Albuquerque morning journal. [volume] (Albuquerque, N.M.) 1903-1926, 1919-02-27
CENSORSHIP ON
GERMAN FRONT IS
DEAD LETTER LAW
Bars Not Yet Officially Lower.
ed, but UnofficiaIIy Almost
Anything May Be Sent by
Correspondents,
BY Cyril Brown.
Copyright, 1919, by the Press Publish
ing Co

| Especial Gable Dispatch to World and
Albuquerque Journal)
Coblenz, Feb. 26.-The newspaper
correspondents here think the Amer
lean military censorship died unoffi-
cially, today when Capt Gerald Nor
gan, chief field censor, passed .unshorn
a dispatch dealing with the delicate
subject technically known as "fric-
ton with only one word deleted by
the censor Henceforth the truth may
pass the censor.
Military censorship is not declared
legally dead yet, but the captains
accredited staff is satisfied it has
passed on for all practical purposes
and merely persists as fiction. This
hypothesis is confirmed by the fact
that Captain Morgan has completed
writing his memoirs entitled 1.-The
Sensor's Side of IT. and now acts
like an ordinary human being, merely
continuing to earn his pay by applying
the rubber censorship stamp to all dis
patches after reading them.
News Not Censored Now.
For the first time during the war
American readers now can get news
from the front guaranteed to be un-
censored. This is how the miracle
happened:
There were four great general prin-
| ciples governing American military
! censorship. These cardina virtues,
| practced in the field by Captain Nor
gan have been going by the board
one by one and the censorship has
been slowly dying ever since the ar
| mistice was signed
/ no ipgf tD1n Of A nj n a n
| military censorship, that all dis
patches and articles must be truth
! full and accurate as to fact and impli-
| cation, was always rather academic,
since war correspondents are famous
for their truthfulness and it became a
superfluous dead letter when the war
correspondents became armistice cor
I respondents.
| The second censorship principle,
| permitting nothing to pass which
| might convey information to the enc
my, likewise became dead letter
! when the beaten Germans became pla-
| tonic foes and general headquarters
ruled that American troops could be
| freely identified and that all names
| and places could be mentioned. This
| ruling let down the bars to the trans
mission of all concrete military news.
Morale Rule Lasted Long.
The fourth censorship principle,
| that nothing could be passed which
! might impair the Americans reia-
| tons with neutrals, always has been
| an academic dead letter so far as cor
respondents at the front were con-
cerned, besides there is no news ram
pant on the Rhine front which could
wound the sensbilities of the most
sensitive small neutral nations. There
never has been a censorship rule
against hurting the feelings of the
Germans
There remained as the last bulwark
of moribund military censorship the
third principle, the famous morale
rule, that nothing could be sent from
the field, whether true or not, which
might tend to impair the morale IT
the American or the allied armies or
the morale of the people at home or
IN allied countries. Desperately Chief
| Censor Morgan chung to his last rem
nant of censoria authority, particu-
| larly ruling out all animadversions on
alleged friction within our army
| or with the allied armies as tending
| to impair morale.
Others Spilled the Beans.
But Captain Morgan was forced
| finally to interpret the morale rule
| literally by the fact that the beans
had been spilled so thoroughly by I'M
! censored officers returning to Paris,
| by doughboys. visiting firemen, con-
) gressmen and others, that nothing
| which correspondents could possibly
send from the Rhine front could in
| jure morale at home or abroad. For
the first time it is felt in the field
that public opinion, allied or domes-
| tic, no longer needs protection by mill
itary censorship. Captain Morgan has
made one mental reservation, the in
| side story of the Ninety-fourth divi-
| sion may not be told yet.
(The story of the Ninety-fourth di-
| vision remains untold because there
are only ninety-three divisions in the
| American expeditionary force).