The Note-Book of an Intelligence Officer - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1917. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... Ill THE BRITISH POSTAL CENSORSHIP January 15th, 1917. For the purposes of organization the British censorship is divided into three principal departments: The Naval Censor, who examines wireless messages and searches couriers found upon the high seas; the CableTelegraph Censor; and the Postal Censor. Of these three the postal censorship is by far the largest and most important. It employs nearly five thousand people, the majority of whom are skilled linguists. Probably no single thing which the war has brought forth, excepting only the invasion of Belgium by the Germans, has so generally irritated and aroused the American public as the British Postal Censorship, which pries into all its letters without the politeness of offering the slightest apology. Yet it seems fairly evident that there must be some adequate explanation for its existence and some excuse for its intrusiveness. In order to pass profitably the necessary period of waiting while my commission in the British Army was being put in order, I decided, soon after landing in England, to study the Postal Censorship and try to worm the truth about it out of the British authorities,--whom I fairly expected would throw every possible hindrance in my way, under the pretext that to explain the censorship might in some remote way furnish the Germans with information of military value. I not only wished to satisfy my own curiosity in the matter, but felt that to offer a solution of the problem to my countrymen through the medium of the "Saturday Evening Post" would be a slight contribution to a better understanding between the two countries of Britain and America. I soon found to my surprise that the British authorities were only too ready to have me pry into the censorship, and the heads of the organization pla...