The Waterbury Democrat., 1942-03-11

toward applying a lot of hush hush on everything. Department of State probably shares that distinc- tion.
 The other civilian branches of the government go on the theory that the American people are entitled to know what their government is do- ing and that everything possible should be told, up to the point of not revealing military secrets. To over simplify, the rule of thumb for the armed services might be interpreted as Don't tell any, thing which the enemy may nat know" The word may" is import ant. If there is any doubt about the enemy's having any given morsel of information, the policy is to apply the ShuSh.
 From the standpoint of strategy, that's a good rule. The harder you make it for an enemy agent to do his job, the safer you are. An axis agent may have all the information he's after on any subject-say plane production-except one little detail. Supply him with that detail or make it easy for him to get 1t and his job is done, Hence the tendency to lean over backward in keeping secret even the smallest production figures. EACH BRANCH DOES
 OWN TALKING
 Reconciling the points of view of the military and naval brances of l the government, which is to cover up and conceal news, and the civil ian branches. of the government, which like to tell what they're do- ing, is one of the tougher problems which the Office of Censorship has to face. Not all the headaches of censorship come in dealing with the public, the press and the radio. Just as big pain is the problem of dealing with government agencies in determining which of their war time activities are censorable and to what degree.
 The policy in this war, as you know, Is not to have one central know-all and tell-little agency like the Creel Committee of the last war. Instead, every government agency thas its own service of information and it tells what it thinks should be told, subject only to 8 genral Supervision policy worked out by an Interdepartmental Committee on War Information, on which are Representatives of 16 federal depart ments.
 Officially, the armed services do not criticize or question this pro- cedure, which is an administration policy that can be traced right back to the White House where sits the commander- int chief of the Army and Navy. Privately, however, there are plenty of officers who think this policy leads to l6 different kinds of confusion.
 If this scribbing kibitzer interprets this criticism correctly, it boils down to belief that there is too much civilian advice and too much med ding of non-military government agencies in matters that are in final analysis the concern of the fightin' men. Putting it bluntly, Army and Navy men tend to resent interfer- Ience of the Office of Facts and Fig ures, the Office of Government Re- Iports, the Office for Emergency Management and the Office of Gen. sorShip in shaping policy on what military information to give the public. And by military information lis not meant just the news of troop movements and actual combat, but the much broader field of training land equipping the Army, and the whole war production program.
 ARMY-NAVY BABY
 LAST TIME
 The Army and the Navy do have valid claim on a knowledge ot censorship. They ran their military censorship in the last war. They exercise censorship over news that goes out of camps and bases today They have had staff plans and training for settling up censorship for years. Even now, the Navy con- trols censorship of cables and in- ternational communications and the Army censors mail over and above the work done by the Office o1 Censorship.
 Army and Navy procurement branches exercise further censorship lon war production. The Army'S h. dustrial Information Branch re- gently issued an extensive set oi rules, restricting publication and broadcasting of many types of news on military construction, supply contracts, production. The publica. tion of newspaper special war in- dustry editions, giving a roundup or community's entire war produc- tion efforts, has been suspended. check is kept on the 2,0O0 house organs of leading industrial firms with war contracts, to keep then from inadvertently giving away military industrial secrets and tht location of troops through the pub ilication of honor rolls of employes lin the services. Army and Navy communiques are of course prepared and censored by the services them selves.