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Show II TRADE SECRETS ARE RESPECTED I London, Sept. 15, 7:40 p. m. David Lloyd-George, British secretary for war, today gave the Associated Press the following statement: "There appears to.be a deliberate campaign, set on foot in the United States by German agents, to throw doubt on the good faith of his majesty's maj-esty's government in regard to the use of information obtained through the censorship. "These German agents appear now to have resurrected my statement in the house of commons on August 8, although that statement was fully explained ex-plained by Lord Robert Cecil, mlnls-I mlnls-I ,' ter of war trade, on August 9, and I most explicit assurances on the same I J subject were given by him in a later interview on August 25. "In spite of this, these propa-I propa-I gandists are trying to dress out my I statement as something new, nullifying nullify-ing Lord Robert Cecil's assurances i which followed it. Let me now say s, on behalf of the military authorities that whQn information is passed on by the censorship to other departments depart-ments it is for the sole purpose of i guiding the action of the government i in the conduct of the war. I "For instance, when we get infor mation that an American firm to whom the foreign office has given a permit for the export of certain goods from Rotterdam, on the ground that these goods had been paid for before the war, is using that permit fraudulently, fraudu-lently, as frequently has been the case, we pass the information on to the foreign office in order that they may cancel the permit. "Again, when wo find that a neu tral firm is using British banking facilities fa-cilities for the purpose of trading with our enemies and is deceiving the British Brit-ish banks In question as to the real purpose of the transaction, we pass that information on to the proper department de-partment in order that they may refuse re-fuse to license the transaction. Or, again if we learn that a shipment of contraband, ostensibly from one neutral firm to another, is really destined des-tined for the enemy, we see that the contraband committee gets that information. in-formation. "That, frankly stated, is what we do. But we affirm and challenge anyone any-one to deny it that honest business interests and trade secrets of an American merchant or manufacturer are as safe in the hands of the military mili-tary censors and of every other government gov-ernment department as they are in the hauds of the American postof-fice." |