The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1879-11-04 00:00:00

THE GOVERNMENT PRISE GA.G.

The Standard ( ituusterial paper) says:—" It is difilcult
to epees e. iisuely of the ' Rules for the guidance of
Editors and Correspondents in the Field which have just
been issued by the Zodiac Government. The action of
the authorities in this butonees haa ism, in truth. treculi•
any ummemomous sod oflen.ire. The nature and scope
of these Lew regulations may be very briefly described.
The object of a newspaper in time of war is to give early,
full, and impartial now.: not to disclose strstegical
emote, but certainly not to make itself the mere mouth-
piece of edictal routine. Hence the correspondents whom
It despatchn, to the field are underatood. oitisin certain
broad limit., to he independent. If chit independence
reams to be • reality, the consequent disadvantage would
belong not more to the newspaper and the puble than to
the Government end to the generals in command. No
credit can be gained from the approving narrative of •
journalist who is only permi*ol to view affairs through
°Metal spectacle. Of the two, it to better that • Govern-
ment should say at once that it will acts. its own war
correspondent than that it shield reserve to iteell the
right of choosing who the war correspondents of • news-
p•per Sr. to be, and of prescribing what they are not to
say. It lath... pretendons to which the Indian Govern-
ment now advance • claim. Correspondents, we are told,
are only to be allowed after they have been officially
licensed; they are not to employ cipher, or a foreign
language, nor to attempt to avild mailsry control in any
tort of way. They are to be subject to the Mutiny Act,
and are to weer a distinctive hedge. If they violate these
rule. they are subject to expuliion, and may, lit, an ill-
conducted cabman, 'lose their licence.' If they are
expelled, the newspaper employing them Ls debarred from
appointing a substitute. In addition to this there Is to be
a military censor, who 'may require telegram, and letters
to be sent through him, and who may stop or tater both.'
Numerous other rules of the same character, it is said,
have been made. It is not unnatural that the Indian
journals should denounce this manifesto as • scandalous
attempt alto. suppression of the truth and • grow insult
to me British press. The new order amounts to • practical
repeal of the ungraciously postponed permission to
Journalism to .end it. amedited agents to the seat of
war. Bat she spirit of the original prohibition is rigidly
maintained. Plain, unvarnished, unprejudiced accounts
of the Progress of the campaign are still the one thing
which the Indian Government declare shell not be
published. Lorreepondente are to be allowed to accom-
pany the army, bat only an the understandieg that they
shall act.. (terns and regletran of the general command-
ing. That Is the manifest meaning of these new regut
shone and it is, of course, plain that no newspaper of sny
standing could think of subjecting atheU or its repro...nth-
tiro, to the isdignim whom indiction is now announced
so bluntly end undiaguisedly. We confess that we ars
unable to understand the principle or purpose which the
Indian Government hare had in view throughout the
matter. Whether it he regarded from the point of logic
and *insistency or expediency and prudence, their coo-
duct seems equally inexplicable. If the original prohibi-
tion, forbidding absolutely the present:* of correspondents,
wee to have boen annulled at all, it should have been
annulled absolutely : and if it were necessary to annul it,
it sae a metal* to have Issued it. Bt the abrogation of
the drot extraordinary de roe comes at • moment when
it I. really useless, so fats. the general interest of the
public I. concerned, and is accompanied by the conditions
which reduce it to an absurdity. This gratuitous com-
plication of a mistaken and shortsighted policy is much to
be regretted."