scription :
collectively he has found a place in the newspaper " morgue." 3 His work has called forth the satire of writers for the press in
other lines, and he has repeatedly been told that the public has ceased to be interested in his work .
Yet with each recurring
conflict between warring nations he finds a place and his letters appear in the daily press. The position of the war correspondent has indeed always been a most difficult one, and one that has been growing increasingly
complicated , since so many different and warring factors are “ The first and greatest of War Correspondents.”
This is reproduced in
J . B . Atkins, The Life of Sir William Howard Russell , II , 388 .
This statement, however , is challenged by F . Lauriston Bullard who says that the first war to be adequately and comprehensively reported in the daily press was the conflict of 1846 and 1847 between the United States
and Mexico . FamousWar Correspondents, pp. 5, 6 , 9. See also Allan Nevins, “ Newsgathering in the Forties," New York Even ing Post, August 10, 1921.
3 “ Since the days of the Crimean war we have seen the business of war correspondence run its full course and sink perhaps into comparative in significance . Owing to the vastly increased range of modern weapons and
extended sphere of military operations, on the one hand , and owing, on the other, to the extreme severity of the censorship , the opportunities even
of the most enterprising correspondents are greatly restricted . All are placed very much in the same position - a position generally in the rear of actual operations ; and , except when enterprise takes the form of fiction ,
the correspondentbecomes , so far as any immediate publication is concerned , little more than an official chronicler .” — Sir Edward Cook , Delane of “ The Times," p . 82. Winston Spencer Churchill, in one of his books on the Boer War, laments: “ Alas! the days of newspaper enterprise in war are over . What can one do with a censor, a forty- eight-hour delay, and a fifty-word limit on the wire? ” - Cited by F . Lauriston Bullard , Famous War Correspondents, p . 3 . 4 “ Dr. Russell, of the Times , was preparing to mount his war-horse .
You know the sort of thing, - he has described it himself over and over again . Bismarck at his horse's head , the Crown Prince holding his stirrup ,
and the old King of Prussia hoisting Russell into the saddle . When he was there, the distinguished public servant waved his hand in acknowledgment, and rode slowly down the street, accompanied by the gamins of Versailles , who even in their present dejection could not forbear a few involuntary
cries of 'Quel homme!' ” — Matthew Arnold , Friendship 's Garland, pp . 313 - 314.
The friends of Matthew Arnold also much deprecated the tone taken in Friendship's Garland towards G . A . Sala . 5 “ It is a plain fact that the public at present takes less and less interest
every year in either foreign or war correspondence.” — G . B . Dibblee, The Newspaper , p . 71.
“ The public is so infatuated with the early stages of a war and so bored and incapable of serious interest in it after a few weeks, that the proper treatment of war news is the most serious problem which a newspaper
manager has to face.” - Ib., pp . 69 – 70 .
