REQUIRES TO BE A PHENOMENON FELLOW.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1246, 13 January 1883, Page 3

REQUIRES TO BE A PHENOMENON FELLOW.

Tsu i* the kind of man according to Archibald Forbes that a special war Correspondent requires to be. It was of no nae for a correspondent to witness a battle unless he could graphically describe it; it was useless to be able to write brilliantly unless the correspondent was a man who, having witnessed the battle, was able to ride perhaps hundreds of miles in order to get his account into the nearest telegraph station. He had frequently endeavored to picture to himself what a war correspondent should be, and his idea was something as fellows i —He should be endowed in the first place with the gift of tongues; he should : %o able to converse in all the European and most of the Asiatic lanand have a smattering at least languages used by the African blacks. He Mould have the sweet angelic temper of a woman. ' He should be as affable as a politician canvassing for votes, and at the same time be able to take care of himself and to show that it would be unwise to take any liberties with him. He should be able to ride anything from a giraffe to a rat. He should have the strength to do without sleep; and after a battle to ride say a hundred miles, and then write at the rate of a column an hour for six or eight hours at a stretch. These and many other qualifications he considered absolutely necessary for the perfect correspondent to possess. But there never was such a man. He thought that Julius Cesar would have made a useful member of the profession, if he could have weaned himself from the meaner avocations of commanding armies, conquering countries, and ruling nations ; Napoleon 1., if be could only have been a little truthful at times, would have knocked Dr Bussell into a “ coeked hat." But, without even approaching to perfection, it waa necessary for the correspondent of the present day not merely to view a battle from a distance but to take his full share of the danger, for the siege guns that sent their shot several miles, field artillery that carried four miles, and rifles that would kill without benefit of clergy at two miles, it was impossible to see much and yet be out of danger. The correspondent must be able to sit down with the shells bursting and bullets whistling around him as calmly as if he were merely watching his bosom friend having his teeth extracted, and there write in pencil, in a bold round hand that should be legible by a telegraphist who did not understand the language in which it was written, the despatch that was to appear in the morning papers next day hundreds or thousand of miles away.