One of the most appalling scandals of modern times is the disgraceful
suppression by the Ginger-beer Press of news relating to the state of
affairs in the Isle of Wight. For some weeks we have not flinched
from filling our columns with picturesque accounts of the epoch-making
events taking place there; and yet the Ginger-beer Press has cruelly
put off its readers with the scantiest details, or else refrained from
any sort of reference. We make our protest all the more vigorously
because many of those readers have been driven to read our own journal
in preference to the erroneous and misleading sheets to which we have
referred.
This distressing state of things has forced us to make the fullest
arrangements for a constant stream of news to be supplied from our
branch offices at Ventnor, Totland Bay, the Needles, and other points
of the Island. We have despatched a huge staff of world-famous war
correspondents, descriptive writers, poets, photographers, Royal
Academy artists, gallopers, commissariat officers, and trained
bloodhounds. Field kitchens, field wireless equipment, and field
glasses are included among their impedimenta, and no single message
will be printed in our pages that has not been sent in some other
way than through the ordinary channels of the post, telephone and
telegraph. Each member of this army of artists, litterateurs and
tacticians possesses a hip pocket, fully loaded, two pairs of puttees,
a compass and a wrist watch.
Every day scores of women and children are leaving the Isle of Wight
for the mainland. Gunboats and cruisers are passing and repassing
before its shores, by order of the Admiralty; strong, silent men are
doggedly pursuing the business they have in hand. In the very heart
of the island some of the flower of the youth of our country is
being trained in the art of naval warfare, while the thunders of
gun-practice are heard every hour around the coast. Yet, search where
you will in the Ginger-beer Press during the last few weeks, you will
find practically no reference to these things.
We implore our readers, on the highest patriotic grounds, to inform
the few remaining adherents of the Ginger-beer Press that if they
desire the Truth it can be found only in our pages.
We have the pleasure of printing below the first of the astonishing
articles which have been sent already from our Expeditionary Staff:--