A PARENTHESIS
To what I have said of journalism I need not add much. I remained in
London as the representative of _The New York Tribune_, and in charge
of its European affairs from 1867 to 1895; returning then to New York
and Washington for _The Times_, till 1905.
When _The Tribune_ began publishing a Sunday edition, one other
innovation upon the established practice followed. I sent each week,
by cable, a column containing a summary view of what seemed most
important during the week. It was not a summary of news and it was
not a leading article but a compromise between the two. It was, at
any rate, the first of its kind, and I was allowed to put it in such
shape as I thought best, since then, the American demand for what are
called "Sunday cables" has grown, the despatches to all the great
journals of the United States have increased in number, in length, in
variety, and in daring. All I claim for mine is that it was the
first. I do not know whether any work in journalism has in it the
elements of permanency. Probably not. Journalism is an expression
of the {252} governing forces of the day, and day by day changes as
the forces change and the days change. But should a history of
international journalism be written, the historian will perhaps
remember that as agent of _The Tribune_ I set up in London that
European news-bureau which all other great American journals after
some years copied; that I was in charge of it during the
Franco-German War; and that the success of _The Tribune_ during that
war was due to the system already described, which I had established
three years before.
The years that follow are full of miscellaneous interests. The
Memories, some of which are reprinted in this volume, are not
primarily historical, though I hope they are accurate. They are
impressions. They cannot be presented as a sequence, and as each
chapter, or group of chapters, deals with a separate subject, I
republish most of them in the order in which they were written and
printed, or otherwise as may seem convenient. I pass now to an
incident of the Irish "War," and then to a diplomatic experiment in
the history of those long contentious relations between Canada and
the United States which have so often imperilled the friendship
between England and the United States.
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