THE ACTUALITY
On the sidewalk _terrasse_ of a little café a few doors from the
American Embassy I was one of a quartet of newspaper men on one of the
final afternoons of August, 1914.
War news, thanks to the censor, had lapsed in volume and intensity; but
the troubles of refugee Americans still made our cables bulky, and we
continued to pass much time at the Embassy or in its vicinity.
A man wabbled wearily down the street on a bicycle. I recognized him
as a "special correspondent" who had called on me ten days before,
asking advice as to where he should apply for credentials permitting
him to describe battles. He later disappeared into the then vague
territory known as the "zone of military activity," without any papers
authorizing the trip.
He leaned his bicycle against a tree and joined us. He had little to
say as to where he had been, but told us that he had been a prisoner
of the British army for several days. He mentioned a town near the
Belgian frontier where, as he described the situation, "the entire army
came piling in before he had a chance to pile out."
I do not know what made me suspect that Mr. Special Correspondent
was then the possessor of big news, for he gave not the slightest
suggestion of the direction in which the British army was traveling.
But I suspected him. In a few minutes he left us to call on the
Ambassador. Later, when I saw him ride away from the Embassy on his
bicycle, I sent in my card.
Mr. Herrick was as bland as usual, but there was a worried look on his
face. I wasted no time.
"Mr. ---- called on you this afternoon," I said, naming the special
correspondent. "He told you some real news."
"Yes, that is so," the Ambassador replied. "How did you guess it?"
I explained that I only had a suspicion, and the Ambassador continued:
"He cannot cable it, you need not worry. He will not attempt it. He has
gone now to write an account for the mail. He told me so that I could
make some plans."
"Some plans?" I interrupted. "The news is bad then."
Mr. Herrick eyed me keenly for a moment--then he leaned over his
desk and spoke in a whisper. He kept the confidences of the "special
correspondent," but he gave me information that supplemented it, which
he had from his own sources. He told me no names--no details--but he
gave me the news appearing in the official communiqués three full days
later;--that the British had been forced back at Mons--the French
defeated at Charleroi, and that the entire Allied line was retreating.
I did not learn where the line was. But as I left the Embassy I
realized that France was invaded; I realized that the greatest story in
the world was at hand. The fear was upon me, although I failed to grasp
it entirely, that this was a story which in its entirety would never be
written for a newspaper.
Mr. Special Correspondent passed two days in the seclusion of his hotel
writing a splendid chapter for which he received high praise, but he
was unable to get it printed until several weeks after the entire story
had gone into history. Other correspondents were able to write half and
quarter chapters which in a few instances received publication while
the story was in progress.
I sat at my desk that night pondering on how to cable some inkling of
my information to America. I confess that I almost wished the cable
was cut and the loose ends lost on the bottom of the Atlantic.
I studied the map of Europe facing me on the wall. Sending a courier to
England was as useless as cabling direct, for the English censor was
equally severe as the French. A code message was under censorial ban. A
courier aboard the Sud-express might have filed the news from Spain or
Portugal but the mobilization plans of General Joffre had arranged that
there would be no Sud-express for some time.
There were undoubtedly other correspondents who knew as much concerning
the state of affairs as I. Many British correspondents, without
credentials, were dodging about the armies, getting into captivity and
out again. Several American correspondents were in Belgium following
the Germans as best they could. But none of them was at the end of a
cable. Had they been they would have been quite as helpless as I. For
had I been able that night to use the cable as I desired, I would have
beaten the press of the world by three full days with the story of the
danger that threatened Paris.
The next night, although I was completely ignorant whether the news was
then known in America, I tried to beat the censor at his own game. I
succeeded to the extent of having my despatch passed, but unfortunately
it was not understood in the home office of my newspaper. This was my
scheme:
During the day rumors of disaster began to spread; but the Paris
papers printed nothing of the truth, and officially the Allied armies
continued to hold the Belgian frontier. That night refugees from French
cities began entering Paris at the Gare du Nord.
I began an innocent despatch that seemed hardly worth the cable
tolls. It ambled along, with cumbrous sentences and involved grammar,
describing American war charities. Then without what in cable parlance
is known as a "full stop," which indicates a complete break in the
sense of the reading matter, I inserted the words "refugees crowding
gare du nord to-night from points south of Lille," and continued the
despatch with more material of the sort with which it began.
I went home hoping for the best and wondering if I had made myself
sufficiently clear to arouse the suspicion of the copy reader on the
other side of the ocean who handled my copy. If I had I knew that those
eleven words would be printed in the largest display type the following
morning.
Two weeks later, when the next batch of newspapers reached Paris, I
read those words with interest. They were all there, but carefully
buried in the story of war charities exactly where I had placed them.