Asebert. I
had on me a three-thousand-word story, written that morning in
Rheims, telling of the wanton destruction of the cathedral. I asked the
General Staff, for their own good, to let the story go through. It stated
only facts which I believed were they known to civilized people would
cause them to protest against a repetition of such outrages. To get
the story on the wire I made to Lieutenant Lucien Frechet and Major
Klotz, of the General Staff, a sporting offer. For every word of my
despatch they censored I offered to give them for the Red Cross of
France five francs. That was an easy way for them to subscribe to the
French wounded three thousand dollars. To release his story Gerald
Morgan, of the London Daily Telegraph, made them the same offer. It
was a perfectly safe offer for Gerald to make, because a great part of
his story was an essay on Gothic architecture. Their answer was to
put both of us in the Cherche-Midi prison. The next day the censor
read my story and said to Lieutenant Frechet and Major Klotz: "But I
insist this goes at once. It should have been sent twenty-four hours
ago."

Than the courtesy of the French officers nothing could have been
more correct, but I submit that when you earnestly wish to help a man
to have him constantly put you in prison is confusing. It was all very
well to dissemble your love. But why did you kick me down-stairs?

There was the case of Luigi Barzini. In Italy Barzini is the D'Annunzio
of newspaper writers. Of all Italian journalists he is the best known.
On September 18, at Romigny, General Asebert arrested Barzini, and
for four days kept him in a cow stable. Except what he begged from
the gendarmes, he had no food, and he slept on straw. When I saw
him at the headquarters of the General Staff under arrest I told them
who he was, and that were I in their place I would let him see all there
was to see, and let him, as he wished, write to his people of the
excellence of the French army and of the inevitable success of the
Allies. With Italy balancing on the fence and needing very little urging
to cause her to join her fortunes with France, to choose that moment
to put Italian journalists in a cow yard struck me as dull.

In this war the foreign offices of the different governments have been
willing to allow correspondents to accompany the army. They know
that there are other ways of killing a man than by hitting him with a
piece of shrapnel. One way is to tell the truth about him. In this entire
war nothing hit Germany so hard a blow as the publicity given to a
certain remark about a scrap of paper. But from the government the
army would not tolerate any interference. It said: "Do you want us to
run this war or do you want to run it?" Each army of the Allies treated
its own government much as Walter Camp would treat the Yale
faculty if it tried to tell him who should play right tackle.

As a result of the ban put upon the correspondents by the armies, the
English and a few American newspapers, instead of sending into the
field one accredited representative, gave their credentials to a dozen.
These men had no other credentials. The letter each received stating
that he represented a newspaper worked both ways. When arrested
it helped to save him from being shot as a spy, and it was almost sure
to lead him to jail. The only way we could hope to win out was through
the good nature of an officer or his ignorance of the rules. Many
officers did not know that at the front correspondents were prohibited.

As in the old days of former wars we would occasionally come upon
an officer who was glad to see some one from the base who could tell
him the news and carry back from the front messages to his friends
and family. He knew we could not carry away from him any
information of value to the enemy, because he had none to give. In a
battle front extending one hundred miles he knew only his own tiny
unit. On the Aisne a general