Reading the English newspapers in those early days of the war, with their stories of starving Germany, their atrocity-mongering, their wild perversions of truth, a journalist proud of his profession must blush for shame at its degradation and insanity. Its excuse and defense lie in the psychological storm that the war created in the soul of humanity, from which Fleet Street itself—very human—did not escape; in the natural agony of desire to find some reason for hopefulness; in the patriotic necessity of preventing despair from overwhelming popular opinion in the first shock of the enemy’s advance; and in the desperate anxiety of all men and women whose heritage and liberties were at stake, to get some glimpse behind the heavy shutters of secrecy that had been slammed down by military censorship.
I was one of those who did not wait for official permits, and plunged straightway into the vortex of the war game. In self-defense I must plead that I was not one of the liars! I did not manufacture atrocities, and had some temperamental difficulty in believing those that were true, because I believed in the decency of the common man, even in the decency of the German common man. I did not invent imaginary adventures, but found tragedy enough, and drama enough, in the things I saw, and the truth that I found. As I had two companions most of the time in those early days, whose honor is acknowledged by all who know them—H. M. Tomlinson and W. M. Massey—their evidence supported my own articles which, like theirs, revealed something to our people of the enormous history that was happening.
Strangely, as it now seems to me, I was appointed artist correspondent to The Graphic, as I had been in the Bulgarian war, and I actually made some sketches of French mobilization and preparations for war, which were redrawn and published. But my old paper, The Daily Chronicle, desired my services and I changed over to them, and abandoned the pencil for the pen, with The Graphic’s consent, a few days after the declaration of war.
I had crossed over to Paris on the night the reservists had been called to the colors in England, although so far war had not been declared by England or France. But the fleet was cleared for action, and ready, and that night destroyers were out in the English Channel and their searchlights swept our packet boat, where groups of Frenchmen who had been clerks, hairdressers, and shop assistants in England were singing “The Marseillaise” with a kind of religious ecstasy, while in the saloon a party of Lancashire lads were getting fuddled and promising themselves “a good time” on a week-end trip to Paris, utterly unconscious of war and its realities.
In The Daily Chronicle office in Paris, where I had done night duty so often, my friend and colleague, Henri Bourdin, was white to the lips with nervous emotion, and constantly answered telephonic inquiries from French journalists: “Is England coming in? Nothing official, eh? Is it certain England will come in? You think so? Name of God! why doesn’t England say the word?”
It was the consuming thought in all French minds. They were desperate for an answer to their questions. Because of the delay, Paris was suspicious, angry, ready for an outbreak of passion against the English tourists, who were besieging the railway stations, and against English journalists, who were in a fever of anxiety.
I saw the unforgetable scenes of mobilization in Paris, which made one’s very heart weep with the tragedy of those partings between men and women, who clung to each other and kissed for the last time—so many of them for the last time—and on the night of August 2nd I went with the first trainload of reservists to Belfort, Toul, and Nancy. All through the night, at every station in which the train stopped, there was the sound of marching men, and the song of “The Marseillaise”:
“Formez vos bataillons!”
The youth of France was trooping from the fields and workshops, not in ignorance of the sacrifice to which they were called, not light-heartedly, but with a simple and splendid devotion to their country which now, in remembrance, after the years of massacre and of disillusion, still fills me with emotion....
I do not intend here to give a narrative of my own experiences of war. I have written them elsewhere, and what do they matter, anyhow, in those years when millions of men faced death daily and passed through an adventure of life beyond all power of imagination of civilized men? I will rather deal with the subject of the Press in war, and with the peculiar difficulties and work of the correspondents, especially in the early days.