I repeat this because it indicates better than I could otherwise the journalistic state of mind at that time in respect of Continental telegrams. Mr. Robinson was at the head of his profession, yet this was his reception of this piece of news. In the end Mr. Frank Hill, the editor, was called into consultation. He had no hesitation and, as before, finally brought his colleague to reason. The telegram duly appeared next morning in The Daily News, heralded by a leading article in which the telegram was rewritten, its importance pointed out, the celerity of its dispatch and arrival dwelt on, and so the readers of The Daily News had every opportunity to admire the enterprise of that journal.
This was very far from being Mr. Holt White's most brilliant exploit, but it was his first. He had not the luck to see the battle of Worth, the earliest of the grave disasters of the French. No journalist had. That great engagement and the defeat of Marshal MacMahon were foreseen by nobody, the Germans themselves excepted, and there exists no account of the battle in the newspapers of the day, save such as came by hearsay; or, much later, the official reports. But when the bare facts were known they were thought prophetic, and the military critics of Pall Mall and Whitehall said gravely: "This is the beginning of the end."
CHAPTER XXIV
HOLT WHITE'S STORY OF SEDAN AND HOW IT
REACHED THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE
I pass over the interval between Worth and Sedan, crowded as it was with events, stopping only to remark that The Tribune was indebted to an American writer on The Daily News for its account of Gravelotte, but not to The Daily News except for the opportunity of buying that account, at a high price. There was an entangling alliance which forbade The Daily News to hand it over to The Tribune, but did not prevent the correspondent of that paper from selling it. I am not sure whether the name of the writer is known but in the circumstances it is not for me to disclose it. The narrative was, of course, cabled to The Tribune at once. Gravelotte was fought on the 18th of August. The account of the battle reached New York, I think, on the 21st. It was, at any rate, the first, and for some time the only narrative published. The defeated French called it the battle of Rézonville, and under that name was this description first printed. From a military point of view the account had no great value, but it was picturesquely written and in those difficult days anything from the field was eagerly read.
Greater days were at hand. The battle of Sedan was fought on Thursday, September 1st, 1870, followed by the surrender of the town, the army, and the Emperor Napoleon on the day following. The news of the catastrophe was not known in London till Saturday morning at ten o'clock, and then only in the briefest form; the mere fact and not much more; through the general Press agency; I suppose Reuter's. Mr. Robinson wired me and I went to The Daily News office. But the bare news was of no great use for my purposes. I went back to The Tribune office in Pall Mall wondering what I was to do, and still more what The Tribune correspondent in the field were doing. I had not long to wait. A dispatch arrived from Mr. Holt White saying he should be in London that afternoon, and at five o'clock he walked into the office.
Seldom have I been so glad to see any man's face as I was to see his, but there was hardly so much as a greeting between us. I asked first:
"Is your dispatch ready?"
"Not a word of it written."