It has been urged, on behalf of the Press Bureau, that of late matters have been very much improved. My journalistic friends tell me that so far as the actual working is concerned this is a fact. There has undoubtedly been less of the haphazard methods which were characteristic of the early days. But there is still too much of what the _Times_ very properly calls the "throttling" of permissible news, and, in spite of the fact that two despatches a week are now published from Sir John French, we are still in the dark as to the _real_ story of the great campaign. Neither our successes nor our failures are adequately described. We are still not told "the truth about the war." And I cannot help saying that the deficiencies of the official information are not made up by the tactics of certain sections of the Press. There is too much of a tendency to magnify the good and minimise the bad. There are too many "Great Victories" to be altogether convincing. As the _Morning Post_ put it: "There seems to be a large section of the public which takes its news as an old charwoman takes her penn'orth of gin, 'for comfort.' And some of our contemporaries seem to cater for this little weakness. Every day there is a 'great advance' or a 'brilliant victory,' and if a corporal's guard is captured or surrenders we have a flaming announcement on all the posters." It is very true. From the fiercest critics of the Press Bureau's methods we do not to-day get "the truth about the war," even so far as they know it. Even the _Daily News_ has been moved to raise a protest against the present state of affairs, and as recently as March 15th declared that the mind of authority "is being fed on selected facts that convey a wholly false impression of things." CHAPTER VI THE PERIL OF THE ENEMY ALIEN "_Every enemy alien is known, and is now under constant police surveillance._"--Mr. Tennant, Under-Secretary for War, in the House of Commons, March 3rd. One of the gravest perils with which the country is still faced is that of the enemy alien. Notwithstanding all that has been written and said upon this most serious question, Ministers are still content to pursue a shuttlecock policy, in which there is very little satisfaction for any intelligent patriot. Each time the subject is brought up in the House of Commons there is an apparent intention of the Government to wilfully throw dust into the eyes of the public, and prevent the whole mystery of the official protection afforded to our enemies being sifted to the bottom. A disgraceful illustration of this was given on March 3rd, when Mr. Joynson-Hicks moved: "That in the opinion of this House it is desirable that the whole administration of the Acts and Regulations concerning aliens and suspected persons should be centred in the hands of one Minister, who should be responsible to the House."