dge will no more make
a superior staff officer who can be trusted, nor a commander of troops
of all arms who will be able to make the most of them in face of the
enemy, than will they make a successful physician or a proficient
electrical engineer. It was also completely overlooked by the
propagandists of this particular stunt that the experience which on
every front, other than the Mesopotamian, temporary officers had been
gaining was for practical purposes confined to trench warfare, and
that, if a decision was ever going to be reached at all, it would be
brought about under profoundly different tactical conditions from
those which had been prevailing. The whole question hinged upon
whether the requisite knowledge could be acquired, and upon what steps
would be necessary to bring that desirable result about. The writers
who dealt with the point perhaps recognized that brains were merely a
means to the end, and not the end. But if they did, why did they fail
ever even to mention the pinion upon which the whole question in
reality hinged?

Journalists, when complaining of the censorship, have put forward the
suggestion that this sort of thing ought to be left to the patriotism
and honour of newspapers, that, if such a plan were adopted, the Press
would of its own accord refrain from publishing any information that
might be of value to the enemy in time of war, and that there would
then be no need for any special official department dealing with this
matter. That sounds plausible, but it will not stand examination for a
moment. Granted that the great majority of editors and their staffs
would never dream of wittingly disclosing information injurious to
their country during hostilities, the fact remains that a chain is no
stronger than its weakest link. If one journal, in its eagerness to
attract, prints what ought to have been kept secret, the reticence of
the remainder is of no avail. Nor is this merely a question of honour
and patriotism. It is also a question of competence. Censorship
responsibilities demand knowledge and call for certain qualifications
which the personnel of the Press in general does not possess. A few
editors, no doubt, could be trusted to do the work efficiently; but
that claim to omniscience which is unobtrusively, but none the less
insistently, put forward by the Fourth Estate has no solid foundation.
One of the lessons of the Great War has been that censorship is an
extremely difficult operatio