secrecy that meant larger safety for American ships and troops and larger chances for American military success?
Our European comrades in arms viewed the experiment with amazement, not unmixed with anxiety, for in every other belligerent country censorship laws established iron rules, rigid suppressions, and drastic prohibitions carrying severe penalties. Yet the American idea worked. And it worked better than any European law. Troop-trains moved, transports sailed, ships arrived and departed, inventions were protected, and military plans advanced, all behind a wall of concealment built upon the honor of the press and the faith of the individual editor. Yet while the thing itself was done there was no joy and pride in the doing. Never at any time was it possible to persuade the whole body of Washington correspondents to think of the voluntary censorship in terms of human life and national hopes. A splendid, helpful minority caught the idea and held to it, but the majority gave themselves over to exasperation and antagonism, rebelling continuously against even the appearance of restraint. Partizanship, as a matter of course, played a larger part in this attitude, but a great deal of it proceeded from what the French call "professional deformation." Long training had developed the conviction that nothing in the world was as important as a "story," and not even the grim fact of war could remove this obsession.
In face of the printed card, with its simple requests unsupported by law, the press persisted in spreading the belief that I was a censor, and with mingled moans and protests each paper did its best to make the people believe that the voluntary censorship was not voluntary, and that the uncompelled thing the press was doing was not really uncompelled at all.
When one paper violated the agreement, as many did in the beginning, all the others were instant in their
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