shall be censored”—which is right—but “As far as is possible we will prevent you from getting any real news about the war at all”—which is wrong. For truth, unfortunately for their theory, will out, and if it is violently suppressed it has a way of finding its way out like lava from a volcano, which will certainly do a great deal of harm before, as it must, because it is truth, it does good in the end. My own belief is that nations, like men and women, practically never gain anything by concealing the truth, because its place is certain to be taken by mistakes and doubts and lies—as has been proved over and over again during this war. It is partly because diplomacy is, perhaps necessarily, founded and built up on concealment that it is so often, as it has been more than once in the last eighteen months, a complete and dismal failure. And as for war—as my warrior friend said to me earlier in this book—“War is a serious matter: let us make it seriously.” By all means let us make it and take it with the utmost seriousness possible. But also let us be sensible about it. His own complaint against the journalists whom he implicitly accused of taking it lightly was that he could not move out of his quarters without the enemy knowing it. Yet till he met me, not a journalist, French or English, had been within miles of his quarters, as he knew perfectly well. What he did not appear to know, like many other people in authority, is that the Germans have no need to go to French or English newspapers for information about the movements of generals or of troops. They know in any case that to do so would be futile, since they are already checkmated in advance by the censor. Most of the information that matters they gain in open fight in the field. They knew long before even _The Times_ knew it that the English army was short of shells and especially of the right kind of shells. A soldier does not take much time to learn whether he is being fired at with shrapnel or with high explosives. They knew long before any newspaper correspondent could have informed them of the fact (supposing there had been any at the front, which, of course, there were not) that the French and English were going to attempt a strong offensive movement in Champagne and at Loos on September 25th, 1915. Their informant was a preliminary bombardment along that particular part of the front which lasted for seventy-two hours. As for other kinds of useful military information, which cannot be gathered on the field of battle, but only from behind the enemy’s lines, for that they depend once again not on newspapers but on aeroplanes and spies (including, thanks to the scanty patriotism and common-sense of some soldiers, women belonging to the profession of Rahab). From each of these sources alone they probably get as much news in a week as all the correspondents of all the newspapers “behind the front” could gather in a year.