Write propaganda, shut up, or fight: Philip Gibbs and the Western Front

The British War Correspondents who reported from the Western Front during the First World War have not been treated well by history. Though many were rewarded with fame and fortune, in the post-war years, their reports were the subject of considerable scrutiny. At best, they have been characterised as naïve dupes of the military and victims of censorship. At worst, they have been impugned as co-conspirators in a web of deceit and lies, the effects of which reverberate to this day. The truth, however, is far more nuanced than that—a reality that is nowhere clearer than in the reports written by Philip Gibbs, the most famous correspondent of them all.