often demanded privileges “ on his honor” but not always maintained his honor. He has often evaded regulations through
the use of private couriers and boats. His most serious prepara tion has sometimes seemed to be his plans for circumventing
the censor.45 He has written much of his personal experiences , his thrilling adventures , his hairbreadth escapes , his physical discomforts , the seizure of his papers , the loss of his camera, the
breaking down of his motor car, and his arrest as a spy, but he often has seemed to write little in regard to the war. He has, indeed, been charged with circulating rumors,46 and these make an imposing array. Among them have been those of concrete gun foundations in England and in
France ; the transfer of
Russian troops around Archangel; the death of the Crown Prince
stated in dispatches dated variously from Geneva, Athens, Rome, Stockholm , or The Hague; the illness of the German Emperor; the exact number of English casualties as reported
from Copenhagen ; the number of German troops transferred from the West to the East , or from the East to the West; the
appearance of the Angel of Mons, and the blowing up of food wagons. So serious has the situation become that one of Eng land's most distinguished historians has been at pains to show from the point of view of the censor and gives a long list of instances of discourtesy and even contempt shown the Turks by the war correspondents .
“ The war correspondents with the Turkish forces had slender grounds for their grievances against the censor's staff ,” he writes, and adds that many
of the rules of the government were quite justifiable and made for the benefit of the correspondents themselves. Few accounts of the ways of war cor respondents have been written by censors ; this is particularly outspoken .
“ Press Censors and War Correspondents ," Nineteenth Century and After, January , 1913 , 73 : 28 -40 .
45 Perceval Landon notes the frank avowal by a daily paper of the way in which its representatives in South Africa had outwitted the censor by
a pre-arranged code and published information that presumably the mili tary authorities had thought it inadvisable to publish . — “ War Correspon
dents and the Censorship ,” Nineteenth Century and After, August, 1902, 52: 327 - 337.
R . S . Baker gives a full description of the elaborate plansmade for getting
the news in the Spanish -American War, in spite of the censor, by using harmless-looking plain despatches that were, however, secret codes.
“ How the War News is Reported,” McClure's Magazine, September, 1898, 9: 491-495.
46 F . B . Elser states emphatically that “ this war has been largely a war of fake stories and misinformation .” _ " Reporting the War from Desk
side,” The Outlook , March 22, 1916 , 112: 693 -699.
