"Devil of a Job"

Censorship Director Byron Price, whose hand on the blue pencil has usually been both light and wise, used a slightly heavier hand last week. He asked editors to go easy on discussing "expectations or probabilities" about the future of Russo-Japanese relations. Reason: "speculations . . . however erroneous they might prove to be, could possibly lead to a Japanese attack on Russia." The Washington Post, which like many a U.S. paper had already made the obvious deduction that Russia's denunciation of its Jap pact "bodes a break sooner or later," confessed to unwittingly violating censorship: "Our consternation over the gaffe is somewhat lightened by the discovery that we are in rather distinguished company . . . Senator Elbert Thomas [and] Senator Johnson....

"Golly, we didn't realize our own strength. . . . There is no telling what the Japanese might do if we were to provoke them editorially. They might even--oops, there we go again. Well, as we were saying, Mr. Price, the Far Eastern situation is fraught with interest, and, uh--er--pregnant with possibilities and, so far as the home-front situation is concerned, it's the very devil of a job to publish a newspaper in the face of censorship inanities."

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