THE ACTIVITIES AND PATRIOTIC SERVICE OF NEWSPAPERS IN TIMES OF WAR

The war correspondent is perhaps the most picturesque figure in journalism. He endures the dangers and the hardships of war as does the soldier, possibly more so, for no one looks out for him in the field or especially cares how he fares. He has some glorious moments; but for the most part his time is consumed in heart-breaking effort to overcome obstacles. His reputation depends on his success in dealing with these difficulties.

The reporting of other wars was easy compared with the late World War. In the South African campaign, for example, the London newspapers were permitted to send as many correspondents as they chose and they went when and where they pleased. The London Daily Mail had thirty-six men there with a staff editor in command—the other London newspapers about the same number each. And all were competing in hustle and grab to get news and flash it to the home office. With little censorship and no restriction the reporting of that war was not difficult. And this was true of nearly all war reporting up to the conflict between Turkey and the Balkans in 1912.

But the great war, 1914–1918, was started with almost as much hostility toward the correspondent as toward the enemy. As though by common consent, all the conflicting nations sought to crush him. Every big newspaper in all the world wanted to send a correspondent to the firing lines: some of them wanted to send two, four, six, even more, for the line of battle soon became more than a hundred miles long in France and much longer on the Russian frontier. At first not any were permitted to approach the firing front or even the division headquarters and the correspondents worked under great disadvantage. A strict censorship was made over the little information they were able to obtain. It was very unsatisfactory. At this time London was almost entirely without information about the war. The solemn silence with reference to the armies and the fighting served to dampen enthusiasm and patriotic ardor. Calls for enlistments were ignored, recruiting came to a standstill. Lists of the dead began to appear, adding to the gloom. No stirring descriptions of personal heroism or glorious achievement were printed. The newspapers made a great row about it and the people joined in.

It was not until later, when the papers were permitted to print stirring news from the front of the ebb and flow of the battle tides, that enthusiasm was aroused and England made splendid response to the call for fighting men. The government at length came to appreciate that to suppress all war news was to breed indifference; and in the same proportion as the censorship was relaxed, public spirit was aroused.

All of the London newspapers made the most elaborate preparations to report the war. Those of the Times were perhaps the most comprehensive and may serve as illustration. It sent ninety correspondents to the army fronts scattering them all along the lines. They were, in the main, high priced men and the expenditure amounted to something like fifteen thousand dollars a week. But the censors shut them out entirely. They were not allowed within miles of the fighting lines and were forbidden to send a scrap of news. It was useless to keep them there and they were recalled. The only news printed in London, Paris, or Berlin, at first, were the government reports.

It was in response to public clamor for more news that a new plan of war reporting was adopted, namely, the syndicating of news. Very few correspondents were permitted on the firing line and each man represented a number of newspapers. In 1918, for example, as many as eight or ten English newspapers shared the work of one man. Reuter’s agency had a man at all fronts. His reports went to all newspapers. This was a great service and also a great saving to the smaller sheets; but the big newspapers wanted their own men to do their work.

In London, a combination of all the daily papers was formed, called the Newspaper Proprietors Association, and it made virtually all arrangements for reporting the war. If a member had in mind a good thing to do he was required by the arrangement to tell it to all the others, for nothing could be done except under this cooperative scheme. These conditions destroyed all competition. Newspaper “beats” disappeared. It was a very unsatisfactory arrangement. There was no freedom of movement for individual publications. And it is more than likely that a similar system will prevail in future wars. No room, no facilities for several hundred correspondents are to be had at the field headquarters of a fighting army. The number must be restricted and the news passed around to all newspapers.

In the latter months of the war, conditions, as compared with the first months, were reversed. Censorship was relaxed somewhat and correspondents were allowed to approach the battle lines with greater freedom. The syndicating plan was not changed. It worked more smoothly as the writers had more liberty but it was not ever satisfactory to the newspapers. The feeling of resentment toward the presence of correspondents in the field somewhat passed away. The writers who kept faith and observed the censorship rules were made more welcome. But army officers never have been reconciled to the presence of correspondents and doubtless never will be.

It was difficult for the newspapers to obtain quick news of the war for reasons already mentioned, yet, reviewing the months of the conflict, it is difficult to recall any serious misrepresentation of facts or conditions. We understood always, with substantial accuracy, how many men each power had in the field, where the armies were gathered, what the losses were, what advantages had been gained or surrendered, and substantially how things were going.

The war was not reported with especial brilliancy until just before its end. In the closing months some very fine work was done, but until then dull routine narration was the vogue. Censorship, the syndicate requirement, the never ceasing congestion of the wires, the compelled reduction in the size of newspapers, were the chief causes for the moderation. A correspondent who knows that his matter is to be cut and slashed two or three times by censors before it reaches his editor loses much of the inspiration to brilliant work.

For the first time in any war, correspondents were compelled to wear a uniform—the ordinary officers’ uniform without any mark or rank, but with a green brassard around the left upper arm. Each correspondent was compelled to provide himself with everything needed in the field including his transport which meant motor car and horses. It has been estimated that the correspondent’s expenses were about eight hundred dollars a month. The correspondents were paid from four thousand to ten thousand dollars a year salary, three or four of especial reputation getting more than the latter sum.

The war involved vast additional expense to newspapers. The cost of maintaining men in the field and in news centers, the cost of transmitting dispatches, especially through the cables, as well as the enormously increased price of every product that entered into newspaper construction helped to swell the total. The increase in the price of printing paper alone cost our newspapers of large circulation an additional eight hundred thousand dollars or nine hundred thousand dollars a year. Instead of paying from seven to ten cents a word for cable transmission, as before the war, the press paid latterly twenty-five to thirty-five cents from London and Paris. Some papers paid as much as one thousand dollars for single dispatches and frequently expended ten thousand dollars a week for the transmission of war reports. In the Gallipoli drive, messages were sent to Constantinople by automobile, thence wired to Vienna, relayed to Berlin, relayed again to The Hague and again to London, whence cabled to America at a total cost of about a dollar and a half a word. Yet we failed to note any relaxation of effort or of expense on the part of American newspapers to get the news. It is an axiom of the business that the very life of the sheet depends on a lavish expenditure for the purchase of information. The big newspapers were compelled to have special correspondents in all the big centers of allied, belligerent and neutral countries, to cover the political situation and other things arising from the administrative state of the war. For example, Holland was the center of German news, being on the frontier and on the main route. Here, naturally, a man obtained the big German news first of all, the German newspapers, the narratives of persons passing from Germany. Switzerland was a news center of almost equal importance for the same reasons. Sweden and Norway had to be covered. It was very trying for the newspapers, very expensive.

In reporting the great war the newspapers were under great disadvantage in consequence of the censorship. It was the more exacting in the European cities, for there it included the censorship of comment as well as news; but much more important war news was permitted to pass through the Atlantic cables than was permitted to be published in London, Paris, or Berlin. Nevertheless, every cable message, every mail letter to America was carefully scrutinized. The letters found objectionable were destroyed; the cables were changed or suppressed at the censor’s will. Dispatches from Paris to America by the way of London were censored in Paris and again in London and also on arrival in America. Messages from Vienna were censored in that city, in Berlin, in London and again in America. But with our entrance into the war all messages from Germany and Austria ceased, practically. At the time Servia was crushed, American correspondents telegraphed some fifteen thousand words describing the conquest, not one word of which reached New York. The reports reached London and were held there because thought to be news damaging to the cause of the allies. An American correspondent early in the war sent four reports of the Champagne advance. One third of one of them was delivered. Other correspondents had the same experience at this time.

In justification of censorship and in appeal to the press for its aid, the War College in Washington, in the late war, cited instances of mischief done in other campaigns. In the Crimean War the English newspapers gave the Russians most valuable information about the nature of the trenches and the condition of the armies. Wellington complained that the English press gave to Napoleon full details of his troops and movements. The result of the battle of Sadowa, in the Austro-Prussian War, was largely determined by a report in the London Times which told that the Austrians were encamped on the right bank of the Elbe. Napoleon’s letters from St. Helena attested that he kept accurate track of the movements of the English fleets and armies by London newspaper reports. The English had always given him credit for a crafty spy system, not appreciating that the letters of English officers which filled the newspapers, were a part source of his information. In the Franco-Prussian War the French journals gave the Prussians full particulars of McMahon’s concentration at ChÂlons, his march to Rheims, and his advance to the Meuse. The Prussians so directed their army movements that the French surrender at Sedan was forced. The advance of the French army for the relief of Bazine at Metz, the success of which depended on secrecy, became known to the Prussians through the French and English newspapers. In our own Civil War, General Sherman’s famous march through Georgia to the sea was largely directed by newspaper reports and by President Jefferson Davis’s speeches explaining how Sherman was to be cut off, which were printed in the Southern press. And the War Office warning told how in the Spanish-American War of 1898, the success of the American expedition that concentrated at Tampa was seriously menaced. Every military movement was reported in our newspapers and the Spanish Government had within a few hours complete accounts of the American preparations for war.

The War Office document made observations on the influence of the press in times of war in the following fashion:

The press, powerful in peace, may become more so in war. By its editorials and presentation of news it may sway the people for or against the war, and thus stimulate recruiting and hearten and encourage the fighting forces in their work, or, by adverse criticism, may tend to destroy the efficiency of these agencies.

It may by publishing names of organizations, numbers, movements, accounts of victories or defeats, furnish information to the enemy that will enable him to deduce the strength and location and intended movements of our own troops.

By criticism of the conduct of campaigns, the action of certain officers or exploiting others, the people will be led to lose confidence in the army with the result that the moral support of the people is lost; they cry for and obtain new generals and new plans of campaign, not based on expert knowledge and thought with a consequent lengthening of the war or even defeat.

War has added greatly to our information about foreign countries. We studied their geography as we followed their armies, their history as we became interested in various regions. We have come to know of their resources, their products, their agricultural and their financial condition. Every day for more than four years, in hundreds of newspapers’ columns, we read of their statesmen, their generals, admirals, soldiers, sailors, their people, their purpose, their patriotism, and their courage. We know of their cabinets and their parliaments as never before, their industrial troubles, their petty politics as well as those larger problems that require diplomatic interference. The war brought us into a new intimacy with almost all the nations of the globe. It incubated hundreds of new problems.

It must be quite impossible for the public to appreciate the patriotic assistance and the pecuniary sacrifice of the newspapers in the war. They surrendered hundreds of pages to appeals for aid, to arousing interest, to patriotic propaganda. Let us glance at the work of a single sheet:

Mr. William H. Field of the Chicago Tribune attested (April, 1918) that at that time his newspaper was devoting fifty per cent of its space, other than advertising, to matters concerning the war. In response to the question, “What can we do to help win the war?” it was decided to serve patriotic purposes both practical and inspirational. Mr. Field said:

In the Sunday edition, fiction section, we print at least one patriotic story. The pictorial supplement contains war photographs and portraits of military leaders.

The woman’s department is devoted largely to war service. One section is given to the work of the Red Cross and especially to its needs. We give scientific and practical information about food and preach economy and conservation in cooking and urge coÖperation with the Food Administrator.

We advocate the making of war gardens and give explicit directions.

We have a Camp Stories contest in which we encourage soldiers to send short stories of camp life.

We print one page of signed editorials on the war. The idea of the page is to give articles such as may be found in magazines of the caliber of the Atlantic Monthly, the Yale Review, the North American Review and the New Republic.

On the club page we have one article and picture from the Woman’s Committee of the State Council of National Defense.

Under the heading “Woman in War Time” we report the activities of the various patriotic women’s organizations.

A three or four thousand word letter of society gossip has been a feature for many years. I find in the last one fifteen hundred words devoted to the work of the Woman’s Committee on the Liberty Loan campaign, one hundred words on war talk at one of the clubs, five hundred on the entertainment of soldiers and sailors, five hundred words to the Woman’s Land Army, three hundred words on the work of women in munitions factories, five hundred to appeals for war donations from New York committees, and three hundred words on a sale of Easter cards for the benefit of the wounded. This one article, indexed as “Society Letter” is one hundred per cent war propaganda. The only feature section not contributing to war material is the comic section.

What has been true of the Chicago Tribune was true also of nearly all the important newspapers of the United States. Nothing was permitted to come before the most insignificant bit of war information. The newspapers made all news subordinate to war news. Day after day no other intelligence than war news appeared on the first page of our metropolitan sheets. With glowing patriotism they surrendered column after column to appeals for help for Belgium and for scores of other charities growing out of the war, and not in all the long years did they cease to print appeals. Through the coÖperation of the newspapers millions on millions were raised before we entered the war. Then began renewed efforts to help the Red Cross, the Young Men’s Christian Association, the Knights of Columbus and kindred organizations. And in still greater patriotic endeavor the press of America urged support of the Liberty Loans and the thrift stamp movements.

The newspapers spoke for the national government. They printed the government appeals. They counted not the cost to themselves although every additional page meant hundreds if not thousands of dollars in additional expense. In no other way could the government so quickly reach the people. The President’s appeal to public sentiment, the treasury’s call for financial aid, the plans for taxation, the demands for conservation of food and resources, the thousand and one suggestions to the people were all before the people in less than twenty-four hours in every city of this broad land. Through the press, the government could almost instantly communicate its wishes to more than three-quarters of the people. Yet the attitude of the government, and especially of Congress, was that of antagonism to the press and in some directions almost of hostility.