The Irish Was Just Censor, Though Rigid,

Front Our Own Correspondent
DUBLIN
The Irish censorship was lifted immediately on the termination of hostilities. We are enjoying a general inquest '.on its operations. It has been attacked fiercely by the Unionist Irish Times, but defended by the Catholic Standard and Cosgravist Leader. Also the Irish Catholic concurs.
These latter papers suffered exceptionally heavily by deletions during the war years, but both of them say now that they make no complaint — they testify that the Censor, though rigid, was just, It was the frequent attempts to prove partiality that compelled the censorship to be rigid. As one of these papers observes, once a certain element made a practice of charging the Censor with had faith. and with weighting his decisions, he had to close down impartially on things that otherwise he would have let through.
.CATHOLICS SUFFERED
This is important testimony, for the Censor's decisions often were painful to Catholics as Catholics.
The Polish news, in particular, came in for some very irksome rulings.
The point is, however, that we could not undertake to adjudicate on the truthfulness of every story put out, today by one belligerent's propaganda and to-morrow by another ; nor could we preserve our unity if our press was to be filled with the passions of the con
flict between Left and Right. The censorship might . be rigid, sometimes officials might be wooden ; but the national policy was impartially applied. I quote this testimony by sufferers under censorship because much publicity has been given to one paper's allegations to the contrary. That paper has hcen publishing pictures that were suspended during the censorship, and suggesting that the suppressions were anti-British in intention. Of its pictures, two at least have been proved to he not. what they purport to he; but matters atters more., it is not publishing any of the many anti-British things that the Censor suppressed to show the other side of the story. If Germany had won, it would be easy to publish a lot of things against England, America and Russia that the Censor suppressed, and so to allege that the censorship all along had worked for England.
ANGLO-IRISH CONTRASTS • The moral consequence of our five years' detachment is very striking, if we may judge from an article by the Hon. Frank Pakenham, who lately visited Ireland to address the Catholic Association for International Relations. He said that the contrast with the state of mind in England was astonishing.
He found in Ireland no sign of antiBritish feeling, but also a complete scepticism about the propaganda that directs the present wave of hate and vengeance and a deep suspicion that atheistic Communism has won the only victory.
As to our scepticism about current propaganda, it is of longer standing than the peace or the war. It is not to-day or yesterday that we found it all but impossible to get truth about our own country published in England —one hour's sailing from our shores.
An example of what galls us, in press matters, is seen in the suppression throughout the entire British press and radio of the cause of the Dublin disturbance on VE-Day. Our Government Publicity Department gave the facts: they were not published. They have been underlined, however, by a decision of the Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. who announces that he has taken disciplinary action against the disturbers of the peace who started the whole trouble. He has also suppressed the customary Trinity " rag "— an annual exhibition of fesceanine spirits, in which there was clang* of fresh, wanton provocation to the People of our capital city. That T.C.D. has been constrained thus to acknowledge that the whole provocation came from that quarter, and that this fact has been suppressed everywhere, while Ireland has been accused of anti-British and anti-American feeling, will explain why we think very poorly of press standards of fairness.
Yet another example has reached us, in letters from Affierica which tell that while much has been made throughout the world of an act of diplomatic courtesy to the defeated Power, the entire American press suppressed the far most striking fact that our Legislature adjourned when President Roosevelt died —adjourned, after speeches of profound feeling, by the leaders of all parties.
Let me hasten to add that THE CATHOLIC HERALD is esteemed in Ireland, read throughout our cities, and (as I note from experiefice) often sold in the twopenny boxes of remote country chapels, just because it is recognised as an exception to the rule of controlled opinion.