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sorts, the New York "Herald" boat lay up to the wind, and its correspondent stood calmly in the prow with his watch out, counting the shots that shrieked overhead. There happened to be no other newspaper boat in sight, and the "Herald" ran to cover with a beat." Since then neither the "New York" nor the "Brooklyn" moves anywhere without a clustering fleet of jealous despatchboats puffing and snorting in her wake.

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After all the excitement and hardship attending the gathering of this war news, the correspondent might arrive in Key West only to make the heart-breaking discovery that he could not get his message through to his paper. Only two cables run between Key West and Punta Rossa, on the mainland of Florida, and government despatches, which take precedence over all others, utilize one of them almost exclusively. Correspondents for half a hundred papers were crowding to secure the early use of the other line, and, if there was some important piece of news to be reported, the wire was soon overloaded, and the poor fellow who came late, sweating and excited, had little chance of getting his message through. To escape the possibility of such a failure, one New York paper made arrangements to have a despatch-boat run with its messages to Miami, on the mainland, but the scheme did not work successfully, owing to the time involved.

Even after the war began, newspaper readers were astonished to see almost daily despatches from Havana, often containing matter which no censor would have passed. How did they get through?

When American correspondents left Havana, many newspapers made arrangements with some friendly Spaniard or Englishman, or in one case with an American who had lived nearly all his life on Cuban soil, to stand watch and send news messages at every possible opportunity. There was little use of employing the cable, owing to the patriotic activity of the censor, although a little veiled news came through in this way. For instance, one despatch read, "General Gomez has retreated from A. to B. with a large force of men." This just suited the censor, and he let it go through. The telegraph editor in New York read between the lines. By consulting a map he found that B. was nearer Havana than A., and that this retreat was in reality an advance upon the Spanish capital. But such subterfuges were uncertain and unsatisfactory, and a far more serviceable plan was formed for entirely eluding the Spanish authorities. The corre

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spondent in Havana quietly wrote out his despatches and sent them down by special messenger to the coast near Mariel, which is only a short distance west of Havana. paper arranged with a country tradesman who made daily trips to Havana to act as its courier. At five o'clock on Monday, seven on Tuesday, ten on Wednesday, and so on through the week, a different hour for each day, the despatch-boat was to approach the coast, and, upon signal that the enemy was not in sight, send a swift boat ashore for the messages. It was a highly difficult and dangerous mission, but a good many Havana despatches have come by this roundabout route.

In addition to these secret resident correspondents in Havana itself, several newspaper men have ventured into the interior to join the insurgents, although they were well aware that they took their lives in their hands when they did it. All of these men made arrangements to return, at a specified hour, on one of two or three days, to a certain point on the coast, where a warship or a despatch-boat had appointed to meet them.

With the earliest intimations of a declaration of war public interest, which had been centering around the "Maine disaster, shifted to Washington and Madrid.

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The newspapers of New York made elaborate preparations for spreading the first news of the war resolution. A correspondent was on watch in Congress; a score of feet away a telegraph operator sat ready with his finger on the key; the wire was wide open, and in the composing-rooms of at least two New York papers a lineotype operator, who was also a telegraph operator, sat at his machine ready to tick the words into type the moment they sprung from the wire. Three minutes after the declaration of war was passed, the newsboys were struggling up out of the "Journal" delivery-room crying an extra announcing the news. In three minutes the correspondent had gathered and written the news just a line or two of it-the despatch had been sent from Washington to New York, had been set up in type, printed, and delivered on the street, ready for sale at a penny. This remarkable time record was rendered possible by a process known as "fudging.' The type lines set by the lineotype-telegraph operator are wider at the top than at the base, so that when placed together they form the section. of a small cylinder. They are firmly clamped in an ingenious little supplemental machine. consisting of a cylinder and an inking rell

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for red ink. This is attached to a revolving to send their messages in French to an shaft at the top of one of the huge printing alleged commercial house in Paris, in reality presses, and so arranged that when the paper the Paris representative of the paper, there comes rushing through from the regular type to be translated and forwarded to New York. cylinders below, the "fudge" prints a big By this means the Spanish censors were red WAR" and a few lines of extra news thrown off their guard, and for a time the in spaces left for that purpose in the right doings of Spanish ships were known in New hand columns of the edition. This is the York almost as promptly as the movements genesis of the "Red Extra," and it is a of vessels in the Narrows. typical development of modern journalism. While the correspondents in Washington were busy with the liveliest kind of news, the activities of a great nation stripping for war, the newspapers were experiencing untold trouble in getting news from Spanish points. Distinctly American correspondents found little comfort in Madrid after the departure of General Woodford, but there yet remained Englishmen, Frenchmen, and friendly Spaniards who could send despatches. However, it was impossible for them to cable any news of importance, even to London and Paris papers, owing to the strict Spanish censorship. The correspondents repeatedly filed despatches addressed to English papers with the necessary peseta's worth of stamps attached, only to find that their work had been unceremoniously thrown into the censor's waste-basket.

"If you don't send our messages," they expostulated, "you should return the cable tolls."

But the piratical Spanish authorities, one bureau after another, shrugged their shoulders in the expressive Spanish way and returned nothing. More than one New York paper lost thousands of dollars in this man

ner.

Finally, Madrid correspondents devised a scheme for sending their despatches by special couriers, a six hours' run by rail, across the Spanish border to Bayonne or Biarritz, in France, where they can cable without molestation. In every case the couriers are required to pay the cable tolls in advance, and, in the present feverish condition of the Spanish people, they must be most circumspect in their demeanor if they expect to escape with their lives, to say nothing of the money which they carry. The total expense for the Spanish news service, including couriers, tolls, and correspondence, sometimes reaches $2,000 a week for a single New York paper.

In addition to its regular correspondence from Madrid, one newspaper engaged, by cable, British residents of Cadiz, Barcelona, and Carthagena to report the movements of Spanish war-vessels. They were instructed

Anticipating trouble at Porto Rico, with the probability of a great naval battle not far distant, several American newspapers, together with the Associated Press, made an attempt to locate correspondents at the Spanish port of San Juan. The "World" sent Mr. George Bronson Rea, who speaks Spanish fluently and who hoped to pass as an Englishman that had long been a resident of Spain. He had made arrangements to send messages by code to a fictitious business office in London. But he met with trouble from the start. He found not only an obdurate censor, but highly suspicious officials. Upon the receipt of a cablegram containing the word "fortifications," he was immediately placed under police surveillance and threatened with instant imprisonment if he attempted to escape. A few days later, Mr. Rea, with an eye to cable tolls, sent from St. Thomas this laconic, but graphic, narrative of his adventures:

"Arrived Porto Rico. Hot. Impossible cable truth. Since your fortification message, police surveillance. Eluded vigilance. Midnight. Bicycle. Coach. Horse. Schooner. Smuggler's boat. Here. Hope satisfactory."

Since Mr. Rea's adventures, St. Thomas, in the Danish West Indies, has been made the news base for American correspondence. Here despatches may be sent to New York by way of the Haiti cable, at the rate of seventy-three cents a word, or they may go from Kingston, Jamaica, to the. Bermuda Islands and around by Halifax, Nova Scotia, to New York, at the same rate.

At all points where correspondents are sending despatches a newspaper must establish a credit in gold, identify its representative, and prepay the charges on cablegrams. Although this may seem a mere detail of the work, it often involves much exasperating delay and expense.

Wherever there is a censor, no despatches in cipher are allowed. Messages may be "briefed" by the omission of unimportant words, but they must always be in " plain language," whether English, French, or Spanish. These restrictions have given rise to a

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number of exceedingly clever codes, whereby staff correspondent either in Hong Kong or messages may seem to say one thing when in the Philippine Islands before the action they mean quite another. The American was over, and yet three of the inevitable newspaper has learned that a Spanish censor American reporters were actually being carwill allow a demand for money to go through ried with the fleet into the battle in Manila when he will blue-pencil everything else. Bay. These were Mr. John T. McCutcheon, an Accordingly the codes are made to center artist and correspondent for the "Chicago around the transmission of money. For in- Record," and Mr. E. W. Harden of the stance, a correspondent cables the editor of "Chicago Post," who were fortunate enough his paper: to be on board the "McCulloch;" and Mr. Joseph L. Stickney of the New York "Herald," who accompanied Admiral Dewey on the Olympia." Several unrepresented papers succeeded in securing the services of correspondents of London papers at Manila and Hong Kong. Others cabled the United States Consul at Hong Kong, requesting him to engage a suitable person to cable early news of the movements of Dewey's fleet. After the cable was cut, a New York paper, in its eagerness to be the first to tell the tale of victory, chartered a despatch-boat at Hong Kong and ordered it to sail at once for Manila. Some idea of the expense involved in all of these inquiries and instructions, with the resultant despatches, may be formed when it is known that for every message received by cable from Hong Kong the newspapers pay $1.60 a word.

"Send $500 quickly. Wire instructions." To the Spanish censor this looks like the most innocent of requests, and he is deeply interested in having money come into the country. So he lets it go. At New York it reads in quite a different way-" Battle. 'Vizcaya' sunk. American fleet now off Porto Rico." If the despatch had read, "Send $600" or send $700," it would have meant Almerante Oquendo' sunk," or "Cristobal Colon' sunk;" and if it had been "Cable directions," instead of "Wire instructions," it would have meant "American fleet disabled and retreating." And so on through infinite variations.

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One New York paper arranged to protect itself still further by having its code despatches sent by a commercial man in the Spanish port to a supposed banking house in London.

Not to be deterred from the hope of sending the first news of the anticipated naval conflict off Porto Rico, one correspondent used his Yankee wit and chartered the Danish steamer "Tyr," at Baltimore, and went with her at once to St. Thomas. She sailed under the Danish flag, and her captain had his Danish papers. Consequently, if she crossed the track of the Spanish fleet she could not be molested. If she was hailed she could report that she was a Danish steamer bound down from Copenhagen, by way of Baltimore, to St. Thomas, with a cargo of cheese, and the correspondent could lie quietly below and take snap-shots of the Spaniards through a port-hole. If the "Tyr" blundered into a naval conflict, as she could be depended upon to do, she would be as safe from molestation as an English vessel. And yet, even with the protection of a foreign flag, the correspondent takes many desperate chances -but it is a business of chances, and its success is measured in chances.

While these things were happening at the seat of war in Cuban waters, Admiral Dewey was advancing upon Manila, more than 10,000 miles away, and great naval battle was impending. It was impossible even for a New York newspaper to place a

At the Cape Verde Islands, the Canary Islands, Martinique, in the West Indies, Rio Janeiro, and other points from which war despatches have been received, the newspapers of America may have had no regular correspondents, but so well organized is the news service of the world that there is always some man, be his nationality what it may, who is the authorized correspondent of some paper or news association. If he reports to any city in the world, his news finds its way within a few hours to the newspapers of the United States. This was strikingly illustrated by the prompt and definite news which American papers received from the far away Cape Verde Islands the moment the Spanish fleet touched port, the messages coming by way of the Madeira Islands, Lisbon; and Penzance, England, and so to New York, at a cable toll of eighty-six cents a word.

The organization of the news service for reporting the great events at Santiago, and the ingenuity and bravery of the correspondents who attended the land and naval forces through their historic achievements there, call for separate treatment, and cannot be gone into here. It must suffice to say that they form one of the most interesting chapters in all newspaper history.

THE

EDITORIAL NOTES.

MCCLURE'S AND THE WAR.

HE war with Spain raised new and difficult problems for the editors of all periodicals. It was obviously an opportunity to suffer a large loss or secure a large gain in circulation, and the hard question was how to deal with it so as to have the gain rather than the loss. We have good reason to believe that the course followed by the editors of MCCLURE'S was not an unwise one. In the last four months-May, June, July, and August-the circulation of the Magazine has increased 428,357 copies over that for the corresponding months of last year, an average increase per month of 107,089 copies.

It is not our design, in dealing with the war, either to compete with the newspapers in gathering and publishing the current news of the war, or to anticipate the labors of the historian by presenting a history of it. Our design is, however, as shown in this and previous numbers of the magazine, to publish carefully written articles by actual participants in the most notable and important events. Thus, in the present number, we give accounts of the destruction of Admiral Cervera's fleet from two exceptionally well-qualified observers who were on the flagships of Admiral Sampson and Commodore Schley throughout the engagement. In the August number, we published Colonel Rowan's account of his own hazardous journey across Cuba on a secret mission from the government. In the October number, we shall have a participant's dramatic account of the life and movements of the army in the investment and capture of Santiago.

A COMBINATION WITH THE "LADIES' HOME JOURNAL."

A combination has been formed by the Doubleday and McClure Company and the "Ladies' Home Journal" for the publication of a series of dainty novelettes and also of a number of books of special practical value. The combined circulation of MCCLURE's MAGAZINE and the "Ladies' Home Journal" is more than 1,250,000 copies a month, which means some 6,000,000 readers, certainly the largest list of book-buyers ever

reached directly. The editions of these books will be about ten times as large as the usual first printing of new books, and the readers of both periodicals will be supplied at proportionately low prices.

MISS TARBELL'S LATER LIFE OF LINCOLN.

In the November number will begin the second part of Miss Tarbell's "Life of Lincoln." The period covered in this work is that of Lincoln's Presidential career, beginning with the campaign of 1860, when he was first elected, and ending with his assassination in 1865. The point of view of the work is entirely different from that of other lives of the great Civil War President. It will not be a history of the times. It will not attempt to trace the campaigns and describe the battles of the war. It will be, rather, a study of the man Lincoln, depicting his personal relations to all the leading men in public life and in the army and navy, as well as his relations to the common soldier and to the plain people. It will show him in his daily life at the White House and in his summer cottage at the Soldier's Home, and describe his visits to battlefields, hospitals, camps, and forts.

RUDYARD KIPLING'S NEW STORIES.

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We are sure that our readers are interested in Rudyard Kipling's works, and we are glad to announce that our Book Department will soon publish a new volume by Mr. Kipling, entitled "The Day's Work.' will contain nearly all the short stories he has written during the last five years, revealing him in his most mature and strongest work. Other early publications by the Book Department will be "The Lady of Castell March," by Owen Rhoscomyl, which is the first of an interesting series of Dollar Novels; General Nelson A. Miles's "Military Europe;" and several important books on nature study, with colored plates, including one by the author of "Bird Neighbors," entitled" Birds that Hunt and are Hunted," with nearly fifty colored plates; a "Butterfly Book," by Dr. W. J. Holland, superbly illustrated in colors; and "Flashlights on Nature," by Grant Allen.

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