e beer, or the cooking.

3. Secure a set of good maps of the scene of operations. It will be
handy also to have any books which have been published describing
campaigns over the same _terrain_.

4. Keep in touch with the official bulletins issued by the military
authorities from the scene of operations. But be on guard not to become
enslaved by them. If, for instance, you wait for official notices of
battles, you will be much hampered in your picturesque work. Fight
battles when they ought to be fought and how they ought to be fought.
The story's the thing.

5. A little sprinkling of personal experience is wise; for example, a
bivouac on the battlefield, toasting your bacon at a fire made of a
broken-down gun-carriage with a bayonet taken from a dead soldier.
Mention the nationality of the bacon. You cannot be too precise in
details.

[Illustration: A YOUNG WIDOW AT HER HUSBAND'S GRAVE]

Ko-Ko's account of the execution of Nankipoo is, in short, the model for
the future war correspondent. The other sort of war correspondent, who
patiently studied and recorded operations, seems to be doomed. In the
nature of things it must be so. The more competent and the more accurate
he is, the greater the danger he is to the army which he accompanies.
His despatches, published in his newspaper and telegraphed promptly to
the other side, give to them at a cheap cost that information of what is
going on _behind_ their enemy's screen of scouts which is so vital to
tactical, and sometimes to strategical, dispositions. To try to obtain
that information an army pours out much blood and treasure; to guard
that information an army will consume a full third of its energies in an
elaborate system of mystification. A modern army must either banish
the war correspondent altogether or subject him to such restrictions of
Censorship as to veto honest, accurate, and prompt criticism or record
of operations.

The Bulgarian army had not the courage to refuse authorisation to the
swarm of journalists which descended upon its headquarters. Editors had
argued it out that the small Balkan States, anxious to have a "good
press" in Europe, would give correspondents a good show. But the
Bulgarian authorities, anxious as they were to conciliate foreign public
opinion, dared not allow a free run to the newspaper representatives.
Apart from the considerations I have mentioned, which must govern any
modern war, there were special reasons why the Bulgarian