In his gallant defence of the Press Bureau against overwhelming odds--few people share his admiration for that most unhappy institution--Sir Stanley Buckmaster denied that information was ever "kept back." So far as I know no one has ever suggested that the Press Bureau had anything to say about the circulation of official news: its unhappily directed energies seem to operate in other directions. But that it is keeping back news of the very gravest kind admits of no shadow of doubt. The official reports have assured us of late, with irritating frequency, that there is "nothin' doin'." Now and again we hear of a trench being heroically captured. But we hear very little of the reverse side of the picture, upon which the casualty lists, a month or six weeks later, throw such a lurid light. Time and again lately we have read in the casualty lists of battalions losing anything from two hundred to four hundred men in killed or wounded or "missing," which means, in effect, prisoners. Even the Guards, our very finest regiments, have lost heavily in this last disagreeable fashion: other regiments have lost even more heavily. Now British soldiers do not surrender readily, and we can take it for granted that when a large number of our men are made prisoners it is not without very heavy fighting. One single daily paper recently contained the names of very nearly two thousand officers and men killed, or wounded, or missing, on certain dates in January. Where, why, or how these men were lost we do not know, and we are told absolutely nothing. The real fact is that the news is carefully concealed under a tiny paragraph which announces that a line of trenches which had been lost have been brilliantly recaptured. We are glad, of course, to learn of the success, but would it not be well for the nation to learn of the failure? Can it be supposed for an instant that the Germans do not know? Is it giving away military information of value to the enemy to publish here in Great Britain news with which they are already perfectly well acquainted? Is it not rather that in their anxiety to say smooth things the authorities deliberately suppress the news of reverses, and tell us only the story of our triumph? The most injurious suppression of news by the Government has made its effect felt in practically every single department of our public life which has the remotest connection with the prosecution of the war.