But these variations merely affect the more or less dangerous details of the trip, not the programme as a whole, which is quite rigid.
In the beginning of the war a few men, like Alexander Powell in Flanders, and Robert Dunn in the retreat from Mons, were actual knights-errant of the pen and wandered or whirled where they pleased, and saw what happened to come their way.
But on the western front, at least, that is all dead and gone.
The activities of war correspondents have been thoroughly regulated, systematized, standardized. Just what the correspondent is to be permitted to see at the front is deliberately considered and arranged in advance. The authorities decide what fights are fit for him to see just as painstakingly as chaperons used to decide what plays were fit for débutantes to see. He, together with the six or eight other journalists who are to make up the party, is placed in the hands of a military duenna who guards his every move from the time the admirably organized tour starts, until he is again safely delivered back in Paris. The precise duration of the trip, the precise route to be taken, the precise place at which each meal is to be eaten, the precise room in the precise hotel in which each night is to be spent, the precise General to be met and trench to be visited, are all inexorably fixed in the schedule of the trip.
The only phenomena which the general staffs cannot predetermine are the activities of the aviators and the course of the enemy's shells and bullets. Hence, the only spontaneous adventures in store for correspondents, which may come unexpectedly, at any moment, are the whirring of aeroplanes overhead, their shelling and their duels and the sudden passing or arrival of enemy projectiles, from tiny bullets up to enormous "Jack Johnsons."
Even this element of surprise can be avoided in the case of a small minority of visitors who I understand prefer to limit their researches at "the front" to the hospitals, supply-trains, motor-repair organizations, encampments of reserves, and similar objects of interest, which lie some twenty kilometres behind the trenches and yet really are sufficiently a part of the front to be known as its rear.
The front has a second category of visitors besides the war correspondents of whom I have been writing—"the distinguished strangers." These do not come to the front for the purpose of writing about what they see, and are for this reason, as well as because of the courtesy which it is desired to show them, allowed considerably more latitude, although they, too, are kept religiously away from any part of the lines where real trouble is expected.
I myself was fortunate enough to be invited to visit the French and Belgian fronts in a sort of dual capacity. Having pledged myself not to go on to Germany, and to write nothing about anything that was shown me in confidence, I was given a special trip, instead of going with one of the regular "journalists' parties," which certainly have an unromantic resemblance to Cook's Tours. I was thus enabled to visit certain advanced trenches where larger parties, in the nature of things, could not go, and was shown things which had not previously been shown to correspondents. But the organization of my trip resembled that of the average correspondents' tour closely enough to enable me to describe its details.
In Paris in a rather small room on the second floor of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, at a methodically cluttered writing-table, on which one of the oddly-shaped French telephones lapses into occasional silence, sits a slender, suave, well-groomed Frenchman about forty years old. He has a glossy dark moustache, large and pensive dark eyes, a nicely deprecatory manner, and a beautifully conciliatory smile. He chats to his visitor in excellent English, if English be required, and smiles at him this almost tender smile. He is Monsieur P——, the war correspondents' Czar. He is the absolute ruler of their destinies. For it is he who picks and chooses among their waiting numbers, and decides to which to accord the privilege of a place in one of the parties which leave about every two weeks for a two- or three-day trip to the front.