TRYING & PRYING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 September 1942, Page 4

TRYING & PRYING

JOB OF THE AMERICAN CENSORS FIRST LINE OF DEFENCE AGAINST SABOTAGE. AND INNOCENT LEAKAGE. (By William H. Stringer,, in the “Christian Science Monitor. ) NEW YORK, July 23. The Office of Censorship has a trying and prying job on its hands today. By law, it is empowered to examine every piece of communication entering or leaving the United States. By dint of hard work, it manages to scrutinise or audition almost all of them, and with small delay to them in the process. Letters, cables, press dispatches, radio broadcasts, films, sheets of music, books —even the tiny rolls borne aloft by carrier pigeons—are censored by the men and women working under Byron Price, Director of Censorship in Washington. They constitute America’s first line of defence against espionage, sabotage, and the innocent leakage of information valuable to the enemy. They know it, and tney're “on their toes.” the 6000 and more Paul Prys now mobilised. CO-ORDINATED SERVICE. The blue pencils of America’s war time censorship are wielded by Navy, Army and civilian bureaus co-ordinated under the Office of Censorship. Foreign mails entering and leaving the United States are scanned by the postal censorship which in New York employs a staff of 2000 men and women, including officers detached from the Army, experts of wide background, and clerks. A group of Army officers had been studying postal censorship before the United States entered the war, and a group of Navy officers had been studying cable censorship. When the Office of Censorship was established by President Roosevelt, Director Price continued these Army and Navy officers in the postal and cable divisions of the new organisation. These officers are detailed to the Office of Censorship and are responsible to Mr Price. Letters homeward bound from soldiers on foreign soil are censored first by the Army at the camps where they originate. Cable and radio censorship is handled by a selected staff of Naval officers with New York headquarters at 67 Broad Street. It was this Navy organisation which on the Sunday night of the Pearl Harbour attack imposed America’s first cable scrutiny since 1918.

Other censors listen in on long-dis-tance conversations with points outside the United States. Branches of the various censorships are stationed in strategic cities throughout the nation so as to maintain what is termed a “peripheral” censorship. United States and British censorships are co-operat-ing closely in an effort to prevent any duplication of their activities. TRAINED EXAMINERS. It would take a clever Mr Moto to sneak something past the personnel at the New York Postal Censorship Station at 244 Seventh Avenue, where the mails are scanned. Here speciallytrained examiners go through approximately 400,000 pieces of mail each day, sniffing them for secret writing and code messages as well as more visible forbidden statements. Most of the letters are on their way again, resealed and bearing the censors’ badge of approval, inside 24 hours after receipt. Foreign mail in New York was originally handled by a few workers under Col. Harry O. Compton, a reserve officer from Washington State. The present mass of mail, estimated at 100 times the first figures, compels the larger work force which is still under Colonel Compton, who reports to Col. W. Preston Corderman, chief postal censor, who reports to Mr Price. The specialist Sherlock Holmeses at this office are often persons of wide background—retired bank officials, doctors of philosophy, musicians, exporters, professors—who take a delight in matching their wits against enemy malice aforethought. Motivated by patriotism, some are working at considerable financial sacrifice.

There are reasons for employing such erudition. When a sheet of music arrives though the mails, it takes a musician to decide whether the piece has the earmarks of genuine composition or is a code done in musical notes. Code specialists, in turn, are often able to spot a language cipher in the midst of a chatty letter, or in a volume of prose. How they go about it remains a censor office secret. Letters may arrive written in Arabic or Esperanto, Gaelic or Urdu, Sanskrit or Icelandic; someone among the 900 translators on call al this New York office will be able to decipher the scrawls, for they speak more than 100 tongues. Censors are pledged to secrecy and tell no tales after hours about the confidential information they may have chanced upon. Some of the more humorous incidents which lighten the censor’s day do leak out, however, including a few which disprove the intent of Mi- Price’s remark that “no one need doubt where a censor would wind up in a popularity contest.” SWEETENING THE CENSOR. More than one letter-writer, doubtless moved by consideration, has included a piece of chewing gum or candy in his envelope with instructions to the censor to enjoy same while reading his epistle. That’s all right with the censor, but if the edible was intended as a bribe, it has never worked that way. Evidencing a lesser regard were the contents of an envelope recently addressed to one Admiral Yamamoto of Japan. Inside, when the censor opened it, was a single slip of paper bearing in large black letters the greeting: “Hello, Nosey.” Another writer, confessing a present weakness, wrote as follows: — “Dear Mr Censor: I am in love with a leatherneck, and I intend to keep on writing. Some of it may be mushy, but please don’t black out a single ‘sweetheart.’ ” After looking to see if any code was involved in the persistent repetition of this word, the censor doubtless complied.