War Office Press Bureau

UK civil service organization set up under the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) in August 1914 to carry out the censorship of war information during World War I. The bureau was headed by Conservative member of Parliament Frederick E Smith and staffed by a large body of civil servants. All news coming back from the Western Front and other battlefields had to pass through the bureau before publication. The promotion of a positive picture of the war was seen as crucial to victory, as the government feared that bad news from the front would lead to a drop in morale and lack of unity.

The war minister Lord Kitchener and Douglas Haig, commander in chief of the British military forces, worked closely with the bureau and often checked reports themselves before release to the newspapers. Until 1915 the bureau allowed only two war correspondents on the Western Front, the soldier-historian Col Ernest Swinton (inventor of the tank) and the English novelist and travel-writer Henry M Tomlinson. Over the next four years increasing numbers of journalists were given official permission to report from the Western Front, but their reports always had to be checked before publication. Any attempt to break these rules could lead to the removal of their official permission to report, and possible imprisonment.