The Press: When is a Secret?

Once again last week Secretary of the Navy Knox's rules of "voluntary censorship" made a monkey out of the U.S. press.

British Press Service announced that "Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten* . . . has come to the United States to take command of the British aircraft carrier Illustrious and to supervise her repairs in an undisclosed American shipyard."

Thus the British, as in the case of the Malaya, let a cat out of Secretary Knox's bag. But the cat had long been out prowling publicly in everything except print.

For at least two months several hundred thousand people—and unquestionably several dozen Nazi agents—have...