THOUGHT-CONTROL IN FRANCE
By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN
Parts, October 26th.
WAR inevitably brings thought-control in the shape of propaganda and censorship. In broad outline the French approach to this problem has been very similar to the British. A Ministry of Information was set up in both countries shortly before the outbreak of the war. When war became imminent both Ministries assumed functions of censorship.
There is a curious and amusing similarity in the com- plaints about the functioning of these Ministries in Paris and in London, about cases of inefficiency, of excessive and unreasonable secrecy about unimportant matters, of bureau- cratic delay, always so exasperating when the needs of the daily Press are concerned. But there are also important differences between methods of thought-control in France and Great Britain. Some of these are rooted in contrasts of national temperament, others in varying political con- ditions. A characteristic of the French censorship is the visible havoc which it works. One can scarcely pick up a newspaper or a magazine without finding at least a few blank spaces where the censor's hand has been at work. Not infrequently a whole leading article is eliminated, the title and the signature of the author sometimes being allowed to remain.
This is the result of the system of preliminary censorship. No newspaper can go to press until every sheet has the censor's visa ; and eliminations are usually made too late to permit the substitution of new material. M. Leon Blum, who is both the leader of the French Socialist Party and the editor of its newspaper, Le Populaire, has criticised this system as unnecessarily inconvenient, from the technical standpoint of the journalist. He has suggested that the desired results could be achieved without censorship, if the Government, through some authorised spokesman, would communicate its prohibitions and injunctions to the editors of the newspapers, applying penalties of suspension or suppression to wilfully disobedient papers. However, there has been no indication that any such modification of the present system will be adopted., Censorship bears rather severely on Le Populaire, and Socialists are convinced that a certain conservative political bias pervades the institution. The censor suppressed some articles in the Socialist newspaper urging the convocation of the Chamber of Deputies, and its editors indulged in some natural exultation when the Cabinet announced its decision to convoke the Chamber in the latter part of November. One individual who has fared very badly indeed at the hands of the censor is a contributor to the weekly magazine, L'Europe Nouvelle, who signs himself " Le Guet d'Orsay." In pre-war days he was a ferocious critic of Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet, on account of the latter's supposed inclina- tion toward a policy of " appeasement." Bonnet now holds the post of Minister of Justice ; but his critic has found extremely little opportunity for articulate expression, because week after week his articles, entitled " Censorship," appear either as complete blanks or with only a few isolated sen- tences. Such severity, however, is exceptional. It is generally possible to grumble about the censorship and, what is still more important in France, to laugh at it with impunity.
The lively and argumentative French temperament finds congenial expression in discussing at length the uses and abuses of the institution. While most criticism is naturally directed against its repressive aspects, publicists occasionally take the censor to task for overlooking something which, in the opinion of the writers, he ought to have stopped. So the fiery and polemical Henri de Kerillis recently found fault with the censor for permitting the publication of articles by the Nestor of the French Monarchists, M. Charles Maurras, insisting that Germany should be dismembered. M. de Kerillis was critical not of the idea itself, but of the wisdom of publishing it at the present time, when it might be ex- pected to stiffen the German will to resistance and to affect unfavourably opinion in neutral countries. Another well- known commentator on international affairs, M. \Vladimir d'Ormesson, questioned the advisability of permitting the publication of too much material indicating the possibility of an early German collapse as a result of shortage of food and other internal difficulties. M. d'Ormesson's advice to his countrymen was to prepare for a war " long, hard and implacable."
The censorship, which goes by the name of " Anastasia," is the butt of numerous joking cartoons, most of which are permitted to see the light of day. One represents a self- important censor as saying: " I have mislaid my scissors ; the Press won't appear today." Another shows a functionary leaning back in his chair and observing : " I'm not over- worked, as censor of Le Journal Officiel" (a publication which prints only the decrees and ordinances of the Gov.:rn- ment).
The postal censorship has its human side. Cases are re- ported when the censor duly replaced a private message of a soldier to his sweetheart in the concealed spot in the flap of the envelope where it had been originally placed, while a letter written in the simple cipher which consists of reversing the order of letters in each word was delivered, with a note from the censorship authorities, also in reversed letters, to the effect that this was not permissible.
The main effects of censorship on the work of foreign correspondents have been indirect. Peace-time sources of information tend to dry up and a good deal of news is censored at the source. But cable despatches to America have gone off with promptitude and with a minimum of deletion. British correspondents have encountered more difficulties than their American colleagues, because they have been obliged to run the gauntlet of two censorships, their own and the French. For a time the only insurance against inordinate delay in sending messages from Paris to London was to relay them, at very considerable expense, via New York. Now, however, an arrangement has been made for the daily use of the telephone by British journalists, with the British Ministry of Information acting as a sort of trans- mission agency. There is definitely more freedom for downright criticism of the War in Great Britain than in France. In fact, there is none at all in France. Attacks on the War by Com- munists, who changed almost overnight from vociferous bellicists into extreme pacifists at the dictation of Moscow, and by others can only be made through clandestine methods and at the risk of arrest and prosecution. Here two con- siderations must be borne in mind. The French are more impulsive and hot-tempered than the British, and hence lest tolerant of criticism in a time of national emergency. And seventy-two Communists in a national Parliament (the situation in France) represent a greater problem and a greater strain on the national sense of tolerance than a single Mr. Gallacher.
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