Any study of war correspondence must make clear the im possibility of formulating any all-inclusive generalizations con cerning it. During the first period , the war correspondent was
ignored , but he sent home letters crowded with news from the field ; during the second , he was socially lionized , and his accounts
were of thrilling events, embroidered by the press itself with stories of the difficulties of transmission ; in the third, it was the correspondent personally who was in the limelight and much of the ostensible war correspondence reflects the personalachieve
ments of the writers ; the present period has seen the opportuni ties of war correspondents limited at every turn with the danger
that war correspondence is reverting to type and becoming special correspondence, - in default of definite and exact mili
tary news, the correspondent gives his own interpretation of conditions brought about by the war. And again , as wars differ among themselves, so do war correspondents differ, and so therefore does war correspondence differ. In probably most civil wars, an effort is made by both sides to secure advantageous foreign alliances and war correspondents
are welcomed by the opposing factions in proportion as they are considered able to influence favorably public opinion at home. The power of the war correspondent who, while ostensibly send
side or the other, is assuredly very great and correspondingly
construction legislation of Congress .101
In wars like that in South Africa where the war correspon 99 C . T . Congdon , Reminiscences of a Journalist, p . 275 . 100 See , for example , F . Ross, series of articles sent to Blackwood' s
Magazine; J. Williams, The South Vindicated; S . A . Goddard, letters to Birmingham and London newspapers; E . N . Hatcher, Last Four Weeks of the War.
101 J. Pike, The Prostrate State.
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accurately the conditions produced in the South by the re
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pro -North or pro -South .100 At the close of the war, unbiased Northern correspondents rendered great service in reporting
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of correspondents who were for the most part ardently either
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dangerous. The American Civil War is said to have created a corps of clever correspondents who reduced reporting in the field to something like a science.99 But it also created a body
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ing news to his paper, writes at the same time in favor of one
