respondence to his employers, but that he is not wilfully or unnecessarily extravagant, º that it is unfair to condemn the best of the profession for the sins of the irresponsible members
of it and to compel all to suffer for the sins of the few , that, in spite of the fact that “ the war correspondent practiced camou
flage long before the present war introduced the word and the idea to readers of English ,” 71 his standards of truth and honor 72 as well as of his personal and technical qualifications for the work are the highest.73 He is proud of the long list of distinguished
men who have been war correspondents and he rejoices that he is one of the guild . vantage. I do not believe that ever before has the public come so near to
getting the full truth from the battlefield . The danger which besets all War Correspondents, when operating individually , is that they will give way to the temptation to embroider their accounts, adding trimmings of
imagination to the facts, and using conjecture to supply deficiencies in things which they have not seen . No correspondent can do that here.” “ Of purposeful ' faking there is none." _ " A War Correspondent on his Work , "
Nineteenth Century and After, December , 1917, 82: 1205 - 1215. 70 Winston Churchill wrote, “ This advance into the Free State has cost you a lot of money . . . . I fear this war has been a great expense to you . " R . Lucas, Lord Glenesk and the “ Morning Post," p . 386 .
Melton Prior notes the enormous expense in mailing copy in the Trans vaal War where he had to pay £70 for a runner. - Campaigns of a War Cor respondent, pp . 296 – 297. 71 S . Strunsky applies this term to all that form of correspondence where
small defeats are promptly acknowledged in order to give an atmosphere of frankness while serious reverses are passed over in silence , retreats be
come “ strategic retirements,” and other accounts are “ the capers of news paper men who did not have enough to fill columns. ” — “ War Notes from
a Newspaper Desk ,” Atlantic Monthly , September, 1915, 116 : 401-410. 72 “ The one lesson which a journalistic training teaches beyond all others
is that of the ultimate invincibility of the truth . It is hardly to be expected
that in training for war - wherein secrecy and the deceiving of the enemy necessarily play so large a part - the same lesson should be taught with anything like equal force.
" The conditions have immeasurably improved . But the Army has still some little way to travel in the directions, first, of understanding that
nothing can ever be so powerful as the truth and , second , of trusting further to the discretion of Correspondents who know the use of the weapons which they wield much better than the Army can ever teach them .” — H . P .
Robinson, “ A War Correspondent on his Work ,” Nineteenth Century and After , December, 1917, 82 : 1205 - 1215 .
73 H . Wagner has an important chapter showing his own preparation and qualifications as a war correspondent in Bulgaria , - he was a linguist, he had lived among the Southern Slavs, he was familiar with the history of the Balkan peoples ,he had had a military education , and he had founded
a daily paper in Bosnia. — With the Victorious Bulgarians, chap. XX , “ My Experiences as a War Correspondent."
