Censorship

Censorship was imposed during the war on newspapers, publications and soldiers’ mail with the aim of denying the enemy information of military importance, and to maintain civilian morale and suppress internal opposition to the war effort. In 1916 anti-sedition war regulations made illegal “any public utterance or action that might discourage the prosecution of the present war to a victorious conclusion”. Anti-war literature was confiscated and distributors prosecuted, and newspapers had to submit articles to the censor to be passed fit for publication. The horrors of war and the dreadful circumstances in which many soldiers died were largely hidden from public view. The need to uphold public morale, to recruit more soldiers, and to support the war effort was reinforced by the war rhetoric used in newspapers, public events, and in the churches.

Censorship also applied to images of the war with official photographs, film, and works of art being heavily controlled and censored. In 1917 Henry Armytage Sanders was appointed official New Zealand photographer and cinematographer in France, but under strict conditions. He was not permitted to develop his own photographs or films, all material to be sent to General Headquarters to be developed and censored. Consequently official photographs from the First World War show little of the death and desolation.

Soldiers were not supposed to have cameras at the front, but many took pictures that provided poignant and graphic views of the war, in direct contrast with the official photographs where depictions of death and desolation were rare. The official war artists were instructed not to include dead bodies in their work, which was hard for some to come to terms with.

“Why may not the real horrors of battle be illustrated? Every time I have painted the reality I have been requested to alter it. Why? Nothing would prevent wars so much as for the masses to see the torn and mangled forms. Heads and limbs blown away from their bodies and other terrible mutilation of horses and men I have had the sorrow of seeing. It is the false picturing of battles that fans the cursed war fever because only the glorious side of it is shown or realized except by those who have lost their dear ones or those who have been mutilated.” (Art and the War, Capt. A. Pearse, NZRB, 1919)

When his time as an official war artist was over George Butler found a way to reconcile the constraints of censorship, with what he had seen, by repainting a scene he had done earlier. In 1918 as a war artist he painted Sunken Road at Solesmes under the conditions of his position, but in 1920 free of restrictions he repainted the exact same scene as he had originally seen it, including the bodies of the dead.