As applied to war, that point of view is equally just.  The army calls for your father, husband, son—­calls for your money.  It enters upon a war that destroys your peace of mind, wrecks your business, kills the men of your family, the man you were going to marry, the son you brought into the world.  And to you the army says:  “This is our war.  We will fight it in our own way, and of it you can learn only what we choose to tell you.  We will not let you know whether your country is winning the fight or is in danger, whether we have blundered and the soldiers are starving, whether they gave their lives gloriously or through our lack of preparation or inefficiency are dying of neglected wounds.”  And if you answer that you will send with the army men to write letters home and tell you, not the plans for the future and the secrets of the army, but what are already accomplished facts, the army makes reply:  “No, those men cannot be trusted.  They are spies.”

Not for one moment does the army honestly think those men are spies.  But it is the excuse nearest at hand.  It is the easiest way out of a situation every army, save our own, has failed to treat with intelligence.  Every army knows that there are men to-day acting, or anxious to act, as war correspondents who can be trusted absolutely, whose loyalty and discretion are above question, who no more would rob their army of a military secret than they would rob a till.  If the army does not know that, it is unintelligent.  That is the only crime I impute to any general staff—­lack of intelligence.

When Captain Granville Fortescue, of the Hearst syndicate, told the French general that his word as a war correspondent was as good as that of any general in any army he was indiscreet, but he was merely stating a fact.  The answer of the French general was to put him in prison.  That was not an intelligent answer.

The last time I was arrested was at Romigny, by General 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.”