Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/406

380 do more than they love themselves, if they are to wield the force that makes youth and romance so omnipotent. The flavor of adventure is never lacking in successful journalism because, underlying it all, is the consciousness, a consciousness curiously aggressive, that evil is being overthrown; that that incomprehensible thing, the public, is being served through the medium of the particular journal for which the work is undertaken.

The "game," however, has behind it a purpose, a deep and serious purpose, as this book, I believe, has shown. Expressed or unexpressed, there is always a strong belief that this country is different from others, and that the making of a happier and better nation is in the hands of each individual, working his own way. There is ever present, under cynical cover at times, the missionary spirit—the sense of personal responsibility for the right conduct of our government and our people, a spirit that leads even to the greatest sacrifice.

Of that spirit two examples come to mind—there must be hundreds that are known to others. At an engagement near Santiago, Cuba, just previous to the battle of El Caney, in the Spanish-American War, there was a correspondent, named Edward Marshall, of the New York Journal. He was where, if he had had due regard for his own life, he would not have been—in the front with the soldiers. A bullet struck his thigh, making him a cripple for life; as he lay bleeding and wounded—how seriously, it was not possible to tell—he dictated to a comrade his story for his paper. It was foolhardy, some one afterward suggested,—but was it not also magnificent?

In the editorial office of the New York World is a bronze tablet bearing the inscription: