described , — that these daily dispatches should be distributed
as the War Office thought fit to every newspaper that cared to pay its share toward the cost of the message. The object of this plan was apparently to reduce to a minimum the friction with the censor, to lessen the expense of war cor respondence , and to improve the service. The result, if carried out, would have been to make war correspondence an appanage
of the War Office.97 Somewhat later a proposal was made by the Morning Post,
the London Outlook, and a writer on the Daily Mail for a bill making it a penal offense to publish unauthorized news of naval
and military movements, the bill to be passed in time of peace, but to lie dormant until needed and then to be made instantly operative by Order in Council. It was urged in favor of this
proposed measure that the press needed to be protected against
itself and protected against a liberty that in the nature of things it could not help abusing, while it also needed to be relieved of
responsibility . But the inevitable result of such a measure would seem to an onlooker to be the transference of all responsibility for the authoritativeness of the press reports from the press
itself to the Privy Council and thereby to reduce the press to a condition of nonage.98
The difficulties of the recent period are still too much in the
foreground to have been as yet adequately dealt with by all the conflicting interests involved . If at times the war correspon dent feels himself between the upper and the nether millstone,
that the censor destroys his work while the government itself supplants it by installing official “ war movies," he remembers
the difficulties of his predecessors and takes courage. 97 H . F . P. Battersby , “ War Correspondents,” National Review , Novem ber , 1900 , 36 : 420 - 429.
P . Landon emphasizes the importance of setting up a very high standard for those to whom
licenses were in future to be issued and gives a series
of important suggestions covering the future status of the war correspon dent that had grown out of his experiences as a war correspondent in South
Africa . — “ War Correspondents and the Censorship ,” Nineteenth Century and After , August , 1902, 52: 327- 337.
98 A Journalist, “ The Press in War Times,” Fortnightly Review , March, 1906, 85: 528–536 . A footnote by the Editor states that steps to prepare such a bill were taken February 12, 1906 , by a Committee of the Newspaper Society. No further information as to its fate has been available .
