decreased through the cutting down of advertisements.40 Nor are these extra expenses met by the sale of papers even though the immediate effect may be, as in the Franco-Prussian War, that “ the excitement caused by [it] has led to an increase of between fifty and seventy-five per cent. in the sale of the London daily papers .” 41 The public quickly loses interest in the details
of a campaign,spectaculardescriptions of charges and combats and endurance of sieges soon pall, the center of continued interest shifts
from the front to the conditions behind, below , and beyond the front,and thesales increased by a factitious interest quickly decline. Other reasons seem also at times to have deterred editors from favoring war correspondents, but it is not always possible for the historian to go behind the face of the returns and to separate fact from motive.42
For the recent comparatively low status of the war correspon
denthe seems himself to have been in large part responsible. His chief equipment for the work may have been his own impelling
desire to become a war correspondent.43 Hemay have no knowl edge of any language but his own . He may be entirely ignorant of horsemanship . He has frequently forgotten that he is the guest of the army and can claim no right to follow its operations. He often has virtually practiced espionage on his hosts. His
complaints have sometimes seemed entirely baseless.44 He has 40 O . G . Villard , “ The Press as Affected by War," Review of Reviews, January, 1915, 51: 79-83. 4 The Athenaeum , July 23, 1870, 56 : 117.
During the recent difficulties in Mexico an effort was made to meet the expenses entailed by war correspondence through syndicating the letters
arranged for by a leading journal. 4 M . B . Honan landed in Genoa, February 25, 1848, and says that not an Italian newspaper had a correspondent in camp. His own letters to the
London Times explained that the disasters of the Italians were due to the weakness of Charles Albert. These letters, he states, were copied by the
Italian papers and their contents approved by the army. But Italian editors were ambitious for office and therefore defended Charles Albert, although they published the Times' letters while assailing the writer. It seemed to him that the Italians were more desirous of suppressing than of aiding the efforts of the few who attempted to remedy the defect of lack
of all intelligence from the camp. — The Personal Adventures of " Our Own Correspondent” In Italy,'pp. 371-373. 43 An interesting account of such an experience is well set forth by H . W . Farnsworth in The Log of a Would -be War Correspondent, 1913 . 44 E . N . Bennett, during the Balkan campaign of 1912, assisted the Turkish authorities in their censorship of the press . He writes , therefore,
