te is unintelligent.

Chapter XI
War Correspondents

The attitude of the newspaper reader toward the war correspondent
who tries to supply him with war news has always puzzled me.

One might be pardoned for suggesting that their interests are the
same. If the correspondent is successful, the better service he
renders the reader. The more he is permitted to see at the front, the
more news he is allowed to cable home, the better satisfied should be
the man who follows the war through the "extras."

But what happens is the reverse of that. Never is the "constant
reader" so delighted as when the war correspondent gets the worst of
it. It is the one sure laugh. The longer he is kept at the base, the more
he is bottled up, "deleted," censored, and made prisoner, the greater
is the delight of the man at home. He thinks the joke is on the war
correspondent. I think it is on the "constant reader." If, at breakfast,
the correspondent fails to supply the morning paper with news, the
reader claims the joke is on the news-gatherer. But if the milkman
fails to leave the milk, and the baker the rolls, is the joke on the
milkman and the baker or is it on the "constant reader"? Which goes
hungry?

The explanation of the attitude of the "constant reader" to the
reporters seems to be that he regards the correspondent as a prying
busybody, as a sort of spy, and when he is snubbed and suppressed
he feels he is properly punished. Perhaps the reader also resents the
fact that while the correspondent goes abroad, he stops at home and
receives the news at second hand. Possibly he envies the man who
has a front seat and who tells him about it. And if you envy a man,
when that man comes to grief it is only human nature to laugh.

You have seen unhappy small boys outside a baseball park, and one
happy boy inside on the highest seat of the grand stand, who calls
down to them why the people are yelling and who has struck out. Do
the boys on the ground love the boy in the grand stand and are they
grateful to him? No.

Does the fact that they do not love him and are not grateful to him for
telling them the news distress the boy in the grand stand? No. For no
matter how closely he is bottled up, how strictly censored, "deleted,"
arrested, searched, and persecuted, as between the man at home
and the correspondent, the correspondent will always be the more
fortunate. He is watching the march of great events, he is studying
history in