was open to any paper to publish what it thought fit, subject to liability to prosecution. The Press Bureau had no power to prevent publication. It issued news; it censored cablegrams and certain telegrams; it would read articles submitted to it and approve them for publication or refuse to give sanction. The effective steps taken by the Government to ensure accuracy in the press and the non-publication of dangerous matter were (i) the regulations, (2) the Press Bureau, and (3) the censors at the front. The main object of the regulations was to prevent in- formation unwittingly being given to the enemy; a secondary purpose was to prevent inaccurate information being given to the public at home. In these matters the press certainly required guidance. No journalist, however able, could from his chair in Fleet Street form an accurate judgment of the value of, say, a certain action in Flanders or France or on the other fronts, which might or might not be a part of a concerted plan or even a feint. The printing of an apparently harmless piece of news might be of the greatest value in one way or another to the enemy, who studied the press of all countries with the greatest care.
Some newspapers printed statements or articles that were indiscretions, and some few papers and a journalist here and there were prosecuted. It was in the nature of an anomaly that the power of prosecutions rested, not with the directors of the Press Bureau, but with the director of Public Prosecutions. All that the directors of the Press Bureau could do, as, indeed, any citizen could, was to call the attention of the director of Public Prosecu- tions to an apparent breach of a regulation. A detailed account of the Bureau appeared in 1920, under the title of The Press in War Time, written by the late Sir Edward Cook, who, during the greater part of its existence, was a co-director with Sir Frank Swettenham. Immediately on the cessation of hostilities the Bureau ceased to operate.
War Correspondents. At the beginning of hostilities the British military authorities would not allow newspaper corre- spondents in the war-zone, but they appointed an official "Eyewitness," whose report was furnished to the press. Owing to the representations of Lord Riddell, who was supported by Viscount Northcliffe and Viscount Burnham, Lord Kitchener, then Sec- retary of State for War, consented to allow six press correspon- dents to be accredited to G.H.Q. in France during the first week in May 1915. The original intention was that they were only to be there for a limited period, but, as a matter of fact, they remained until the Armistice. The reports of the correspondents were, of course, subject to censorship, and, though mistakes were made by the military censors, it is, as Lord Riddell has said, surprising that the system worked as well as it did, considering that the work was done by people without any previous experi- ence and without any established principles to guide them. In France the supervision was especially strict. The correspondents were entirely in the hands of officers delegated for the purpose, who arranged everything for them, sending them in cars, always accompanied by a staff officer. Facilities on the other fronts were more easily obtained. On the Italian front, for instance, the accredited correspondents had cars, and went where they chose, without press officers in attendance. Everyone wore officer's uniform, with Sam Browne belt, and without rank badges, but with an ornamental " C " on the service cap. The principal war correspondents at the British front in France were Sir H. Perry Robinson and Sir W. Beach Thomas (Times and Daily Mail), Sir Philip Gibbs (Daily Chronicle), Sir Percival Phillips (Daily Express), and Sir Herbert Russell (Reuter's Agency). These gentlemen received the honour of knighthood for their services at the front. The above were known as " The Big Five," and were there most of the time, whereas the other papers had representa- tives there only occasionally, such as Messrs. H. W. Nevinson and H. M. Tomlinson. On the French front in France were Mr. Gerald Campbell ( Times and Daily Mail), Mr. H. Warner Allen (Morning Post), Mr. Martin H. Donohoe and the late Mr. G. H. Perns (Daily Chronicle), and Mr. Lester Lawrence (Reuter's Agency). On the Italian front was Mr. J. M. N. Jeffries (Times and Daily Mail), Mr. H. Warner Allen (Morning Post), Mr. Perci- val Gibbon (Daily Chronicle), Mr. G. Ward Price (Newspaper
Press Association), Mr. E. H. Lacon Watson (Reuter's Agency), and Mr. Julius Price (Central News Agency). Other war correspondents were Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett, Mr. W. T. Massey, Mr. Prevost Battersby and Mr. Guy Beringer.
AUTHORITIES. Mitchell's, Sell's and Willing's Press Directories; H. Simonis, The Street of Ink (1917); Sir Edward Cook, The Press in War Time with some account of the Official Press Bureau (1920); Paul Dehn, England und die Presse (Hamburg, 1915); The News- paper World (weekly) ; " The Relation of the Press and the Army in the Field," an address delivered by Lord Riddell at the Royal United Service Institution, March 25 1921 ; private information.
(3) FRANCE. In recent years the French press, though its technical advance has in certain respects been comparatively small, its printing being on the whole inferior to English, and photographic reproduction having not made such improvement as in England and the United States, has shown a remarkable statistical progress. By the end of 1916 there were in France 3,780 newspapers, as compared with 1,800 40 years previously. Of these, four, namely the Petit Parisien (about 2,000,000), the Matin (1,870,000), the Journal (1,400,000), and the Petit Journal (1,050,000), reached, by the end of 1920, the exceptionally large circulation of over one million copies daily a figure which one or two other papers, such as the Echo de Paris (850,000), nearly approached.
In 1910 the pioneer illustrated daily Excelsior was founded, but although well produced it did not attain the popularity of similar papers in England, its circulation at the end of 1920 being 200,000. Other leading papers established between 1910 and the beginning of the World War were: L'Homme Libre (1913), established as the personal paper of Georges Clemenceau; La Bataille Syndicalist (1910), the Syndicalist daily; Le Bonnet Rouge (1913), also an
extreme Socialist paper; and Paris Midi (1912), a paper which quickly obtained a large boulevard circulation.
The part played by French journalism during the World War forms a very interesting story. The opening of hostilities naturally created very great difficulties. Before a shot was fired the Humanite lost its director, Jean Jaures, assassinated on Aug. i, and in the Paris press in general for the first two weeks the utmost confusion prevailed. Several newspapers suspended publication. The general mobilization robbed them of their staffs, and the German threat to Paris and the measures for evacuation which were taken added to the difficulties, although the Temps, it may be noted, succeeded in moving its entire production to Bordeaux. It was only towards the end of 1914 that the position could be in any degree reestablished. In 1915 publication went on practically unhindered, but from 1916 onwards the growing shortage of paper and the scarcity of metal for printing-presses resulted in numerous ministerial decrees curtailing the size of papers and fixing prices. All this added to the great difficulties under which newspaper production went on. Nevertheless, on the journalistic side the traditions of French writing were brilliantly maintained by several well-known writers. (See A. de Chambure, Quelques Guides de I'Opinion en France pendant la Grande Guerre.) Such outstanding writers as Maurice Barres and the military critic, Marcel Hutin, in the Echo de Paris; Charles Maurras and Leon Daudet in the Action Fran^aise; the military critic, formerly dramatic critic, Henri Bidou, in the Journal des Debats; Auguste Gauvain in the Journal des Debats; Joseph Reinach (d. April 1921), writing over the signature " Polybe " in Figaro, all accommodating their party views to the union sacree, guided French opinion daily on the political and military situation. Gustave Herve, preacher of the class war, became a fervent patriot, and the title of his paper was changed from La Guerre Sociale to La Vicloire. Georges Clemen- ceau, early in difficulties with the censorship on account of his outspokenness and his attacks on the Government's preparations for the war, changed the title of his paper to L'Homme Enchaine, from which it was re-transformed to L'Homme Libre on his succession to the presidency of the Council.
What party activity there was in France as regards the press during the war centred round the extreme socialist papers and the person of M. Caillaux. In June 1917 this politician, or a number of persons favourable to his policy (the Ligue Re- publicaine) founded a daily paper, Le Pays, with the object of
