I
The Ministers and Ambassadors who have represented the United States in England have an interest individually and as a body. So long a line of men, mostly distinguished, is almost a dynasty. Some of them are totally forgotten. Some are remembered faintly. Some have left a lasting impression. I have known a round dozen of them. The public memory is short. If I say that to Mr. Charles Francis Adams it was permitted to do a greater service to his country abroad than to any American since Franklin—or since his grandfather, John Adams, who might perhaps as a diplomatist be ranked above Franklin—if I say this, there are Americans to whom it will seem doubtful. But since Adams's greater service consisted in a just menace of war to England if she let loose the Alexandra, the current histories, written in days when every act of hostility to England was applauded, right or wrong, have done him justice. He was right, a thousand times right, and we cannot remember it too often.
But what Americans ought also to remember is this, that when Mr. Adams flung his glove in Lord Russell's face it was done neither from temper nor impulse. It was the considered act of a Minister who had weighed all the chances, who had made up his mind that open war was better than covert hostility, and that it belonged to him to accept the responsibility. Whether Mr. Seward would have backed up his Minister may be a question, had the Minister's "This means war" been met by Lord Russell with "Then war it is." But the British Government knew—even Lord Palmerston knew—they were in the wrong; and they gave way. But they gave way only because Mr. Adams had put the alternative of war before them. It was very far from being his only service or his only triumph, but it was the greatest of all.
It is not too much to say that the diplomatic fortunes of the United States were in the hands of the American Minister to Great Britain from 1861 to 1863; and, indeed, to the end of the Civil War. A weak man, or an incompetent Minister, would have brought us to the dust. Adams, of course, was neither. He was a match for anybody in his business as Minister. He had the intellectual qualities and he had the personal qualities. Moreover, he was an Adams. He belonged to the governing classes, to one of the few great American families in whom the traditions and gifts of government are hereditary. The philosopher who divided the population of Massachusetts intomen, women, and Adamses made a strictly scientific distribution. The Adamses were of that minority which, under one name or another and in all countries alike, governs. It governs none the less when it sees fit to allow the democracy to believe itself all-powerful than when it takes command as an aristocracy.
I knew Mr. Adams. Mr. R. H. Dana, Jr., who smoothed so many paths for me, gave me a letter to him. This was in 1867. The days of tumult and conflict were over. His great work was done, but he remained Minister till 1868. The legation was then in Portland Place. Mr. Moran was Secretary of Legation; an excellent official whose service in that position in London lasted seventeen years, and was finally rewarded by promotion to Lisbon as Minister. He was a good watchdog. A secretary, of whatever rank, has to be that. Like Horatius, he has to keep the bridge, albeit, against his own countrymen. They are the Volscians. When I asked to see Mr. Adams Mr. Moran very properly wished to know why, and when I produced Mr. Dana's letter Mr. Moran seemed to think it was addressed to him, and not till I had explained that it was Mr. Dana's, who was Mr. Adams's friend, and that I had no other business than to present this letter, did Mr. Moran's vigilance relax. We became friends afterwards.
When I saw the Minister he departed a little from his official manner, greeted me kindly, and said: "You have brought me a very strong letter. What can I do for you?" When I thanked himand said I wanted nothing, he relaxed a little further, laughed a little, and observed that most of his countrymen who called at the legation had an object. He talked with a singular precision; his was a mind of precision, like the modern rifle, equally good at short range and long if you adjust the sights. But good as was his talk, what impressed you most was the silent power of the man; the force in reserve, the solidity and the delicate temper of the metal.
I dwell a moment on the relations between travelling Americans and their legation or embassy—which to the untravelled may seem unimportant—because, now as much as ever and perhaps more than ever, the duties of a Minister, of an Ambassador, of the embassy, are so often misunderstood by that portion of the public from America which is intent on immediate admission to Buckingham Palace. I have known many secretaries since Mr. Moran's time. They have been, as a rule, willing and competent, really desirous to be of service to their countrymen.
There is no other embassy than the American on which such demands are made as on ours in London and in Paris, and to some extent in other capitals. These demands are addressed first of all to the Ambassador or Ambassadress. I will take a single instance. There is each year a large number of Americans who desire to be presented at Court, and who think it the duty of the Ambassador to arrange for their presentation. Many of these applications are sent byletter well in advance of their coming. There are hundreds of such applications—literally hundreds; four or five hundred this year from American ladies who thought themselves, and were, worthy to appear before the King and Queen at one of the three Courts presently to be held. The number of presentations which the Ambassadress is entitled to make at each of the three Courts is four. That is a rule, an ordinance of the King who has the sole authority in such matters. Sometimes, in some special case, upon reason assigned, the rule is relaxed and a presentation may be made outside of it. But all such requests are rigidly scrutinized and the margin is very narrow. The exceptions are units.
In these circumstances, with four hundred candidates for four presentations, what is an unhappy Ambassadress to do? The American, used to the easy ways prevailing at the White House, supposes they must be equally easy at Buckingham Palace; or that, upon a word from the American Ambassador, in these days of pleasant Anglo-American relations, all doors will fly open. If they do not, each one of the four hundred regards hers, as a case for exceptional favour. She has come three thousand or four or six thousand miles in order to lend the distinction of her republican presence to these royal functions. What is an Ambassador for if not to give effect to these good intentions? The Lord Chamberlain stands at the door with a drawn sword, but is an American Ambassador to be intimidated by a mere officer of the RoyalHousehold? It is in vain to answer that even a King has a right to say whom he can receive and whom he cannot.Le charbonnier est maître chez soi, but not, they think, the King of England.
The perplexities arising out of this American eagerness to witness these royal splendours are innumerable. The resentment arising out of inevitable refusals is a burden which every Ambassador has to bear; and every secretary too. Grievances are of many kinds. It is not so many years since an American Minister was asked by cable—almost ordered—by a distinguished fellow-countryman to engage lodgings for him in London. It is not many more since an eminent statesman, arriving after Levees and Drawing-rooms were over, desired a secretary to arrange that he and his family should take tea with the Queen at Windsor Castle.
These are cases occurring not in musical comedy but in actual life. There are others, relating not to royalty but to society, and to various forms of English life. But it is already only too evident that the diplomatic duties of an Ambassador are not his only anxieties. The others, so far as I know anything about them, have always been borne cheerfully. Everything has been done for the American in London that could be done. He is taken care of to an extent that the Briton abroad never is, nor ever expects to be. But to all human effort there is a limit.
II
MR. JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY
Since Mr. Adams's retirement in 1868 we have had three Ambassadors whose ability as diplomatists entitles them to places in the front rank. If you take account of other kinds of ability and of Ministers, there are more than three. Mr. Motley was a brilliant historian whose "Rise of the Dutch Republic" and "History of the United Netherlands" gave him a lasting European reputation and added distinction to American literature. But neither his six years of service as Minister to Austria, 1861-7, nor his year and a half in England, 1869-70, proved him a great diplomatist.
Austria was not then, and is not now, of the first importance from an American point of view. We respect her wise old Emperor. We do not, I think, agree with Mr. Gladstone in saying you can nowhere put your finger on the map and say, "Here Austrian rule has been beneficent." She never was a model to us and is not now. But since we like courage, and clear-sighted decision, and the recognition of facts, and like the men who have these gifts, we have not joined very heartily in the European outcry against the Austrian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. We are a world-power for certain purposes only. We stand aloof from purely European complications. They are, as a rule, no affair of ours. We learned to our cost, or possibly our mortification, not verylong ago, that Austria, "effete" or not, was capable of giving us a lesson in diplomacy; or, at least, in diplomatic etiquette; by which we, or our late President, may or may not have profited.
Mr. Motley, though he wrote excellent dispatches and made no diplomatic or social mistakes in that difficult Austrian capital, had not the smooth temper or the patient arts which are essential to success at critical moments. He was impetuous, explosive, rhetorical; prone to interpret his instructions in the light of his own wishes or convictions. Socially he was a force, even in Vienna, because of his personal charm, his distinction of appearance and of manner. Socially speaking, he was an aristocrat. He was the first American Minister in London to establish himself in a house suitable to the dignity of the post, Lord Yarborough's, in Arlington Street. He was known to be Count Bismarck's friend. That of itself gave him a kind of celebrity, for Count Bismarck was then a comparatively unfamiliar personage in England, where the outlook of the average man on the Continental horizon is not wide.
One of the first questions Count Bismarck asked me when I first talked with him in the Wilhelmstrasse in 1866 was whether I knew Motley.
"Yes."
"Are you going to Vienna?"
"Yes."
"Then of course you will see Motley. Be sure you give him a message from me—a warm message. I have never forgotten our university daystogether at Göttingen; our friendship. He knows that, but tell him again. And tell him I hope to see him in Berlin before he goes home."
As he spoke, there came into the eyes of the Iron Chancellor a look I had not seen before. The steel-blue softened into the blue of the skies; after rain, as the Chinese say. His friendship for Motley was an affectionate friendship. Later, I talked with Motley about Bismarck and of course delivered my message.
"Yes," said Motley, "we were boys together at Göttingen. His was a different life from mine. I dare say you have heard the stories about young Bismarck's exploits. In those matters he was like most students of his time and of his class. The Prussian Junker is a being by himself. But we became friends, and friends we have remained. We don't meet often, but the friendship has never died out nor decayed."
Another thing made Motley far otherwise popular in England; his passionate Americanism. Mr. Price Collier is of opinion that Englishmen do not like Americans. I do not agree with Mr. Collier, but, whether they do or not, they like an American to be an American. They liked Mr. Motley because his patriotism burst forth in all companies and at all times. It made him, or tended to make him, reluctant to compromise on any question where the interests of his country were concerned. But compromise is of the essence of diplomacy; most of all as between the greatest Powers of the World. If nobody ever yieldedanything, negotiations could end only in surrender or in war; the two things which it is the business of diplomacy to avoid. Nothing Motley ever did in diplomacy was of such service to his country as his two letters toThe Times, early in the Civil War, and his memorable outburst in the Athenæum Club. To write the letters he violated the unwritten law of diplomacy, for he was then Minister to Austria. To make the Athenæum speech—for it was nothing less—he departed from the other unwritten law which makes a club neutral ground, and makes anything like an oration impossible.
But Motley had among other qualities the quality of courage. His invective in the Athenæum against the very classes among whose representatives he stood was magnificent, and it came very near being war, or a declaration of war. He would keep no terms with the men who were enemies of his country in such a crisis as that. If it had been anybody but Motley who thundered against the ignorance and prejudice of the Confederate allies who then gave the tone to English society, I imagine the Committee of the Club might have taken notice. But Motley fascinated while he rebuked. When he had done denouncing them as renegades to English ideas and enemies to liberty, they liked him the better. I can think of no incident so like this as Plimsoll's defiance of the House of Commons, when he rushed into the middle of the floor and charged his fellow-members with sacrificing the lives of Englishsailors to the cupidity of English ship-owners, and so compelled the House to adopt the load-line.
History has taken note of Plimsoll's exploit. Motley's may never appear in pages which aim at historical dignity. But to this day, when near half a century has passed, Motley's is still remembered; still spoken of; still admired. There are men living who heard him. The English do not entirely like being reminded of their mistakes about us at that period, but they bear no malice against the man whose admonition did much to bring them to their senses. On the contrary, through all these forty-odd years, you might have heard Motley spoken of with admiring good-will.
Before all things, he loved his own country. Next to his own country,longo intervallo, he loved England, and it may be doubted whether we have ever sent a Minister, or anybody else to England whom the English themselves have loved as they loved Motley. His deep blue eyes shine starlike across all that interval of years. He carried his head high. His stature was well above the usual stature of men. In all companies he was conspicuous for beauty and for his bearing. And from the confusion and forgetfulness of that crowded period he still emerges, a living force, a brilliant memory; an American, as Dean Stanley said of him, "in whom the aspirations of America and the ancient culture of Europe were united."
There is supposed to be still a mystery about his recall by President Grant. But it is an open-airmystery. Grant struck at Sumner through Motley. Any weapon was thought good enough to beat Sumner with. Motley was his friend, Sumner had made him Minister. It was deemed possible to humiliate Sumner and to teach him a lesson. The interests of the country were not allowed to stand in the way of this high purpose, and so Motley went. Or rather, he did not go. Asked to resign in July, 1870, he disregarded that request. Grant hesitated; or perhaps Mr. Fish, then Secretary of State, hesitated. But in November of the same year, Motley was recalled; an act without precedent and happily never repeated. No charges were made. There were none to make. Motley's diplomatic record, his personal character, were spotless. The childish scandal started at Vienna never had a rag of evidence to support it; nor anything behind it but anonymous personal animosity. His departure from England left no stain upon anybody except upon President Grant, and upon such officers and Ministers of his as stooped to be the instruments of his ill-will.
III
TWO MINISTERS AND TWO AMBASSADORS
Mr. Lowell may be compared with Mr. Motley as an example of our American method of appointing Ministers who not only are not—for they could not be—trained diplomats, but whose character is essentially undiplomatic. Mr. Motley was, however, so much more a man of the worldthan Mr. Lowell that they cannot be bracketed. There is a similarity but no identity. Until Lowell came to London he was a recluse. Motley had never been that. Lowell had been a professor in Harvard University. Motley, though a student and historian, was not what the English call "Donnish," whereas Lowell had often the air of lecturing the company, as if a company of pupils. Delightful as his talk was, the touch of the pedagogue was there. Indeed, it may be doubted whether life in a university, which is a world by itself, is ever a good training for diplomacy. An Ambassador ought to be a man of the world—it is perhaps the first and highest of his qualifications—but not a man of a world. A thorough knowledge of the Greek aorist or of the proceedings of Antigonus in Asia Minor is not needed in the conduct of delicate negotiations; nor did Lowell find his familiarity with Spanish literature of much use at the Foreign Office, or in that larger foreign office known as English Society.
Society was to Lowell in the beginning of his English experiences a stumbling-block; and to the end he only too often made a misstep. He was liked all the same. The English are a people who can make allowances, nor do they expect a non-Englishman to be cast in an English mould. They recognized his positive merits. They did not dwell on what they thought defects. I suppose I have before now told what I always thought a characteristic saying of an English host, as Lowell drove away from his door:
"I need not tell you how much I like Lowell and how delighted I am to have him here as often as he will come. But from the moment he enters my house till he is gone I am in a panic."
The panic into which this genial host fell was due to Lowell's fighting spirit; surely not the spirit of a diplomatist. To that and to a passion for accuracy which he allowed to become pedantic and aggressive. He left behind him a path strewn with victims; a renown for brilliancy; a just repute for many amiable and delightful traits. But the qualities essential to a Minister were not among them.
Mr. E. J. Phelps, who came after him, was a lawyer, and a lawyer may perhaps be expected to be more combative than a professor; but it was not so. Mr. Phelps took Mr. Lowell's house in Lowndes Square; a respectable dwelling in a very good square, but by no means an ideal legation. When Mr. Phelps became its tenant the atmosphere changed; the climate was a softer climate. The amelioration was due, in part, to Mrs. Phelps, who was beloved. Mrs. Lowell had been an invalid. Her husband used to say: "My wife has no acquaintance and I have no invention"—as an excuse for social shortcomings. But Mrs. Phelps knew a great many people and charmed those whom she knew.
It is doubtful whether an abler man than Mr. Phelps ever came from the United States to London as Minister. He was hailed at once as a brother by his brethren of the Bar; and they puthim on a level with their best. His simplicity of character, his humour, his truthfulness, were evident to everybody. Intellectually he was anybody's equal. As Minister he had, like all his predecessors, his trade to learn. But he soon learned what was essential; learned diplomacy as if it were a new cause he had to master for a great trial. His mind was judicial. He ought to have been Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
With the promise of a nomination to that great post in his pocket, he went home; but he returned. The will of Mr. Pat Collins, of Boston—hating Phelps because he would not, as Minister, be the instrument of Irish ill-will to England—had proved stronger than the will or the word of the President. Mr. Cleveland's surrender, no doubt under strong political pressure, deprived us of Mr. Phelps's services as Chief Justice and he became a law lecturer at Yale. He was a jurist who would have adorned either place. He was also an orator who leaped into fame by a single speech, at the farewell dinner given him in London; although, indeed, his speech at a dinner of welcome on his arrival was scarcely less felicitous. "A masterpiece of oratory dignified, eloquent, and pathetic," said Lord Rosebery, a judge of oratory if there be one.
We have sent to England so many different kinds of Ministers and Ambassadors that they must be praised—and, happily, most of them can be praised—with discrimination, and also with brevity, for I cannot go on for ever writing on asingle topic. I pass to Mr. Hay. The mansion Mr. Hay leased in Carlton House Terrace was, like all those on the south side of that short street looking on St. James's Park, adequate and even imposing. It was like unto the larger one on the corner, formerly Lord Ardilaun's, now Lord Ridley's. When Mr. Blaine entered it one evening at a concert he said to the friend who was with him: "This is the first really palatial house to which you have brought me." Not a palace, but palatial.
Mr. Hay knew as well as any American then living, or better, what a part social influences could be made to play in diplomatic life. He played that part with distinction. He was born for it. He had cultivated his natural gifts in half a dozen European capitals. He had such a knowledge of England and the English people that it has always seemed a pity he did not write a book about them. But he left a record as Ambassador which tells the story. He was a man who carried his point without a collision. He loved England and was beloved. When President McKinley sent for him to come home and be Secretary of State Hay said: "I am a soldier and must obey orders. But all my fun in life is over."
As it turned out it was not over. A still greater career opened before him, and he was the first American Secretary of State to make an imaginative use of his opportunities, and a great name in Europe and Asia alike. He was the first American Secretary of State to take the lead in aworld-embracing policy; to unite the European Powers in support of it; to extract a binding pledge even from Russia; to bring Japan, not very willingly, into this charmed circle; and to lay the foundations of American influence in China broad and deep. We often talk of America as a world-power. We have a right to, and whatever be the more recent, and perhaps in some cases rather doubtful, extensions of our authority, we owe what is best and most lasting in our position abroad to Hay.
None of all this could Hay foresee when he quitted London for Washington. What he knew was that he was relinquishing a place for which he had proved his fitness, and embarking upon the unknown. This sorrow at leaving England was genuine, and the sorrow of his English friends, and—if ever there be such a thing as a general sorrow—of the English public, was not less.
The late Queen said of Hay: "He is the most interesting of all the Ambassadors I have known." If the authority for this is wanted, it was said by the Queen to Lord Pauncefote, then British Ambassador to the United States; and Lord Pauncefote repeated it to me, with leave to repeat it to others, as I now do; by no means for the first time.
To Mr. Hay succeeded Mr. Choate. I hope it will be taken as a compliment if I say Mr. Choate was better liked the longer he stayed. He had, when he arrived, a frankness of speech which is sometimes called American; and is, no doubt, characteristic of certain individual Americans.There is in Mr. Henry James'sBostoniansan American banker settled in England to whom his son, provoked by a remark of the father to a noble lord who was his guest, observes:
"Well, father, you have lived here a long time, and you have learned some of the things they say, but you haven't learnt the things they don't say."
It is inevitable. In new social circumstances, time is of the essence. It is no reproach to Mr. Choate that he found it so. He had, and has, an exuberant wit; one somewhat contemptuous of conventions and established forms. He poured it out in floods. He gave free scope to its caprices. When it had become chastened by experience, the English delighted in it; as we Americans have long delighted in it. But time was needed on both sides. The English and Mr. Choate had to become accustomed to each other. In the end they did. A beautiful harmony grew up, and before Mr. Choate went home he was an accepted figure in the society which at first had sometimes a questioning spirit. He, too, lived as an Ambassador ought to live; and in Carlton House Terrace, like Mr. Hay. From the beginning the Foreign Office had found in him, in Bismarck's phrase, a man with whom it was possible to do business. For he had a kind of preternatural rapidity in mastering great affairs, and a marked skill in the composition of public addresses.
They were both from Boston. In the days when they first became known in England and began their work of conciliation as between England and the United States, Boston was still Boston, and New York had only begun to be New York. The latter statement may be challenged, but the very men who take most pride in the New York of to-day ought to be the first to accept it. For Manhattan was not then the magnet, as London has always been, which drew to itself whatever was best from other parts of the land. Boston was still the Athens of America. There were excellent names elsewhere and at least one man of genius who owed neither birth nor culture to Boston; but the capital of Massachusetts was none the less the literary capital of the United States. Emerson, Holmes, Lowell, Longfellow, Agassiz, R. H. Dana, Jr., were all living and all in the fulness of their powers. Theodore Parker, the greatest force in the American pulpit, was just dead. Chief Justice Shaw had been for thirty years the head of the judiciary of his own state and a revered authority throughout the Union.Wendell Phillips had no rival as an orator. Harvard was the first of American colleges. The ideas of New England, which were the ideas of Boston, had spread and taken root, and new commonwealths in the West were nourished on them; nay, these ideas and these conceptions of law and social order were the foundation stones on which new States were built. No theologian had arisen to dim the fame—a great yet sombre fame—of Jonathan Edwards. Daniel Webster, "disappointed, defeated, slept by the solemn waves of the Atlantic," but you cannot think of Boston or of Massachusetts without him; nor did the disasters of his last years much lessen the homage paid him at death or his immense influence on the political thought of the whole country.
If the intellectual pre-eminence of Boston in those days was somewhat grudgingly admitted by New York, it was incontestable. New York presently redressed the balance, not so much by her own creative efforts as by drawing much of what there was best in Boston to the banks of the Hudson. I believe Mr. Howells's migration at a later period was thought to be the decisive sign; one of many. Commercial influences prevailed over the purer influences of literature. The publisher took command. But I apprehend that Mr. Howells did not forsake the Charles for the Hudson without many regrets. The atmosphere was not the same. Old Abernethy used to say: "If you live in the best air in the world, leave it and go to the second best." Unconsciously,perhaps, Mr. Howells obeyed that medical prescription. He went to the second best.
Did he find a Tavern Club in New York? Over thenoctes coenæqueof that pleasant company in Boston Mr. Howells used to preside, with a genial charm all his own. It was so long ago that I may be forgiven if I remember in print one of those evenings which owed so much to his presiding genius. He spoke and was the cause of speaking in others. He had the tact which drew from others more than they supposed they had to give. He gently compelled the most reluctant of guests from their chairs. There was a brief eulogy on the victim. It was Mr. Howells's art to paint a portrait so vivid, albeit flattering, it needed no name to be recognized. "If," said he, "you were in any doubt of his identity, you will recognize him by the look of determined unconsciousness on his face."
I reckon it among the highest of Mr. Howells's many services that he has been at times an interpreter between England and America, and in more senses than one. There is a sense in which every American writer who reaches an English audience is an interpreter, or, better still, an Ambassador, the business of an Ambassador being to keep the peace. For when Lord Dufferin was complimented on his diplomatic fame he answered: "Ah, that is all a mistake. So long as we succeed you never hear of us. It is when we have failed that the world begins to know of our existence."
That, however, is amalàproposanecdote, andtells the other way; but in such papers as these there must be anecdotes. Mr. Howells was not a silent Ambassador, and he would not have been an Ambassador had he been silent. His books spoke for him. The English thought, and still think, that his writings had some qualities which it does not suit the parent stock to consider distinctively American. They liked the reserve, the simplicity, the continual though implicit reference to English literature. It was partly because of the homage he paid to the great masters that they presently came to accept him also as a master. They were quite aware that his homage was sometimes reluctant. When it went further and, as in his unlucky criticism of the greatest of English masters in fiction, became a caricature, they resented it but they bore no malice. How can you bear malice against a writer with so much sweetness of nature as Mr. Howells?
Besides, what he has written about England is sympathetic; and is thought sympathetic by the English. If it be also at times critical, the English accept the criticism as it is meant. Nothing is truer about them than their indifference to criticism. They regard Mr. Howells's essays as so many studies, and these studies as interpretative. What he has lately been writing of provincial towns is almost a revelation to the Londoner, who himself is sometimes called provincial, and does not mind.
Another Bostonian, Mr. Henry James, took a longer flight still; all the way from Boston toLondon and so to Paris and Italy, in all of which he is equally at home. It was, I think, Colonel Higginson who, in his patriotic impatience of the expatriated American, winged a shaft at Mr. James, and at those who called him cosmopolitan. "In order to be truly cosmopolitan," said this eminent colonel, "a man ought to know something of his own country." To which Mr. James has lately made the best possible reply by a book on his own country which is an appreciation like no other of recent days. And I will say this, that if Colonel Higginson supposes an American or a Russian or a Japanese can win favour with the English by trying to be English he is profoundly mistaken. The English like an American to be an American. If he is a writer, they like his writings to be American.
Who are the American authors most popular in England? I will take the dead only. They are Hawthorne, Emerson, Lowell, Longfellow, Holmes, Dana, and Walt Whitman; others, perhaps, but if there are others they are all like these I have named, American to the finger-tips, American in thought, in language, in method; nay, if you like, in accent. That is why they are relished in England. I do not include Poe. He is better understood in France than in England; his genius is perhaps more Gallic than Saxon. So much so that when the American Ambassador delivered a discourse at the celebration in London of Poe's centennial, it was as if he had spoken on a topic remote from the minds of this English people. They readhim because he was American Ambassador, or because he was Mr. Whitelaw Reid, and for his graceful mastery of the topic and of the English language. But to them he seemed to be announcing a discovery.
When Mr. Henry James adopted his new manner—the manner in which all his books sinceThe Awkward Agehave been produced—his English readers turned away from him, or many of them did. The change coincided, or nearly so, with his change from pen and ink to dictation; a perilous experiment. But, whatever else may be said of it, Mr. James has gradually won back his English public. To them the matter is more than the manner, as in Mr. Meredith's case also. The American is now thought a more distinguished writer than before. I use the word distinguished as he uses it, meaning that he has more distinction as a writer and turns out more distinguished work. They are no longer repelled by his colloquialisms, by his Gallicisms, by his obscurities, by his involutions of structure, or by the labyrinthine length of his sentences. Through all these, they now perceive, pierces the true genius of the man. Therefore is he another Ambassador, another of those Americans who, from having become known abroad, have added lustre to the fame of their own country where, in European estimation, it most needs lustre, namely, in the domain of letters.
By the time the New Yorker of to-day has read thus far, if he has read, it may have become clearto him how great a part of all the renown in literature we have abroad comes to us from Boston. All the American writers best known here and most read, Whitman excepted, are of Boston, or of the State of which Boston is, or was, the final expression. If another exception were to be made it would be Lincoln, whose greatest pieces of prose, and most of all the Gettysburg address, are well known to Englishmen who know anything of America. If what Dr. Jonson said in the preface to his dictionary, "The chief glory of every people arises from its authors," be true, then what do we Americans not owe to Boston? Supposing, that is, we care for the judgment of a foreign nation, which Browning declared to be like the judgment of posterity.
For some of these Bostonians London has a personal affection. Emerson is beloved. Lowell was an immense favourite; a favourite notwithstanding his combativeness in a society which prefers toleration to excursions on the warpath. Holmes during his visits here was idolized, and as the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table he is idolized, and quoted day in and day out. Of Longfellow's Poems in the pre-copyright days more copies were sold than of Tennyson, and when he was here the English thought him almost one of themselves. Dana'sTwo Years Before the Mastis the one story of the sea which, among many rivals, seems likely to be immortal in England, and is, meantime, the one which in circulation year after year far exceeds all others. And Dana was one of thoseAmericans on whom the English found an English birthmark.
There was a time when Mr. James and Mr. Howells used to be bracketed, as if they hunted in couples; which was not a discriminating view, though a popular view. It expressed itself in the jingle about "Howells and James Young Men," of which the music-hall was the proper home; and there it related to a firm in Regent Street, now extinct. But it was sung by the daughters of a house where Mr. James was a guest, and almost in his hearing, to the horror of its mistress. To all popularity there are penalties. But the popularity of Mr. James is perennial.
I
Returning to New York in the early autumn of 1866 and spending the winter inThe Tribuneoffice, I was again sent abroad the following year, this time under an agreement to remain till 1870. I was to go as the exponent of a new theory of American journalism in Europe, a theory based on the belief that the cable had altered all the conditions of international news gathering and that a new system had to be created. I had been long enough in London and on the Continent to be convinced that London must become the distributing centre of European news for America. I talked it over with Mr. Young on my return. Mr. Young had a mind open to new ideas and he was unusually quick in deciding. But this suggestion struck him at first as a proposal to impair the authority of the managing editorship. He thought, naturally, there ought to be but one executive head, and that a European manager, no matter how strictly subordinated tohis chief in New York, would, at such a distance, acquire too much independence. The proposal, moreover, was far-reaching and had no precedent; not that the want of a precedent troubled Mr. Young much. He had spent much of his time as managing editor ofThe Tribunein disregarding precedents and laying down laws of his own. But this scheme, he presently saw, would never have been thought of had not submarine telegraphy taken a practicable shape, nor would such a scheme have been of much practical use so long as news went by mail. Nor could it be tried till a great many details had been thought out.
Under the old system, eachTribunecorrespondent reported directly to New York. Had that system remained unaltered, the triumphs of American journalism in Europe would have been impossible. That all the European representatives of this paper should report to London instead of New York might seem no very great matter, but in truth it was vital. When it had once been decided to establish aTribuneoffice in London, a revolution had taken place. There was to be a responsible agent in charge. He was to organize a new administration. He was to appoint and dismiss other agents all over the Continent. He was—subject, of course, to orders from New York—to transmit news to New York.
He was to be the telephone between Europe and the managing editor in New York. But he was to relieve the New York office of its supervision over the European staff. What St. Petersburgand Vienna, Berlin and Paris, had to say to New York was to be said through London. There would be an economy of time. Orders could be sent from London and results received much more quickly than from New York. In an emergency as was presently to be shown, the difference was enormous. The notion of the centrality of London, of its unity as a news bureau, was perfectly simple.
But it took years for that one simple notion to get itself completely accepted and acted upon. I will give one illustration. When the fatal days of July, 1870, were upon us I thought I saw a great opportunity.The Tribunealone had an organization in Europe competent for the work of supplying war news. But as I did not know how much news New York wanted, I cabled a question to the editor then temporarily in charge. The answer came back that I was to go to Berlin. It would have been a fatal step. I should have come under German military rule, and cabling from Berlin at that time and much later was a slow and uncertain business. Nor could the plans I had in mind have been carried out from Berlin. There would have been a censorship upon every dispatch, and censorship means not merely mutilation to suit a bureaucratic ideal, but delay. Berlin, moreover, was remote, while London is on the road to New York, and spite of the cable the delay from that cause also would have been injurious. In short, I disobeyed the New York order. I explained, of course, but I pointed out that anunfettered discretion was essential to success, and I asked to be allowed a free hand or to be relieved. I was given the free hand.
These methods have since become so familiar that there is little need to explain them, but at that time they were not merely novel but were derided by journalists of great experience. Mr. James Gordon Bennett was one of those who scoffed at them, and presently was one of those who followed them and made a large use of them, greatly to his own profit and to that of the considerable news organization he controlled. But at first he said nothing would induce him to set up in London a rival office to New York. Now, every important journal in the United States has offices in London, and subsidiary offices in Paris and often in other European capitals. But the authority of New York or Chicago remains what it was.
The idea once accepted, somebody had then to be appointed to London. Mr. Young asked me to go. I declined. I liked leader-writing much better than news-collecting. I thought the power of influencing opinion through the editorial columns ofThe Tribunethe most enviable of all powers. The London scheme, moreover, was an experiment and I did not think I had had enough experience with news to justify my undertaking so large a business. But Mr. Young pressed it, saying it was my scheme and I ought to put it in operation. He might, had he chosen, have issued an order and I should have had no choice but to obey or resign;but that was not his way. He trusted to persuasion; he treated his subordinates as, for some purposes, his equals, and he did not care for unwilling service. He was a past master in the art of stating a case and in the use of personal influence. In the end he convinced me not only that I ought to go, but that I wanted to go, and I gave in, still with misgivings but not without a certain enthusiasm at the prospect of doing a new thing in journalism. It was like Young to say, as he did at parting: "Remember, I don't care about methods. You will use your own methods. What I want is results."
The incredulity with whichThe Tribuneexperiment was first received gave way slowly, but it gave way. I suppose it was the news service ofThe Tribunein the Franco-German War in 1870 which finally convinced the most sceptical. So I will pass to that, stopping only to explain one other matter.
It was in 1870 also that the first international newspaper alliance was formed. The papers which formed it wereThe Tribuneof New York andThe Daily Newsof London. I saw at the beginning that it was desirable to be in a position to know what news would go to New York through Reuter and The Associated Press. That knowledge was only to be had inside of a London newspaper office, and it was with that view chiefly that I first made a proposal toThe Daily News. I suppose I chose that paper because I knew its editor and manager. I did not think it likelythatThe Daily Newsservice from the battlefields would, at first, add much to our own; nor did it. But I went to Mr.—afterward Sir John—Robinson with an offer to exchange news, whether by telegraph or mail, on equal terms; we to give them everything we had and they to do the like by us. The offer was very coldly received. Mr. Robinson could see no advantage to his paper from such an agreement. I told him what we were doing and intending to do. Still he was incredulous and he finally said No. I told him I did not mean that either paper should narrow its operations at the seat of war in expectation of help from the other, nor that either should credit the other with its news. It was to be a war partnership and each would put all its forces in the field. But he would not have it.
It was Mr. Frank Hill, then editor ofThe Daily News, who came to the rescue. The news department was none of his but he had an all-embracing intelligence, and when he heard what the offer was he pressed it upon his colleague and finally secured its acceptance. The credit for whatever benefit inured toThe Daily Newsfrom this partnership was therefore due originally to Mr. Frank Hill and not to Mr. Robinson.
It remains true that Mr. Robinson was a very distinguished journalist and that his work at a later period of the war was of a high order. If he had done nothing but secure the services of Mr. Archibald Forbes he would have earned a lasting renown as manager. But before Forbes'swork had begun to tell,The Daily News, receiving and publishingThe Tribunedispatches as its own—as it had an absolute right to do under our agreement—had won a great reputation for its war news. Sir John Robinson is dead but I published a statement on this subject while he was living, which was brought to his attention. I said then, as I say now, thatThe Daily Newsowed toThe Tribunealmost the whole of the war news by which its reputation was at first acquired. This period lasted down to the surrender of Metz; perhaps later. My statement was never disputed. It may still be found inHarper's Magazine, where the facts are set forth much more fully than here, and it was this article inHarper'swhich Sir John Robinson read. We had ceased to be on good terms. I forget why. He grumbled a little at the publication of the story, though without reason, but he attempted no denial and no denial was possible.
The matter was much discussed at the time in the American Press and there were many criticisms, based on an absolute ignorance of the real arrangement between the two papers. Further confusion grew out of the fact that one ofThe Tribune'swar correspondents had a contract withThe Pall Mall Gazette, then owned by Mr. George Smith and edited by Mr. Frederick Greenwood, one of the great journalists of his time. This contract left him free to deal with us but not with any London paper. It followed, therefore, that some ofThe Tribunedispatches appeared inThe DailyNewsand some inThe Pall Mall Gazette. Our New York friends could not understand this tri-partite agreement; but then it was not necessary they should; and their comments were much more amusing than they would have been if they had known the truth. The mind moves with great freedom when unhampered by facts.
II
"American methods," said certain English journalists, seeking to account forThe Tribune'ssuccesses in the Franco-German War. The phrase, whether meant as eulogy or criticism, was, at any rate, explanatory, for we had had four years of Civil War experience, from 1861 to 1865, while the English, unless we reckon the Indian Mutiny, had to go back to the Crimean War in 1854 for precedents in war correspondence. Moreover, the one great triumph of English journalism in the Crimea was not a triumph of method. It was a triumph due to the genius and courage of one man, Dr. Russell, who exposed throughThe Timesthe murderous mistakes of army organization and army administration, and so forced the War Office and the Horse Guards to set their houses in order. It was a great public service; perhaps the greatest which any journalist in the field ever performed. But it was not exactly journalism. It had little or nothing to do with that speed and accuracy in the collection and transmission of news which, after all, must be thechief business of a correspondent. It has never been imitated. It never will be till another Russell appears to rescue another British army in another Crimea. That great exploit was not primarily journalistic but personal.
I do not suppose it occurred to any of the many able newspaper managers in London that in dealing with a European war they would find a rival in an American journal. They knew there was an Atlantic cable but probably thought, if they thought about it at all, that the cable tolls would be prohibitive, for, as we shall see in a moment, they had not yet grasped the idea that the telegraph is only a quicker post. Putting the question of cost aside, it does not matter how a piece of news or a dispatch or a letter is transmitted; whether by rail or by steamship or by wire. What matters is that it should get there. To-day this is a truism. Forty years ago it was a paradox; in Europe if not in America. There had been great achievements in the transmission of news long before the telegraph was invented. It may be doubted whether they were not, some of them, greater than those due to the telegraph. But so far as the use of the telegraph is concerned we are dealing with the beginnings. The year 1870 is a year of transition if not of revolution. I think we are entitled to remember with satisfaction that in telegraphic news enterprise, even in Europe, it was an American journal which led the way, and thatThe Tribunewas that journal.
In forming their war plans the managers ofEnglish journals, as I was saying, left American journals out of account. Perhaps they knew, in a dim kind of way, thatThe Tribunehad an office in London. But the office had been there for three years and no other American journal had yet followedThe Tribune'sexample. Important dispatches had been sent from this London office to the New York office by cable, but the London managers, if aware of the existence of the cable and ofThe Tribuneoffice in London, had not co-ordinated these two pieces of knowledge. The area of all possible competition in war was news confined, in their view, to Fleet Street and Printing House Square.
They sat content, true Britons as they were, in their belief in their own supremacy; a supremacy often challenged, never overthrown.The Timeswas stillThe Times.The Morning Postwas still a threepenny paper.The Daily Telegraphwas still the organ of the small shopkeeper.The Daily Newswas the mouthpiece of Nonconformist Liberalism, with no great pretensions to any other sort of authority. The evening journalism was not supposed to be eager for news, except news of that peculiar description which offers its readers an afternoon sensation and is unaccountably omitted from the next morning's papers. The news journalism was yet to be born.The Daily Mailhad never been heard of. Lord Northcliffe, the man who has done more than all others of his time toward the creation of a new journalism in England, and who is almost more a statesmanthan a journalist, was then just two years old.
Moreover, the outbreak of war was unexpected. Lord Granville was then Foreign Secretary and of an unshaken optimism. Lord Hammond, Permanent Under Secretary of the Foreign Office, had announced a fortnight before that never since he had held a place in that office had the sky been so free from clouds. M. Émile Ollivier has lately retold with skill in theRevue des Deux Mondeshow the war was brought on, but there is nothing in his elaborate special pleading to show that any reasonable man ought to have expected the French Emperor, or even M. Ollivier himself, to follow the unreasonable, mad, arrogant policy they did follow. Nor can Downing Street or Fleet Street or Printing House Square be blamed for not being aware that the conduct of affairs in France was in the control of men who would play into Bismarck's hands. For, let M. Ollivier say what he will, Bismarck's opportunity would not have come had not France, after Prussia had withdrawn Prince Leopold's candidature for the throne of Spain, demanded a guarantee that it should never be renewed or never be supported by Prussia. Never had events moved so quickly. Prince Leopold was first heard of July 4th, 1870. On the 12th he renounced his claim. On the 13th Benedetti laid before the King of Prussia at Ems the demand of France for guarantees. On the 14th Earl Granville woke from his deep dream of peace and strove to bring France and Prussia to terms. On the15th the Emperor declared war; the Chamber approving by an overwhelming majority.
There are in journalism two ways of dealing with a war crisis of this kind. One way is to send into the field everybody you can lay hands on to cover,tant bien que mal, as many points as possible, and so take your chance of what may turn up. The other is to choose the best two men available and send one to the headquarters of each army. I preferred the latter, perhaps because there was a difficulty in finding good men, and there were but two from whom I expected much good. These were Mr. Holt White, an Englishman, and M. Méjanel, a Frenchman. Mr. White was ordered to join the Prussians and M. Méjanel to accompany his own countrymen. The same instructions were given to both; very simple but I believe at that time quite novel in England. Each was to find his way to the front, or wherever a battle was most likely to be fought. They were to telegraph to London as fully as possible all accounts of preliminary engagements. If they had the good luck to witness an important battle they were not to telegraph, but, unless for some very peremptory reason, to start at once for London, writing their accounts on the way or on arrival. If they could telegraph a summary first, so much the better; but there must be no delay. The essential thing was to arrive in London at the earliest moment. They were to provide beforehand for a substitute, or more than one, who would take up their work during their absence.
These instructions were based on the improbability that any single correspondent could anticipate any very important news which Governments, the news agencies, and the Rothschilds would all three endeavour to send first. I reverse the order in which a Minister once said to me news of war or of high politics usually arrived. Such news, he said, comes to the Rothschilds first, next to the Press, and to the Government last of all. Besides, the mere fact never contents the public. It wants the full story. There was never much chance of sending the full story by wire from the battlefield or from any town hard by; nor, indeed, from any capital; even from a neutral capital. Only when once in London was a correspondent master of the situation.
Mr. Holt White carried out his instructions with an energy, a courage, an intelligence to which no tribute can be too high. In the first instance he witnessed the battle—not an important one except that it was the first—of Spicheren, and wired a column or so to London. It was I believe, the first battle story of any length ever sent by wire from the Continent to London. English journalism, as I said above, had not yet regarded the telegraph as anything but a means of transmitting results. The full account was to come by mail. I had told Mr. Robinson I meant to use the telegraph in this new way, but he was not ready to believe it could be done. So when I carried Mr. White's account toThe Daily Newsoffice, after cabling a rewritten copy to New York,I took with me the original telegraph forms as well as the second copy. The dispatch as telegraphed by Mr. White was slightly condensed, had been carelessly handled, and was not in good shape for the printers. I handed my copy to Mr. Robinson. He looked at it with undisguised suspicion.
"It is your handwriting," he said.
I admitted that.
"And the battle was fought only yesterday."
"Yes."
"It could not have come by post."
"No."
"Well, how then?"
"By wire."
"A dispatch of that length! It is unheard of."
But I thought this had gone far enough and showed him the telegraph forms. Still he said:
"Do you expect me to print this to-morrow inThe Daily News?"
"Print it or not as you choose. It will certainly appear inThe Tribune. I have done as I agreed in bringing you the dispatch. You, of course, will do as you think best about publishing it."
I repeat this because it indicates better than I could otherwise the journalistic state of mind at that time in respect of Continental telegrams. Mr. Robinson was at the head of his profession, yet this was his reception of this piece of news. In the end Mr. Frank Hill, the editor, was called into consultation. He had no hesitation and, as before, finally brought his colleague to reason.The telegram duly appeared next morning inThe Daily News, heralded by a leading article in which the telegram was rewritten, its importance pointed out, the celerity of its dispatch and arrival dwelt on, and so the readers ofThe Daily Newshad every opportunity to admire the enterprise of that journal.
This was very far from being Mr. Holt White's most brilliant exploit, but it was his first. He had not the luck to see the battle of Worth, the earliest of the grave disasters of the French. No journalist had. That great engagement and the defeat of Marshal MacMahon were foreseen by nobody, the Germans themselves excepted, and there exists no account of the battle in the newspapers of the day, save such as came by hearsay; or, much later, the official reports. But when the bare facts were known they were thought prophetic, and the military critics of Pall Mall and Whitehall said gravely: "This is the beginning of the end."
I pass over the interval between Worth and Sedan, crowded as it was with events, stopping only to remark thatThe Tribunewas indebted to an American writer onThe Daily Newsfor its account of Gravelotte, but not toThe Daily Newsexcept for the opportunity of buying that account, at a high price. There was an entangling alliance which forbadeThe Daily Newsto hand it over toThe Tribune, but did not prevent the correspondent of that paper from selling it. I am not sure whether the name of the writer is known but in the circumstances it is not for me to disclose it. The narrative was, of course, cabled toThe Tribuneat once. Gravelotte was fought on the 18th of August. The account of the battle reached New York, I think, on the 21st. It was, at any rate, the first, and for some time the only narrative published. The defeated French called it the battle of Rézonville, and under that name was this description first printed. From a military point of view the account had no great value, but it was picturesquely written and in thosedifficult days anything from the field was eagerly read.
Greater days were at hand. The battle of Sedan was fought on Thursday, September 1st, 1870, followed by the surrender of the town, the army, and the Emperor Napoleon on the day following. The news of the catastrophe was not known in London till Saturday morning at ten o'clock, and then only in the briefest form; the mere fact and not much more; through the general Press agency; I suppose Reuter's. Mr. Robinson wired me and I went toThe Daily Newsoffice. But the bare news was of no great use for my purposes. I went back toThe Tribuneoffice in Pall Mall wondering what I was to do, and still more whatThe Tribunecorrespondent in the field were doing. I had not long to wait. A dispatch arrived from Mr. Holt White saying he should be in London that afternoon, and at five o'clock he walked into the office.
Seldom have I been so glad to see any man's face as I was to see his, but there was hardly so much as a greeting between us. I asked first:
"Is your dispatch ready?"
"Not a word of it written."
"Will you sit down at once and begin?"
"I cannot. I am dead tired, and have had no food since daybreak. I must eat and sleep before I can write."
He looked it; a mere wreck of a correspondent, haggard, ragged, dirty, incapable of the effort which nevertheless had to be made. It was notime to consider anybody's feelings. A continent was waiting for the news locked up in that one man's brain, and somehow or other the lock must be forced, the news told, and the waiting continent supplied with what it wanted. Incidentally, it was such an opportunity forThe Tribuneas seldom had come to any newspaper. It was necessary to use a little authority. I said to Mr. Holt White:
"You shall have something to eat, but sleep you cannot till you have done your dispatch. That must be in New York to-morrow morning."
So we went over to the Pall Mall Restaurant, which was then in the building now replaced by the Oceanic House, the headquarters of the International Marine Navigation Company; if that be its name. Food and drink refreshed him. We were back inThe Tribuneoffice not long after six and work began.
Mr. Holt White wrote one of the worst hands ever seen, so I said to him I would copy as he wrote and my copy would go to the cable operators. Bad or good, mine was a hand they were familiar with. We sat opposite each other at the same table, and I copied sheet by sheet till there was enough to give the cable a start, then took it to the Anglo-American cable office in Telegraph Street. I went myself for two reasons: first to make sure it was delivered, and second to make sure it went without interruption. The latter, indeed, was a point of which it was impossible, under the Weaver régime, to make sure. But Icould at least hand in the message over the counter. Many a message have I trusted myself and nobody else with, and many a letter have I posted with my own hands; everything, in fact, of importance ever since I had anything to do with journalism. It is often inconvenient but I have found it a good rule.
I dwell on these details. Few things in American journalism, the Civil War excepted, have made more stir than this exploit of Mr. Holt White. But the full credit which belongs to him he has never had. Consider what he had done. He had been all through the battle; he had been in the saddle all day from four o'clock in the morning till nightfall. The battle over, he started for London. He rode with his life in his hand. He had to pass the lines of three armies, the Prussians who refused him a permit, the French outposts to the north of Sedan, and the Belgians, who made a pretence of guarding their frontier and the neutrality of Belgian territory. He could not explain how he managed it. When he reached Brussels he thought it might be possible to write there and to wire his account from Brussels to London. But at the chief telegraph office in Brussels the official in charge told him flatly he would accept no dispatch relating to the war. The issue of the battle was unknown in Brussels. Anything handed in for transmission to London or elsewhere would be submitted first of all to the censor; and in Brussels, as elsewhere, the censorship is a heart-rending business; delay inevitable; and there wasno time for delay. It was, as I explained in an earlier chapter, one reason why all correspondents were directed to come straight to London where the censorship did not exist. Mr. Holt White was soon satisfied that it was useless to try to telegraph from Brussels, and he came on by train to Calais, missed the Calais boat, caught a later one, which did not connect with the Dover-London service, and, once at Dover, chartered a special train to London and so at last arrived.
I asked him if any other correspondent had come with him. He thought not; at any rate, no one whom he knew as correspondent and, of course, no one came by the special train. Still, there was no certainty. It was already two days since the sun had gone down on the beaten French in sedan. There was nothing to do except to hurry on the dispatch to New York.
With indomitable courage White wrote on. After a time I asked him if he would rest a little before finishing.
"No," he said, "if I stop I shall go to sleep, and if I go to sleep I shall not wake."
The man's pluck was a splendid thing to see. His answer was like the answer of an Atlantic captain who, in the old days when there was no telephone and designers had not learned how to make the captain's cabin the nerve centre of the ship, had been for three days and nights on the bridge. I asked him how he lived through it. He said it was rather trying to the knees.
"But did you never sit down?"
"Oh, if I had sat down I should have gone to sleep."
There are heroisms of that kind in the routine of life, professional and other, and even in the profession of journalism of which the newspaper reader in the morning over his coffee and rolls never thinks. But they are real and without them, and without the loyalty and devotion of such men, there might sometimes be nothing for the man with his coffee and rolls to read.
White sat at his table till midnight and later. It was nearer two o'clock than one before the last of his message was filed in Telegraph Street. Whether by Mr. Weaver's intervention or not I cannot say, but there was a delay on the wires. The delay, I was afterwards told, was on the Newfoundland land lines to New York. It may be so. It was a message six columns long and not all of it appeared inThe Tribunethat next Sunday morning though all of it had been filed in ample time; two o'clock in the morning in London being only nine o'clock of the evening before in New York.
No matter. It was a clear, coherent, vivid battle story, and it was the only one. No morning paper in London had any account of the battle till the Tuesday following; and all New York accounts,The Tribuneexcepted, were from the London Press or Press agencies. It is not worth while to recall the comments ofThe Tribune'srivals. They were angry, naturally enough, and they resorted to conjectures which might as wellhave been left unexpressed. It is enough to explain further that Mr. Holt White's narrative did not appear inThe Daily Newsbecause he had an agreement withThe Pall Mall Gazette. Part of this account, therefore, was printed in an abridged form inThe Pall Mallof Monday, for which it was written separately.The Pall Mallis an evening paper, and when that was cabled to New York and found to be obviously from the same source asThe Tribune'sthe guesses grew wild. But the plain truth is now told, and is simple enough.
Mr. Holt White was a journalist but not at that time a journalist of any exceptional reputation or position. This, I think, was the first very considerable thing he had done. I am sorry to have to add that it was also the last. He was a man to whom, after such an achievement as this, a long repose became necessary. He rejoined the Prussian headquarters, spent the winter at Versailles, and during all those months did practically nothing. Of his great gifts and capacities he made no further use, even down to the end of his life, and the end came early. But he is entitled to be remembered as a man who at one supreme moment accomplished one of the most brilliant exploits in the history of journalism. Let us judge him by his best, and, so judged, his name must take its place with those of Russell, McGahan, Forbes, Steevens, and others of that rank if there are any others.
One more remark, to remind you how alien fromthe mind of the British journalist at that time was the free use of the telegraph, which in America had become a thing of every day. When White sat down to write he said to me: "I suppose I am to condense as much as possible?"
"No, write fully."
"But it is going by cable."
"Yes."
"It will be some columns long."
"The longer the better."
He thought a little, then said:
"I still don't quite understand."
"Then please put the cable out of your mind, and write exactly as if you were writing for a London paper and the printer's devil waiting." And he did.