ing the support of the newspaper correspondents and their incessant and exaggerated approval of all he says and does .” 32 It is probably experiences of this character that have led to the
judgment that “ one of the banes of an editor's life, [is] the foreign correspondent who lives in his own set abroad and re flects only their opinions without regard to the views of the paper
at home.” 33 At least one journalist has found foreign corre spondents inveterate grumblers, probably because they feel themselves exiles and can not keep in touch with affairs at home. A form of occasional correspondence long in vogue was that of the traveller who wrote to his home paper descriptions of Euro
pean scenery , and of European capitals with their art treasures. Much of this was enthusiastically received at a time when com
paratively few persons went abroad, 34 but it was necessarily superficial and lacking in perspective. The letters even of the most famous among these correspondents are to -day almost for gotten , yet the impression made on their own time can not be
overlooked.35 The correspondence of this character has almost disappeared from the press owing to the great increase in the use of the cable,36 the enormous expansion of foreign travel in times of
peace, and the multiplicity of authoritative guidebooks to European cities. The place of this early correspondence has in time of war been taken by “ letters from the trenches” sent usually to local papers 32 A . H . Layard , Autobiography and Letters, II, 102-103. 33 G . B . Dibblee, The Newspaper , p. 240. 34 Representative letters may be found in Letters from Three Continents by the Arkansas correspondent of the Louisville Journal (1849) ; Letters of
Travel written by David Grey for the Buffalo Courier (1865 - 1868) ; Letters from Europe by J . W . Forney (1867) .
Since negative results are often quite as significant as are positive ones, it is of interest to note that these letters from abroad rarely , if ever, concern the press of foreign countries. Even editors, when traveling abroad , have seldom written of the press in the countries visited . The extent attained in America by special correspondence prior to the Civil War has been described by Allan Nevins in the New York Evening Post, August 10, 1921. 36 A . Shadwell , " Journalism as a Profession ,” National Review , August ,
1898, 31: 845-855. 36 “ Foreign correspondence, especially foreign political correspondence ,
Ogden, “ The Press and Foreign News," Atlantic Monthly , September , 1900, 86 : 390 - 393 .
