PERILS OF WAR CORRESPONDENTS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 253, 15 March 1913, Page 1 (Supplement)

PERILS OF WAR CORRESPONDENTS

CASUALTIES PROPORTIONATELY HEAVIER THAN SOLDIERS'.

The war in the lialkan* and the news of each encounter must bring to our minds the dangers that war correspondents sometimes have to meet to supply their papers with "copy." Badly as Mr. {'handler, the war correspondent in Tibet, was hacked about by the savage swor'dsmen of the Lhassii Depon in the affair at Guru, be may. nevertheless, thank his lucky stars that he was not taken prisoner by the enemy. For in that ease his captors would almost assuredly Lave put him to a slow and agonising death, as is their well-nigh invariable wont under such circumstances. Indeed, not the superstitious Tibetans alone, but practically all Mongolians, arc especially bitter against the harmless, necessary correspondent. We first found this out during the Chinese "opium war" of 1860, when Mr. Bowby, the Times' representative, after being inveigled within the lines of the Tartar General Sankonlinsin, was seized. carried captive to Pekin. and there tortured to death in an underground dungeon. BENEATH THE WALLS OF THE "FORBIDDEN CITY." It was to avenge this well-nigh unparalleled act of treacherous cruelty that we, iater on in the campaign, burnt the Emperor's summer palace, together with the bulk of the priceless art treasures~it contained Mr. Bowlby was one of the earliest of war correspondents, and one of the most unfortunate. Up to about the middle o! last century the public had perforce to rely upon the official despatches for its information as to how things were going on in a campaign. No journalists, for instance, followed the fortunes of the Afghan war of 1842, ■ which was lucky for them, for our entire I army of 16,000 men were exterminated | in the Khyber Pass by the wild Ghiizas, only one man, Dr. Brydon, escaping. In the Crimea were several, English and French, but they for the most part viewed the fighting from safe distances, and there were but few casualties. Nor does this imply any remissness on their part. Before the days of rifled lirearms it was quite possible to see all there was to see of a battle, without running into danger. Now, of course, all this is changed. With siege guns that carry ten miles, with field batteries having a range of four miles, and with rifles that kill at two miles, the war corresp6ndelit who is not prepared to incur danger might as well stay at home. Indeed, experience has proved that in modern wars the percentage of casualties among journalists is actually far in excess of that prevailing among the fighting rank and file. A HEAVY TOLL. For example, in the petty Servian campaign of 187G there were twelve correspondents who kept the field and went under lire. Of these three were killed, and four were wounded. In the Rnsso-Turkish war of 1878, of seventy-live correspondents who started only three saw it through to the end. Their names were Millet (of the Daily News), Grant (of the Times) and Villi ers (of the Graphic). Among those who succumbed was .MacGaban, of the Daily News, the "man who made the war-." This he did, of course, by his vivid account of the "Bulgarian atrocities," which, cabled to his paper from that country, and re-transmitted to Russia, roused there a fury that naugtit but | blood could quench. MacGaban died, at ! the age of thirty-two. of malignant typhus supervening on a broken leg and other injuries. The Franco-Prussian war of 1870 was the first really big conflict to be followed step by step by modem correspondents in the modern fashion, and as a result some eighty of them were severely wounded, while eighteen were killed outright. Of these latter none died more gallantly than Pemberton. of the Times. Indefatigable, no less in lending aid to the wounded than in pursuit of news, he exposed himself freely and fearlessly on the shell-swept field of Sedan, and was blown to pieces towards the close of the action by a, stray projectile. The Soudan has been especially greedy of the lives of journalists. The first to leave bis bones there was O'Donovan. of the Daily News, who perished when Hicks Pasha's army of ten thousand men were destroyed near El Obeid. in November. 1573.

Xhc tost was Howard, of tlip Xcw York Tlcrald, wlio, at tlio capture of Omdurman in September. ISOS. ventured into the city while our batteries on the opposite side of' the river still bombarding it, and was hit and killed by almost the very last shell fired. On the same occasion, too, Colonel Frank Rhodes, brother of the great Cecil, was severely wounded. He was acting at the time as the correspondent of a, London illustrated paper.

And besides these there were many others. Mr. Power's fate, for instance, was an especially sad one. Shut up with Oordon in Khartoum, he volunteered to try to open up communications with tlie advance guard of Wolseley's annv.

For this purpose Gordon lent him a, steamer and fortv men. But treachery was at work. The pilot, who was in the pay of the Khalifa, cast the little craft on an island, and in the twinkling of an eve thev were massacred.

Xext foil Sir Leger Herbert, of the Morning Post, and Cameron, of the Standard, hoth of whom were shot dead by Dervish snipers on the evening of tlie dav following the battle of Abn TClca.

Tint their fate was a merciful one compared with that of Oliver Pain, the voting French journalist, who. with a foolhanliness that only just missed being heroic, actually succeeded in penetrating to the Mahdis' headquarters in the wilds of Kordefan.

Fanatical hatred of England led him to adopt this suicidal policy, the paper he represented being the Tntransigeant. M. Henri Pochefort's Anglophobilo organ. Of course, the Mahdi refused to recognise him or his mission. \either would he allow him to depart, affecting to regard him as a spv. And. in the end, the unhappy yonth PFPTSHRD MISERAP.TA' OF STAPVATTOX. The fate of Vizetelly, of the Pictorial world, was long in doubt. It is now known that he was killed very early in I he lirsl campaign. Cordon, of the Manilieslcr Cnardian. perished miserably of lhirst in the heart of the desert, while bravely pressing forward on : foot to gather news for his paper.- "Dick" Wake, the Craphic's representative at Smikin. was killed bv a spent bullet just outside the walk of the town. In the Cuban-American war twentythree correspondents lost their lives, and an incredible number-were- invalided home suffering from yellow fever. Perhaps the most splendid among not. a few line examples of journalistic heroism incidental to this affair was that afforded by Kdward Marshall, a young New York pressman. lie had been shot through the spine, ond afler he had been told by the doc-

tors Unit lie bad but a little while U; live, he set to work to write Lis despatch to Lis piper as lie, lay bleeding to death on a blanket. (!. W. Stevens was, perhaps, the best known of many journalists wbu "laid down their lives (luriny the reeetit Boer war. Shut up with White in Lady.suiilh, typhoid seized him. Jn the days of eonvaleseenee, heart weakness revealed itself, and all was over. The first casualty in this campaign was sustained by Knight, of the Morning l'ost, whose arm was so badly shattered by an "explosive" or '•soft-nosed" bullet, that it had to be amputated near the shoulder, and Lis life was for a long time in imminent danger. Altogether, from the beginning of the protracted struggle to the final surrender if the Boer remnant at Vereenigirig, some thirty correspondents of all nations were killed or died of disease, and about one hundred received wounds more or jess severe. Of course, a profession so hazardous and nerve-frying is a'well-salaried one. A possibly envious and almost certainly impecunious subaltern declared that the Pressmen in the Transvaal were "paid lik/j princes, and treated like ambassadors." Without going quite so far as to endorse this, it may be stated, without fear of contradiction, that the disbursements of newspaper proprietors to their great correspondents in this, the last of Britain's great \vars, far exceeded in lavishness anything ever known before in the history of journalism. One hundred pounds a month and "everything found" was the usual rate of remuneration. But £l5O was not uncommon. And at least three correspondents received over £2OOO a year apiece. , |