The Miller press. [volume] (Miller, S.D.) 190?-current, 1915-04-01
Thirty Fourth Year.
WAR NEWS VALUE
NOW EXPLAINED
Correspondents Handicapped by
Censor and Mems Imagin-
alton

public is illogical and e uhtruth-
full has been often observed. Here
tofore his has all been charged to
the censors at London, which city
controls the news cables. The wild
est and most improbable reports
have come from the Russian capital,
via London, all fayoring the Rus
slams, of course. In fact war news
from all the fighting nations, ap-
pears to be highly colored in favor
of the nation in which it originates,
But an interesting and perhaps
correct diagnosis of the conditions
and news" from the Russian battle
front reaches America in the ad.
vance chapters of a book being writ
ten by Stanley Washburn, an Ameri-
can correspondent, on his field OBJ.
servations at Warsaw. and publish
ed in the Mime polis Journal. He
says:
"In spite of the fact that that the
front is SO near, it is very difficult
TO gather direct information of what
is going on each dav. | have never
in Z somewhat varied experience.
found any place where more false
reports are circulated at par than
here in Warsaw. Even Chefoo in
the Manchurian campaign, which up
to that time had the record for in
accuracies. must take second place
to Warsaw. Hardly a day passes
when one is not told with the great
est conviction bv someone or other,
stories to the effect that the Ger
mans have broken our line, are al
ready at Blonie, Is miles away, that
Warsaw will be evacuated instantly,
and | know not what other wild
tales. Even the best informed and
most seriousminded are more than
half the time mlsied as to what is
actually going on. Though the
news from almost every front is
actually in this hotel within "a hours
Of its occurrence, it is all but Impos-
sible to get it pieced together so as
to make A consistent whole. The
Younger officers who will talk know
nothing about the situations save
for the immediate vicinity in which
they themselves have been engaged.
The front is so extended, and there
are so many thousand details, that
the report of a single individual
who has come from the front line is
about as informing as to the whole
perpective as the viewpoint of a
man whose nose is two feet from a
stone wall.
| find that not even some of the
officers are not informed as TO which
corps TANKS their own organizations,
while the lower generals have only
the vaguest idea as TO operations
that are going on 10 miles away.
The man who comes m from a posi-
ton where there has been a snappy
action during the day a see only
the results that took place in his
particular trench. If his battilion
reputsed the Germans, he brings
word that the Germans made a gen.
eral assault all along the line. and
in his heart he believes that his re-
giment has been the center of one
of the greatest actions in the worlds
history.
1t is hard for any who go through
an action where half of their neigh
bors are killed or wounded to real
ize that ven the wiping out of his
whole regiment or brigade is but a
detail of the war. and that the fight
which he took to be on so gigantic a
scale was in reality relatively but a
skirmish.
Thus it is that we get from dav to
dav reports of great victories and
great defeats from the men who are
absolutely sincere and intelligent as
well. 1t is all but impossible in
operations SO large to get a perpec-
tive at all, and it is doubtful if even
the staff gets more than a very
vague idea of what happened.
The inaccuracies as to actu"l
events are. however, small in COM
parison with unfounded general in.
formation. Reports of losses are off
hundreds of percent. A hundred
dead easily have been increased to a
thousand by the time the report
gets here, and probably more when
it gets to Petrograd. IL the Ger
mans get a new army corps v