The man's pluck was a splendid thing to see. His answer was like the answer of an Atlantic captain who, in the old days when there was no telephone and designers had not learned how to make the captain's cabin the nerve centre of the ship, had been for three days and nights on the bridge. I asked him how he lived through it. He said it was rather trying to the knees.
"But did you never sit down?"
"Oh, if I had sat down I should have gone to sleep."
There are heroisms of that kind in the routine of life, professional and other, and even in the profession of journalism of which the newspaper reader in the morning over his coffee and rolls never thinks. But they are real and without them, and without the loyalty and devotion of such men, there might sometimes be nothing for the man with his coffee and rolls to read.
White sat at his table till midnight and later. It was nearer two o'clock than one before the last of his message was filed in Telegraph Street. Whether by Mr. Weaver's intervention or not I cannot say, but there was a delay on the wires. The delay, I was afterwards told, was on the Newfoundland land lines to New York. It may be so. It was a message six columns long and not all of it appeared in The Tribune that next Sunday morning though all of it had been filed in ample time; two o'clock in the morning in London being only nine o'clock of the evening before in New York.
No matter. It was a clear, coherent, vivid battle story, and it was the only one. No morning paper in London had any account of the battle till the Tuesday following; and all New York accounts, The Tribune excepted, were from the London Press or Press agencies. It is not worth while to recall the comments of The Tribune's rivals. They were angry, naturally enough, and they resorted to conjectures which might as well have been left unexpressed. It is enough to explain further that Mr. Holt White's narrative did not appear in The Daily News because he had an agreement with The Pall Mall Gazette. Part of this account, therefore, was printed in an abridged form in The Pall Mall of Monday, for which it was written separately. The Pall Mall is an evening paper, and when that was cabled to New York and found to be obviously from the same source as The Tribune's the guesses grew wild. But the plain truth is now told, and is simple enough.
Mr. Holt White was a journalist but not at that time a journalist of any exceptional reputation or position. This, I think, was the first very considerable thing he had done. I am sorry to have to add that it was also the last. He was a man to whom, after such an achievement as this, a long repose became necessary. He rejoined the Prussian headquarters, spent the winter at Versailles, and during all those months did practically nothing. Of his great gifts and capacities he made no further use, even down to the end of his life, and the end came early. But he is entitled to be remembered as a man who at one supreme moment accomplished one of the most brilliant exploits in the history of journalism. Let us judge him by his best, and, so judged, his name must take its place with those of Russell, McGahan, Forbes, Steevens, and others of that rank if there are any others.
One more remark, to remind you how alien from the mind of the British journalist at that time was the free use of the telegraph, which in America had become a thing of every day. When White sat down to write he said to me: "I suppose I am to condense as much as possible?"
"No, write fully."