CHAPTER II

THE CASE FOR RESTRAINT OF THE PRESS

In the early days of the war an editor who
likes to think out his questions in public for the
benefit of his readers printed an article entitled
"The Duty of a Newspaper." In view of
criticism of the Censorship, he started the question
whether it might not be a better plan to leave
every editor to be his own censor. " We are
tempted," he said, "to fancy sometimes that we
should be in no greater danger if there were no
Press Censorship at all. Free rein would be
given, of course, to every sort of inaccuracy, wild
surmise, and ' perilous disclosure,' to use King-
lake's phrase, and though the exact truth would
of course be published in the medley — and would
be extremely damaging to our interests if it were
known by the enemy to be the truth — it would
probably be almost impossible for him to dis-
entangle it from other statements that flatly
contradicted it." He went on to argue " about
it and about," and concluded that, though a policy
of complete freedom might conceivably answer,



CH. II THE CASE FOR RESTRAINT 15

and though "it would be intensely interesting
to see the result of such an experiment," yet
the risk was too great.^ It was indeed ! The
experiment had been tried in an earlier war.
