A CENSOR'S LIFE IS NOT A HAPPY ONE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 82, 17 January 1941, Page 8

A CENSOR'S LIFE IS NOT A HAPPY ONE

Telling The World Means Telling The Enemy

We reprint below the full text of a special talk on the British censorship, given

by

Cyril

Radcliffe

controller of news and censorship in the Ministry of Intormation. The talk was broad-

cast from the BBC last Friday.

HE first thing to know about news censorship in_ this country, is why news is being censored at all, said Mr. Radcliffe. There was no censorship in peace time: it is a war product like many other bans and restrictions. But war implies an enemy with designs against your country, cut off from all ordinary means of communication with it, and desperately anxious to know the truth about everything that is going on inside it. Here we have deliberately based our censorship on this sole principle, that news is not to be published which is likely to be useful to the enemy in his prosecution of the war against us. That does not mean that there is not a@ great deal that has to be suppressed. There is, but it does mean that there is no organ in this country whose’ job it is to prevent people knowing facts because they are inconvenient or awkward for the Government, or because they run counter to the Government’s policy, and opinion and criticism are free so long as they do not give away facts which are useful to the enemy. I do not want to quote a formula to you when I say that I see it illustrated in practice every day. Telling the World Now censorship is an unpopular thing, and I am not sorry that it is so. It is honest and vigilant in the public to want to know the truth about what goes on, rather unpalatable though it may sometimes be. But angry as you may get with the censor at times, please never mistake the reason for what he does. It is so easy when there is silence instead of a story, or when some piece of news comes out of London minus every detail that human interest requires, to put it all down to official fear of letting out the truth. You know the kind of thing-*of course, we can’t tell them that," Don’t believe it. This is not the dictators’ censorship: It is a censorship of a free people. There is nothingnothing however arduous or grim that we dare not tell to the people of this country or to the world. But there are @ great many things that we should think it very foolish to tell to the enemy. Unfortunately, and this is the trouble, ‘we cannot tell the world without telling the enemy at the same time, and the enemy will profit by it News Is Like Quicksilver Just see how it works. We broadcast something on the wireless as I am doing now. I am speaking to you, but

I am also speaking to Berlin. I hope that half-a-dozen gentlemen in Germany are wasting their time taking down what I am saying now. Or we put it in the British newspapers, but then. what began as a secret-or at any rate, something known to a few people-is shared among literally millions of readers. Good. But you have increased at the same time a million-fold the chance of sharing that bit of information with the enemy. Newspapers go abroad. Also, whatever news is published here is going to be sent out of the country as fast as air or wire can carry it, by the correspondents of Empire or neutral newspapers who are working here. It is their job, and believe me, they know how to do it, to get the news to the other end, where it can be published or broadcast. No, news runs about like quicksilver: Let it out and it will never stop until it has made a circuit of the world. In that circuit, it is going at some point to strike a German ear or stick in a German hat, and quickly a piece of news can be flashed from London to New York and start back again to Berlin-even reach it-within an hour. Well, that’s one thing to remember. The speed with which our news can reach the enemy. The Censor’s Dilemma But another thing that people sometimes fail to allow for is the wide range of things that the enemy wants to know. Everybody sees the point at once if I say, don’t publish news of when a convoy leaves, where a particular battleship is, how many tanks we are producing a month. But the war in which we are engaged does not stop short with what may be called the ordinary military idea. It is total warfare. Warfare against the whole civil and industrial life of the community. Everything that goes on in the country may be of interest to such an enemy. A road diversion here, a new factory there, a rise in price, a bad crop, all such facts are grist to his mill. What are you going to do then? Shut down on all information except the barest and most colourless statements until the war is over or the news stale enough not to matter? That would be a disastrous thing in a country like ours which is not ashamed of what it does and in which we really and genuinely believe in the right of the people to know what is going on. The right to know. The right to make up your mind, These are good things. ‘Things of value, and their maintenance in a country in wartime is one sort of security, just as keeping information away from your enemy is another. If you were a censor, how would you solve the problem? Probably along much the same lines as we've tried to solve it here. Accept that most bits of fact are capable of

being of some use to the enemy. Try to find ways of treating them which do not give the dangerous things away. Rather reluctantly sit on the rest and receive a certain amount of disapproval and blame from the public, with the reflection that a censor’s life is not a happy one. How Censorship Works Let me give you one or two illustrations to show how news censorship works in actual practice. Of course, I must be careful not to say anything that gives secrets away. Weather news is an instance.. It is well known that when the war began we gave up weather reports and weather news in the papers, at any rate they are not published until they are old enough not to matter, These reports would have been useful to the Germans for their forecasts of the kind of weather they would be likely to meet in flying over this country, or at sea. Operations may depend upon the kind of weather that you expect to meet. Weather forecasts depend on intimate knowledge of local conditions at a number of different places and, close at hand as the Germans are, they do not possess that knowledge. So the reports have had to go. Fate, which is never kind to censors, so arranged that last winter every sort of record of snow and frost was broken. Interesting and surprising things kept on happening and the unfortunate censor had to sit on the whole subject, News of Air Raids Another case, and a more serious one, It is the censoring of reports of German air raids. There are many people who complain bitterly of the form which such news takes. They feel, I think, that it is pitifully inadequate to the occurrence. Indeed there is something in these complaints. The story they say is a record of the destructive horribleness of German bombing. It is a record of ancient, familiar and homely things bombed to heaps of ash and rubble. It is a record of the resolution and endurance of ordinary people meeting and rising superior to these things. Let the world hear this story worthily told, not swallowed in a few dry phrases. This is the position. This bombing warfare is fought down our streets and on our doorsteps none the less because the bombers come and go. It isn’t wise, is it, to stop each morning, have a look round, and then send out to the world a progress report of how last night’s raid went, where it failed and where it succeeded. Soldiers in the trenches would think it a foolish thing to throw over to the enemy who had just raided them an account of what he has done. If he fails, he will be free to turn his attention elsewhere, there is so much that we can tell ‘the enemy after an air raid that

he cannot ever be sure of or even know otherwise. His pilots come and go in the darkness, and at a great height. We stay and see what has happened on the ground, in daylight. Even naming the towns that he has visited may, in cer tain cases (not always, of course), enable him to check some error in navigation or aim and try more accurately next time. Censorship Is Commonsense Flying at night over an alien country is a problem in aerial navigation. It is all very well to find out that the German communique next morning mentions by name the towns that have been attacked. German air communiques have not proved to be the mirror of accuracy, and we should be very simple if we assumed that the enemy knew, or even believed, all he puts in his communique. And remember the enemy who attacks us in these raids has no special concern with the fate of what are called military objectives. These darting, flogging blows are struck at the whole civil and industrial life of the country which he aims to make uninhabitable. Our gas, our water, our transport, our food, a victory over them means another strong point fallen to the enemy. It does not seem sensible to give him much guidance on the subject, does it? Yet, try to write an adequate account of a big raid. without saying something one way or another about these things that would be useful to the enemy to know. I think that you would find yourself in a difficulty. Nobody is so silly as to suppose, or to expect the outside world to suppose, that German bombs defeat the law of averages by falling on churches, or hospitals or private houses, but the point is to keep our enemy guessing all the time as to how much else they do or don’t do. I have given you some of my ideas about censorship. Censorship itself does not need justification. It is plain common sense in wartime. No country in its senses can do without some form of it, and many countries have found it necessary to resort to a censorship of news even in times of peace. What does need justifying is the way you apply your censorship, or to put it another way, what result your censorship is trying to achieve. British Censorship Works I have told you what our aims are and why we are glad that with the willing help of editors and correspondents, our censorship can be made to work. Proof of the pudding is. in. the eating, not in what the cook says about it. I am in the position of the cook, but it is my hope that next time you find yourself wondering why some piece of news that you want to hear is suppressed, you will remember that censorship here is not an attempt to conceal the inconvenient or depressing facts, but an attempt to suppress all facts good or bad that it would be dangeroug to us if our enemy should know,