The Bookman Gregory Mason, 5th September 1914 AMERICAN CORRESPONDENTS AT WAR WHEN THE NEWS came that Europe was going to war, that the prophecies of military theorists and the dreams of alarmist jingoes were about to become facts, that, in short, the biggest story since the flood was about to break, the clan of men who write about wars began to gather from the ends of the earth. Some had been looking for trouble in the Far East, others had been hovering about Ecuador and Haiti where for some time there has been a faint but encouragingly persistent smell of powder; more were still waiting on events in Mexico; and yet more were devoting their pens to the events of peace. As soon as it became known that the arrogance of three rulers was to plunge a continent into the greatest war of history practically every American writer of prominence whose name is associated with things martial dropped his business, got into communication with some friendly managing editor and after strapping about his waist a belt filled with the gold of the editor and weighting his hip with a piece of military hardware, to be used in case he should be forced by circumstances to relinquish the role of bystander for that of combattant, got upon the next boat for Europe. A war is an important assignment, and for the most part the American correspondents have been given carte blanche by their editors to go where they please and spend what they please. As far as the former privilege is concerned, our correspondents are finding it comparatively easy to go anywhere except to the front. Never was there a war in which the movements of the newspaper men were so restricted as this. The lid was clamped down tightly at the beginning, and if anything it has been screwed tighter since the opening of hostilities. Each of the armies in the field has a set of regulations carefully drawn up with an eye to preventing war correspondents getting any real war news at all. If a man is with the Germans he must get a permit each time he wishes to leave the immediate vicinity of his tent and he is never allowed to get within eye-shot of the line of battle. The Germans have a number of officers who speak foreign tongues and whose particular mission it is to see that the war reporters are well entertained — far from the source of news. No correspondent is allowed to travel with the French army unless he is a citizen of France or of one of the countries allied with France in this struggle, a rule that nominally, at least, cuts out Americans at once. Then each correspondent is obliged to submit certificates of character and physical fitness to take the field, with three photographs to be kept by the military authorise, and he must also pledge himself to abide by all the regulations. A white armlet is provided by the French for each correspondent on which is inscribed his name, nationality and the name of his newspaper. he must not leave his quarters without a permit, which is not issued at advance posts, and he is not allowed to wander about in the war zone unless accompanied by a specially detailed officer. The French Government pays the living expenses of all journalists with its troops and gives them free medical service, but it enforces the rule which the American army has recently adopted that each newspaper is entitled to only one representative with the army, and it demands that all newspapers who have men at the front send copies each day to the Minister of War for his inspection. If, in the face of these almost insuperable difficulties, a man gets his hand on a bundle of news, he then faces the problem of sending it out. In other words he finds himself up against that bugaboo of war correspondents, the censor. Practically all the war news that has been coming from Europe has been coming either from England or from France. Germany and Russia have been sewed up. Under the censorships of both France and England the use of code in the body of messages is forbidden, and all references to military movements, such as the whereabouts and plans of armies, and all accounts of losses and defeats are strictly banned. Before the war was much more than a week old the French Cable Company served notice that messages were subject to a minimum delay of forty-eight hours, and in England, where the censorship is more severe, the delay has often been greater. The feelings of a war correspondent with a big piece of news to send home in the face of this state of affairs may well be imagined. In messages sent from England the use of code even in the address is forbidden, and no message will be transmitted unless carrying the full address of the addressee even to his street number and unless signed by the full name of the sender. Thus it will not do to send a cable to “The Sun, New York.” Sun correspondents must address their cable news to “The New York Sun, 170 Nassau Street, New York, USA.” Thus, too, if correspondent William Theophilus Smith wishes to advise his fond mother that he has not been bullet-struck or disease-smitten he may not sign his message with the usual “Bill”, but must sign in full, “William Theophilus Smith”. The result is that messages from England have averaged twice their usual length and the service has been fully fifty per cent, slower than it would have been had not this unnecessary rule been adopted. The most maddening feature of the cable service from England has been the fact that, owing to an insufficient supply of censors, correspondents are frequently forced to experience the anguish of knowing that important despatches are being held up for hours until the over-worked censor can get through the pile of cables ahead of them. This is enough to drive any newspaper man to drink. The Japanese were the first to show that they had fully learned the lesson of the Franco-Prussian War, in which the defeats of the French were in no inconsiderable degree due to the fact that the Germans were able to gain from French and neutral newspapers advance knowledge of the movements of their enemies. The first great land fight of the Russian-Japanese War, the battle of the Yalu River, brought to the attention of an astonished world a new policy of a warring nation toward the hirelings of the newspapers of neutral countries. The Japanese allowed no cable to go out which contained any information on the position of their armies, or on the extent of their losses, or their plans for the future. Written matter, even when containing most caustic criticism of the Japanese, was smilingly viséd by the censors of the Mikado, who well realised that it could not be published within thirty days of the date of its transmission, by which time the entire military situation would be changed. The wisdom of the Japanese was in striking contrast to the stupid policy of Lord Stanley, the British Chief Censor in the Boer War. A reporter with the English forces might cable all he pleased of casualty lists and military movements, but let him breathe a word of criticism of the tactical wisdom of the British commanders, and he at once found himself persona non grata. Under the present air-tight and iron-bound censorship the only way of getting an important and essentially complete piece of news to America by cable, aside from sheer luck or carelessness on the part of the censor, is through the use of some extremely simple and practically “invisible” code pre-arranged between correspondent and editor — such as that by which William G. Shepherd of the United Press Associations scored a complete “beat” over his fellow correspondents on the occupation of Vera Cruz by American marines and bluejackets. As soon as the American forces began to come ashore Shepherd got the following innocent looking message past the Mexican censor: “Films forwarded in Vera Cruz.” This meant to Shepherd’s New York office, “American marines landed in Vera Cruz.” After all, the Japanese conception of the war correspondent’s position is correct. It is hard on the war-crazed public, eager for a shred of news from the front, and hard on the men who for adventure and money go to wars for newspapers that the reporters are not allowed to roam about at will, jumping from one army to another and back again, as they were wont to do before Japan set the international fashion the other way. But when all is said and done, the war correspondent has no inalienable right to be at the front, and it is absurd for an army to maintain a publicity bureau to let the enemy know of its position and plans. Indeed, in the “good old days” when correspondents were allowed to come and go as they pleased, without showing credentials from any newspaper and without registering with the home War Office, each writer was largely dependent for success on the extent of his pull with army and navy officers and inevitably therefore was before all things else a personal press agent for his particular good angel. So firmly intrenched in their traditional privileges were the correspondents who covered our early troubles in the Philippines on account of this power of “knocking” or “boosting” officers, collectively or individually, that after the newspaper men in a round robin letter protested against the imposition of a rather strict censorship the command came from Washington to “conciliate the newspaper men.” Americans who are now spectators in the theatre of war in Europe are learning that the proper function of a war correspondent today is mainly that of a historian who sees a small cross-section of the conflict which is valuable as a piece of history to be put together after the war with the contributions of other observers. For a magazine writer a war offers still a field fertile with “colour” and descriptive material palatable to the public. So far as the newspapers are concerned, however, they are beginning to learn that it no longer pays them to send out writers whose reputations have been made in the field of fiction, or whose only success as war correspondents was won in the old easy-going days, when a dashing manner and a feeling for theatrical values was what counted. The newspapers are coming to see that a war is much like any other assignment, and they are coming to depend more and more on members of their regular staffs, in other words, on everyday straight-ahead good out-and-out newspaper men. The successful newspaper war correspondent today must have a good news sense, physical endurance, organising ability, and a large expense account — especially a large expense account.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Sep 2014 04:19:10 +0000
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