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CHAPTER IX

THE WAR CORRESPONDENT " It was the reactionary Tory Xenophon who had retired from public life, civil, or military, before instituting the alliance, since

so fruitful, of the writer with the fighter.” — Escott.

“ On quitting school Iboldly undertook to write and relate thewars.” - Froissart, 1357. “ They sent us back the news which greatly rejoiced the whole

army.” — Philippe de Comines, 1492. " How should younger brothers have maintained themselves, that have travelled, and have the names of countries and captains without book as perfect as their prayers? . . . It hasbeen a great profession ; a peace concluded is a great plague unto them , and if the wars hold , we

shall have store of them ; oh, men worthy of commendations; they speak in print." - Shirley, 1631.

“ Our own war with Spain seemed to be waged by and for the news papers .” — New York Evening Post, August 1, 1914.

THE first war correspondent of modern times may be said to

have been Julius Caesar who, happily for posterity, combined with his duties as war correspondent those of censor and editor. The uncensored letters of the Crusaders gave the Western Europe

of that day its first real knowledge of the Orient, and the by products of the correspondence, in the descriptions of the country and of the life of that time, have had a more permanent value

than have the descriptions of assaults and sieges. Froissart was the great war correspondent of the fourteenth century and the

by-products of his accounts have been the interesting picture he unconsciously gives of himself and of life at the courts he visited. Successive correspondents and chroniclers followed until the seventeenth century when " war correspondents ” appeared in

the Low Countries. These were penniless English soldiers who translated from the High Dutch or the Low Dutch and wrote “ relations" for booksellers. The relations or “ corantos” soon were issued at frequent intervals and thus news of the Thirty