WOMEN CENSORS DISMISSED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24410, 23 September 1940, Page 11

WOMEN CENSORS DISMISSED

AUSTRALIAN HONORARY STAFFS (From Our Own Correspondent) SYDNEY, Aug. 10. Because honorary women censorship workers in Sydney had divulged the contents of letters passing between members of the Royal Australian Navy and relatives and friends ashore.- the entire staff of about 20 women in Sydney and those in other States have been dismissed. A Labour member had raised the question in the House of Representatives, and the Minister for the Navy (Mr Cameron) said that complaints of the practice had been proved. Earlier, the member had been informed the Minister for the Army (Mr Street) hard said: "If I hear of any person on the censorship staff breaking the oath taken on ioining the staff he or she will be dismissed immediately." Two days later, the principal military officer in Sydney, Lieutenantgeneral Miles, announced that the entire staff of 20 voluntary women communciations censors in Sydney had been dismissed. He said that, since the orders for the dismissals had come from Melbourne, he could give no reason for them. It meant the abandonment of the system of unpaid women censors.

A naval officer's wife said that she and many of her friends in Sydney, knowing that women of their acquaintance had been doing censorship work here, had been sending letters to friends in Melbourne for posting there. They knew that the letters would be censored in Melbourne, possibly by women, but did not mind as long as the censors did not know them..