environment must be limited, before anyone can create a
pseudo-environment that he thinks wise or desirable. For while people
who have direct access can misconceive what they see, no one else can
decide how they shall misconceive it, unless he can decide where they
shall look, and at what. The military censorship is the simplest form
of barrier, but by no means the most important, because it is known to
exist, and is therefore in certain measure agreed to and discounted.

At different times and for different subjects some men impose and
other men accept a particular standard of secrecy. The frontier
between what is concealed because publication is not, as we say,
"compatible with the public interest" fades gradually into what is
concealed because it is believed to be none of the public's business.
The notion of what constitutes a person's private affairs is elastic.
Thus the amount of a man's fortune is considered a private affair, and
careful provision is made in the income tax law to keep it as private
as possible. The sale of a piece of land is not private, but the price
may be. Salaries are generally treated as more private than wages,
incomes as more private than inheritances. A person's credit rating is
given only a limited circulation. The profits of big corporations are
more public than those of small firms. Certain kinds of conversation,
between man and wife, lawyer and client, doctor and patient, priest
and communicant, are privileged. Directors' meetings are generally
private. So are many political conferences. Most of what is said at a
cabinet meeting, or by an ambassador to the Secretary of State, or at
private interviews, or dinner tables, is private. Many people regard
the contract between employer and employee as private. There was a
time when the affairs of all corporations were held to be as private
as a man's theology is to-day. There was a time before that when his
theology was held to be as public a matter as the color of his eyes.