untoward
communicativeness of certain of our prominent journals were being made
by the French and Belgians. So the Press Bureau took to sending
doubtful passages across for our decision--a procedure which
necessarily created delay and caused inconvenience to editors.
Publication, it may be mentioned, was approved in quite four cases out
of five when such references were made. One rather wondered at times,
indeed, where the difficulty came in.

But a verdict was called for in one case which imposed an
uncomfortable responsibility upon me. This was when a telegram from
the Military Correspondent of _The Times_ from the front, revealing
the shell shortage from which our troops were suffering, was submitted
from Printing House Square to the Press Bureau in the middle of May
1915, and was transmitted by the Press Bureau to us for adjudication.
It was about three weeks after Mr. Asquith's unfortunate reference to
this subject in his Newcastle speech. Publication of the message could
at the worst only be confirmatory to the enemy of information already
fully known, and national interests did seem to demand that the people
of the country should be made aware how this particular matter stood,
seeing that the labour world had not yet fully risen to its
responsibilities in connection with the prosecution of the war which
depended to so great an extent upon our factories. Choice of three
alternatives presented itself to me--leave might be refused, higher
authority might be referred to, publication might be sanctioned then
and there. The third alternative was adopted, although one or two
minor details in regard to particular types of ordnance were excised.
It seems to be generally acknowledged that publication of the truth
about the shell shortage was of service to the cause; but for some of
the attacks upon the War Office to which the publication of the truth
gave rise there was no justification whatever. The attacks, indeed,
took the form of a conspiracy, which has only been exposed since
mouths that had to remain closed during the war have been opened.

For the General Staff at the War Office to have formulated apposite,
hard-and-fast regulations for the guidance of the Press Bureau
covering all questions likely to arise, would, it may be observed,
have been virtually impracticable, or at all events would not have
really solved the problem. Sir S. Buckmaster, when in charge of the
Bureau, pressed me as regards this subject more