We do not want to exaggerate the importance of this
particular incident, but it seems to us that it is one which ought to be most strictly inquired into, and that if the facts are found to be as stated, the gross breach of his duties on the part of the Censor ought to be dealt with severely. Correspondents at the front should, we hold, always add their names to all telegrams, in order that the public may be able to exact from them full responsibility if they are deceived by false accounts; but how can they do this if the correspondent can plead tampering by the Censor? The Censor's functions should, as we have said, begin and end in the deleting of statements dangerous in a military sense. That is the maximum of censorship with which any man, soldier or civilian, can be trusted. Look at the result of an unlimited censorship. Thousands of men are now saying and believing that the Government wanted originally to suppress the news of the killing of the wounded because the knowledge of such barbarity would interfere with their policy of yielding to the Boers. Of course, that is mischievous nonsense, but it is the sort of mischievous nonsense which always has and always will come from attempts to tamper with the Press.
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