From ‘Unofficial News’, The Spectator, 20 March 1915:
THE exclusion of war correspondents from the firing line has greatly reduced the volume of unofficial news available for the enlightenment of the general public. What remains, moreover, has to run the gauntlet of the Censorship. How some of it manages to get through is a mystery which we cannot pretend to fathom. Fortunately all that appears on the tape does not always appear in the newspapers. But disregarding what may be described as “freak” news, it may be worth while to set down some rough aide towards estimating the credibility and value of unofficial intelligence which have been suggested by the experiences of the last eight months.
The unofficial news that reaches us through neutral channels needs to be scrutinized and discounted in the light of the sympathies and the special circumstances of the neutrals in question. For example, the telegrams from Russian correspondents of Roman papers have throughout taken an optimistic, not to say roseate. view of the progress of our great ally. And the same remark applies to telegrams from Bucharest.
But the bulk of the non- official news from neutral sources comes from Copenhagen and Amsterdam, and here we have to distinguish carefully between information which reflects the attitude of the neutrals themselves and that which is more or less obviously furnished from German sources to impress and influence neutrals and enemies alike. No one who has studied the extracts from the leading articles in the Dutch papers can fail to be struck by the freedom and even asperity with which German methods have been criticised. At the same time, these papers have been the chief medium for the dissemination of precise and specific information about the movements and numbers of German troops on the western front, and the supply of munitions of war and guns, which could only have come from German informants, and which ex hypothesi the Germans could not possibly wish to publish if it were correct.
As a matter of fact, it has often been entirely impossible to reconcile this information with the official reports of the operations which it indicated or foreshadowed. We are driven to the conclusion, therefore, that it was provided either to mislead the enemy or to affect his moral—especially the moral of non-combatants.
The immediate impact on the man in the street of unofficial news is largely determined by the method of its presentation. Mr. Lloyd George said at Bangor that the lure of drink had done us more harm than all the German submarines. We would not go so far as to say this of our newspaper headlines, but the “moral and intellectual” damage they have inflicted on the nation is at least considerable. Of all the journalistic by-products of the war they are among the most detestable; but they have a curious psychological interest as reflecting in a crude and exaggerated form this policy and personality of different newspapers. Thus one paper distinguished above the rest for its genius for minimizing difficulties recorded the loss of H.M.S. ‘Hawke’ with hundreds of gallant lives under the headline “Old British Cruiser Sunk.” Another which dealt so largely in lurid epithets—”terrific,” “amazing,” “appalling”—in the first months of the war seems to have exhausted the vocabulary of exaggeration and to have been reduced to moderation by necessity. Others have specialized in the practice of stating rumours as if they were facts- “Cracow in Flames”—sometimes, but by no means always, partially correcting the impression by the addition of “Amazing Report”; or utilized their placards for emphasizing grievances against Government Departments. This often argues a ludicrous lack of perspective, but it is preferable to the exaggerations and evasions of their contemporaries. The most striking headlines are nearly always derived from unofficial news, except on those rare days when there is such a dearth of war intelligence that ordinary crime or sensation is given a chance, and the posters salute us with such reassuring announcements as “Jeweller Sandbagged in a Flat,” “Raid on a West End Club,” or “Famous Actress in the Divorce Court.”
Comments