concerned in his work . The war correspondent is never too insignificant to escape the notice of the government; the war office regards him as its arch enemy; army officers deem him an
interloper ; the troops complain that they are not adequately noticed by him ; the censor wields his blue pencil and mercilessly strikes out his most telling paragraphs; the general public is prone to consider him omniscient while criticizing him for not
providing on tap fresh and importantnews; to his own newspaper he is a valuable but expensive asset; to himself, the war cor
respondent would not be worth sending to the front if he did not consider his work sufficiently important to justify all the attention it receives from all the circles that it touches. The
problem of squaring the circle is not more hopeless than is that of harmonizing all these mutually contradictory elements in the
work of the war correspondent. It is easy to understand why the war correspondent seems everywhere to be persona non grata to those in authority. His letters are not desired by the government because " in informing the public, the newspaper informs the enemy.” As early as 1807, .
the Duke of Wellington had protested against the freedom allowed Henry Crabb Robinson, sent out by the London Times as its first specialwar correspondent, and he lost no opportunity of inveighing against all of the tribe. In 1810 he found one of his great difficulties in “ the babbling of the English newspapers, from whose columns the enemy constantly drew themost certain 6 " The Duke had never held the newspaper press in much respect. The information which it conveyed to the public during the Peninsular War,
although of the deepest interest to the British community, was offensive to him , because the same information reached the enemy whom it was of importance to keep in ignorance of the operations of the English camp and the disposition of the troops. Moreover , the press libelled him without mercy , giving publication to the grossest falsehoods, and assigning the worst motives to those acts which proved to be the result of the most
consummate judgment, the most profound forethought, and the purest patriotism . But he took no steps to procure the punishment of the libellers.
He despised , or affected to despise them - he found a safety -valve for his
wrath in calling them ' rascally ,' 'licentious,' and so forth ; and upon one occasion he wrote to Sir Henry Wellesley, 'What can be done with such
libels and such people, excepting to despise them , and continuing one's road without noticing them ? ' It had been well for his renown if he had continued this lofty policy, leaving to time the assertion of truth and the
confusion of his maligners .” — J. H . Stocqueler, The Duke of Wellington , II, 152 .
