f. We are not spies. We are
civilization demanding to know if you have something that more
concerns the whole world than it can possibly concern you."

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 w