The New York herald., 1870-08-27
Tho Hcrald's Facts and tho Fiction OF
Its Competitors.

The newspaper proper Of our time is, or
should be, an instantaneous intellectual pho
tograph, so to speak, of the worlds activity
during each and every day, if it be published
in any great centre of human intelligence and
have at it's command the brains and the means
to render the picture complete. 1t would be
but trite comparison, and feeble one as
well, to liken the editors pen to the wand of
Prospero and the subtle sprite of the electric
which the press now so amply controls and
directs with such unerring precision have
q power, q comprehensiveness and q
ubiquity that far surpass even the imaginative
wonders of the great poets fancy. They see,
feel, hear, analyze, compare, sift, condense,
put together again and transmit to the reader
all that occurs beneath the broad heavens,
from the celestial wonders of the sky itself to
the minute events that hourly interest us and
our fellow creatures within that narrow circle
of our individual lives which all men
love to christen ''home." Such is the
idea that gave birth to the New
YORK HERALD and has inspired it's growth
through the lifetime of toilful and anxious
generation, and such are the genil that we
summon to our aid. During the long period
Of intense effort and unremitting vigilance
which have made the HERALD the one great
cosmopolitan journal of the nineteenth CEN
tury-a title which we have laboriously
earned, and which has been accorded to us all
the world over, even by the ablest and most
successful Of our contemporaries-em have
risen and fallen; ancient systems, hoary with
time, have passed away; races of men have
emerged from servtude or sank into decline,
and science, with her wondrous applications
Of steam, electricity and photography, has
created almost literally ''new heavens and a
new earth" Our grand success has pioneered
and cleared the way, set the example, sus-
tanned the ambition and encouraged the pro-
gross Of host of competitors in all parts of
the globe. We have written exact history
while instructing the millions, and have done
this SO faithfully and completely that were
some stupendous natural or political convul-
sion to overwhelm the civilization of this
epoch, and were nothing of it all to survive
but the complete files of our paper, the his
torian of future ages, when the light began to
dawn again, would find little difficulty in
drawing faithful, litelike, vivid picture of the
manners, customs, personages and every day
occurrences of the nineteenth century, with its
grandeur and its gloom, its pathos and its
humor, from the exhaustless annals that he
would thus find ready to his hand.
But the celerity with which this astonishing
record Is made challenges attention as strik-
ingly as its completeness. In few hours
facts arc transmitted to our editorial table
literally from the uttermost ends of the earth
and it is scientific fact that they actually out
speed the fight of time itself as the sluggish
hand of the clock marks its progress on the
dial Dispatches from the far East dated in
the afternoon Of any given day at the place Of
starting may be impaired by us to the public
in full print in the morning of that same day,
and this is feat 80 often performed that it
has ceased to excite any special mention, al
though the news is read in New York appa-
rently before it left the antipodes. Another
feature which is among the most gratifying of
oil is that these great results are chiefly the
fruit Of private enterprise. One remarkable
instance among many it may not be unfair
to recall The special correspondents of
the NEW YORK HERALD telegraphed the
full details Of the great victory Of the British
expeditionary force at Magdala, in Abyssinia,
directly to our Office before one word Of the
news was known in London, and the first init
nation that the most powerful government on
earth received of 1t was by our immediate de-
spatch to the Queen, fact that was duly
acknowledged by the crown in the account
that by our aid was published next morning
in the London Times simultaneously with our
own Since that conspicuous instance we
have repeatedly illustrated similar enterprise,
and we are doing so now on grander scale
than ever, in the accounts we daily furnish
of the present great war in Europe. Some
of our contemporaries are exulting rightfully
over heavy dispatches received from France
and elsewhere of battles fought and won, and we
can afford to wish them joy; for. while they ma
turally take pride in little effort, here and
there, we are regularly and constantly plac-
ing ten times as much before the public.
Since the Franco-German conflict began, four
weeks ago, the NEW YORK HERALD has paid
in drafts through J. S. Morgan & Co., bankers
at London, more than thirty-fve thousa and dol
lars for the outfit of correspondents and the
receipt of dispatches from every interest
ing point involved. From London, Paris,
Berlin, Vienna, st. Petersburg, Copenhagen,
Switzerland, Florence, Rome and the various
scenes of military collision we have given
the most diversified, exact, complete and COM
prehensive letters and details, obtained with
out regard to risk or expense, and yet have
found no cause to make any particular pother
on the subject. The rules of the Associated
Press require us to place all telegraphic news