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Show CENSORING THE WAR NEWS. American newspaper correspondents correspond-ents in London are complaining that the censorship is so rigid as to be vexatious and blundering One ot the correspondents, writing to the London Times under date of September Septem-ber 11, makes this statement: "To show that our complaints are not made without good reason I would like to give a few examples of our experiences. I could fill a column with similar happenings One day this week I received a cable from New York informing me that nothing at all of the previous night's cable service had got througfl&n time for publication. This meanthat a mes sage filed here at 8:30 p. m. London time, or 3 30 p m. New York time, had not been delivered at 8 a. m. London time the following morning. A few days previously I received a cable telling me that of some 5.000) w ords filed here betw een 0 p. m. and I 2 a. m. considerably less than one- fourth had got through in time for I , publication. A message filed by onel of my confreres on a Wednesday; night was not delivered in New York; till the following Friday afternoon. That this was not due to he matter b'-ing objectionable is presumably proved by the fact that a more for tunate correspondent, who took the same story from the same English newspaper several hours later, got It through in time for publication in the Thursday morning's issue of his pa per. Examples of this kind are of uany UvuUJ I trrieo. "A more amazing example of thej censorship is tho following: The official of-ficial presB bureau Issued at 9 p. m. on August 2S the account of the naval action In the Bight of Heligoland, a story that thrilled England from end to end There is probably hardly a newspaper in the United States that! would not have published a special! edition for that story. But whati happened to the American correspond-; ents In London ? Every man hurried that official account, just as it was! issued, to the cable offices, and the censors apparently consigned their messages to the wastopapcr basket, for they have not arrived in America yet The American people wonld have known nothing of that splendid feat of the British navy until the English newspapers reached them but' for the fact that by some fortunate accident for it can only have been ' an accident the dispatch of just one! correspondent escaped the censorship, and got through. One may imagine the astonishment in the offices of the other newspapers and of the great news agencies!" Any newspaper man can sympathize with the correspondents, but if the editor of the Standard were censor, laboring for the success of the allies, he would allow nothing more to escape es-cape his blue pencil than is permitted permit-ted to come out of Berlin Important war movements often are allowed to leak through an innocent looking newspaper story. Today any reader of the American press reports can form a fairly accurate idea oi the strength of the allied armies, the position po-sition of tho different units and the paramount aim, at the present time, of the allies forces, and yet no one, outside the German lines, can volunteer volun-teer as much information as to the German armies. Everyone knows the allies are centering their greatest efforts ef-forts on turning the German right. No one knows the most Important move contemplated by the Germans The newspapers want all the news they can get as it means much to V them, but battles are not won on pub licity and a censor is entitled to take that view. oo |