The Press: Devil of a Job

Censorship Director Byron Price, whose hand on the blue pencil has usually been both light and wise, used a slightly heavier hand last week. He asked editors to go easy on discussing “expectations or probabilities” about the future of Russo-Japanese relations. Reason: “speculations . . . however erroneous they might prove to be, could possibly lead to a Japanese attack on Russia.” The Washington Post, which like many a U.S. paper had already made the obvious deduction that Russia’s denunciation of its Jap pact “bodes a break sooner or later,” confessed to unwittingly violating censorship: “Our consternation over the gaffe is somewhat lightened by the discovery that we are in rather distinguished company . . . Senator Elbert Thomas [and] Senator Johnson….

“Golly, we didn’t realize our own strength. . . . There is no telling what the Japanese might do if we were to provoke them editorially. They might even—oops, there we go again. Well, as we were saying, Mr. Price, the Far Eastern situation is fraught with interest, and, uh—er—pregnant with possibilities and, so far as the home-front situation is concerned, it’s the very devil of a job to publish a newspaper in the face of censorship inanities.”