WAR CORRESPONDENTS AND THE

AUTHORITIES.

THE profession of war correspondent may be said to have been definitely founded in the Crimean War. Since that struggle there has been no war, at least in the old world, permission to chronicle the events of which has been denied to the representatives of Journalism, until the recent advance on Cabul, following upon the massacre of our forlorn-hope skeleton of an embassy to that turbulent capital. During the advance on Cabul, permission to correspond for newspapers was accorded only to officers. When Cabul had been reached, the stringency was colourably so far relaxed, as that civilian correspondents were no longer to be hindered from being present with the forces in the field, who were willing to comply with a code of regulations, which has since been published, in all its disgraceful entirety, in the journals of this country. When that code first appeared in India, it was believed to be a grim hoax. The Anglo-Indian press hailed it with contemptuous derision. The Indian authorities who promulgated it, who, it may be assumed, asked for it from the Home authorities, and who are now acting upon it, quailed from the courage of their opinions, in that they were fain to disclaim the debasing responsibility of its conception. That bewildering anachronism, the Indian Press Commissioner,' shambled into deprecatory publicity with the following official communiqué :—

6

SIMLA, Oct. 29.

The rules for the guidance of editors of newspapers and of correspondents with an army in the field, recently communicated through the Press Commissioner to the Press, were prepared in the Intelligence Branch of the Quartermaster-General's Department at the Horse Guards, and have received the provisional approval of H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge, and of Her Majesty's Secretary of State for War. The only alterations made in the text, as received from the Horse Guards, are of a purely formal and trivial character, such as the substitution of the words 'Government of India' and 'General Officer Commanding in the Field' for the words 'Commander-in-Chief' and 'military authorities.'

It is clearly intended to be inferred that the Indian Government has been merely the instrument of the Home authorities in enforcing the rules specified. These rules have not been recalled or formally altered; and they are still, at all events, nominally and potentially operative. The Home authorities cannot be ignorant of the fact that the Indian Government has shuffled its responsibility in regard to them on to their shoulders. They have not disavowed this responsibility. I know not, indeed, whether from shame, from cynical

indifference, or from timidity; they have, nevertheless, refrained from specifically acknowledging it. No reply has been vouchsafed to two formal requests for information on this point addressed to the Horse Guards by the conductor of one of the Service Papers. I have a serene confidence, based on experience, that the thumbscrew of Parliament will by and by succeed in the enterprise in which the missives of the journalist have failed to achieve success. Meanwhile I am anxious to lay before the public some arguments and considerations bearing on a subject which cannot seriously be regarded as one of insignificant importance. It is difficult to state a case with befitting calmness and impartiality when one is conscious of thrilling indignantly with a sense of insult that is almost brutal; and yet, since I have the fullest realisation that this subject must be regarded neither wholly from the view of the insulted journalist, nor from that of an hungry and unsatisfied public, I can easily conceive that in dealing with it I may subject myself to the imputation of being but a lukewarm vindicator of the position of my order, and a philistine indifferentist to the cravings of a reading public.

It may seem wasting discussion on a foregone conclusion, to set forth the arguments for and against the permission of war correspondents with armies in the field. That this would have been so six months ago, I readily admit; the man who would have solemnly gone about such an undertaking might have been regarded as a feeble Rip van Winkle. But during the past six months, war correspondents have been altogether prohibited from accompanying a British army in the field. A code of regulations has been issued and acted on which, whether intentionally or not, has the effect of prohibiting from accompanying an army in the field every war correspondent who possesses a tittle of that sense of self-respect which must have deserted alike those who drew it up, those who promulgated and acted on it, and those who, in dogged, sullen shame-facedness, decline to own and to commit infanticide on the scandalous bantling which has been sworn upon them. In such a juncture, I submit, we are forced back upon first principles. Let me essay to argue the matter on these, bringing to bear on the subject the somewhat rare experience of one whose military instincts are certainly not less keen than are his aspirations to be an effective and faithful war correspondent (the two impulses being perfectly compatible), and of one who has served as a war correspondent with the armies of at least six diverse nationalities. It is not easy to conceive any other objections to the presence of war correspondents in the field than the three following:

1. That they may detrimentally affect public opinion at home either by unpleasant and inopportune truth-telling, or by wanton lying. 2. That they may produce discontent and want of confidence in an army in the field, by hostile criticisms on its leader.

3. That they may give information to the enemy, by revealing prematurely intentions and combinations, or by forwarding for publi

cation details of strengths, fortifications, means of, or shortcomings in, transport, supplies, &c., of which the enemy may take advantage.

In respect of the two first of these objections, it may well be imagined that a section of British journalism would summarily set them aside, on the plea of the 'liberty of the press.' The argument would run in this wise: We are free to make what strictures we please, so long as they are neither libellous nor seditious. By leading articles we can, without check, essay to influence public opinion. We can say bitter true things; nay, if we are so minded, we can lie that our diatribes may have the more effective purchase. We can fulminate against a general with ink dipped in gall, nor can any man make us afraid. We have a right, by acknowledged use and wont, to send our representative with the army, and no man has a right to infringe the liberty or call it license, if you please—of the press, to influence or curb the tenor of his comments on what he sees. If this position is disputed, you touch the palladium of British freedom, the liberty of the press; and you have as much, or rather as little, right to establish a censorship on our leading articles as on our war correspondence.' This reasoning is doubtless specious, but it has a fatal defect. The right to publish leading articles, so long as they are neither libellous nor seditious, is indefeasible. No such right exists in relation to war correspondence, or at least in relation to the fountain of genuine war correspondence, the correspondent in the field. By consuetitude, he accompanies armies, but always on conditions implied or expressed, mostly the latter. He is there on privilege, and on his honest behaviour as a good citizen and a truth-telling man. There is no getting over this. I have no ruth for the lying war correspondent, who happily is a very rare creature. A case occurred the other day in Afghanistan, in which a correspondent branded with atrocious cruelty the soldiers of a noble regiment. He has owned to his lie, and he would be a strange man who would grieve over his deserved expulsion. The Nemesis in such a case is inexorable. Nor is it any matter that it may be somewhat tardy, because the regulation is none the less crushing that it comes late. As for the truth, the telling of it can never be detrimental to a nation. A nation is entitled to know the truth about its own business; because, if the truth is disastrous, it is afforded the opportunity of urging with the force of knowledge the necessity for efforts at retrieval or reformation. On this point, the occasion will occur for speaking later with more detail. As regards the objection of the untoward influence on an army in the field of hostile criticisms on its chief, it collapses, to make a bull, before it is set up. The leader in a recent campaign thought proper to put it forward, else it would not have demanded notice. I ventured to reply to that general with the simple remark, that an army in the field does its own criticism.' The ablest penman, even supposing that his work came quickly back into the force which it concerned, could no more depreciate in its eyes the chief in whom it believed, than he could

inspire confidence in the chief regarding whom it had already, with unerring instinct, formed its own unfavourable conviction. He might wound or flatter, as the case might be, that chief's self-love; but I should not think highly of a leader thus defective in the mens æquus which is one of the highest attributes of generalhood, nor could the welfare of the country hang on this impressionability of his.

There is vastly more weight in the objection that the war correspondent with his head loose may give information to the enemy. It is, however, obvious that this objection can only have weight were it possible that his information can reach that enemy; in other words, in wars in which a modicum of civilisation and accessibility is the attribute of your enemy. Now this condition has been applicable to but one enemy of England since Waterloo. Barring the Russians in the Crimea, although we have been fighting off and on ever since Wellington confronted Napoleon, we have never had an adversary of whom it was possible that, in the nature of things, he could learn anything from journalistic sources. The Saturday Review, whose eccentric rôle is to vituperate war correspondents, while making no scruple to avail itself, very much without thanks, of the fruits of their toil, gave to its world the ludicrous suggestion that the Afghans were being supplied by the Russians from Central Asia with intelligence concerning our forces operating against them telegraphed to the English newspapers. When one reflects on the distance between Cabul and Charjui, the Russian telegraphic terminus, one hardly knows whether the more to scorn the rancour, or smile at the geographical ignorance, of the paper I have named. With a free thoroughfare for spies from the seething city of Peshawur all the way to the mal-odorous Bala Hissar, the Afghans have never had any need to lean upon Russian enterprise for efforts to accomplish physical impossibilities.

Ketchwayo was reported to take in the Natal Witness, but the nimble runner who brought him a stale copy of that print could 'wipe the eye' of its out of date latest intelligence,' by the information gathered by his own powers of observation. If that only be war, in its true sense, when the adversaries are reasonably fairly matched in point of equipment, resources, and the general appliances of civilisation, including tactical and strategical intuition, then England has never been at war, save once in 1854-5-6, since Waterloo. We have only been slaughtering barbarians, with the occasional alterative of being slaughtered by them. The wanton inapplicability of the present rule to the contest now occurring in Afghanistan is therefore glaringly apparent.

But these rules were drawn up in view of a real war, and it is in relation to a struggle of that description that the question of the danger that correspondents may give information to an enemy has seriously to be considered. Fairness compels the acknowledgment that such a risk does exist. I have known the evil done. One

journal, during the recent Russo-Turkish war, published wholly unjustifiable details of the defences of Kars, and its information was actually and naturally taken advantage of by the assailants of that fortress. Another journal printed, from its correspondent, particulars of the defences of Rustchuck, which I personally know were regarded as extremely opportune by the force contemplating its attack. I can easily imagine cases in which the simple name of the place, whence a wholly innocent communication might be despatched by a correspondent known to have his wits about him, would be calculated to inspire an adversary with the suspicion of an impending movement in a region otherwise unheeded. Blinking of facts will never help a case. But the experience of nations who have made wars on a large scale is in favour nevertheless of taking the risks for the sake of the advantages resulting from the presence of war correspondents with the armies. The Germans are the warriors of modern Europe, according to the modern conception of warfare. In 1870-71 they freely admitted correspondents, imposing upon them no censorship whatsoever. As a rule, I think they trusted most to the ignorance of correspondents, and simply left them out in the cold in the matter of information, relying on the likelihood that a combination would have come off, a blow been struck and done with, before the correspondent could have grasped the situation, so as to give it injurious publicity, had he been ever so willing.

To some correspondents intentions were guardedly indicated just sufficiently to allow of their following events intelligently; and there were occasions on which a correspondent who had proved himself trustworthy was taken into full confidence in the safe assurance of his fidelity. It was understood, rather than definitely expressed, that indiscretion would be summarily dealt with, and when indiscretions were committed, they were summarily dealt with. The fieldpost was open to every correspondent; to use the military telegraphic wire was a favour sparsely accorded, owing to the pressure of army work; and all telegrams so sent had first to be approved. But the German wires from the frontier were open without let or hindrance, nor was there any restriction, as in the present rules, to specified modes of conveyance, nor any prohibition against special couriers. The correspondent had his head loose, with the full fore-knowledge that his head would journalistically be taken off if he wrote what he ought not to write. I have no reason, but the contrary, to believe that the experience of the Franco-German war has had any tendency toward inducing the General Staff in Berlin to impose more stringent regulations on correspondents for the future. And there is every reason to believe that the French military authorities are keenly alive to the detriment wrought on the impulsive and spasmodic idiosyncrasy of the French nation, under dire strain, by the withholding from it of plain truth, with the inevitable result of omne ignotum pro terribili.