VIII OF THE PRESS CENSORSHIP 131

" Composure " : that is to say, Do not ex-
aggerate or pile up the agony unnecessarily, and
preserve a sense of proportion. The men at the
Front, with whom enemy raids were a nightly
occurrence and who were habituated to tragedy
on a larger scale, were often surprised and some-
times indignant at the comparative importance
apparently attached by the Press, as judged by
" lineage," to the battles at the Front and to raids
at home respectively. They forgot that military
men, or correspondents working under their eye,
were responsible for the one set of reports and
journalists at home for the other. And with
regard to the latter, it may be recalled that a
famous French editor is said to have placed in the
newsroom of his office this notice : " Remember
that one man run over on the Boulevards is worth
more to us than a thousand buried in a distant
earthquake." The Press during the war was not
callous, but it was following a natural bent in
writing up tragic matter which occurred at its
doors. The Directors of the Press Bureau cannot,
therefore, claim much success In the advice which
they ofFered from time to time in this connection
under the head of what I have called " Com-
posure," meaning a sense of proportion. The
amount of raid-matter submitted for censorship was
very great, and a raid night was a harassing occasion
for everybody concerned, alike at the Press Bureau
and in the newspaper offices. The papers flooded

K 2



132 PRINCIPLES AND LIMITS chap.
