CENSORSHIP AND FREEDOM.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 July 1940, Page 4

CENSORSHIP AND FREEDOM.

'pi-lOSE who are most anxious that the publication, in the Press or elsewhere, of information of value to the enemy should be prevented, may welcome unreservedly the announcement of the British Minister of Information (Mr Duff Cooper) that the present system of voluntary censorship in the United Kingdom—a system under which newspapers submit voluntarily to the censorship matter the publication of which they think might be opposed to the national interests—is to be continued and that plans for a Press censorship board have been abandoned. In justice to the British Ministry of Information it must be noted that it has consistently disclaimed any thought of opening a campaign against free speech. The Ministry, as its Parliamentary Secretary (Mr Harold Nicholson) has said, is not an Ogpu or a Gestapo, and “does not desire to dictate to the citizens of this free country what they should say, think, feel or hear.” It does not wish to “attack free speech and free thinking, or to deprive the Press of its fundamental rights of comment and criticism.” Tn an enlightened consideration of censorship policy it must be appreciated that there are other dangers to be guarded against which certainly are not less serious than those involved in the publication of information of value to the enemy. That it should be the aim of all concerned not to publish information of value to the enemy goes without saying. If, however, measures of control over the publication of information are developed to the point of stifling freedom of speech, of the Press and of criticism, the effect at best is to avert one danger at the cost of bringing upon the nation other and more serious dangers. The publication of information of value to the enemy may contribute to the defeat or discomfiture of the national fighting forces, but the stifling of free speech and criticism may bring the nation to disaster, by exposing it to a betrayal like that which meantime has cost the people of France their liberty. It has been said that the overthrow ol? France was due much less to the power of the Germans than to the state of ignorance in which her people were kept in the days of approach to disaster. The suppression of information of course was justified ostensibly on the grounds of necessary military secrecy.

That we believe ourselves to be safeguarded by a broad margin, in Britain and in other British countries, against any similar danger most certainly does not mean that, we should tolerate the narrowing of that margin. It should not be difficult io arrive at a satisfactory determination of censorship policy in a free democracy. We are all of us,bound to cooperate loyally and heartily in withholding information of value to the enemy, and the public interest deihands that positive action should be taken against any failure in this duty as well as anything in the nature of subversive action or agitation. To make'these needs, however, an excuse for attempting to suppress freedom of speech and criticism is to practise treason against the body politic. In an extreme case the effect may be, as the example of France has sadly shown, not to safeguard, but to undermine and destroy the national military effort.