In the Firing Line

Extract: The Baptism of Fire “E’en now their vanguard gathers, E’en now we face the fray.” Kipling.—Hymn before Action. The War Correspondent has become old-fashioned before he has had time to grow old; he was made by telegraphy, and wireless has unmade him. The swift transmission of news from the front might gratify us who are waiting anxiously at home, but such news can be caught in the air now, or secretly and as swiftly retransmitted so as to gratify our enemies even more by keeping them well-informed of our strength and intentions and putting them on their guard. Therefore our armies have rightly gone forth on this the greatest war the world has ever seen as they went to the Crusades, with no Press reporter in their ranks, and when the historian sits down, some peaceful day in the future, to write his prose epic of the Titanic struggle that is now raging over Europe he will have no records of the actual fighting except such as he can gather from the necessarily terse official reports, the published stories of refugees and wounded soldiers that have been picked up by enterprising newspaper men hovering alertly in the rear of the forces, and from the private letters written to their friends by the fighting men themselves. These letters compensate largely for the ampler, more expert accounts the war correspondent is not allowed to send us. They may tell little of strategic movements or of the full tide and progress of an engagement till you read them in conjunction with the official reports, but in their vivid,....Arthur St. John Adcock (17 January 1864 – 9 June 1930), was an English novelist and poet, known as A. St. John Adcock or St. John Adcock. He is remembered for his discovery of the then-unknown poet W. H. Davies.LifeAdcock was born in London. He was a Fleet Street journalist for half a century, as an assiduous freelance writer. He worked initially as a law office clerk, becoming full-time as a writer in 1893. He built up a literary career by unrelenting efforts in circulating his manuscripts, initially also working part-time as an assistant editor on a trade journal. He was a founder member in 1901 of Paul Henry's literary and performing club, with Robert Lynd, Frank Rutter and others.The acting editor of The Bookman from 1908, Adcock, according to A. E. Waite who knew him, did all the work of the Bookman, nominally under its founder William Robertson Nicoll. In 1923 he became also its titular editor. As an influential critic, he has been classed with conservatives such as Hilaire Belloc, Edmund Gosse, Henry Newbolt, E. B. Osborn and Arthur Waugh.