difficult a thing it is to obtain a man possessed of all the physical, moral, and mental qualities which are essential in a good war-reporter; and upon the whole the English press was supplied with its accounts of the war in a manner which entitles all Englishmen to feel proud at once of the enterprise and the ability of our journals.

The 'specials' took flight from the Charing Cross and Victoria stations, having been duly provided with passports, letters of recommendation, portable ink-stands, india-rubber baths, mackintosh capes, circular notes, field-glasses, and all the other indispensables of a war reporter's outfit. But their troubles were only beginning when they left the dull streets of London behind them. In the first place both Governments announced their determination to be troubled with no newspaper writers. It was a war to the death upon which they were about to enter, and they brusquely told neutrals that they did not care to have them looking on in the character of amateur critics and scenic artists. They were not going to fight for stage effect, and like duellists, who have made up their minds to fight it out, they wished to set to work with closed doors, unwatched and uninterrupted. The strongest pressure had to be brought to bear upon the two powers to induce them to give way. They did give way in the end, as

we all know, but at the beginning of the struggle the unhappy special correspondents had to submit to hardships and indignities which nothing but the strongest devotion to duty on their part could have enabled them to bear. Those who remember the story of the days when the French army was gathering at Metz, will remember that the letters of the newspaper correspondents in those days consisted chiefly of records of their own hair-breadth escapes from the fate commonly reserved for spies. Not one of them but was insulted and arrested, whilst some were shamefully ill-treated and imprisoned, without a shadow of excuse, for a considerable length of time.

Various were the stories told in London concerning those dark days and the actors in them. Of one Special' it was said that, being debarred from the exercise of his duties through the unceasing vigilance of the French authorities in preventing his seeing what was going on, he calmly resigned himself to fate, and shutting himself up in a garret in Metz, with no company save that afforded by a huge melon and a bottle of brandy, succeeded in evolving a series of war letters out of his inner consciousness. Another had become the temporary tenant of a room the rightful occupant of which—a fellow-correspondent—

had been haled away to gaol as a spy. The confinement of the latter, whom we shall call Mr. X-, having lasted longer than usual, some of the other English reporters determined to move on his behalf; and they went to enlist the sympathies of Z, the gentleman who was temporarily occupying X-'s room. 'We've come Z——,' said the spokesman, 'to ask you to help us to get that poor fellow X-out of prison; he's been shut up for a whole week now.' 'Heavens!' cried Z——. 'Do you imagine I can do such a thing? Why, I found in this room, when I took possession of it, an admirable dressing-case and six excellent shirts, of which I have the free use during Mr. X's unhappy detention! Gentlemen, I wish you a very good morning.' The story is by no means authentic, but when it was told it raised a laugh at the expense of the most generous of special correspondents.

Dr. Russell was not sent with the French army. Carrying letters of introduction to the Crown Prince from the Prince of Wales, he followed the Germans in their fortunes during the war. But like all the other correspondents, he was at the outset the victim of untoward circumstances. It was his ill-luck-chiefly, if not entirely, from the difficulties thrown in the way of the special corre

spondents by the authorities-not to come up with the Crown Prince's army until after it had met and overthrown MacMahon at Woerth. When he did at last join the Prince he was immediately attached to head-quarters, travelled in the Prince's company, dined frequently at his table, and had quarters assigned to him nightly by the officer whose duty it was to provide for the accommodation of the Staff. Such favour had never before been shown to any newspaper reporter. It may be thought that, under such circumstances, the 'Times' correspondent lived in that luxury and ease which are supposed to be the lot of princes. How different was the reality from all such imaginings! Russell tells us in his diary of the frequent nights he spent with no better bed than a heap of not over-clean straw; of the scanty and almost loathsome food with which he had frequently to be content; of the fatigues, dangers, discomforts of every kind amid which he had to do his work. And yet he was the chief of the special correspondents, better provided for in almost every way than any of his colleagues! Is it possible that there are some people who envy the Special his life of peril and hardship?

Throughout the war it was to the English newspapers that the world trusted for accurate information with respect to its progress. Almost at the

outset one distinguished and well-known man, Colonel Pemberton, who acted as the representative of the Times' with the head-quarters of the Crown Prince of Saxony, was shot dead whilst pursuing his duties on the field of Sedan. Another, Mr. Davin, the representative of a Dublin journal, was wounded about the same time at Montmedy, whilst the hair-breadth 'scapes of others would take many pages to recite. Dangers of this kind, and the terrible hardships of a campaign, were not the only drawbacks to the comfort of the 'specials' during this part of the war. What, for instance, could be more annoying to a man, after he had spent many hours in peril of his life upon a battle-field, and many more in writing an account of the scene he had just witnessed, to find that his graphic narrative had been lost in the field post-office, or sent to Turkey, say, instead of England? Something of this sort was constantly happening during the war to the correspondents. It happened to Dr. Russell on the occasion of the first day's fighting near Sedan, and we should have been without the early and admirable account of the great surrender, which appeared in the 'Times,' if Dr. Russell had not travelled express to London from the battle-field, writing the story as he journeyed, and returning to the Prussian army directly he had deposited his manu