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Show NEWS EMBARGO. It fines without saving that the action of the war tirpartinent in refusing to i:ivo out the homo ad.lres.MC3 anrl next of kin of American .soldiers killed or , wounded in netion in .France, as well as those who die from natural causes or meet death by accident, will be more or less bitterly resented all over the couutry, especially by those, who Lave relatives in tlin army. There may be less disposition to complain, however, after the explanations made by Assis-; Assis-; tant Chief of .Stall' March are duly considered. con-sidered. The relatives of the men named in tlie casualty lists will be notified . j as soon as the lists are received. Tuatl' much is promised. Tt is probable, there-tore, there-tore, that there will not be any great amount of delay in this part of the programme. Jf the newspapers were allowed to publish the addresses the result would be much quicker ami more satisfactory all around. But as the , order is aimed at the press, thero will ; bo no chance for the papers to obtain desired information, and there will be much guessing and great anxiety occasioned oc-casioned by the publication of the mere names. It is said in justification of the order i that it was issued upon the request of . (ienernl Pershing, who had been ad- , vised by the French government that . ; the casualties, as published in this com 1 fry. make valuable information aece: i sible to the enemy. The French viei is that the Germans could obtain froi j statements giving the exact number o casualties resulting after a raid an. j from official statistics, in the form o j casualty lists, which give precise effect I of gas attacks, much valuable informa i j tion, and their representations to Gen ' oral Pershing were made for the pur j pose of influencing our government ti : emasculate tho reports from the front 1 ! The French government has never is ; sued a casualty list of any kind siuet ; the war began. The war office in Paris ! as soon as a name is received, noti lies the mayor of the home town frorr which the soldier came and the munici pal official notifies the family or next i of kin. The British government issues weekly lists which contain only the information now given out in Washington. Wash-ington. We are further informed by the chief of staff that the German gov-ernment gov-ernment long ago discontinued the practice prac-tice of posting in towns the names of the killed or wounded from those towns. The new regulations impose a hardship hard-ship upon the newspapers of the United States, for heretofore they have been relied upon to furnish all information from the battle fronts. In future their accounts will be incomplete owing to tho deletions of the war department. We have no reason to hope that the order will be modified if our allies insist in-sist upon uniform practico in the publication pub-lication of the casualty lists, and we are not disposed to rail at the authorities authori-ties in Washington for taking tho advice ad-vice of General Pershing, who undoubtedly un-doubtedly concurs in tho opinion of the French that the Germans hae been able to obtain information from our casualty lists, and desires to do all he can to prevent such information from leaking out. We do not agree with Mr. Keeley of the Chicago Herald, who characterized (he order as "absurd, cruel, infamous and impossible,'' and we incline to the opiuion that he will , take a more dispassionate view of the situation after being put in possession of all the facts. At the same time we very much regret our inability to furnish fur-nish all news desired by our readers. |
