THE WAR CORRESPONDENT.

Otago Witness, Issue 2397, 8 February 1900, Page 59

THE WAR CORRESPONDENT.

HIS WORK, RISKS, AND STATUS,

"For better or for worse, the Avar correspondent, as regards a British army in the field, has been stamped out. The journalist Avho noAV accompanies an army is a war reporter. He dances in the fetters of th.c censorship, Avhose poAver over him is absolute ; it may not only detain or withhold his Avork ; but at discretion may alter it so that he may be made to say the direct reA T erse of what he wrote." These are the vieAvs of Archibald Forbes, himself a past master in the a"rt and craft of war correspondence. Whether they aye overdrawn or not, the fact remains that the dangers, hardships, and privations of the war "special's" career have not been amended by the neAv conditions or the course of time. Circumstances ha\ T e deprived the Morning Post of the services, in the present TransA r aal campaign, of Mr E. F. Knight and Mr Winston Spencer Churchill, the one having suffered amputation of his right arm as the result ot a Boer bullet Avound, and the other being a prisoner of Avar at Pretoria. [Mr Churchill has since escaped from Pretoria, and is once more AA'ith the British forces. — Ed.] Events march so rapidly nowadays that it seems but yesterday — though in reality it is hard on 15 years ago — since St. Leger Herbert, another Morning Post correspondent, was shot dead at Gubat. Considering, indeed, that the number of Avar correspondents and artists in a campaign may almost be reckoned on the finger of one's hands, it cannot be denied that this brotherhood of pressmen pays heavily Avhen Aye come to sum up the roll of killed, Avounded, struck doAvn by mortal sickness, or permanently debarred from active pursuits. True, there still survive among the "veterans" such hale hearty specimens as Sir William Howard Russell, Mr Henty, Mr Charles Williams, Mr Bennet Burleigh, and Mr Sydney Hall. Among the " youngsters' are Mr Maxwell, Mr G. W. Steevens [avlio has recently died of fever at Ladysmith], and Mr Stuart and Mr Robertson. But then turn to the other side of the picture and see in AA r hat gloomy colours it is painted.

KILLED AND WOUNDED

-At Omdurman Mr Hubert Howard •was killed and Colonel Frank Rhodes was wounded ; and then, in the campaigns going back a quarter of a century or less, the names of the dead but not forgotten "specials" crowd on the memory — St. Leger Herbert, already. named, and his companion, Cameron ; "Edmond O!Donovan, Frank" Power, Vizetelly, Major Pemberton, H. Garrett, and others. It is not only the bullet and the assegai, as the last-mentioned name reminds us. "Then the cholera," as Mr Knight AATote in August 1896, " SAvept up the river from the Mediterranean, and fell on all oiir camps in succession. It Avas as if Aye Avere perpetually under fire from an unseen foe against whom we could not strike back a blow in our defence — a noiseless fire before which we saw our friends suddenly fall in their stalw.art youth, in eight cases out of ten not to rise again. One spoke to a man who was strong and hearty, and later in the same day heard he was dead. Cholera, dysentery, and enteric fever were wofully thinning the ranks, and the last Aveek of July Avas the most fatal of all. Our little band of correspondents was not spared in that fatal Aveek, for on the 28th died of enteric fever our much-esteemed and much regretted colleague, H. Garrett, the special correspondent of the NeAv York Herald, whose amiable qualities had made him many friends in this camp."

SOME OF THE RISKS,

Of surviving and still active Avar correspondents there are few, if any, who have not been in "a tight corner. ' Mr H. H. Pearse was in the thick of it at Abu Klea, and in many another awkward place in various latitudes and longitudes and quarters of the globe ; Sir "W. H. Ru&sell, "the Pen of the Crimea war," had a sunstroke and a sabre cut across the thigh at the time of the Indian Mutiny, and in the Secession war was threatened with assassination after tne battle of Bull's Run, and Mr Bennet Burleigh has carried his lire in his hands a score of times. Mr Archibald Forbes, whose Avar "record" began at the time of the Franco-German struggle, Avas the hero of that memorable ride after the battle of Ulundi, through a hundred and twenty miles of trackless country swarming Avith Zulus. On reaching the telegraph at Landsmann's Drift, on the Natal frontier, he was the first to Avire the tidings of the victory to Sir Garnet Wolseley and Sir Bartle Frere. Mr George Augustus Sala had an equally exciting and even more disagreeable experience in Paris at the time of the FrancoPrussian Avar, Avhen "the spy fever"' Avas at its height. Arrested on the vaguest suspicion, he Avas cast into a noisome cell, tenanted by frve-and-twenty ruffians. "Here is a Prussian spy for you ! " Avas the genial form of introduction. "I was knelt upon," narrates Mr Sala, " buffeted, scratched, and my hair torn out in liandfuls. One villian in a Avhite blouse tried to bite me, Avhile another devoted his energies to kicking my ankles Avith his Avooden sabots."

SPY OR '"SPECIAL."

To be taken for a spy seems, in truth, to be almost the worst thing that can happen to a war correspondent — whom Lord Wolseley, in the early editions of "The Soldier's Pocket Book," described as "ths curse of modern armies."' Mr J. J. O'Kelly, now an Irish Member of Parliament, had some lurid experiences a quarter of a century ago in Cuba, where he was acting as war correspondent for the New York Herald. He joined the rebels, counting on being able to convince the Spanish authorities that advantage would accrue to Spain by the true state of the ir"nm'f" i t ; o r i !H"cr nvde known by an liuiop. (Lni, ,wr' un, mial witness. He Via-* ioUi, liovi'vm, lli it if lie set out, it must ht j .it in own n--i". Is a matter of fuci, on ivt urmuj, iv ' ' his dangerous expedition lie fell win (;),.„ lirtuds of the Spaniards ; m»d, to quote hi own words — "The critic? l moment '.vat. f.i&t c>,p-

proaching Avhen my life Avould have to be placed in the poAver of men not accustomed to slioav much mercy. They had Avarned me fairly that if I visited the insurgent; camp and returned I should be shot as a spy." More than once he Avas inclined to abandon the idea of returning to Ncav York, as it seemed safer to send on his press letters by the laborantts, and to join the Cuban forces as a combatant. On regaining the Spanish lines he was arrested and lodged in a cell containing " another prisoner and a number of rabbits." Mr O'Kclly was brought before a court-matrial at midnight. " There was something spectral in the uncertain glimmering of the lamp. The assistants were half in shadoAV, and the scene full of mystery and gloom. The effect on ray imagination Avas terrific. All the stories of secret murders and assassinations that had been recounted to me from the moment of my arriA-al in Cuba rushed into my mind, and I saAV myself a A r ictim to the vengeance and hatred of the authorities."' Bound Avith ropes he was aftei'Avards conveyed under guard to Santiago de Cuba. Next he aa-.is immured in a pestilential dungeon in the Cabanas, and finally convoyed over-sea to Spain, Avhere • on his ariTval at Madrid he Avas released. In later year-s l«lr O'Kelly had an adA*enturous time in America, Algiers, and elseAvhere. He AA-ent to the Soudan in the early eighties-for the purpose of joining the Mahdi, but Avas lost for some months in the desert, appearing eventually on the Nile not far from Khartoum. O'DONOVAN AND FRANK POWER. It Ava«« in the spring of 1883 that another intrepid Irishman, xLClmund O'Donovan by name, left London for Khartoum, there to attach himself as a Avar correspondent to Hicks Pasha's army. Crossing the desert route from Suakim to Berber, and never delaying, he pushed on thence to Khartoum, and, joining the army there, accompanied its march toAvards Kordofan. O'Donovan fell on the fatal field of El Obeid. His companion on part of this journey Avas a young fellow, only about 25 years of age, named Frank Power, Avho had already gained some reputation with his pencil, and had done duty as a war correspondent on the Bulgarian frontier in the RussoTurkish Avar. Power, saved 'by an illness from being at El Obeid, found iiim«elf back once more at Khartoum, and there never relinquished his original design of keeping note and account of everything that passed around him. He, with Gordon, Avas one of the besieged defenders of that place from February 1884 until September 1884, and as has been acknowledged, "it was almost exclusively through Mr PoAver's despatches that England and Europe first of all learned of the disaster which befell Hicks Pasha's army, the triumph of the Mahdi, and the gradual closing of the enemy round Khartoum. Afterwards it was from him that Aye had the graphic and stirring accounts of General Gordon's arrival, of his energetic efforts to establish order and to keep the hostile tribes around him at bay : of his A'ictories and his misfortunes ; of the valour of his Bedouin foes and the treachery and coAvardice of his Turkish and Egyptian troops." In September, 1884, Colonel Stewart (not to be confused with Sir Herbeit Stewart) and 3 r oung Power were despatched by Gordon on the ill-fated steamboat Abbas to endeavour, if possible, to cut through the Mahdists, and to reach the British lines. They embarked accordingly, and as history knoAvs, they steamed* down the Nile to Berber — and to death.

SOME EARLY WAR CORRESPONDENTS.

Leaving aside Julius Cajsar, who Avas his " oArn Avar correspondent," the "special's " craft is of comparatively recent groAvth. It is _ certain that the Duke of Wellington was not hampered by any bygone Winston Churchill in the Peninsular War. How his iron visage Avould have hardened had he been asked to grant a permit to a " special ! " As far as can be gathered, the first recognised Aval correspondent to a neAvspaper Avas a gentleman (whose name unhappily has sunk into obliA T ion) at the siege of AntAverp in 1831. Much earlier in the century, though, there Avas in an informal and" unrecognised manner a Avitness named Peter Finnerty — one can make a shrewd guess at his nationality — " who, on his return from the Walcheren Expedition, told the British public a 'good deal more about that unfortunate naval and military blunder than the British Government of the day cared to haA*e published." There Avas, too, sonify .really admirable pen-and-ink work about the Carlist Avar in the London papers, notably bj' Mr Frederick Hardinan and Mr C. L. Gruinesen. Mr Gruinesen fell into the hands of the Carlists and was about to be sbot, Avhen he Avas rescued from his impending fate by the intercession of the late Lord Ranelagh, who had taken serA r ice in the cause of Don Carlos de Bourbon. — Morning Pest.