dents. Soon after another woman equally prominent at home wasnot recognized by the crowd and therefore received no ovation except in the columns of the press . “ It would never do at home, ” it was explained, “ to let Mrs. X . have great public appreciation here and give none to Mrs. Y .”
Another limitation is found in the work of the free-lance special correspondent who goes forth to see what is to be seen. He may go to Mexico on behalf of the owners of oil wells and presumably
he decides that intervention in Mexico is necessary . He may be sent to a foreign country whose language he neither understands nor speaks and again presumably he hears and sees and reports what his interpreter wishes to have heard, seen ,and reported, and thus absolutely contradictory letters concerning the same situation may be sent by different correspondents to their respective papers. He may visit the offices of various public utilities and decide that the agricultural districts are opposed to daylight saving. He may have his orders “to pitch into” public officials and he does not miss the opportunity of so doing.[1] The line that divides the special correspondent from the propagandist is at times invisible.
But some of the limitations on the work of the special correspondent may be personal rather than official. If his life at the capital tends to be drab and dull,—“the foreign correspondent under the Second Empire had a most uninteresting time;” if he is not received at Court as was the case during the Empire in Germany; if time hangs heavy ,—he yields to temptation and
- ↑ “A correspondent once brought me a dispatch he had prepared, requesting me to look it over and see whether it contained anything strictly libellous. It proved to be a forecast of the course of the secretary of the treasury in a financial crisis then impending. 'Technically speaking ,' I said , after reading it, there is plenty of libellous material in this, for it represents the secretary as about to do something which, to my personal knowledge, he has never contemplated, and which would stamp him as unfit for his position if he should attempt it. But as a matter of fact he will ignore your story, as he is putting into type to-day a circular which is to be made public to-morrow , telling what his plan really is, and that will authoritatively discredit you.”“Thank you,' he answered, rather stiffly . 'I have my orders to pitch into the secretary whenever I get a chance. I shall send this to-day, and tomorrow I can send another saying that my exclusive disclosures forced him to change his programme at the last moment.'”—Francis E . Leupp, “The Waning Power of the Press,” Atlantic Monthly, February, 1910, 105: 145-156
