Censorship Changes

Two moves in the direction of a more workable press censorship came last week from the U.S. Navy.

Secretary Knox announced that the Navy would not mind if the press published news of British warships in U.S. yards provided that nothing be said: 1) until the Navy released the information (not within seven days of the ship's arrival), 2) about a ship's length of stay, date of departure or destination, 3) about any damage it had received, 4) about its route to the U.S., 5) about how the ship took part in any battle, 6) that might be of value to the enemy.

As an earnest that information would be available the Navy released the names of twelve British warships now in U.S. ports. This was a great improvement over past practice although it has one major drawback even from the Government's standpoint. There were several ships conspicuously missing from the Navy's published list, which was admittedly incomplete. The public will probably not feel much better so long as it knows that the Navy is holding out as much information as it feels like.

The Navy's second noteworthy censorship move was to announce plans for cable censorship. Under Secretary James V. Forrestal told the House Naval Affairs Committee that Navy and Army have a joint plan for censorship of all cable messages and. of course, of radio messages and broadcasts. The plan needs only a Congressional O.K. to go into effect. He emphasized that the plan did not include "compulsory censorship of the press." Working details of the plan were left blank, but the Navy already has a training school for censors in Manhattan. Started in great secrecy last October, it is still kept much under Navy's hat. (Says Third Naval District Press Relations Officer Lieut. Commander John T. Tuthill Jr.: "I don't know there is such a school.") Students, about 50 thus far, are Manhattan newsmen who will later receive Naval Reserve commissions ranging from ensign to lieutenant senior grade (pay and allowance: $2,199 to $3,158). Carefully checked by FBI, Navy's censors-to-be study naval regulations, hear lectures by naval intelligence officers, learn to decipher codes. Practice codes are mostly old spy communiques. Example: a harmless-looking news dispatch which dates all the way back to World War I, in which the second letter of each word spells out: "Pershing sails July 1."

Since the object of a censorship is to keep information from the enemy, nol from the public at home, the developing of a good outgoing cable censorship of military information is more to the point than press censorship. And so far as it is effective it makes the withholding of news from the public at home less rather than more necessary.

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