In the narrow sense it might be said that journalism could hardly exist before journals, but that would be essentially inaccurate. Journalism is the art of writing for immediate practical effect, just as rhetoric was the art of speaking for the same purpose. In ancient times public speaking had an immeasurably greater influence than now owing to the existence of small city states, where the governing assembly could remain within the reach of one voice. With the growth of the Roman empire and the decay of the power of the Roman Senate the current power of the written word began to grow at the expense of the spoken one and it certainly dominated opinion under the aristocratic governments of the middle ages. But it was the art of printing, which made periodical publication possible, and turned the tables on political speaking to such an extent, that public orations are not now primarily directed to the ears of those, who hear them, but to the eyes and understanding of those, who read them next morning.

But there was journalism before Gutenberg. Something of the spirit of it is present in the oldest script in the world, written perhaps 2000 years before Christ and preserved in the Prisse MSS. in the national library in Paris. There we find an old priest recording his regrets, that the world was not as it was when he was young, that the golden age was over and that modern times were degenerate. Conservative papers please copy. Julius CÆsar had the essence of it in his Veni, vidi, vici and the whole of his De Bello Gallico was nothing more than the most admirable special and war correspondence, intended to keep his name before the Roman people and to induce them to contrast the sacrifices he was making for the glory of the empire with the corrupt luxury of the senatorial party at home.

The capacity to weigh exactly the practical effect of words in despatches, which is strictly akin to journalistic talent, has been an invaluable one to many a general who had to rely on popular support. Napoleon was a master of it, Frederick the Great, being an autocratic sovereign, could afford to despise it. But the best instance of this quality exhibited on a striking occasion in history was the way, in which Bismarck sub-edited the famous Ems telegram, which brought on the Franco-Prussian war. He cynically tells the story in his “Table Talk.” Bismarck had gone to Berlin to discuss the coming war with Moltke and Roon. The conversation was gloomy, because at that moment it appeared that the difficulties with France would be adjusted, which did not suit the views of the war party. While they were sitting at dinner, Bismarck received from the Emperor a telegram describing a firm but not unfriendly reception of Benedetti, the French ambassador, leaving it to his Chancellor to publish the whole or part of his despatch, as he pleased. Bismarck turned to Moltke and asked, if he was assured of success. He was told yes. “‘Well then,’ said I to both, ‘you can now calmly go on with your dinner!’ Thereupon I sat down at the round marble table, standing near the dining one, perused the King’s despatch once more with great attention, took a pencil and erased the sentence referring to Benedetti’s request for another audience, leaving only the head and tail. And now the telegram read somewhat differently. My two guests exclaimed, ‘Splendid! That will do!’ and now we continued our meal with the best of appetites. I gave directions for the telegram in its altered form to be communicated as quickly as possible to the semi-official newsagency (Wolff’s bureau), to all the newspapers and all our embassies abroad.... I never had cause to regret the way in which it was edited.” That night Paris was led to believe that the French ambassador had been insulted and war broke out next day. Could we have a better instance of the thorough comprehension of the weakness of the public addressed and of the way newspapers can be used to manipulate opinion and sway the course of events in great issues?

Such supreme opportunities do not come to ordinary journalists. Under the same circumstances they might possibly behave better. But at all times of public excitement something of this power is in the hands of every editor. It is, as a rule, for him to say the last word in the method of presenting news of a sensational description, either to modify the bitterness of an unpleasant announcement or to add to its provocative character. But the presentation of obvious news is but part of the functions of journalism, its selection is another and the selection also of accompanying details and corroborative and explanatory information. It is this side of journalism, which is entirely modern, which may in fact be said to have been, if not invented, yet for the first time consistently done and supremely well done by the father of English journalism.

Defoe is the master of circumstantial detail. The reader can find no modern instance, which will excel or equal in this respect his True Relation of the Apparition of Mrs. Veal. He first employed this art of inducing credibility for his central tale, whether fact or fiction, by so surrounding it with petty and commonplace exactitude, that criticism is diverted and put to sleep and conviction is insensibly compelled. He was also master of an equally modern art, intimately allied to the other, of selecting subjects of topical interest and treating them in a realistic way. In this respect I venture to quote from Professor Minto who shows how some of Defoe’s most celebrated works had an entirely opportunistic origin.

“Defoe was essentially a journalist. He wrote for the day and for the greatest interest of the greatest number of the day. He always had some ship sailing with the passing breeze and laden with a useful cargo for the coast upon which the wind chanced to be blowing. If the Tichborne trial had happened in his time, we should certainly have had from him an exact history of the boyhood and surprising adventures of Thomas Castro, commonly known as Sir Roger, which would have come down to us as a true record, taken, perhaps by the chaplain of Portland prison from the convict’s own lips. It would have had such an air of authenticity and would have been corroborated by such an array of trustworthy witnesses, that nobody in later times could have doubted its truth. Defoe always wrote what a large number of people were in a mood to read. All his writings, with so few exceptions that they may reasonably be supposed to fall within the category, were pieces de circonstance. Whenever any distinguished person died or otherwise engaged popular attention, no matter how distinguished, whether as a politician, a criminal, or a divine, Defoe lost no time in bringing out a biography. It was in such emergencies that he produced his memoirs of Charles XII., Peter the Great, Count Patkul, the Duke of Shrewsbury, Baron de Goertz, the Rev. Daniel Williams, Captain Avery the king of the Pirates, Dominique Cartouche, Rob Roy, Jonathan Wild, Jack Sheppard, Duncan Campbell. When the day had been fixed for the Earl of Oxford’s trial for high treason, Defoe issued the fictitious Minutes of the Secret Negotiations of Mons. Mesnagerat the English Court during his ministry. We owe the Journal of the Plague in 1665 to a visitation, which fell upon France in 1721 and caused much apprehension in England. The germ which in his fertile mind grew into Robinson Crusoe fell from the real adventures of Alexander Selkirk, whose solitary residence of four years on the island of Juan Fernandez was a nine days’ wonder in the reign of Queen Anne. Defoe was too busy with his politics at the moment to turn it to account; it was recalled to him later on, in the year 1719, when the exploits of famous pirates had given a vivid interest to the chances of adventurers in far away islands on the American and African coasts. The Life, Adventures and Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton, who was set on shore in Madagascar, traversed the continent of Africa from east to west past the sources of the Nile, and went roving again in the company of the famous Captain Avery, was produced to satisfy the same demand.”

A more questionable venture in semi-journalism was made by Defoe in The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, which is still a matter of controversy. It was an outrageous pamphlet, so skilfully couched in language current at the time in the mouths of extreme Highchurchmen that the whole country was deceived, in which it was proposed to put a short term to Nonconformity by hanging every preacher in a conventicle and banishing the congregations. It met with all the paradoxical success that its author could have wished because it was accepted by the dominant Tory party with acclamation that was turned into fury, when the author was discovered to be a Dissenter, who had published it in mockery of the excesses of his opponents. Defoe had to stand in the pillory for three days and was fined and imprisoned.

It may be questioned whether such a prank can be considered to be irony, when the key to the inverted point is not contained in the work itself but in some outside circumstance. True irony is an appeal in one form of words to two grades of intelligence, one of which accepts the literal and the other the concealed meaning. A much more indisputable instance of journalistic irony in our times was Henri Rochefort’s eulogy of Napoleon II., equally effective with Defoe’s as a practical weapon and as a literary masterpiece of concealed invective for ever to be unexcelled. The validity of this irony consisted in facts that were known to all his readers, while the statement of them was inverted for reasons not of caprice nor cleverness but for a practical purpose for which there was every excuse. It is so short that the gist of it is worth quoting. It was in the second number of the notorious Lanterne, the first issue of which had been sold to the extent of 125,000 copies, that Rochefort complained that his political attitude had never been understood and that he was in fact an out and out Bonapartist. “Nevertheless,” he added, “I may be allowed to choose my own hero in the dynasty. Amongst the legitimists some prefer Louis XVIII., others Louis XVI., others on the contrary place all their sympathy on the head of Charles X. As a Bonapartist, I prefer Napoleon II.; I have a right to do so. In my mind he represents the ideal of a sovereign. No one will deny that he has occupied the throne, because his successor calls himself Napoleon III. What a reign, my friends, what a reign! Not a tax; no useless wars, with the ravages they involve; none of those distant expeditions in which six hundred millions are spent to recover fifteen francs; no devouring civil lists; no ministers accumulating five or six posts at a hundred thousand francs each; that is the monarchy, as I understand it. Oh yes! Napoleon II., I love and admire you without reserve.... Who then will dare maintain that I am not a sincere Bonapartist?” Within a few weeks the Lanterne was suppressed and Rochefort was flying over the Belgian frontier. But his articles had prepared the Commune and eventually made France a Republic.

Returning to England it is impossible, in mentioning Defoe, to refrain from opposing to him, not only politically but in a journalistic sense, his far more brilliant Tory opponents, Swift and Bolingbroke. It is true that their weapons were more effective at the time, because they were more aristocratic, but for that reason they are outside the stream of progress. Journalism is necessarily democratic. Bolingbroke with his Dissertation on Parties and the Patriot King anticipated Disraeli’s novels and the Saturday Review. Swift in his Drapier’s Letters made one counter-move to the Whig government of his time, which showed that, if he had sufficiently valued the weapon of an ephemeral pen, there is no one living or dead, who could have beaten him either in literary style or in practical effectiveness. After Swift comes Junius, with his newly-discovered advertisement of anonymity, a long way behind, a kind of ostentatious but safely sheltered temerity colouring his natural tendency to seclusion and his disinclination to take the responsibility of parrying counter-attacks.

Since the time of Junius there has been little literary matter in the press equally brilliant as well as ferocious. The battles of journalistic independence were fought more with the special message and the telegram than with the pen. Cobbett, Joseph Cowen and W. T. Stead may be held to be the best known names among what may be termed the aggressive school. Southey, Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt, R. H. Hutton, Meredith Townsend, W. T. Arnold and Andrew Lang may be quoted as the best representatives of the academic school. George Borrow, Lawrence Oliphant, W. E. Henley and G. W. Steevens may better be described as free lances owing obedience to no tradition. If we may single out one typical journalist, little known in London, who may stand forward as the representative writer of the century in England, just as Alexander Russel was beyond the Tweed, I should name Dr. Dunckley, at one time editor of the Manchester Examiner, who wrote for the daily press articles which came to take their place as some of the constitutional documents of this country. Writing under the name of “Verax” in a series of articles for his own paper, afterwards republished, he attracted widespread attention and was attacked with some bitterness in the Quarterly Review. Dunckley was at pains to warn the country against a threatened constitutional experiment similar to the unfortunate mistake of George III., whereby the direct influence of the Crown was to be reasserted for the benefit of one party in the State. He defended himself against the Quarterly with dignity and effect. “When I began writing I never thought of challenging the verdict of so wide an audience. In the discharge of a semi-imposed and pleasant duty I merely wrote for my accustomed readers in these northern districts. I never dreamed that the country mouse would visit town. The reviewer says, I appear to pose as a tame Junius! If I had thought of posing at all, it would have been as Junius rampant. As a matter of posing one would have been just as easy as the other and of the two I should have preferred the renowned original. But the reviewer does me too much honour. I thought no more of Junius than of Tancred or Mungo Park.”

It is impossible to close this brief review of journalism without some reflections on that branch of it, which consists not in writing but in controlling and directing the writing of others. There is more than a distinction between the two functions, there is to some extent an opposition. Sheer brilliancy with the pen is not the best quality for an editor. If he has it, he must be sparing in its use; otherwise he will write every one else of considerable ability off his own paper and find himself, like Defoe, having to do alone and unaided everything of any special importance. That is not a possible position for any one to take up in a daily newspaper in modern times. A race of editors has thus grown up, who write hardly at all themselves and pass their lives as the perpetual directors and critics of others. In this respect our typical example is undoubtedly Delane, of whom we have fortunately much published information.

By way of understanding the great step taken by the new tradition of an editor’s calling established by Delane we may recall Leigh Hunt’s confessions or views of his editorial work. The Hunts, father and son, when running the (London) Examiner, long since dead, made it a rule to isolate themselves from the world, to refuse dinner invitations and all personal intercourse with party leaders. They remained at home or at the office polishing paragraphs and evolving verses. “I galloped,” said Leigh Hunt “through my editorial duties, took a world of superfluous pains in the writing, sat up very late at night and was a very trying person to compositors and newsmen.” Delane on the other hand hardly ever took pen in hand, dined out every night in the season and went back to his house in Serjeant’s Inn, about 5 a.m. only after he had seen the final proofs of everything which he considered important. It is said that in his thirty-seven years of editing Delane saw more sun-rises than any man in London.

In keeping himself as the chief link of his paper with the world and confining himself at the office only to duties of guidance Delane remained always the best and finest judge of the course to be taken at the moment. This is speaking journalistically, because Delane’s acuteness of judgment as to the psychology of London society was far from being consonant with the verdict of history or with special gifts of prophecy. To use Lord Salisbury’s phrase Delane often “put his money on the wrong horse,” notably in backing up the South against the North in the American civil war and in expecting an easy win for the French against the Prussians in 1870.[10]

However that might be there was no revolting in the office against him. Henry Reeve, a writer on foreign politics in the Times from 1840 to 1855, at one period tried to take an independent line against the views of his editor and relying upon influential official support rebelled against various alterations in his articles. He was soon suppressed and on a repetition of the trouble was encouraged to resign. Another incident, illustrating quite admirably the skill with which Delane handled one of the banes of an editor’s life, the foreign correspondent who lives in his own set abroad and reflects only their opinions without regard to the views of the paper at home, occurred before the Crimean war, when events in Constantinople were drawing Europe’s eyes towards the circle round Lord Stratford de Redcliffe. In September, 1853, we find Delane writing, rather savagely, to the Times correspondent there—“The tone, which you have recently taken, compels me to address you, for it is impossible for you to continue to be our correspondent if you persist in taking a line so diametrically opposed to the interests of this country. As it would seem that you never take the trouble of reading the opinions of the paper with which you correspond, I must begin by informing you that whatever concern it may have in the well-being of Turkey, it owes a higher duty to the people of the United Kingdom, who are willing to support Turkey so far as they conceive it to be for their interest, but acknowledge no obligation, either by treaty or by implication, to shed their blood or spend their money in its behalf. You seem to imagine that England can desire nothing better than to sacrifice all its greatest interests and its most cherished objects to support barbarism against civilization, the Moslem against the Christian, slavery against liberty, to exchange peace for war—all to oblige the Turk. Pray undeceive yourself.” That is strong writing, but for all that events a few months later pulled the way of the correspondent and not of the paper.

An instance of Delane’s forcible common-sense and grasp of essentials is given in a letter written to Russell at Versailles, pointing out the right line to be taken in dealing with the victorious but unpopular Germans. “Now I by no means believe that Bismarck has wings under his white coat, but I think that those who live in his camp are bound not to see cloven hoofs in his boots and there has been a tendency in all the correspondents to make such a discovery lately, to exaggerate the dangers of a position, which has no doubt been critical and to welcome any news, however false, of French success. Under such circumstances and remembering that the Germans have been sorely disappointed in the resistance of Paris and are suffering greatly and not so much at ease as to their prospects as before, I am by no means surprised that they should be sulky and should regard all correspondents with disfavour and should make you, as the representative of the whole body, the butt of their ill-humour.”

When we come to war correspondence, we touch upon what many people regard as the culminating romance of journalism. To us, who are inside the circle, it does not always appear in the same light. There are greater triumphs than securing the first news of a battle but none whose results are so immediate. For the correspondent himself the situation is dangerous without romance, responsible often with little credit. His chief enemies are dirt, ill-humour and neglect. He has the rough edge of most tempers and must professionally regard with suspicion any advances that may appear too friendly. Men whose business is killing and who are paid to be killed cannot be aux petits soins with a profession generally looked upon in military circles, as an evil, which only the vehement and detestable curiosity of the public now makes necessary, which they hope some day to make harmless by isolation if it cannot be abolished altogether. Yet these are only the preliminary difficulties. Mr. J. B. Atkins in his life of W. H. Russell (afterwards Sir William), himself a war-correspondent, who has gone through several wars, remarks that Russell with all his experience did not cease to be troubled by the overwhelming question, which will always perplex correspondents, as to the best position from which to see a battle. It is a question which becomes increasingly difficult as the range of fire increases. “To-day,” says Mr. Atkins, “no man, who applies himself to get what people call a ‘realistic’ impression of fighting can hope to have an accurate or even a coherent idea of the tactical handling of troops along a wide front. In modern warfare the employment of many correspondents is necessary to enable a newspaper to produce a connected account of a single battle. The only correspondent who can acquaint himself with the general issue, is he who stays in the rear, where the field telegraph and telephone wires converge upon headquarters.”

“Billy” Russell, as he was familiarly called, had a varied and successful career, which will probably never be equalled, now that the future of the profession must become a more composite one. He saw the Danish campaign of 1850, the Crimean war, the Indian Mutiny, the famous rout at Bull Run, the battles of Sadowa and Sedan besides many minor conflicts and the siege of Paris. He lived to predict to a friend during “Black Week” in 1899 that, even as in the American war the early reverses of the North only acted upon the Transatlantic branch of the race as reverses have always acted upon this, to encourage them to more persistent sacrifices, so the Boers must be ultimately worn out by attrition as had happened to the forces of the South.

Russell’s achievements in the Crimean war have passed into history. We can see now that the greatness of his success was due to the apparent obstacles, which were placed in his way by ignorance, contempt and deliberate repression. Such discouragements are an incentive to a man of courage and perseverance and especially so to an Irishman. The fact that Russell was everywhere cold-shouldered, left without rations or quarters, excluded from all important information and even at one time expelled from the shelter he had procured for himself, rendered him free from those embarrassing obligations which accompany favours conferred and left him a stark spectator of one of the greatest tragedies of inept military administration. A smaller man might have been embittered and goaded to retaliatory criticism, but Russell was above this weakness. The weapon he used, as few have had the opportunity to use it, was the terrible one of the mere truth, what Lord Morley has called, “the irony of literal statement.” It was used effectively and brought down the government at home and altered the conduct of the war.

One can understand how the old generals trained in Peninsular principles, were quite unaware of the new power that had grown up to overshadow ministers and even to give lessons to the Crown. It is more surprising that Russell, who had been a journalist for a dozen years, should himself be quite unconscious of all the attributes, with which he was invested. He knew that his position was an independent and responsible one but the realization of how much influence he had on the future of the men, who helped or bullied him daily, only came to him later. In his own words, “I did not then grasp the fact that I had it in my power to give a halo of glory to some unknown warrior by putting his name in type. Indeed, for many a month I never understood that particular attribute of my unfortunate position, and I may say now in all sincerity and truth, I never knowingly made use of it.”

The same qualities of unbending resistance to all the arts of browbeating were required by Russell in his American campaign. Here he had to face not only the unpopularity honestly earned by himself for his unvarnished tale of the panic of the Federals after the battle of Bull Run—unfortunately for himself he never saw the whole battle—but he had to bear by proxy the natural resentment of a whole nation to the line of policy pursued by the Times. For this he was in no way responsible; in fact he would have altered it if he could, for ever since his visit to the South before the outbreak of war he could never forgive what he saw of the grosser aspects of slavery.

Russell’s correspondence during the Franco-Prussian war is interesting because we find him competing for the first time on equal terms with a new star and a new method. The successes of each were honourable to both, as, although frequently beaten at first through the lavish use of the telegraph by Archibald Forbes and the Daily News, he regained his ascendency in the end by the advantages of his old prestige and his command of the best information. This new star was to some extent a star of his own making for it was at one of Russell’s lectures on his campaigns that Forbes’s heart took fire with military zeal and drove him into the dragoons and later to become a journalist and his inspirer’s successful rival. In the early part of the war Forbes’s repeated anticipations of the Times became the cause of much heartburning in Printing House Square and Russell for years did not understand how he was beaten. Many years later Forbes wrote him a friendly letter explaining his method, which relied a good deal on chance, perhaps more so than the Times would have permitted. Being attached to the staff of the Crown Prince of Saxony, where discipline was less strict than with the Prussians, Forbes would transmit beforehand information of the proposed attack, of the number, calibre, and position of the guns and of various details of the coming clockwork battle. As the Germans were usually successful in their combination Forbes had only to wire a brief confirmation or alteration in order to have a very fairly accurate account appearing in his paper. One can imagine, however, that a correspondent reporting Marengo or Waterloo in that fashion would get into trouble with his manager. There is one story of Forbes’s personal vicissitudes in the Commune, which must stand on the summit of all the hairbreadth dangers of a correspondent. On a morning when the Versaillais troops were fighting their way into Paris and breaking down the barricades of the Communards, Forbes, who was safely behind the line of the civilized combatants in one street, happening to cross along a side street into a parallel main boulevard, found himself to his dismay behind one of the untaken barricades. The rush of the assailants was about to take place. The Communard officer saw Forbes, seized him before he could retreat and ordered him into the firing line. In vain Forbes protested his nationality. At that time and place they were of no moment and as he refused to use the chassepot, which was put into his hand, he was put up against the wall to be shot. At that instant the regular troops carried the barricade, seized the much bewildered Forbes with the weapon in his hands and put him again in his old place to be shot as a combatant. Forbes’s protests were very nearly set aside but it occurred to the officer in charge to ask to see his hands, because the chassepot always threw back a spit of black powder on the hand from the breech for every shot that was fired. Forbes’s hands were clean, so he was free; but, if he had fired one shot to save his life on the first occasion, he would have lost it on the second.

To conclude this halting review of groups of journalists, we must not omit to mention the occasional writer who may have fleeting and simultaneous fidelities to many journals. Of this type, not to mention living names, Andrew Lang was the best known British representative, a cultivated gentleman with a touch of the academician and of the spiritualist in his composition. But the type does not flourish in England, where personal and continued attachment to an organ is a rest for the wits and a prophylactic against bailiffs. On the Continent also it is almost never a permanent career. The successful journalist passes on to the drama, or to politics, or to finance. In America the best opportunity is offered for his talents through the medium of the syndicated press. Immense sums are paid to ready pens, who have the knack of appealing to a wide range of tastes, such as no single journal can offer, however rich it may be. These popular heroes are of all kinds; some, men of genius. I may mention Mr. Dunne, the well-known writer of the Dooley articles, publicist and wit, equally at home with English life, politics and manners as with the failures of his own government and the successes of his own politicians. He has a colleague on his peculiar platform of general satirist, less well-known but not less witty; if not so genial, yet more trenchant. Mr. George Ade has limited the circle of the appreciators of his brilliancy by writing in what is perpetually a new language, American slang. Those, who can leap over the bars of an unapproachable faculty of fin de siÈcle language laden with some bitterness and inveterate criticism, will recognize in him the keenest intellect, that has been engaged in journalism since Swift. He deals with things familiar in his own country and sometimes met in ours; the blue-stocking, who had an intellect, which made a noise like a dynamo; the negro head-waiter with a corporation and a dress-suit, that fit him too soon; the father of a family, trying to raise three children with one hand and a mortgage with the other; or the young commercial gentleman, who in his own line of conversation was as neat and easy-running as a red buggy, but when any one talked about Chopin and Beethoven would sit back so quiet, that often he got numb below the hips. It is a pity that the barrier of language shuts him off from most of us. On the other hand there are some things of the same intention, that we do not miss much. Probably about the largest circle of readers in the world, some 10,000,000 a day, is reached at this moment by a journalist familiarly known in the Middle West as “Uncle Walt,” whose speciality is “lineless rhymes,” of which the following is a specimen: “Charles the First, with stately walk, made the journey to the block. As he paced the street along, silence fell upon the throng; from that throng there burst a sigh, for a king was come to die! Charles upon the scaffold stood, in his veins no craven blood; calm, serene, he viewed the crowd, while the headsman said, aloud: ‘Cheer up, Charlie! Smile and sing! Death’s a most delightful thing! I will cure your hacking cough, when I chop your headpiece off! Headache, toothache—they’re a bore! You will never have them more! Cheer up, Charlie, dance and yell! Here’s the axe, and all is well! I, though but a humble dub, represent the Sunshine Club, and our motto is worth while: “Do not worry—Sing and Smile!” Therefore let us both be gay, as we do our stunt to-day; I to swing the shining axe, you to take a few swift whacks. Lumpty-doodle, lumpty-ding, do not worry, smile and sing!’”