Northern Wisconsin advertiser. [volume] (Wabeno, Wis.) 1898-1925, 1904-08-25

eral agreement its representatives
might nearly all return. And in any
future war the game will be almost
as improbable, unless it is British
or American war
Modern methods of lighting do not
favor the correspondent. A stray in
dication from him, impossible for
even a skilled censor to cut out, may
give watchful enemy a clew TO
some movement which was enigmat-
ical before. Let us suppose. for in
stance, that he mentions casually that
he has seen some electric light stand
ards forwarded TO the front week
before fighting begins. Will not the
enemy infer that night attack Is
threatened or provided against?
Modern War Difficult to Report.
Then, again, the war correspondent
now can see very little. Ranges are
long, powder smokeless, positions ex-
tended, formations open. A battle is
long string of men popping at the
landscape. with bullets whining over
them. Occasionally the landscape
knocks one over. Guns pitch shells
from the other side of hills. The
landscape may become quiet and the
men crawl on or it is too fierce for
them and they crawl back.
Perhaps some day the popping will
be done away with, like the smoke.
Then the soldier will be lying down
clicking machine at the hills with
whizzing of deadly insects round him,
few men in sight ON his own side
and nobody in front. 1t is a horrible
idea, and though it may make good
psychological fiction it does not lend
itself to narrative.
We had a debauch of special cores
pondence in the south African war
1t was much overreported, and as we
were generally fighting on the wire
our papers got the news first and
fresh. The beers usually knew more
| about our positions than we did our
selves, so there was no danger in pub
lishing anything. Further, we had
only our own men to depend on for in
formation. Boer official news. always
Untrustworthy, soon disappeared
with the official boer element: the
continent was bitterly mendacious
and had hardly anybody at the front
from its newspapers. We did the
war to death. 1t was rather a small
war for numbers and battles and it
was spread over a vast area and a.
long time. Even foreigners of mill.
tary education caught the craze and
absurdly exaggerated the importance
of the whole affair.
Brought Us to Our Senses.
The Japanese and Russians have
called us back to the normal proceed
ure of modern warfare. To be sure.
the out-of-the-way and painless nature
of the scene of war render secrecy
fairly easy, what the two belligerents
have done is what all professional
soldiers will want to do. War is a
business, not spectacle; men who
fall are not butchered to make a half
penny holiday for newspaper readers
in foreign countries. The real scien
tific soldier objects to fight with a re
porter at his elbow; it is danger t.
his plans and to a certain extent q
shame to his reticence.
Moltke, silent in seven languages,
succeeded in having most men tolera
bly, silent about himself. Probably the
bitter experience of our newspapers,
keeping representatives abroad in ex-
pensive countries and getting hardly
any news past the censors, will sicken
their editors and proprietors of the
game and cure the British public of
its morbid curiosity for exciting
details. The war correspondent as we
knew him is doomed.