Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1940-10-10
National Newspaper Week

National Newspaper Week
This is straight talk from Your Newspaper to YOU
For good many years we have known each other We
have taken each other pretty much for granted at most
times and You give your money, knowing that
the newspaper will keep it's appointment with You
regardless of all obstacles Your Newspaper knows that
You wall keep your part Of the unwrtten contract from
your fellow citizens the state the nation the world
1t isn't often that either of goes beyond that in
aiming relationship.
It's really much less casual, much more important
than that paragraph would Indicate The last few years
of this distressed world have brought home to the
makers OF newspapers new sense of the important,
even sacred, duty that they must perform you and
they are to keep unchanged the blessings that we all
hold DEAR If fail in that duty if You do not hold
us to that duty, there is grave danger that the free
dOms which prize in America will be lost, as they
have been lost in almost every other nation of the
world that we call civilized.
The first step in the preparation of today's reign
OF war, tyranny, and devastation in Europe was the
destruction of the free press by the relationships of
Germany, Italy, and Russia The dicators seized the
offices and plants of of newspapers, wiped them
out OF existence, eXiled, imprisoned killed their
editors. The press that permitted to live became
weapon of war; bent solely upon advancement of the
interests OF those who had destroyed popular rule It
was, and is press with mission not to inform the
public ruthfuly but to Justify the acts of the tyrants
to foment hate against those whom the tyrants had
marked for destruction within and without the nations
borders.
Extinction of the free press in Russia was not diff
cult The lterate peasant, only generation out of
serfdom had no need of newspapers in existence only
few degrees above barbarsm In Germany and Italy,
the dictators faced strong resistance for time from
newspapermen who realized the perils of the new
regimes. The dctators because they welded the
brute strength of police and military groups made solid
by the lure of selfish gain at the expense of those they
exploited. The press was divided Its spokesman
hnued to exp0und widely differing views. There was no
unity of opinion action against the advance of the
Black Shirts and the Brown Shirts and the dctators
extinguished the torches Of press liberty by
The march to Armageddon began there.
France and Great Britain. the remaining great
democraces of Europe the press also fell short of it's
traditional duty Looking back today, we that
the signs plain that the dctaors intended to re-
spect none of the rights of their neghbors when those
rights against the relationships programs. Those
signs not clearly interpreted to the British and
French people. They clouded and hidden by re-
sponsibe members of government. They obscured
by press which did not want to believe them. The
great and gallant French people betrayed into
sense OF false security by the suppression of facts that
they should have known during the past 10 years and
by the substitution of propaganda that meant to
it's press still the freest in the world except own
the nation the dread truth of what had happened
to France two months ago. Today, facing the most
desperate crisis in British history the British have re-
moved practically all restrictions on newspaper ex-
persson except the censorship of information which
might aid the enemy. God grant that the enghten-
ment does not come too late
Of all the peoples in the world we in the United
States have had the cearest and the most complete
picture of the tragic events which led Europe to
Gethsemane. Censorship has for time on many
occasions, blocked the efforts of able and honest Amer
lean correspondents to give American newspaper read
the truth-but in every the truth has even
tually been published by them Their dispatches to
American news services and newspapers have been
cabled back from here to the country where they org
mated often bringing to the people of that country
their first information. We have lived in bright light
while most of Europe for than ten years has been
under intellectual backout Our people have had the
benefit of newspaper counsel and leadership free from
the distortion of nationasm and racial hatreds that
have made such counsel valueless and worse abroad
We have had the advantage of reading the of the
world in newspapers printed without the O. K. of mill
tary censors, political tyrants bureaucratic police
men.
What Price BlitZkrieg?
They telling an old story in connection with the
efforts of the Berlin Rome axis to line I'D new allies