‘Here,’ he would say, ’this paragraph is taken verbatim from “Le Figaro”; this other appeared in “Le Temps,” this other in “Le Siecle,"’ and so forth.  And he was not alluding to extracts from editorials, but to descriptive matter—­accounts of demonstrations and ceremonies, fashionable weddings and other social functions, interviews, and so forth.  The practice upset all his ideas of a foreign correspondent’s duties, which should be to obtain first-hand and not second-hand information.

In principle this is of course correct, but a correspondent cannot be everywhere at the same time; and nowadays, moreover, English journalists in Paris do not enjoy quite the same facilities as formerly.  As regards more particularly the Dreyfus business, the French, with a sensitiveness that can be understood, have all along deprecated anything in the way of foreign interference, and the English Pressman of inquiring mind on the subject has more than once met with a rebuff from those in a position to give information.  Again, the political difficulties between the two countries of recent years have often placed the Paris correspondents in a very invidious position.

This brings me to the Fashoda trouble, which arose last autumn while M. Zola was still in his country retreat.  The great novelist’s enemies have often alleged that he was no true Frenchman; but for my part, after thirty years’ intimacy with the French, I would claim for him that his country counts no better patriot.  He is on principle opposed to warfare, but there is a higher patriotism than that which consists in perpetually beating the big drum, and that higher patriotism is Zola’s.

The Fashoda difficulties troubled him sorely, and directly it seemed likely that the situation might become serious he told me that it would be impossible for him to remain in England.  The progress of the negotiations between France and Great Britain was watched with keen vigilance, and M. Zola was ready to start at the first sign of those negotiations collapsing.  As all his friends were opposed to his return to France (they had again virtually forbidden it late in September when the Brisson Ministry finally submitted the case for revision to the Criminal Chamber of the Cour de Cassation), he would probably have gone to Belgium, but I doubt whether he would have remained long in that country.

I have said that M. Zola is opposed to warfare on principle.  His views in this respect have long been shared by me.  Life’s keenest impressions are those acquired in childhood and youth.  And in my youth—­I was but seventeen, though already acting as a war correspondent, the youngest, I suppose, on record—­I witnessed war attended by every horror:—­A city, Paris, starved by the foreigner and subsequently in part fired by some of its own children.  And between those disasters, having passed through the hostile lines, I saw an army of 125,000 men with 350 guns, that of Chanzy, irretrievably routed after battling in a snowstorm