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Show WITHHOLD ADDRESSES 01 CASUALTY LISTS War Department Bases Position Po-sition Upon Objections Made by French. WASHINGTON, March 10. The war department gives no indication of yielding yield-ing in its determination to -withhold the home addresses of soldiers killed or wounded, or who die of other causes in France. Easing its position on the objections the French government made to General Pershing against tho American method of issuing casualty lists, the department intends in-tends to meet objections in congress and from the public with the answer that the old system betrays valuable military information to the enemy, and the fact that nearest relatives of soldiers are officially of-ficially notified hours before they could get the information from the newspapers. The committee of public information maintains its stand that the mere names of soldiers, without home addresses to identify them to neighbors and friends, or prevent confusion with other men of similar simi-lar name, are so devoid of news value that it will not issue the lists. Therefore There-fore the lists will continue to bo issued once a day from the office of Adjutant-General Adjutant-General McCain. Pointing out that the French publish no casualty list at all. but merely notify the relatives, wsr department officials give us their explanation of the new move that tho enemy by scanning the. complete casualty lists as they have previously been issued Is enabled to piece out a fail-idea fail-idea of t lie identity of the troops confronting con-fronting him. Although, under the new plan, relatives will be notified and. officials expect, publication pub-lication of names of troops will find their (Continued on Page Two.) WITHHOLD ADDRESSES OF CASUALTY LIST (Continued from Page Qne.) way into local newspapers, it Is felt that the publications will be widely scattered and that the task of assembling the names from all the newspapers of the country and consolidating them into military information, in-formation, would be such a tremendous task, that from the aspects of a spy sya-item sya-item it is practically impossible. In the smaller cities and towns, It is assumed, the mere mention of a soldier's name will lead to ready Identification and publication without a great effort, but In the great cities this is accounted well nigh Impossible, unless relatives themselves them-selves notify the newspapers as they receive re-ceive telegrams from the war department. In promising to quickly send official notifications to relatives, however, the war department is careful to warn the public that it must not identify men by their names alone, because there are many similarities of names In the army. Unless n man's relativ.es have received an official telegram concerning him. the department pays, they must assume that some other man of the same name Is referred re-ferred to. Until some, other arrangements. If any, are made, the war department plans to issue the casualty lists once each day, and persons iinding names they recognize recog-nize will have to communicate with relatives rela-tives of the man listed to learn if, it is some-, one else of the same name. ' When the adjutant . general's offloe closed tonight, the daily casualty list had not been received from General Pershing. This has happened before on Sunday, and it is assumed that the cable was dispatched too late for transmission durina: the day. |
