Laurel outlook., 1945-09-05

things according to patterns differ
ent from others not for the sake
of merely being different nor for
a silly assumption of superiority. A
very definite illustration of laying
aside jealousy guarded rights in
time of crisis was the voluntary
censorship the weekly and daily
press exercised during the war. 1t
was even different from the news
censorship in France, a democracy,
before that nation was overwhelmed
by the enemy. There the columns
were censored by govrnment; here
the newspapers censored themselves.
1t was true that they were request
ed to do so, but there were no re-
representatives. of government in the
American newspaper offices to
mark out words, lines, paragraphs,
perhaps columns and sometimes
whole pages. The papers laid aside
their freedom of telling the news
about anything they chose, and
voluntarily omitted all things that
might be of value to the enemy.
Now that the war is over and the
necessity for concealment is gone,
a few of the stories that were
never printed may be mentioned.
In Laurel the Outlook printed
thousands of letters from service
men and women located all over the
world. The letters were highly in
teresting to all the home readers
we'll as to those in the service,
but the paper knew that the most
careful reader was the enemy. 1t
was often a perplexing job to print
the letters without giving away in
formation and yet retain the in
Sometimes it was necessary
to rephrase and reconstruct, and
sometimes to make a long dismal
mark or put in a pair of parenth-
isis marks and state that something
lad been omitted. The field cen
;ors had passed the letters, but the j,
duty was to exercise a sec
md censorship. When enough peo-
lie talk about a thing, the enemy
S bound to learn something; there
ore the paper had to keep out
fragments that could be pieced to-
A good many interesting things !
appened in Laurel that in time of
eace would have been written 4
bout. There were the great guam .,
tiles of war material moving on
he railroads, strange looking boxed
that caused no end of specu-
ltion, and other shipments exposed =
n flat cars-naval guns sometimes, 6
lells, bombs, tanks, jeeps and
ndlease. The enormous process
of trains passing through the
aurel yards never ceased. Inter-
,ersed with the countless troop
aims. 1t all would have been in
resting matter to tell, but it was
after the enemy wanted to know
)out too.
Laurel and the east side of the 7
ocky mountains had been mapped
n Japanese raids from the air, G
the Japs ever got a foot -
I'D in Alaska. The object was to !,
,stroy or cripple railroads, oil re- y
.neries, factories and highways. 1t I
as best to not say anything about
hat happened here, or give de- T
riptions of extensions, buildings T
improvements that could be as
mbled in files and later used for .
entifying targets. After the mi =
al phase of the Pacific war the T
-ance steadily became more re-
ote, but it still was a good policy 6
keep mum.
Military authorities realized that !.
aurel offered an exceptional tar !,
t. Camouflage could not cover
lining railroad lines at night, or #
silver river or a we'll defined re-
lery. There was no good sense ~
describing them, or the changes,
the enemy.
There was the instance of Jap {
csc balloons. They were being I
in Japan for drifting
ross the Pacific and into America. }
good many came through, but
ay never did any serious damage
cept in a few cases.. One of
Dse was the killing of several =