Omaha daily bee., 1898-05-15

tween Spain and England? The cable PLAYS
but relatively small part in the delay
The royal inquisitor, known as the censor,
is the man mainly responsible for this woe
full waste of time He is not always at
home, nor is he, perhaps, always in the
humor for censuring and critcising, and
the messages must wait until he is disen-
gagged and in the mood.
But why should there not be many Gen.
sors? First of ALL indeed, one wonders why
there should be any. Spain is a consttu-
tional country. and at present it is governed
by the liberal party. which holds high the
honor of freedom and fraternity. and makes
war upon all the old world abuses of despot-
ism. conservatism, etc. Yet, for all that,
there is censure-nay, such strict CEN
sure as has been unknown In Russia since
the days of Nicholas /, and is paralleled
only In the Turkish empire of today.
Smere word, to which the censor reasonably
or unreasonably objects is enough to ruin
a telegram Of a thousand words to which he
assents. Thus I forwarded a most impor-
tant message yesterday which with the ut
most difficulty was enabled to hand in at
3 p. m. The facts it contained dealt with
the resolutions adopted by the cabinet coun-
Gil At the end there was one short sentence
to the effect that, according to a rumor
current in journalistic circles of the capital,
1t was expected that the Spanish officers
would meet in the Puerta del Sol that even
ing and walk home in silence by way of a
patriotic demonstration. This was abso-
lutely true. The rumor was current every
where. l sent off the message at p. m.
sharp, and mentioned the time in the tee-
gram. Shortly after o'clock next morning
1 received a communication from the chief
of the telegraph to the effect that, owing
to the sentence about the projected manifes-
tation, he had detained my message, but
that II, on reflection, l considered that l
could modify that particular passage the
telegram would be duly sent! After ten
hours had elapsed and the news was be-
come utterly worthless!
OF course a censor Is only man and can
not therefore, do the work of ten men at
once. What ten censOrs could do In one hour
one censor needs ten. and 1t may be twelve
hours, to do 1t in. This would be obviated
IL the government employed several officials
to read the messages of correspondents to
their journals. But Spaniards who under
stand, nay, who have an inkling even of any
foreign tongue. are incredibly few. Even
French is Greek to most Of the educated
classes of officials. journalists and politi-
cians Still, there are several who know
smattering of English hence the length
of time it takes to censure an English mes
sage. In general, therefore, the matter
stands thus: There is little news to be had
before p. M and telegram handed in at
8: 80 p. m. will most likely reach London
too late for the morrow's paper That Is
one aspect of the matter. The Germans,
however, are much better off. Their Ian
guage is given up as a bad job by all Span
ish officials and no attempt whatever is made
to censure kilograms in that language. To
prove this the following experiment was
lately resorted to in my presence. Two iden-
tcal telgrams were handed in at the office,
the one in German and the other in French.
Next day the latter was returned as stopped
by the censor, while the other was for
warded and duly appeared. Lest there
| should be any doubt on the subject the ex-
periment was repeated, with the same re-
suit another day; and on third occasion
an acquaintance of mine forwarded a most
| sensational message In German to the effect
that the position of the queen regent was
become precarious and the censor passed 1t
on without a remark!
The Spanish ceremonies which accompany
the handing in of a telegram would be
amusing were they not so irksome and time
killing You approach little window in the
one Office in the city, and when your turn
comes, hand in your message. The clerk
counts the words couple OF times over.
adds up the result Of each page, refers to tn