Newspaper Editor Declares American Censorship Is Stricter Than Germans'

Censorship of out-going news in this country is far more stringent than the worst ever enforced by Germany, according to Erwin D. Canham, managing editor of the Christian Science Monitor, who spoke at P. B. H. last night on "Newspapers and the World War."

"Censors want our Allies to think that we are united," he stated, revealing as an example that news of the sugar-rationing was not allowed to be sent abroad for three days.

"This policy cannot compare to anything practiced by England," he maintained, "for it has the effect of conceal the workings of democracy in this country."

On the other hand, news is being smuggled out of occupied Europe with an extraordinary regularity and completeness, he declared, stating that New York was one of the best source for such grape-vine information.

"Once in a while," he stated, "someone is successfully bootlegged out of a Nazi concentration camp in some glamorous way, who is only too willing to reveal the opinions that he has had to conceal so carefully from the Nazis."

Aside from these isolated occasions, moreover, there is constantly arriving from Europe a steady stream of refugees who are a great potential source of information. Only one-sixth of such news, however, is sufficiently reliable to print.

Former journalists are especially valuable, he noted, for they know the background of their country and can discuss the details behind every laconic communique released by the German censorship.

Foreign News in New York

"When the Lisbon correspondent of the Monitor was expelled by Portugal," he explained, "he covered substantially the same news from New York."

As a general criticism of American journalism in the war, he remarked that "it lays too much emphasis on everything." This tendency toward sensationalism, he continued, tends to over-emphasize petty defeats and victories and to build up a distrust of all news released in this country.

News coverage from the Far East, however, has on the whole been excellent, according to Canham. Despite the speed with which correspondents need to retreat before the Japanese they have on the whole kept their dispatches up to date.