LAUGHING AT THE CENSORS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 120, 23 June 1941, Page 2

LAUGHING AT THE CENSORS

American correspondents, in London have done a good deal cf grousing about the British censorship, but the culprit shows no sign of reform, and a few more well-pitched yelps seem called for (writes one of them in The New Statesman). It is all the more a pity that the censorship, run by men with brains, should so frequently lapse into stupidity. The chief Press censor, Mr Cyril Radcliffe, and the Director of Censorship, Admiral George Thomson, are not only men of keen intelligence, but are manifestly anxious to facilitate the work of foreign reporters in London. The trouble appears to be that they lack the power to enforce their ideas against the stuffed owls in the Foreign Office and defence departments To make clearer the sort of brick wall we continually bump into, let me mention a few recent experiences. One episode overstrained the New York Times correspondent's patience. He had mentioned German planes flying up the Thames Eistuary the previous night. "You mayn't mention the Thames in your despatch," the censor told him. "Then," the correspondent answered in despair, "go ahead and report to my American readers that the German bombers flew up the Amazon." The censor was certainly not lacking in conscientiousness.. He meticulously deleted the word Thames, replaced it by Amazon, and promptly forwarded the despatch to New York. Another American reporter was forbidden to mention Coventry, shortly after the devastation of that city. For the benefit of readers up in their Goddiviana, he described the havoc wrought in "a Midland town, famed for its naked women," and the censor immediately passed it. A third American correspondent reported recently that discussions regarding a new British credit to China are proceeding. The censor, | after a tussle with the Foreign Of- | fice, approved, this, but insisted on the elimination later in the same message of the phrase, "A; new British credit to China is possible." Are you surprised that, baffled by this high logic, the censorship drives us occasionally to break out in gooseberry pimples and in print?