Here we paid our final respects to the officers of the staff whom we had known off and on for nearly two years. A few hours passed, and again we were on the train. This time it is a ten hour stretch in a third class car to Newchwang, the end of the neutral and uncensored cable.
In the early hours of the morning, with typewriter on my army trunk, half a column cable was pounded out, and that afternoon the Chicago News printed the first cable from the field of what the army thought of peace. A day’s delay in Newchwang to sell my horse, then two nights on a B. & S. freight steamer to Chefoo, and thence by boat and rail two days more to Peking, and a white man’s hotel. No one who has not lived in a Chinese village, surrounded by the filth and vermin of a Manchu compound, during the rainy season, with water trickling through the roof on the inside and mud two feet deep without, can quite realize what a bed, a bath, clean clothes and good “chow” means. Two hours after arriving, a blue-clad Chinese boy handed in a cable from Chicago. It ran: “Await further instructions, Peking.”
For the first time in nearly two years, the editor in his office ten thousand miles away had no immediate plan of action on his mind. For the moment the world was quiet, and a brief respite from the constant call for “stories” granted to the correspondent.
War work for the reading public falls naturally into two distinct classes, as different as prose and poetry in literature. Editors call the exponents of these divisions “feature men” and “events” or “cable men.” The former are the literary artists who write atmosphere and artistic impressions for the monthly and weekly papers of the world. At enormous salaries, and with the retinue and camp equipage of a commanding general, they drift leisurely along with the army. When the battles are over, they chronicle their impressions and send them by mail to their home offices. They are accompanied by trained artists of the camera, to illustrate their stories, and what is still lacking is filled in by some artist of repute at home. Their names appear in large letters on the covers of the magazines to which they contribute, and to the world are they known far and wide. The other type, the “cable men,” are collectors of what might be called “spot” news. From them not atmosphere or color is demanded, but “accuracy of fact” and “quick delivery” is the essence of their work. Known professionally wherever big papers are printed, the cable man is almost unknown to the general public. His paper requires of him first to be on the spot where news is being made, and second to get a clear, concise and correct report of that news to an uncensored cable, and do it before anyone else can. Waking or sleeping, the events man has two ideas in the back of his head, the hour his paper goes to press, and his line of communication to his cable office. As a diver depends on his air tube to the face of the water, so the correspondent depends on his line of communication to the outer world. The moment his retreat is severed he is useless and for the moment might as well be dead. He may have a story of world importance, but if he is out of touch with the cable his news is worthless. His paper, on the other hand, is prepared to back him to the limit to maintain such a line. Steamers, railroad trains, courier systems, and any means or methods his imagination or ingenuity may devise, are his for the asking, if he can only get out exclusive news, and get it first. His paper will pay fabulous sums, $2,000, $5,000, even $10,000 for an account of a world event. A single story of this kind is printed in ten thousand papers in fifty different languages within twenty-four hours after the correspondent files it in a cable office. His version of the affair is read first by every foreign office in the civilized world. On his story the editorials on the “situation” are based, from London to Buenos Ayres. The “feature man” chronicles the events as he sees them. The “cable man,” though in a small way, is a part of the great event. In the boiling vortex where history is in the making, there is he, struggling against his colleagues of the press of America and Europe to give to the world the first facts of an international clash. He moves to the click of the telegraph, and if he acts at all, he must act on the minute. Even hours are too slow for the newspaper reading public. His editor at home watches the ever-changing kaleidoscope of history, moving and reforming on the stages of the world. Now Japan is in the public’s eye. He has a man on the spot. Again it is a race war in Georgia—the invasion of Thibet, a constitutional parliament in Persia, war in the Balkans, or a revolution in Russia. All of these the restless, lynx-eyed one watches from his office in Chicago. A hundred cables a day reach his desk from all quarters of the globe, and in his mind from hour to hour he is weighing the relative importance of all the interesting situations in the world. If a parliamentary crisis develops in Europe, he has the choice of a dozen of his foreign staff to cover it. A few words on the pad, and in five hours the Berlin correspondent starts for Sweden, or perhaps the Paris man telephones his wife that he is off for Algeciras or Madrid. A pause in the career of a war correspondent for such a paper means to him that for the moment the situation is too indefinite to warrant any immediate action. From day to day he lives with a vague wonder on his mind where the next day will see him. Will he be on his way home, to Europe, Asia, or the Philippines, or perhaps to some unfamiliar place he has to search in the Atlas to find? Surrounded by his campaign baggage and war kit, he sits and waits, ready for a quick call to any quarter of the globe to which the cable may order him.
Peking is too far from the haunts of civilization for one to follow the news of the world day by day. The telegrams are days old, and the papers weeks and months. For over a month the correspondent waited in Peking and played. China is ever the source of interest which ebbs and flows. Now it is on the point of another Boxer outbreak, and next it is in the throes of constitutional reforms. An occasional anti-foreign riot, a Chinese execution, or perhaps even a bomb helps to while away the lazy days, and gives material for intermittent cables on the trend of far eastern politics.
We were waiting on the veranda of the hotel across from the American Legation. At this moment we seem as far from Chicago as from Mars. The sounds and sights of Peking have weaned us from the confusion of a world beyond. Rickshaw coolies squatting outside, the low murmur of their voices, the jingle of a bell on a passing Peking cart, all tend to widen the gulf that separates the East from the West. We are aroused by a voice at our side. “Telegram have got.” It is for me. I take the sheet of paper that in some form or other has found out my quiet in every quarter of the globe. As you tear open the gray envelope you wonder almost subconsciously where the next weeks will take you, and your curiosity hurries your hand as you tear it open and read the curt message dated Chicago, and marked “Rush.”
“Russia direct. When do you start?” Once more the love and fascination of the game surge through your veins. You are too far out of the world to know what is passing for the moment in Russia, but you feel sure it must be something good and big, with promise of long duration, to have brought this urgent cable of five words, ordering you half around the world. You call for a telegraph blank, and as you wait, your mind works almost unconsciously, something unexpressed and involuntary. “Russia direct! The Trans-Siberian road is unquestionably the quickest, providing you can get immediate action, but it is now blocked with troops and munitions of war. Obviously a permit will be necessary. It would take ten days at least to make connections through the State Department and the Petersburg Minister of Railroads to get it. Ten days is too long to wait, and then there are the uncertainties of days besides. The Pacific might do, but the Empress sails from Shanghai to-morrow. You can’t make her, and there is not another fast boat for a fortnight. There is a French or German mail for the Canal surely within a week,” and your mind is made up, and on the arm of your chair you write the reply, “Leaving to-night. Shanghai Monday, thence first steamer Canal,” and sign your name, mark the message “R. T. P.,” which means “Receiver to pay,” and walk to your room. Your Japanese understudy who has been on your staff these many months jumps up. Another man who has been waiting in the corner of the room gets out of his chair. He is an American negro, Monroe D. Morris, who for three weeks has been an anxious candidate for a staff position. Since it is Russia, the Jap is obviously impossible. You tell him so, and he shuffles his feet as he hears the ultimatum, for he had hoped for a trip to Europe. But one man’s meat is another man’s poison, for while the mournful Ikezwap backed up for the last time, the beaming Ethiopian grinned from ear to ear as he rushed to his quarters to throw together his own small belongings.
A few hours sufficed to pack all my effects which, when mobilized, comprised fourteen pieces of impedimenta. The theory is that a war correspondent must move from place to place prepared at any moment to adjust himself to any situation, from a war assignment, revolution or riot, down to the meeting socially of a foreign ambassador. Hence these fourteen pieces, which sound excessive, contained everything from a frock coat and a high hat down to a kitchen camp stove. Saddles, tents, campaign outfits of various kinds take up much room, but are really worth the bother, for when one wants them, that want is a demand that money often cannot meet. One’s own saddle on a hurry call that may mean days of riding is in itself an asset beyond comparison. It may mean all the difference between success and failure. One knows just what one can do with an outfit tried and true, and hence it is worth while lugging it about the world, even if it is used but once or twice.
A few days later saw me and my grinning Ethiopian disembarked on the Bund at Shanghai. The place looked familiar enough, for I had spent weeks there, and this was my fifth visit. Every time I left I felt that I had made a distinct addition to my information as to the wickedness of the world, and every time the desire rested heavily on my mind to write a story about this cosmopolitan mushroom on the China coast, but each time I held my hand as I realized that fate might well bring me back to it, but now that Shanghai is some ten thousand miles away, and the chances of seeing the people who might read such a story remote, I feel that I cannot pass it over without a few comments.
Geographically, the Chinese city is almost at the end of the earth. Morally, one could say, without any hesitation, it is at the end. The only place that can compete with it for demoralization and unrestriction is Port Said. The two are neck and neck for laurels of this description. Shanghai is the final bit of dead water to which the flotsam and jetsam of the stream of life seems to drift and then stop in utter stagnation. People who have failed to make good in all other quarters of the world, seem to turn naturally towards the China coast, and Shanghai lures them as the candle does the moth. There remittance men are as thick as sparrows in springtime. These creatures are the black sheep and younger sons, or other undesirable members of well-to-do families, who are allowed so many pounds a quarter by their loving friends, on the sole condition that the cash must be paid anywhere “east of the Canal.” They drift along through India, over to Burma, down the States of the Malay Peninsula, and with short stops at Singapore and Hongkong, they start straight for their final collapse in Shanghai, where they meet shoals of their fellows, consuming bad whiskey and soda at the bars of the various hotels. These gentlemen form a strong and populous element in the community. Next we find a large colony of alleged business men who have failed to accumulate the fortunes to which their alleged abilities are supposed to have entitled them, and who have come out to China to sell someone a gold brick. These two classes form the matrix of the foreign unattached residents. Then we have the men who are actually attached to some business house with their home office in the States, or back in Europe. These are for the most part doing short sentences, and are fairly respectable. Lastly we have the Shanghai business man, who is one of the most strenuous gentlemen of his kind to be seen the world over. He speculates in shares, of which there is an enormous variety in Shanghai. The operations in the Chicago wheat pit and the New York stock exchange in days of a panic are mild in comparison to the fluctuations observed on any ordinary day’s business in Shanghai stocks. The result is, people are losing and winning fortunes every few hours.