Page:The Newspaper and the Historian.djvu/284

 ress.

planning a campaign, rely on information that might have been sent out with the express purpose of deceiving him, since " send

ing out false rumors of intentions and even false news of events is the custom of warfare ;" 84 that governments should rely on the war correspondents of the enemy when their own spies infest the enemies' country ; that any leader would ever admit that he had received important information from this source. A war department is nothing if not omniscient as well as omnipotent,

and not a single instance seems to have been recorded where it has itself acknowledged that the enemy was the authority for

its knowledge of the military movements of the other side. On the other hand, it seems evident that war correspondence has

sometimes been censored or suppressed “ for political purposes only ;" 85 that correspondents have been denied opportunities because governments and military officials have disliked criti cism ; that keeping military secrets from the enemy may be a

pretext for controlling the news. These questions have been raised, not to decide them , but to indicate that the historian can not accept without further investigation these statements

that may be ex parte and conventional.86 The quagmire in which the censorship of war correspondence

may involve the historian is illustrated by the Spanish -American War. The American correspondents were prevented from writing 84 Hamilton Holt, “ Understanding the War News,” Independent, Jan uary 31, 1916, 85: 146. 86 " The military press censorship, originally established for the plausible purpose of guarding against the possibility of information , likely to prove of value to the enemy, being conveyed to their knowledge through the columns of the public press, was a weapon that a general in command of

an army in the field, whether Oriental or European , did not fail to make use of against adverse criticism ." - E . Vizetelly, Reminiscences of a Bashi Bazouk , p . 320.

86 An excellent discussion of this phase of the question is that of T. F. Millard, “ The War Correspondent and his Future," Scribner's Magazine,

February, 1905, 37: 242-248. The writer disapproves of the censorship of war news and of acquiescence in it. He believes publicity is war's most

formidable opponent and that military censorship is a relic of barbarism. Other points raised by him have been incorporated above. An important presentation of the pros and cons of the status of the war

correspondent is found in the article of Archibald Forbes, “ War Correspon dents and the Authorities,” Nineteenth Century, January, 1880, 7 : 185 - 196 ,

and the reply to it by Viscount Melgund, “ Newspaper Correspondents in the Field ,” Nineteenth Century, March, 1880, 7: 434 -442.