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.