Just as it’s never difficult to overclassify a piece of information, it’s never difficult to find reasons not to declassify. The same principle governed the way official censorship operated during the Second World War: everybody knew that ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’, and censors, responsible for second guessing what the enemy just might infer from an odd sentence, could be just as cautious. What follows is a diary entry dated 19 April 1945.
‘Are you security-minded? I mean, really security-minded? Yes; I agree the war in this theatre of operations is nearly at an end, but we must be careful. Are you as careful as this, for example?
The Films Division of the Ministry of Information sponsoring a brief film of the foolishness of unnecessary train journeys decided that the dialogue of a garrulous woman traveller relating her unnecessary journey to her sister, talking of Crewe station thus: "I never saw so many people in my life, if there was one Canadian soldier, there were fifty thousand," should be amended to, "if there was one Canadian soldier, there were thousands."
The official explanation: "Security reasons; just think how awful if there were fifty thousand."
Terrible; but perhaps they meant the crush on the platforms!’
(John Paddy Carstairs Kaleidoscope and a Jaundiced Eye Hurst & Blackett London 1946)
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