Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1917-03-01
GERMANY MUZZLES
ALL NEWS SOURCES
Desire One Hand to Create Favorable Impression Among
NeutraS Is Made Void Through Peculiar System of Cen
Soring Press Matter

ties for obtaining the economic as well
as the military news insistently asked
for, and acted on suggestions made to
him. He was able to send correspond
ents to active points on the front.
Nevertheless he or those above him
retained the same cenSorS, who up to
the present have acted in an arbitrary
manner, inexplicable to neutrals.
For example, they frequently held
back the very information which had
been furnished by the military de-
partment itself, and refused to pass
apparently innocent news items pub
lished in the German press, which
were picked up and telegraphed from
Holland, Denmark or Switzerland. In
some cases one correspondents dis
patch on a given subject would be
passed while an identical article from
another would be held up.
The military succeeded in having an
order issued on all fronts that corre-
spondents were to be shown every
thing there was to be seen and that
all possible courteses were to be eX-
tended to them, but the censors were
then permitted to blue pencil the re-
sultant dispatches. On the first trip
arranged by the department two
American newspapermen flew over the
entire Somme sector in an airplane,
in accordance with the order to show
correspondents everything possible.
Air Battle Story Suppressed
Their report of the battle seen from
the air was suppressed. The airplane
staff was brought up on the carpet and
all but cashiered. The incident was
closed when one correspondents story
was released, while the others was
held up and is still among the ar
chives at great headquarters. There
were no indications of favoritism,
however, as is shown by the fact that
the correspondent whose account OF
the airplane flight was held up sue
ceeded in sending another dispatch
unchanged which, when presented in
German by the correspondent OF a
German-American newspaper, was
not permitted to pass.
These and countless similar cases in
dicate that genuinely earnest efforts
have been made by the German au-
thorities to put newspapermen in pos
session of real news, but their efforts
as often as not have been partly or
entirely nullified by the censorship
against which every neutral CORE
spondent in Berlin has complained re-
peatedly.
BY curious coincidence, it was a
man unacquainted with newspapers
who early in the war told the German
foreign office that it could hope to in
terest neutrals, and especially Amert-
can, public opinion only if it offered
news of such value that American
newspapers would willingly pay for 1t.
Gradually, officials in the foreign
office and elsewhere have adopted this
view, but only TO limited degree. The
/ foreign correspondents in Berlin are
still flooded with quantities of litera-
ture written in German by Germans
from the German viewpoint, while
each day news which the correspond
ents desire to transmit is suppressed
and must find its way out by the me-
dunn of German newspapers or by
word of mouth, to be distorted or mis-
understood.
AS relating to the German press the
censorship is very severe. 1t is the
more effective because there are no
blank spaces in the newspapers to in
dicate to the reader what has been
eliminated. Protest has followed pro-
test against the muzzling of newspa-
pers in regard to political as well as
military news, but the only letup has
been along economic lines.
Newspapers now are able to discuss
with some freedom food and similar
conditions, and even to criticise the
economic administration. Criticism of
the government. and specifically of the
party of Chancellor Won Bethmann-
Hollweg, is still forbidden and a num-
Der of newspapers still remain under
the so-called preventive censorship,
being obliged to submit political ar
ticles to the censor before they are
published.