The war correspondent who accompanied the Russian Army which crossed
the Danube in the summer of 1877, and who had the good fortune to be a
welcome person, found his path of duty made exceedingly easy for him.
And whether he was a welcome person or not depended almost entirely on
himself. His newspaper might be held in obloquy, but the authorities
ignored the hostility of the paper with something that closely
resembled magnanimity, and the correspondent was not held responsible
for the tone of his journal, but only for the matter in it which he
himself contributed. It is rather a mild way of putting it to say that
the _Standard_, for instance, was not friendly to Russia throughout
the period in question; but Mr. Boyle, its representative, was quite
frankly accepted, and has testified to the courtesy and comradeship
of the Russian officers. He had to go, and everybody ought to rejoice
that this fate befell him, because it was the occasion of his brilliant
and amusing book, _The Diary of an Expelled Correspondent_; the
_teterrima causa_ assigned was a passage in one of his letters. The
_Daily Telegraph_ could not have struck the reader as being more
bitter against the Russians than was its contemporary of Shoe Lane; but
the gentleman designated to represent it when he presented himself at
Kischeneff was refused his legitimation. This, however, was for reasons
purely personal to the candidate, against whom there was some ill-will
in the Russian headquarters, and not, as I understood, because of the
tone of the journal by which he was accredited.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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