NEWS FROM THE WAR ZONE

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 117, 4 February 1918, Page 3

NEWS FROM THE WAR ZONE

WAR COB-RESPONDENTS AT THEIR WORK. Mr. H. Perry Robinson has an interesting and instructive article in the current "Nineteenth Century" on "A War Correspondent at His Work." There aro at present five accredited correspondents of the British Press with tho British Armies in France. "The substantial agreement of our dispatches on all points of interest has not infrequently been cited," Mr. Robinson says, "as pointing to a suspicion that wo all draw our news from some common and official source. 'This is quite untrue.. If five men went to a cricket match they would probably agree as to the result and as to the main incidents of the game. . - The absence of conflict in our dispatches might more generously be cited as presumptive evidence in favour of their truth. But the fact is that each dispatch is in a sense a work of collaboration."

Mr. Robinson then describee a day's work, and tells how the correspondent himself decides the point he will visit —there being absolutely no restriction on his movements except that he is accompanied by a Press censor. Each man on his homeward way calls at his proper army or corps headquarters fertile latest official news, and then they, meet at their own. headquarters and exchange notes, generally at about one o'clock in the afternoon. All that ench man has learned is common property. That done, there aro two hours or two hours and a half to write dispatches so that they may be censored and telegraphed in time for the next morning s papers. "I do not believe," Mr. Perry Robinson declares, "that ever before lias the public come so near to Betting the full truth from the battlefield." This brings him to the extremely delicate question, as lie describes it. oF how far they are permitted to tell all the truth. The subject on which opinions clash most frequently is that nf mentioning unite of British troops by name. The attitude of the correspondents in the event of a great reverse is next discussed. Happily the matter has not boon put to the test, for while since the beginning of the Sonimo battle not all our attacks liad met with equally complete success there had been nothing approaching a creat reverse. No correspondent, Mr. Perry Robinson is certain, has ever claimed complete success for an operation which has partially failed. ''But left to ourselves, we would certainly use more freedom in treating of our minor reverses than wo are permitted to use, and wo believe that bad we done so the world would by now have arrived at a juster appreciation of the magnificence of the work that lias been done by SirDouclas Haig and his armies, and would have come nearer than the bulk of public opinion lias yet conic to measiirinc our victories at their true importance."

"One lesson which a journalistic trainins; teaches beyond _ all others. ,, Mr. Robinson remarks, "is that of the ultimate invincibility of truth. Tim qupstion of what kind of information will help tbe enemy (perhaps, even, what kind of writing will strengthen or encourage him) is a purely military auestion on which the judgment of the Army must be final. But the effect of tlio printed word on our own people, on the world at large, and even on the men in tho is a matter on which correspondents are infinitely better judges than tho Army can ever be."