Using the series

These Reports prepared by the Department of Defence, Division of Military Intelligence, Censors staff, were referred to the Attorney General's Department by the Division of Military Intelligence under the signature of T Trumble the then Secretary of the Department of Defence. They are second or third copies although in a few instances they would appear to be originals. Other copies were sent to Censors in other states and a summary was sent to London as well as to Military Intelligence Offices.

The Reports contain information relating to trading with the enemy and other suspicious activities culled from letters Intercepted by Censors in the 6 Military Districts, each Military District compiling its own report. In this particular series the reports from the 6th Military District Headquartered in Hobart Tasmania do not appear to be extant although a portion of the original reports exist in Australian Archives Victorian Regional Office for 1916, in CRS B, Intelligence reports on enemy trading and other suspicions actions (ex MP 95/1).

Content matter includes summaries and comments on such groups as IWW  (Industrial Workers of the World) OBU (One Big Union) Sinn Fein, and a host of smaller Political Bodies. There is also detailed comment on the activities among the German Community in South Australia, the Russians in Queensland, and Italians attempting to evade conscription for service in Italy. Anti-Conscription elements also receive detailed attention from the Censor. Each file is made up of several forms showing serial No, Date, Name and Address of sender and Addressee, brief subject matter and Censor's notes. Where it has been considered necessary a copy of the Intercepted correspondence is attached at the end of the file.

Relationships with other records

Each entry in a file (with the exception of one file) has a serial number, but there is no evidence to suggest that the Attorney General's Department used this as a registration system. In the early part of the series the

Attorney-General's began to register these files on receipt but later abandoned this in favour of the outgoing registration of the division of Military Intelligence until April 1918 when reports from all districts received the general identification No 97 prefix, followed by a consecutive despatch No. These intelligence reports were used to produce a Weekly Intelligence summary. These summaries have also been registered in the Australian Archives as CRS A6287, Weekly Intelligence Summaries, A11 Military Districts

System of arrangement and control

However as no controls are known to be extant, Australian Archives has arranged the series in a numerical sequence within each Military District Number.

The Military District Numbers are:-

District No 1.QLD (this included the North Coast Towns of NSW)

District No 2.NSW.

District No 3.VIC.

District No 4.SA.

District No 5.WA.

District No 6.TAS.

Finding aids

All items in this series in the custody of National Archives of Australia as at November, 2001 have been entered onto the item level database, RecordSearch.