weeks I had been following an army in
breathless, anxious chase of facts; wheedling Censors to get some few of
those facts into a telegraph office; learning then, perhaps, that the
custom at that particular telegraph office was to forward telegrams to
Sofia, a ten days' journey, by bullock-wagon and railway, to give them
time to mature. Now here, piping hot, were the stories of the war.

There was the vivid story of the battle of Chatalja. This story was
started seven days too soon; had the positions and the armies all wrong;
the result all wrong; and the picturesque details were in harmony. But
for the purposes of the public it was a very good story of a battle.
Those men who, after great hardships, were enabled to see the actual
battle found that the poor messages which the Censor permitted them to
send took ten days or more in transmission to London. Why have taken all
the trouble and expense of going to the front? Buda-Pesth, on the way
there, is a lovely city; Bucharest also; and charming Vienna was not at
all too far away if you had a good staff-map and a lively military
imagination.

In yet another paper there was a vivid picture--scenery, date, Greenwich
time, and all to give an air of artistic verisimilitude--of the signing
of the Peace armistice. The armistice had not been signed at the time,
was not signed for some days after. But it would have been absurd to
have waited, since "our special correspondent" had seen it all in
advance, right down to the embrace of the Turkish delegate and the
Bulgarian delegate, and knew that some of the conditions were that the
Turkish commissariat was to feed the Bulgarian troops at Chatalja and
the Bulgarian commissariat the Turkish troops in Adrianople. If his
paper had waited for the truth that most charming story would never have
seen the light.

So, in a little book I shall one day bring out in the "Attractive
Occupations" series on "How to be a War Correspondent," I shall give
this general advice:

1. Before operations begin, visit the army to which you are accredited,
and take notes of the general appearance of officers and men. Also learn
a few military phrases of their language. Ascertain all possible
particulars of a personal character concerning the generals and chief
officers.

2. Return then to a base outside the country. It must have good
telegraph communication with your newspaper. For the rest you may decide
its locality by the quality of the wine, or th