responsibility to the thousands of readers whose only knowledge of foreign affairs is derived from his letters . Hemay even have a responsibility towards the citizens of the country where he temporarily resides . During the Second Empire , when the French press was under galling restrictions, it was in the correspondence
of the representatives of the foreign press that the French had “ the unique source of information about their own affairs. " 24 The long list of special correspondents from Henry Crabb Robin
son to the present time shows men who have appreciated and lived up to these responsibilities. Speaking of the CivilWar, E . L . Godkin once said : “ There never was a warwhich afforded such ma terials for 'special correspondence of the best kind as this one- no
matter in what way we look at it.” 25 The special correspondent has for the most part not only lived up to his responsibilities, but he has appreciated his opportunities .
The truth of this statement is not invalidated by another patent fact, — that the special correspondent has been at times prone to magnify his office. If he is sent abroad by a great news- ,
paper to report to it, for example, the effects of the Pasteur treatment on four children sent from America to Paris to receive it, and he writes that " in the newspaper world the taking of a
leading part in the burning subject of the day, and being the first to ventilate it, plays a very important rôle ,” 26 the historian accepts the spirit of the work , without necessarily accepting the
value placed upon it by the writer. But these very opportunities are fraught with danger . It is not alone in Great Britain that it has been possible to say ,as does
Greenwood , that“ The most difficult and least satisfactory service
of the Press in Britain is the Foreign Correspondent's." 27 The influence of the correspondent may be used for good ends, but he may be in turn under the influence of the man higher up .
Greenwood gives an account of a visit in the early days of the Pall Mall Gazette from a German official coming directly from
24 Theodore Child , “ The Paris Newspaper Press,” Fortnightly Review , August 1885, n . s. 38: 149 – 165. 25 Rollo Ogden , Life and Letters of Edwin Lawrence Godkin , I, 204 -205.
26 Aubrey Stanhope, On the Track of the Great, p . 56 . 27 F . Greenwood, “ The Newspaper Press: Half a Century's Survey,” Blackwood's Magazine, May, 1897 , 161: 704 –720.
