imagined in some quarters, the enemy alone. Local enthusiasm, for instance, could havo been aroused, and recruiting stimulated, if

correspondents had been allowed to describe tho exploits of individual regiments. To read of these weeks afterwards in official dispatches is not the same thing. Moreover, Mr Campbell is inclined to doubt M'hether, in point of fact, any knowledge the Germasn could get from the Allied press would be of J much importance to them. "They have no need to go to tho French or English newspapers for information about the movements of generals or of troops. They knew, iv any case, that to do so would be futile, siuco they are already checkmated in advance by the censor. Most of the information that matter* they gain in open fight in the field. They knew, long before even tho 'Times'' knew it, that the English army was short of shells, and especially the right kind of shells. A soldier does not take much time to learn whether he is being fired at with shrapnel or with high explosives. They knew long before any newspaper could have, informed them of the fact that the French and English were going to attempt a strong offensive in Champagne and at Loos on September 25th, 1915. Their informant was a preliminary bombardment along that particular part of the front, which lasted for 72 hours." As for other kinds of useful military information which cannot be gathered on the field of battle, but only from behind the enemy's lines, for that they depend, once again, not on newspapers, but on aeroplanes and spies . From each of these sources alone thoy probably get as much news iv a week as all the correspondents of all the newspapers behind the front' could gather in a year." Moreover, the embargo on special correspondents has robbed the nation of v very potent means of influencing neutral sympathies. Mr Campbell gives a very striking oxamplo of this. At the outset of the war public opinion in Switzerland was strongly in favour of Germany. It has now swung round and supports the Allies —and the chief factor in the change has been the authenticated reports of German atrocities in Belgium and France. For economic and military reasons (in order to make the blockade effective) it was highly important for the Allies to secure the benevolent neutrality of Switzerland, yet by virtually compelling" the Swiss to read of the war iv the German versions, they quite needlessly delayed the revolution in Swiss sympathies. The German papers denied the atrocities; the Allied papers contained stories of them from the mouths of their victims, but no accounts which embodied the serious investigations of trained observers accustomed to sift evidence and weigh facts. Consequently the Swiss came to the conclusion that they were either fabrications* of exaggerations of over-strain-ed soldiers ami refugees. It was only when a large number of civilian repatriated internees were returned to France through Switzerland, after spending some months in German prison camps, that the Swiss had proof of the brutalities attributed to Germany. This was afterwards confirmed by the report of the Commission of Inquiry, and Swiss sympathies were definitely alienated from the Central Powers. But the process would have been much quicker had the Swiss from the beginning been enabled to hoar the. stories of responsible journalists which they would have been quite prepared to accept.