o
thwarted by those higher up,56 or to be at the mercy of a foreign government that by virtue of cable control edits all war cor respondence, or to find his work considered a tool to be used for
the benefit of the censor,57 or that he is assumed to be a fakir
who " writes home flat lies sent out by imaginative correspon dents,” 58 or that the censor is willing to pass untrue news if
injurious to the enemy, or unwilling to pass true news if unfavor able to his side.59 He finds not only that his work is rejected but that the very spirit in which it is done does not win the sympathetic under standing he believes it merits . He considers it an honorable
function of the war correspondent to stimulate the patriotism of those at home by narrating the deeds of valor of those at the
front, buthe findshis efforts coldly received by the government.60 dismiss it in three sentences.” — F . B . Elser , “ Reporting the War from
Deskside,” Outlook, March 22 , 1916 , 112: 693-699. 66 “ An Editor ” gives an account of a wireless vessel organized by a
newspaper correspondent in the Russo - Japanese War. In the Gulf of Pechili he impartially recorded the messages passing between the belligerent ships on both sides. “ He closed his experiment without any illusions as to the
future of his profession . After a polite intimation from both sides - by
wireless — that they would sink him on sight, he felt constrained to abandon the cruise." - " A Newspaper in Time of War ," Littell 's Living Age , June 5 , 1915, 285 : 605 -611. 67 W . G . Shepherd says that early in the war (apparently in 1914) he wrote a harmless story and took it to the censor in Munich who greeted
him effusively and handed back the copy without writing the word “ cen sored .” He started to write the word himself, but was told by the censor
not to do so , “ let it go as it is,” thus to give the impression “ that Germany was not hindering newspaper men in their expression of opinion .” effort of the censorship system
“ The
to use the reporters as tools in influencing
neutral opinion was highly offensive.” — Confessions of a War Correspon dent, pp . 15 - 17.
68 W . G . Shepherd gives a long series of " fake stories " thus sent out
that give color to this charge. - Ib ., pp. 89– 122. 69 W . Maxwell, “ The War Correspondent in Sunshine and Eclipse," Nineteenth Century and After , March , 1913, 73 : 608 -623. Frank Fox wrote about the same time, “ I suspect that at first the Bul
garian censorship did not object to fairy tales passing over the wires , though
the way was blocked for exact information . “Why not? ' I asked the Censor vexedly about one message he had
stopped . 'It is true.' ' Yes, that is the trouble,' he said .” _ " The New
War Correspondent,” National Review , June, 1913, 61: 769–778 . 60 Sydney Brooks writes that “ It (the British Government] has been fully alive to the capacity of the Press for harm , but obstinately blind to its capacity for good," that “ the whole business, in short, of stimulating popular enthusiasm
by means of the Press has been scandalously mis
