THE CENSORSHIP.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 15863, 7 July 1919, Page 4

THE CENSORSHIP.

The announcement that the censorship will shortly be abolished will be greeted with a breath of relief everywhere. lake most human institutions, the censorship is liable to abuse, and £bill more liable to error, and this has caused many people to regard it as an rinnecessary and tyrannical humbug. It is, on the contrary,, a highly necessary thing in time of war, for, notwithstanding the opinions, real or manufactured, of fanatics on the subject, it would never do to let all the world know our intentions, or to permit information to go out to the enemy. The latter danger is the greater, for information is frequently contained in the most innocent-looking of forms. Hence the necessity for the forbidding of code messages, and the subjecting even of plain messages to the minutest scrutiny. Where the censor has chiefly erred is in the stupid withholding of information to onr own people which they should properly be told, and which very often they got to know in spite of- him. Restrictions on trade messages were often a hardship, but were a necessary evil, especially as not a few traders showed that 'they placed profits before patriotism. The lesson of the censorship is not that' it should be abolished in war time.. It is not necessary to abandon a sound principle just because of faulty working. Rather should the attempt be made to improve the working. The importation of rather more common sense into the censorship —if that be possible for officialism—is the chief lesson which the war has taught; us as regards this unpleasant but highly necessary function of the State.