AN EDITORIAL SWAN SONG

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 161, 2 April 1919, Page 9

AN EDITORIAL SWAN SONG

LAST OF-THE "TRENCH .TOURNAL.'.'

I met the editor as I entered, and he broke (he news to. me; "We are preparing our Mvan-sc-ngj'. lie announced. "The sub-editor is writing compliments about.the- staff arid enlarging on the arduous duties of sub-editors generally." ■

It was a. peculiar- little editorial • office I'was in. It consisted of a bollteirt containing v table, ■ two wooden forms, a pot of paste, two or three pencils, a typewriter, and Various! scraps of nianuiicript. The confusion. indicated that.:-something unusual "Was- about to happen.- . The "Gazette" was going to press for tho last lime. One of the most pathetic things in the world is tho winding-up of a newspaper, and even a humble ''trench" magazine''has its pathos. - On the various-.lighting fronts to-day famous little publications are finishing up a long and successful run. They lave been produced, in most cases, in the firing-line, and, overcoming innumerable difficulties and laughing at death and destruction, they have struggled on and lightened the task of our soldiers by their plucky reappearance each wetik. Journalists have been sought out 'to serve the. occasion from all ranks and conditions. Typewriters,' : papers, pencils, and some kind of offices have' all been spirited from somewhere. Editors have been killed and their places have been filled by their sub-editors. In one little magazine in France- not one of the original editorial staff lived to read the last. Words of'the paper they brought into being. Mart came and went, but the paper was preserved somehow. And .now these little papers are all being scrapped. , The editor is writing his last editorial. "Aunt Vera," it indust;!clied young gunner; is giving his last advice oil love affairs to imaginary correspondents, and doling out his beauty secrets to fictitious "subs" for the last time. # Tho typist is making his final complaints about tho illegibility of the sub-editor's handwriting, and "Autolycus" is asking his last pertinent question in the "Things -we want to know" page. Editorial offices in the shape of dugouts,, bell-tents, and broken-down huts are being stripped for the great dispersal, for the "Squib," "Rocket," or "Patrol" will go to press no more. There is the natural joy at the thought of departure, but there is also, in these little editorial offices, a tinge of sad-ness.-"W.S.'," in the "Daily Mail."