The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914, 1912-12-26
TRIALS Of WAR
CORRESPONDENT
Difficulties During Balkan
Troubles Greater Than in
Previous Conflicts.

The trials of the WAL correspondent
during the Balkan troubles are greater
than i'll n previous conflict OF mod
ern times. a member OF the staff of
n London Chronicle, upon his return
to England. gives the following en-
asperating details vt the obstacles
which confront the mon who convey
The news 10 the waitil.- world:
there Is only one unression which
mas been made to newspaper CORE
srondents in this wal. and not only to
journalists. but to military attaches as
well. They are ALLOW j III 'hcadVuar-
te!S. The place where they are Kept
under polite Surveillance is always de-
scr!oEd as the heAU. uariers OF the
army, though the lighting line might
be, II generally is, al least fifty miles
away.
I'm war one expects censorship;
that is a necessary condition OF the
presence of correspondents. CENSOR
ship. however. should imply some in
telliSent scheme OF dealing With the
messages of correspondents. and of
~atfording them facilities for sending
dispatches which have been approved.
Neither of these conditions was OBJ
served by the staff of the army to
which l had the misfortune to be at
taehed, ana my own experience Is very
much the saIne as that OF others with
whom l have compared notes.
The censor's bureau wis !illed with
hopeless incapables who appeared to
iiN the time for beins AT the disposal
OF the correspondents at the most alb
surely announcement hours. News was
doled out without the slightest care
being taken to see II all the corre-
spondents got it, and hen. if our tele-
grams We're not ready in Il few mo-
mentS. II censor wcat off to lunch or
dine. and stayed away Tor hours; often
until the next day.
Arrangements Scandaiuus.
telegraph and post arrangements
were alike scandalous. The censor's
bureau, with comple!c command over
the wires, made not the slightest at
tempt to establish fairly reasonable
tacllltles. once the messages were
censored, with disgusting slowness,
they would lie for hours in the post
Office. 1 saw one batch handed in at
night still lying there next morning,
instruments idle and telegraphis,s
lounging about. 1t is little wonder
that telegraphic dispatches often ar
rived in England a day or two after
mail accounts of the same date.
And now that I have had an op-
portunity of reading my messages. in
the shape in which they reached Lon
don, ] realize that there was a second
line Of censorship, not less potent than
the first.
Only a newspaper message one
can imagine the te~legraphist at a re-
mote Balkan station moaning to him
self as he taps 1t out. as long as the |
number Of words is right. 1t doesn't
matter much what they are
And SO the words come through,
on neat typewriter tape. AS a rule,
there are the same number of letters
IN a word as there We're when it was
originally written. Thus surrounded /
might appear as l'yisorunder'. Eut
even this clew is not always to be re- !
lied upon. A letter lmay be added or
deducted and a long word is some
times broken in two.
That any coherent narrative could
be constructed out of some of the glib
berish that l am credited With send !
ing is sufficiently remarkable, but a
word here and there that has escap-
the censorship Of the t~elegraphist
and u general idea Of what the mes
sage refers to is a wonderful help, and
1t is surprising how close the transla-
ton often is to the original.
y Weird Message.
of course. it has to be remember.
ed that the telegraphers in the Bal
kans do not as a rule understand a
word of English, and that they are
able to send a message only by recog-
nizing the letters and transmittins
in the Morse code. So it is not
wonderful that they should make mis-
takes, even at the best of times. Dur
ing the war, however, most Of the ex-
pert operators have Joined the colors,
and so t~elegraphing has been left to
anybody h knows a dot from q
dash, or. perhaps, not as much as that.
Montenegro" adds the Chronicle,
has been a notable" sinner in this re-
spect. AS an illustration of the per-
versity Of which our correspondent
writes, We give the facsimile of part