GERMAN AND AUSTRIAN NEWSPAPERS.
[To TR/ EDITOR Or TH11 "SPECTITOR."1 SIR,—I wonder if you or any of your readers can suggest a reason for the fact that it is impossible to buy a German or Austrian newspaper in London. Presumably it is some childish nonsense about trading with the enemy. Our news- papers contain selected extracts from the enemy's Press, perhaps sent to them from neutral countries; but it is intolerable that persons who can read German, and wish to learn something about public opinion in Germany and Austria, should be dependent on doubtful translations of
such scraps as a number of unknown and possibly biassed journalists may choose to put before them. The natural result of the system is that prominence is given to all the most offensive rodomontade, and that very little sensible discussion of problems from our enemies' point of view ever
reaches the British public at alL—I am, Sir, &c., C. S.
[Our correspondent should address his protest, it seems to us, to the Press Bureau and the Censors, or to the War Office or Foreign Office, rather than to a newspaper, which is much more likely to be the victim than the supporter and abettor of those institutions in their handling of the problems of the Press. But though we are not what might be called natural defenders of the Press Bureau—if that is the department responsible—we can suggest a reason for suppressing the sale of alien enemy newspapers which, in our opinion, provides a complete justification for such action. If German newspapers were freely sold here, the easiest possible of methods would be provided for communication between the German secret service agents in England and their chiefs in Berlin. An advertisement in the equivalent of the agony column would be a safe means of sending orders and reports in miniature. That is a risk not worth running in order to see how German opinion is moving.—En. Spectator.]
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