My office was in H. B. Plant's Tampa Bay hotel, and there, every day, from seven a. m. until twelve midnight, and sometimes one and two in the morning, I did my work. My own long experience as a practical telegrapher stood me in good stead and when any direct work was to be done with the White House in Washington, or any especially important messages were to be sent, I personally did the telegraphing. At the Executive Mansion was Colonel B. F. Montgomery, signal corps, in charge of the telegraph office, so when anything special passed, no one knew it but the colonel and myself.
The Tampa Bay hotel was at this time the scene of the most dazzling and brilliant gaiety. Shafter's 5th Corps was preparing for its Santiago campaign and each night many officers and their wives would meet in the hotel and pass the time away listening to the music of some regimental band or in pleasant conversation. Men who had not seen each other since the close of the great civil war renewed old acquaintances and spun reminiscences by the yard. Military attaches from all the countries of the world were daily arriving, and their gaudy uniforms added a dash of color to the already brilliant panorama. The bright gold of Captain Paget, the English naval attache, the deep blue of Colonel Yermeloff, who represented Russia, contrasted vividly with the blue and yellow of Japanese Major Shiska, and the scarlet and black of Count Goetzen of Germany. But prominent among all this moving panorama of color was the plain blue of the volunteer, and the brown khaki of the regular. My view of the scene was limited to fleeting glimpses from my office where I was nightly scanning messages, doing telegraphing or overlooking 30,000 or 40,000 words of correspondents' copy. Preparations for the embarkation were going on with feverish haste, and orders were daily expected for the army to move.
There were at this time nearly two hundred newspaper correspondents scattered around through the hotel and in the various camps. They represented papers from all over the world, and were typical representatives of the brain and sinew of the newspaper profession, and were there to accompany the army when it moved. Such men as Richard Harding Davis, Stephen Bonsai, Frederick Remington, Caspar Whitney, Grover Flint, Edward Marshall, Maurice Low, John Taylor, John Klein, Louis Seibold, George Farman and Mr. Akers of the London papers, and scores of others. They were quick and active, intensely patriotic, alert for all the news, a "scoop" for them was the blood of life, and the censorship came like a wet blanket. In a small way I had been corresponding for a paper since the beginning of the war, but when the detail as censor came I gave it up as the two were incompatible.
CHAPTER XXV
MORE CENSORSHIP
I must confess that I stood in awe of these newspaper chaps, because I knew my orders would incense them and if they took it into their heads to roast me my life would be made miserable for a good many days to come. But then in the army orders are made to be obeyed and I determined not to show partiality to any of them. It was to be "a fair field and no favor," so I sent word and asked them to meet me in the reading-room of the hotel at two o'clock that afternoon. They came garbed in all sorts of field uniform and I made a little speech telling what they might send and what was interdicted; I remarked that the work was as irksome to me as it was to them, but orders were orders and if they would live up to the few simple rules they would make my task much easier and save themselves lots of trouble. Nothing absolutely was to be sent, that would convey in any way an idea of the number of troops in Tampa, the time of arrival or departure of any number of troops or ships, and above all, not a word was to be sent out as to when the 5th Army Corps was to sail. When I had finished one of the correspondents shook his head in a deprecatory way and said:
"Well, captain, we thought Lieutenant Miley (my predecessor) was bad enough but you can give him cards and spades and beat him out. You're certainly a hummer from the word go, and I reckon we'd better go home."
He had my sympathy but that was all. Every correspondent had a war department pass; these I examined and registered each man.