" GERMANY EMBATTLED. " [TO TOO EDITOR OF THZ " SPECT&TOlt.":1 Si, — Your
recent review of the book Germany Embattled, by Oswald Garrison Villard, of the New York Evening Post, accuses Mr. Villard of special pleading on behalf of Germany, and of charges against the English Press Bureau which you do not think are just. Your review says that "he not only accuses our Press Bureau of suppressions, but of disgraceful falsifications. He deliberately asserts that the news in the German Press and German official despatches have proved, as a whole, more trustworthy than those of Russia, or France, or England."
At the time when Mr. Villard must have written the articles which go to make up the book you review, the relative dependability of the various official reports was still, perhaps, a debatable question. Your implied defence of the work of the English Press Bureau is, however, a little puzzling to American readers familiar with the Spectator's enlightened point of view. Any American journalist, part of whose duty it is to read Canadian and English as well as Continental journals, is struck by the incredible stupidity of the Prose Censors in England, and their apparent innocence of any guiding principles in their treatment of the news originating either on the Continent or in England, but passing through their hands. This has been marked from the very beginning of the war and continues to the present moment. The writer happened to be in Ireland at the outbreak of the war, and his own experience with the Press Censorship amused bias considerably at the time. Telegraphing to London, he was obliged to pay in advance for a message of several hundred words ; the message was censored, no part of it over reaching its
destination, and yet he was never informed of that fact and was never reimbursed for the undelivered telegram. Multiply this instance by a few thousand and the point of view of the American journalist in regard to the Press Censorship will perhaps be more understandable to readers of Mr. Villard's book. As a matter of fact, American readers have access not only to the news which comes to them viol London, but also to the news arriving by French cable, German wireless, and mail; also • to the articles written by Americans after they have returned to American soil and are no longer subject to any sort of censorship. In the circumstances, is it not just possible that a notably fair-minded writer like Mr. Villard, with access to the news, censored and uncensored, of more than one country, has a juster impression than has your reviewer of the dull-witted inconsistencies and misrepresentations of many censored Press reports ?
In an issue of the New Statesman for the same date as the Spectator reviewing Mr. Villard's book I read this sentence :—
"The British public feels it is being wantonly kept in ignorance, and grows increasingly irritable and distrustful, whilst the rest of the world laughs at tho British ostrich and becomes more and snore inclined, even though its sympathies may be with the Allies, to regard the German official reports as the only reliable source of information concerning the progress of the war."
—I am, Sir, &c., W. B. BLAKE, 27 West 44th Street, New York City, September 15th.
[Mr. Blake fails to meet the point of our reviewer. He accuses the Press Bureau of dull-witted inconsistencies and misrepresentations. Mr. Villard spoke of disgraceful falsifications and gave no specific instances. Mr. Blake calls Mr. Villard a "notably fair-minded writer." Mr. Villard's fairmindedness, to our way of thinking, is on a par with that of the Pope as interpreted by M. Latapie. Lastly, Mr. Blake's appeal to the testimony of the New Statesman leaves us cold. We canna forget that it was in that paper that Mr. Bernard Shaw's pamphlet, Common Sense about the War, appeared. If the New Statesman really thinks that the German wireless is the only trustworthy source of information concerning the war, we can only say that it must have a very strange standard of reliability, one entirely different from the mass of mankind. Berlin wireless only tells the truth when quite convenient. We admit, however, its capacity for so watering falsehood with spurts of truth that there is a false air of exactitude.—ED. Spectator.]
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