The Washington times., 1917-03-09
FIELD CENSOR'S JOB
Is NOT HAPPY one
Harassed and Unpopular Off.
ciaI in Mesopotamia a Sort
of Tower of Sabel.

Taking one consideration with an
other. remarked the late Sir W. s. Gil
bert. a poli,emN1's lot In not a happy
one. Neither Is that OF a field censor.
He is a harassed official land highly
unpopular) at the best Of times. but
nowhere are his duties more arduous
than In the (sardonicaIly) smiling land
Of MesopotamIa. There the office OF
the chief field censor Is a sort OF Tower
Of Babel. the only difference being that
the words Of many tongues are written.
not shouted. II is the censor and his
staff who do the shouting. as bag after
bag Of letters is hurled at their devoted
heads.
In a long. low room in Basrah, in a
perspiration temperature. the chief field
censor and his familiars hold sway. At
a Ions table sit the assistant censors,
each With a pile OF letters before him
and box beside him. into which he
drops the letters when rhe has perused
them. There is a window through which
the public hand in letters and parcels
TO be censored before registration, and
there are chutes from the postoffice in
come rattling down.
Running Fire Of Questions.
At another table stands a gentleman
who is apparently practiclng limitations
of machine-gun bursts" but Is really
stamping the passed" letters. At one
end Of the long table sit the officer in
charge Of the Indian vernacular cor
respondence and the interpreters who
deal with the Mesopotamian language,
while half dozen Sepoys prefer to do
their work seated on the floor.
The chief field censor rejoices in
a table all to himself. and to him
his assistants bring their knottier
problems. His window opens on a
busy street. and passers-by subject
him to a running FIRE OF. questions on
all sorts OF subjects, such as: "Why
Is the ferry late today" and "If l
telegraph to Bombay this morning
when will the message be deliv-
ered?"
When reading. a censor keeps the
pile address side down. and of
course. he is absolutely dumb as to
the contents. As a matter of fact,
he has to work at top speed. and
ii would be impossible for him to
remember the letters he peruses an
hour after he has passed them.
Find Censor Useful Friend.
Sometimes a letter has to be .spe-
cially dealt with. for one reason or
another-for example. II a specific
grievance should be noticed, which
might otherwise Be overIooked-a
note is made for the information Of
the commander-in-chief, so that the
matter may be looked into and the
difficulty removed.
A remarkable but quite common
experience is to come across an en-
velope duly addressed, but contain
ing only a blank sheet of paper.
Pen-shy people, too. ind the censor
useful friend. That Internal cen
sor must have destroyed a lot OF my
letters to you" is an excellent ex-
cuse for the careless correspondent
AS to insufficientIy addressed let
ters, they are legion. The following
is a typical case:
ITO the Jew Ephraim, in Persia"
from his friend Mshommed."
This was the effort of a Turkish
prisoner of war in Basrah.
\ soldier wrote to his wife saying
he was inclosing a one-pound note
for her. but added in a postscript:
Il hear there is bloke called a
censor what opens our letters, so
am not sending the Oue-pound note.