Page:The Newspaper and the Historian.djvu/267

 11, 1913.

If the regular correspondent is in ill favor he is to the last degree objectionable when he carries a camera, — " camera and cinematograph have added the last straw ." The army willingly endures privation and hardship in their most extreme form but it is averse to having these seemingly take the form of a dress parade. If collective defeat comes to the army, the individual

members do not wish to have their personal misfortunes particu larized, their forced retreat and consequent sufferings made a spectacle for the entertainment of others, their internment or

imprisonment with the humiliation and disgrace they conceive is attached to it recognized on the screen by distant friends. The correspondent may write of impersonal defeat and disaster and

justly find them characterized by heroism and extraordinary courage, but the camera can not show the hero with a halo, nor

does it show him on a prancing charger waving his country 's flag ; it can show him only as he is externally, - unkempt, un shaven , and dejected , with none of the aspects of heroism that can be described by the pen. The camera is the most hated part of the outfit of the war correspondent.37 Editors and owners ofnewspapers have long felt the exhaustive

drain made on their resources by war and the war correspondent and hence have not given him a sympathetic welcome. Just prior to the Boer War, Lord Glenesk had asserted that “ a war was a great misfortune for a newspaper. The Morning Post must be supplied with the latest information and must employ the best correspondents, there could be no appreciable increase in the daily demand : the profit would be made by such of the evening papers as had no correspondents on the spot, and could rely on a brisk sale in the streets.” 38 The newspaper expenses in the American Civil War were enormous.39 Every war sends up the

budget of the newspaper for expenses to be incurred for cor respondence, photographs, news service , cable tolls, extra edi tions, increasing cost of paper and of wages, while revenues are 37 Perhaps an explanation of the demand for the camera lies in a sugges tion of Francis McCullagh's that while the earlier war correspondents like MacGahan and Forbes wrote for a highly educated class, the photographer caters to a public that either can not read or has no time to read. 38 R. Lucas, Lord Glenesk and the “ Morning Post," p . 376.

39 J. Francis, Notes by the Way, pp. 75 – 76.