Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1912-11-15
WAR

WAX ..
The following interesting editorial
on a timely subject appeared in the
New York Evening Sun Of Oct. % and
Is reprinted here for tn. benefit of all
publishers:
1.-The mob of war correspondents in
Sofia, including some veterans who
have won their spurs. find themselves
segregated, under suspicion and not
wanted. Probably they won't be al
lowed to reach the firing line, and the
blue pencil OF the censor will nimbly
excise the throb and thrill from their
bulletins. Those amCng them who
have good credentials are likely to see
some fighting at long range with the
stipulation that reverscs shall be gloss
ed over and commissariat and medical
deficiencies ignored. In a word, they
will be personally conducted, as the
correspondents In Manchuria were. by
subaltral staff officers instructed to
see that their charges came to no
harm and " got an opportunity 10
write news that would make the te's-
graph wires smoke and the cables
oscillate.
'"'The day OF the war correspondent
who was tolerated if not cordially
welcomed and who had access to the
firing line and wrote about what he
pleased. seems to be over. He -four
ished in the Franco.Prussian war, was
much in evidence in the Russo-TurkIsh
conflict, roamed and scrubbed freely
in the Santiago campaign, but was
held in check in the Boer war and al
most straitjacketed in the titanic
struggle between Japan and Russia.
And there were giants in the old days
men who rode hard. shared the pri-
vations OF the common soldier, in the
din of battle wrote graphic prose and
galloped a hundred miles through the
enemy's lines If need be to fife their
reports at a telegraph office. Archi-
bald Forbes, j. A. MacGahan, +. d.
Millett, Edmond O'DOnovan (who
braved death phlegmatically in his
ride to Merv) and Bennett Burleign
we're types OF the old war correspond.
ent who described wars as they were
being fought. The Ohio farmers boy,
MacGahan, had as graphic and cOura-
geous a pen as any of them. Accord.
ing to generous Archibald Forbes. it
was MacGahan who brought about the
Russo-Turkish war by his letters on
the Bulgarian atrocities About the
exposure Mr.. Forbes wrote:
Regarded simply in It's literary mer.
its, there is nothing | know OF to excel
1t in vividness, in pathos. in a burning
earnestness, in a glow OF conviction
that fires the heart. His letters stirred
Mr.. Gladstone into a convulsive par
oxysm Of burning revolt against the
barbarities they described"
Forbes was a master of narrative
himself, and, like MacGahan. did some
noble work in his headquarters in the
saddle. In a preface to II or his
books Forbes says, i have spent the
last decade almost Who'll y in campaign
ing and have witnessed the annon
smoke almost as often as I have seer
the peaceful smoke from the domestic
CRATE There is no more brilliant mar.
rative than The Merry Oasis of o..
Donovan, soldier OF the Foreign Lee
gion, veteran of alb the wars he could
adventure, who persisted in the Sudan
with the i'll starred expedition OF Hick
Pasha, One OF these notable cores
pondents survives still, Bennett Bur-
leigh. who fought on the Confederate
side In our civil war and as a cor.
respondent has been through almost
too many wars to count. Mr.. Buraeigh
indifferent to his age, is naturally in
the Balkans now.
".There have been successors to the
kreat men, hut untoward conditions
nave handicapped the juniors, now get.
TIN. gray, some Of them Such q one
p b. +. Knight, who has a long list Of
wars and rigorous books to his credit
and lost "a arm IN the Beer campaign.