The Cape weekly tribune. (Cape Girardeau, Mo.) 1914-1914, 1914-09-11
CENSORS GARBLE
NEWS OF BATTLE
Bureaus in London, Paris and
st. Petersburg Handicap
Newspapermen
SUPPRESS HAPPENINGS
Men in Charge Either Omit the
Facts or Substitute Them
With Fiction

London, Sept. 9-Whilc what
mca@cr news Of the war the public
is getting, is given out by the war
Offices in Paris, Berlin and Pc'rograd
est Pclcrshurgl the British govern
mcut has established a special do-
pmumont for the dissemination Of
such information "a, The authorities
thinks the people should have. This is
known as the Press Buryau and is
Jointly maintained and supervised by
the war office and the admiralty.
The Press Bureau is the clearing
house for contemporary history.
Through the modest upper rooms Of
a ramshackle building in Whitehall
passes news that may thrill the world.
But the world rarely learns the news.
In modern warfare most news is con
traband, and experts from the admir-
atty and the war Office sit day and
night and estreat information CLEANED
at considerable expense and some per-
sonal danger. The new bureaucracy"
is like the sensitive cylinder of u
gramophonc, and it preserves its re-
cords. 1t has large ears and a small
voice. Information pours into the
bureau in floods and it trickles out in
drops.
Disappointed journalists have face
tiously described it as the Suppose
Bureau; they take in more news than
they bring out, and they writhc in the
pains of censored knowledge But the
ccnsors smile blandly and politely
murmur: And the next please, Not
even Il shoemaker can excel a censor
in politcness.
+. f. Smith, his brother, Harold
Smith, and the wcll-groomcd naval
and military officers who rule the
Press Bureau make up in politencss
what they destroy in paragraphs.
In spite of its reserve and rcpres-
sion, the Press Bureau is the record
ing instrument Of the war. The more
ware correspondents are discouraged
and denied the more +. +. Smith and
his colleagues become the evangelists
of war. In brief, court, official, phra-
seology they tell of events that shake
the wolrd; they are the mouthpeces
of the makers of history.
Because of the news that must
come, there is always strained ex-
citement in the Press Bureau. Amid
the insistcnt jangling of the tclc-
phone bells the roughless censoring of
messages, the polite cvasions, and the
distribution of unimpOrtant trifies,
there is ever the feeling that the great
news is near. A few yards away are
the wireless recivrs of the admiralty;
within a stones throw is the war Of
flee; and, realizing that we are in the
nerve center Of news, Wer of the Press
Bureau wait for the thrill.
And when the thrill does come what
a humble setting it will have. The Of
fees of the Press Bureau are neither
impressive nor commodious. There is
nothing of the spacious grandurc,
nothing f the dignihcd splendoI,-
iamiliarly associated with govern
mcnt Offices; it is a comfortlcss con
veuience; sudden reply to a has:y
decision, The Press Bureau i, a nov
idea in England, it is the cooperative
supplanter Of cntcrprising individual
ism. The Press Bureau does not
gather facts; it Sits them. There is
no color in the official messages; they
read like urgent private kilograms at
one cent a word, and as in a toIc-
gram, every word counts.
But, again, what a setting to the
scripture Of a worlds war, Crampcd
and crazy, a maze of desterted rooms,
a dusty, dirty, unfinished medley Of
draughty spaces, that is the British
Press Bureau. A score Of telephone
cabinets, half dozen policemen sey-
era war Office messengers, and a
charwoman suggest an atmosphere Of
energy. But the rooms remain aloof,
with the neglected ayteu.v o. the
great Unlrt