He believes that his government has no appreciation of the physical dangers he encounters,61 or of the moral temptations he scornfully rejects;62 that governments have no comprehension of the enormous difficulties under which the war correspondent does his work,63 that the difficulties inherent in it are enhanced
managed," and that the Government has also failed “ to grasp the importance of the Press as an influence on Imperial and neutral sentiment.” - “The Press in War-Time," North American Review, December, 1914, 200: 858–869. 61 Melton Prior tells of the surprise expressed by Gen . Willis in the
Egyptian campaign of 1882 when he learned that war correspondents and artists actually ran the great risk of going to the front. Prior replied that
unless he saw the actual fighting he could not make genuine sketches.
Campaigns of a War Correspondent, p. 172. J. C. Francis gives from the Daily Express, June 6, 1900, a list of thirty seven war correspondents who had suffered in the South African War. Notes by the way, pp. 74–75. A tablet in memory of seven war correspondents who fell in the cam paigns in the Soudan , 1883- 1884 - 1885, has been erected in the crypt of St.
Paul's Cathedral, London .
Another tablet was erected in memory of thirteen correspondents who lost their lives in the South African War, 1899 - 1902.
A special memorial tablet, with portrait bust, honors the memory of
William Howard Russell; a portrait bas-relief in bronze , with appropriate inscription, commemorates Archibald Forbes ; a tablet in memory of Melton Prior, " artist and war correspondent of the Illustrated London News,"
gives a list of the thirteen campaigns in which he was engaged , covering the years 1874 - 1903. The recent death of Frederic Villiers has drawn renewed attention to the statement that “ he had seen more fighting than any soldier alive." - New York Evening Post, April 6 , 1922,
This opinion is confirmed by Villiers' account in His Five Decades of Adventure . 2 vols. 1920 . 62 W . J. Stillman , while the correspondent of the London Times, in
Greece , 1877– 1883, speaks of the critical condition of affairs in Athens and says “ Comoundouros is buying up all the correspondents he can , and one
of his emissaries told me two or three days ago that if I would help him out I could pocket 20 ,000 francs." - Autobiography of a Journalist, II , 228.
63 See Archibald Forbes, “ Ten Years of War Correspondence" and “ War Correspondence as a Fine Art” in Memories and Studies ofWar and Peace , and “ How I Became a War -Correspondent ” and “ MacGahan , the American War-Correspondent ” in Souvenirs of Some Continents; F . L .
Bullard, FamousWar Correspondents; Memoirs of Henri Stephan de Blowita; H . Labouchere, Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris , every volume written by or about the genuine war correspondent is filled with illustra tions of the difficulties of the work and of the inventiveness and resource
fulness that always enable the war correspondent to surmount them . The situation is best summed up by Forbes when he writes: “ Conditions are
being so altered that it may be said , I fear, to have ceased to be the fine art into which zeal, energy and contrivance elevated it for a brief term . It is now an avocation at once simplified and controlled by precise and restraining limitations. In all future European wars , by an international arrangement the hand of the censor will lie heavy on the war-correspondent.
