r privileges strictly
defined. Only the press associations and some twenty or thirty
newspapers were to send correspondents, and they must put up
substantial bonds for each man--one for his good behavior, the other
to serve as an expense fund against which would be charged his keep
as a civilian guest of the army. These conditions fulfilled, the men
were to accompany the expedition with the privileges, practically,
of officers or neutral attaches.

They would join an officers' mess or have a mess of their own with
similar service; they might provide their own horses which would be
cared for with the other horses of the unit to which they were
attached. They were to stay where they were put, so far as nearness
to the fighting was concerned, according to the judgment of the
commanding officer, and all their dispatches must first pass a
military censor.

These rules were read with some dismay by those not included in the
provisional list. To many who had hoped to see something of a war
they doubtless seemed severe, yet it is a fact that had they been
put into effect, the correspondents in Mexico would have seen much
more, comparatively speaking, than any group of correspondents has
seen in Europe. They would actually have accompanied the army,
sharing throughout the expedition the day-to-day life of the
fighting men, like the old-fashioned "horseback correspondent"--and
nobody in Europe has done that.

At the beginning of the war, England permitted no correspondents at
all at the front, and while a group was chosen, it was well into
1915 before they were even allowed to cross to France. Once they
reached their headquarters they saw a good deal. They lived at or
near the front instead of merely shooting up and back for a glimpse
of it. They met many officers more or less intimately, saw the life
behind and in the trenches; occasionally they were taken to
observation stations from which they saw the effect of artillery
fire, and even, perhaps, in the distance, charging infantry. Yet the
number who had even these privileges was so limited that it included
but one American.

Mr. Frederick Palmer was thus chosen to act as a sort of
correspondent at large for the American press. Mr. Ashmead Bartlett,
an English journalist, acted in a similar capacity for the English
press and, indeed, for the rest of the world, at the Dardanelles. He
saw a great deal, as much, perhaps, as any reporter has seen of any
campaign, but he was