The Quarterly Review

Louvain and Rheims, the horror of the mutilation of Belgium and the dread that something of the same sort may befall England herself, which have kept them faithful to the Allies.

Far more serious than all this are the blunders and the shortsightedness which the censorship has displayed in connexion with the defeat of Admiral Cradock and the sinking of H.M.S. Audacious.' The United States heard of both these disasters from sources entirely independent of the Admiralty, and is still waiting for the official confirmation of one of them. Naturally enough, when a naval battle takes place off Chile, it is impossible to hide it from the people of the United States. It was hardly less improbable that the sinking of a battleship in view of a crew, which visits New York regularly, would remain a secret in that port. Yet it was days before London would admit that anything had gone wrong in the Pacific; and six weeks after the loss of H.M.S.Audacious' the British Government still refuses to announce it.

Is it any wonder that Americans are amazed at the pusillanimity of a system which can produce such results as these? They are amazed and distressed as well. The 'New York Sun' could come out with a leader headed 'John Bull Ostrich,' and could assert that John Bull metamorphosed into an ostrich is one of the strangest sights in history'; but in that very article it could express the belief that the knowledge of such disasters would only stiffen the back of the British race. With no possible strategic reason for hiding the truth, why, ask the Americans, try to hide it, and what conceivable advantage have you in pretending to ignore what all the world knows?

Moreover by this policy of secrecy the censors have discredited everything else they do. Early in the war the Germans announced the sinking of nineteen British battleships, and the Englishman laughed and asked where was the official confirmation? He cannot do that now. If the New York 'Staats Zeitung' or 'The Fatherland' to-morrow announced that Admiral Jellicoe had been blown up, he could not turn to the latest cables from London and prove the falsehood of the statement by showing that they did not admit it. When the

censorship was imposed, a pledge was given that every scrap of news, bad as well as good, should be revealed, unless there were good and definite reasons against it. That pledge has been broken. Naturally enough other misgivings are now appearing. For example, was the whole truth told about the Antwerp adventure? there some radical defect in British naval architecture, which sent the 'Good Hope' to her fate? Are some of these stories the Germans spread about trouble in Egypt absolutely baseless? Is or is not the recruiting at home, particularly in Ireland, progressing as well as could be wished?

America, as a whole, asks such questions in no captious spirit. The news of the loss of one British ship after another has come as a blow to a good many Americans, who are proud to boast themselves Englishmen by birth. It has hurt their pride in a way which has astonished them not a little; and they ask for an explanation, for the actual truth, with real anxiety. How can the Englishman at home now answer them? Once he was proud in the assurance of the integrity of his Government; once he could boast that, the harder the blows of fortune, the tighter would Britain shut her teeth and determine to fight the matter out. Now he can only keep silence, or say that he does not understand what his Government is thinking about. It is a humiliating attitude to be obliged to assume; it is still more humiliating amid a nation disposed in the main to be so friendly. It is above all humiliating because it is so unnecessary, and because there would be no people so willing to accept explanations as the people of the United States, if only it could believe that it was honestly getting the truth.

THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

No. 442.-PART II.

PUBLISHED IN

JANUARY, 1915.

LONDON:

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.

1915

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