WAR CORRESPONDENCE.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—I venture to express an opinion on this subject (Spec- tator, December 15th) because in connection with my duties on the staff of a daily paper I have had exceptional oppor- tunities of ascertaining why, when, and to what extent war correspondents were hampered by censors and other Staff officers. I have, moreover, heard many an instructive anecdote from officers who have returned at the expense of pressmen against whom these particular officers could have borne no per- sonal animosity. There seems, on the whole, to have been no more judgment exercised in the selection of the representatives of some of the newspapers than would have been thought meas. sary for the purpose of reporting a meeting in Trafalgar Square. Apart from ignorance of all matters appertaining to military organisation and methods, several of the correspondents were so lacking in ordinary intelligence as to suppose that they were going to terrorise Staff officers by merely uttering the magic word " Press." When this type of correspondent found his level he openly expressed his opinions of censors and British officers in general, more than suggesting that on his return home he would have something to say that no censor could eliminate. One correspondent stated freely on the spot that all the officers at Magersfontein were drunk, and at least three made no secret of their Pro-Boer sympathies. These are the men who have returned with personal grievances against the censors. But, on the other hand, the experiences of the better class of correspondent who has returned with no personal grievance (except, perhaps, against those of his colleagues who gave the whole band a bad name) point to inexcusable stupidity, laziness, favouritism, and insolence on the part of some of the censors,—men to whom was relegated the delicate duty of opening private correspondence and dealing with it as they chose, apart from the " editing " of cablegrams. There can be no doubt that the presence of so many Press repre- sentatives was distasteful to the perpetrators of military blunders, but the unquestionably rough treatment suffered by the correspondents as a body with certain columns was due more to the ignorance and bad tone of several of the men whom their employers apparently thought good enough for
Previous page
