THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1906.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8292, 21 November 1906, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1906.

A war correspondent on the regulation of the war correspondent Is sure to be interesting. Mr Douglas Story, writing in the Tribune, frankly admits the need of such regulation. There is a power barm in tbe unthinking and the unscrupulous journalist that may wreck the prospects of an army, that may sacrifice ten thousand lives, In the South African War a foreign offioer in the Boer service, writing lu a Paris journal, indulged in criticism of the disposition of Sir Redvera Boiler's forces at the battle of Colenso, and casually indicated a line of attack tbat would have enfiladed the Boer position. Indue oourse the article oame back from France; was considered by the British staff, found to be justified of Its contention, and led to tbe change in formation which drove the Boers out of Natal. At the close of the winter of 1904-05 the Japanese were in doubt as to tbe extent of the reinforcements General Kuropatkin had received in the Ave mouths of cessation from fighting, and they did not obtain the information they wanted until General Gripenberg, in his eagerness to show that his superior was wrong in refusing him more men, revealed to the Novoe Vremya the constitution of the Russian forces. On this the Japanesu based tbeir strategy at Mukden. Mr Story draws from these incidents two morals, one tbe grave risk attending the publication of soch

items, and tbe other that the risks are rruoh greater with men untrained in war correspondence. One result of the abuse of trust on the part of some war correspondents was that tbe greatest battle of history, Mukden, was fought with soaroely an independent recorder present to chronicle its terrible drama. The world was left with an inoomprehenaible series of official telegrams de tailing unintelligible movements of brigades, and divisions, and army corps. The battle—until a Zola resurreots its actuality from the dry bones of official arohives—never existed for the pablio who read to understand. Tbe local historian was absent from his post, and the world as a whole is the loser. Mr Story contends tbat the war correspondent's duty need not clash with that of tbe commander-in-chief, that be is an historian and not a spy, an observer and not an expert revealing plans, that the elimination of war from the Press is not to be contemplated, and that it ought to be within the ability of an Army Council to define the correspondent's dirties so that war correspondence will remain a profession for men of honour and initiative.

Apart from certain obvious and solid considerations against the Channel tunnel project", the London Spectator cites the certainty that the ex. istenoe of the tunnel would lead to recurrent national panics. Whenever international crises arose, and feelings between nations was at a high tension, both countries involved would begin to distrust the tunnel traffic. We should no longer be able to concentrate our thoughts on the navy. Instead, there would be perpetual scares of foreign espionage, possibly the detention of suspeoted travellers, and questions arising in Parliament as to tbe legality of this cr that interference by the police or railway authorities. If if. is urged as regarda that point that wo could always prevent invasion by the use of a meohanisni for flooding the railway, we come back not only to the qaestion which Lord Randolph Ohurohill asked in 1888, "Who would press the button?" but also to the inconvenient fact that there would certainly be another button to be pressed on the other side of the water beside. It is on this ground of an increased tendenoy to panio tbat this and all other schemes for Channel j tunnels between Englaud [and the Continent fall to ihe ground. Panics are essentially bad for international politics, The perpetual drear] of war leads to the readier acceptance of war as an alternative. "If we must figot sooner or later, let us get it over," is a train of thought that has led to some of tbe most terrible, and perhaps least necessary, campaigns of history. If the building of a Channel tunnel can be argued to be likely, as it mo9t certainly can, to inarease the tendency to tnat pessimistic outlook on the probabilities jat war, then the Channel Tunnel Bill of 1906 must bs rejected as decisively as its seven predeoessora. The promoters of so dangerous a scheme will not, perhaps, be finally discouraged; but they may be tempted to expand tneir energies in some more useful direction—possibly on the building of a Channel tuunnl batwoeu Sootland and Ireland.