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The misrepresentation of the results achieved in the published communiqués provoked remonstrances from officers in the field, and apparent indifference to the losses involved roused the anger of the Australians and other troops against their generals. Among his own men Sir Hubert Gough lost more repute in the Flanders campaign than he did in his later retreat from St. Quentin.
Belloc asks the question "How is the plain man to distinguish in the news of the war what is true from what is false, and so arrive at a sound opinion?" His answer to this question is that "in the first place, the basis of all sound opinion are the official communiqués read with the aid of a map."
Little tables were spread about upon the sawdust sprinkled floor, each table with two or four guests discussing the official communiques of the day, the flow of talk assisted by a bottle of red or white wine. M.X., the miller, at heart more or less of a pessimist invariably got into an argument with that fierce optimist, M.Y., the lumberman.
Yet we know at first hand from the officer who edited the French communiqués that these conferences were a regular part of the business of war; that in the worst moment of Verdun, General Joffre and his cabinet met and argued over the nouns, adjectives, and verbs that were to be printed in the newspapers the next morning.
"I am not sure that I like very much the liaison system in Italy. The comparatively young officers intrusted with it report direct to army headquarters, and on their reports the communiqués are usually based. These officers remind us of the missi dominici of the great Moltke, but on the whole I confess that the system does not appeal to me very much.
France as a whole, from the moment when the attack began, understood the issue; the battle was fought in the open and the whole nation watched the communiqués day by day. It was accepted as a terrible if not a final test, and no Frenchman fails to recognize in all that he says the strength, the power, the military skill of Germany.
And to this he adds the following explanation: When I say "the official communiqués" I do not mean those of the British Government alone, nor even of the Allies alone, but of all the belligerents. You just read impartially the communiqués of the Austro-Hungarian and of the German Governments together with those of the British Government and its Allies, or you will certainly miss the truth.
In further explanation, I may add that in this country, confidential matter, in the European sense, does not exist, and such matter can never be kept a secret from the Press. Sometimes I have been able to come to an agreement with the Government over the wording of their communiqués to the Press; that is one of the great advantages of conducting the negotiations on the spot.
The Council of Defense agreed. Representatives of the Commissariats of Supply, Agriculture, Ways and Communications, Labor and the Supreme Council of Public Economy were sent to assist the Army Soviet. The army was proudly re-named "The First Revolutionary Army of Labor," and began to issue communiques "from the Labor front," precisely like the communiques of an army in the field.
As a general rule, the less real information there was to give out, the longer were the communiqués. Experienced correspondents maintained that decisions on delicate questions were made with as much secrecy in Washington as at Paris.
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