Page:The Newspaper and the Historian.djvu/243

Rh willing as a race-horse. Above all, he must love his work better than his comfort, his club, his home, or his friends. He must have a personality all vigor to keep on past every hindrance, and with much candor and sweetness to win and keep men 's confidence, so that they will admit him everywhere and talk to him unrestrainedly; but his personality must be of a kind that does not intrude itself too rigidly at many points. . . . The special correspondent must be so constituted as to remain poor, and willingly, so long as he sticks to newspaper work. . . . The correspondents of to-day must be and are welcome at the houses, clubs, and business places of the men who lead in public affairs. They must be men of parts and of good appearance and behavior.”

Lord Salisbury more briefly and more cynically defined the ideal special correspondent as “ a man who combines the skill of a first-rate steeple chaser with the skill of a first-rate writer.”

The London Times long had, if not an additional, definite requirement, at least a strong preference for foreigners as its chief correspondents, and it numbered on its staff men of American, Czech, Hungarian, and Italian birth who rendered it signal service. This was a peculiarity that distinguished its foreign correspondence, as was also the entire independence in which it left its correspondents in the expression of their opinion, even when, as often happened, these opinions were radically opposed to the editorial tone.

But however high the standards set for special correspondents and however successfully they may meet them from the editor's standpoint as well as their own, the all-important question for the historian is,—how authoritative is that part of the newspaper that appears under the caption "special correspondence"?