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Dazed, amazed, I recognised that I had seemingly mistaken
the duties of a war correspondent. For some six weeks I had been
following an army in breathless, anxious chase of facts; wheedling
Censors to get some few of those facts into a telegraph office; learning
then, perhaps, that the custom at that particular telegraph office was
to forward telegrams to Sofia, a ten days’ journey, by bullock-wagon
and railway, to give them time to mature. Now here, piping hot, were
the stories of the war.
There was the vivid story of the battle of Chatalja. This story
was started seven days too soon; had the positions and the armies
all wrong; the result all wrong; and the picturesque details were in
harmony. But for the purposes of the public it was a very good story
of a battle. Those men who, after great hardships, were enabled to
see the actual battle found that the poor messages which the Censor
permitted them to send took ten days or more in transmission to
London. Why have taken all the trouble and expense of going to the
front? Buda-Pesth, on the way there, is a lovely city; Bucharest also;
and charming Vienna was not at all too far away if you had a good
staff-map and a lively military imagination.
In yet another paper there was a vivid picture—scenery, date,
Greenwich time, and all to give an air of artistic verisimilitude—of
the signing of the Peace armistice. The armistice had not been signed
at the time, was not signed for some days after. But it would have
been absurd to have waited, since “our special correspondent” had
seen it all in advance, right down to the embrace of the Turkish
delegate and the Bulgarian delegate, and knew that some of the
conditions were that the Turkish commissariat was to feed the
Bulgarian troops at Chatalja and the Bulgarian commissariat the
Turkish troops in Adrianople. If his paper had waited for the truth
that most charming story would never have seen the light.
So, in a little book I shall one day bring out in the “Attractive
Occupations” series on “How to be a War Correspondent,” I shall
give this general advice:
1. Before operations begin, visit the army to which you are
accredited, and take notes of the general appearance of officers and
men. Also learn a few military phrases of their language. Ascertain all
possible particulars of a personal character concerning the generals
and chief officers.
2. Return then to a base outside the country. It must have good
telegraph communication with your newspaper. For the rest you
may decide its locality by the quality of the wine, or the beer, or the
cooking.
3. Secure a set of good maps of the scene of operations. It will be
handy also to have any books which have been published describing
campaigns over the same terrain.
4. Keep in touch with the official bulletins issued by the military
authorities from the scene of operations. But be on guard not to
become enslaved by them. If, for instance, you wait for official notices
of battles, you will be much hampered in your picturesque work.
Fight battles when they ought to be fought and how they ought to be
fought. The story’s the thing.
5. A little sprinkling of personal experience is wise; for example,
a bivouac on the battlefield, toasting your bacon at a fire made of a
broken-down gun-carriage with a bayonet taken from a dead soldier.
Mention the nationality of the bacon. You cannot be too precise in
details.
A Young Widow at her Husband’s Grave