The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-05-24
MESSAGES FROM |. GREECE STRICTLY
 BLUE-PENCILLED
Politics Blamed For Rigid Cutting of Telegraph News
 To Outside World.

Athens, Greece, May 24-It has been one of the revealing circumstances of the political situation in Greece since the formation of the Skouloudis Min istry that the censorship of press cab1egrams to other countries has been not only rigid, but double and some times triple. There has been no cen sorship at all of the Greek newspapers.
 To jealousy and mutual mistrust among members of the Cabinet is at tributed the manifold censorship of cablegrams. Four former Premiers sit in the present Ministry, held to- gether solely by their common hatred of Venizelos and their desire to keep him out of office.
 Premier Skouloudis. as Minister for Foreign Affairs, exercises the ostensi- b1e censorship. Telegrams are brought or sent to the ministry and submitted to young dip1omatist, formerly Greek Charge d'Affaires in Montenegro, who either passes them, or himself in turn submits them to the Premier. The latter process is a long one, as MT. Skouloudis is in no hurry, and often the sender of a message must wait two or three hours to learn whether his message may be sent. He generally must wait in person, as the Minister frequently requires the alteration of a word or two. If the sender of the message is not present to accept the alteration, the message is killed as a whole.
 But though bearing the Premier s red-penci11ed authorization, the mes sage is by no means sure to go. For mer Premier and present Minister of Communications, Rha1Iys also has a say about it. He does not always agree with his colleagues, and if he does not, the signature of the regular censor becomes meaningless. No one sees MT. Rhal1ys' censor. The mes | sages are sent to him, he works his l will with them, and they are returned. There is no appeal and no possibility of explanation or alteration.
 l But former Premier Demetrios Gounaris has noS great faith in the l judgment of either of his colleagues I He is Minister of Interior, and as such lis head of all the police, and of the secret police in particular and any mes i sages ref1ecting on him, fail to arrive investigation prove fruitless waste o1 effort. l In the matter of royal messages, in terviews with His Majesty, the King ] of the Hellenes, or dispatches in which 4he opinion of Constantine I. are cited or referred to, there is still another 1 censorship-that of Count Mercati 1 court of Greece. Te1egrams of this mature are referred to the King him. self, and on his approval of them l Count Mercati initials each page and writes a note at the bottom directing 1 the telegraph authorities to pass the l messag age-''by order of the King.'' 1 But the messages do not pass a bit more for having received this sanction of the palace. Minister of Communi- | cations Rha11ys inspects them whether i or not they have the Kings approval Recently a very important paragraph | L. E<@~- stantine to the correspondent of The Associated Press was lost in this Iway. When the matter was brought to the attention of the sovereign he | concluded that Minister Rhallys was probably quite wise in deleting the paragraph in question, and there the discussion ended.
 l The correspondent of the BerIine1 lTageblatt a short time ago created g lsensation by avoiding all censorship of an interview which he had had with King Constantine. Although the mon arch had made it a condition of his receiving the German journalist that there be no interview, the Berlin cor respondent was altogether too delight
 ed with what he heard on the occasion of his first meeting with the Greek sovereign to resist temptation. But he
 was too wiley to try to send his mes. sage out by telegraph and risk its
 muti1ation at the hands of Ministers iSkouloudis, Rhallys and Gounaris; SC I he sent it out by post, under cover o1 the German Legation pouch, and wher it was finally published there was con. Isternation in Greece. Since that in. icident Constantine of Greece has stead. l fastly refused to be directly quoted b1 anyone for publication, and has re
 ceived only one Journalist, a man ir
 whom he has great confidence.
 
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