dealer who is elected mayor is interviewed on the sanitary condi tion of the city ; themayor appointed to a cabinet position is inter viewed on what his policy in the war department is to be; the editor who is made secretary of the navy is interviewed on the cost and number of dreadnaughts needed ; the railroad president who has worked up from trainman is interviewed on the condi
tion of the crops through which his railroad passes . In very many such interviews, the interviewer while presumably seeking infor mation from the officer is really interviewing the office and hence the value of the interview is distinctly limited . Certain persons
suddenly occupy a position which their previous training has not obviously fitted them to fill, the unusual circumstance calls for an
interview , and the interview concerns itself not with what the officer has done in the lines of activity with which he is familiar
but with what he purposes to do in an untried field . The office filled is an important one, the officer filling it is a successful man,
the interview is sought concerning an unfamiliar subject, and it derives its importance from the individual giving it, not from the interview itself. Such is one form of the interview .?
The interview as historicalmaterialmust be questioned by the historian because it is often prepared by a person desiring to be interviewed , given to his own secretary, prepared for publication in his own office, and given to the press in complete form . This might seem to guarantee the authoritativeness of the interview , but the prepared interview is often only a cloak used to hide the absence of ideas or thought on the part of the person giving it.
A person conscious of waning influence, but on that account all themore desirous of keeping in the eye of the public, gives a pre pared interview that is often but verbiage, and negation can not be considered authoritative. Neither the interview nor the inter viewed are of importance and both are but shadows of a vanishing reality . Next of kin to the prepared interview is the inspired interview . This serves but as a mask to conceal facts and situations that it is undesirable to have the public know , or it may be used to influ 7 One writer says that the interview is " more often asked for by persons to be interviewed than refused by people sought.” — E . W . Townsend , “ The Reporter," Bookman, August, 1904, 19:
