单选题 It happened in the late fall of 1939 when, after a Nazi submarine had penetrated the British sea defense around the Firth of Forth and damaged a British cruiser, Reston and a colleague contrived to get the news past British censorship. They cabled a series of seemingly harmless sentences to The Times's editors in New York, having first sent a message instructing the editors to regard only the last word of each sentence. Thus they were able to convey enough words to spell out the story. The fact that the news of the submarine attack was printed in New York before it had appeared in the British press sparked a big controversy that led to an investigation by Scotland Yard and British Military Intelligence. But it took the investigators eight weeks to decipher The Times's reporters' code, an embarrassingly slow bit of detective work, and when it was finally solved the incident had given the story very prominent play, later expressed dismay that the reporters had risked so much for so little. And the incident left Reston deeply distressed. It was so out of character for him to have. become involved in such a thing. The tactics were questionable and, though the United States was not yet in the war, Britain was already established as America's close ally and breaking British censorship seemed both an irresponsible and unpatriotic thing to do.

单选题 The episode recounted in the passage took place ______.
A. just prior to the outbreak of the Second World War
B. bofore Britain entered the Second World War
C. before the United States entered the Second World War
D. while the United States was in the Second World War

单选题 It was clear that British censorship rules had been broken because the story was ______.
A. first published in New York
B. published nowhere but in The Times
C. uncomplimentary to the Bristish
D. much fuller in its Times version than elsewhere

单选题 According to the author, the British did little about the story's publication mainly because ______.
A. everyone responsible had apologized for what had happened
B. it took the authorities too long to figure out how the censors had been outwitted
C. Scotland Yard and British Military Intelligence disagreed about who was at fault
D. they were afraid to admit that the censors had been so easily fooled

单选题 The passage indicates that eventually everyone involved came to regard the publication of the story in The Times as a ______.
A. regrettable error
B. cheap journalistic trick
C. brilliant journalistic maneuver
D. proper exercise of the freedom of the press