Establishing the Committee

Sir Graham Greene, ¹ the Admiralty Permanent Secretary, convened a ‘conference’ there on 13 August 1912, ‘to consider the establishment of a Joint Committee of Official and Press Representatives to deal with the publication of Naval and Military news in times of emergency’. The War Office was represented by Brade, Brigadier-General Wilson, and Lieutenant Colonel GMW Macdonogh. ² The Press were represented by Sir George Toulmin MP (Newspaper Society), Ragland Phillips ³ (Federation of Northern Newspaper Owners), David Duncan ⁴ (Federation of Southern Newspaper Owners), Robert Baird ⁵ (Irish Newspaper 20 Society) and Ernest Parke, Secretary of the (London) Newspaper Proprietors Association. ⁶ This meeting and subsequent ones, and the records thereof, were ‘Secret’, although the content very rarely contained any detail which would have endangered naval or military activities. Considering the number of people in both governmental and press circles who had participated in the establishment of the system, who would be consulted in the coming months, and who subsequently were involved in the production and receipt of Notices from the Committee, it was in general the British public alone who remained for some years ignorant of what was being done in their interest.