The General Staff had for some years prior to 1914 always intended that a reasonable number of correspondents should proceed to the front under official aegis on the outbreak of a European war. A regular organization for the purpose actually took shape automatically within the War Office, in concert with the Press, on mobilization. A small staff, under charge of a staff-officer who had been especially designated for the job two or three years before, with clerks, cars, and so on, came into being _pari passu_ with G.H.Q. of the Expeditionary Force on the historic 5th of August. The officer, Major A. G. Stuart, a man of attractive personality and forceful character, master of his profession and an ideal holder of the post, had been in control of the Press representatives at Army Manoeuvres in 1912 and 1913, and he was therefore personally acquainted with the gentlemen chosen to take the field. (He was unfortunately killed while serving on the staff in France, in the winter of 1915-16.) The General Staff had, moreover, gone out of their way to impress upon correspondents at manoeuvres that they ought to regard the operations in the light of instruction for themselves in duties which they would be performing in the event of actual hostilities. They were given confidential information with regard to the programme on the understanding that they would keep it to themselves, and they always played the game. But when war came, all this went by the board. Leave for correspondents to go to the front, whether under official auspices or any other way, was refused, and the staff and the clerks and the cars abode idle in London under my wing. The Press world accepted this development philosophically for the opening two or three weeks, realizing that the moment when the Expeditionary Force was being spirited over to France was no time for visitors in the war zone. But after that the Fourth Estate became decidedly restive. Enterprising reporters proceeded to the theatre of war without permission, while experienced journalists, deluded by past promises, remained patiently behind hoping for the best. The old hounds, in fact, were kept in the kennel, while the young entry ran riot with no hunt servants to rate them. Some unauthorized representatives of the British Press were, it is true, arrested by the French, and had the French dealt with them in vertebrate fashion--decapitated them or sent them to the Devil's Island--we should have known where we were. But as the culprits were simply dismissed with a caution the situation became ridiculous, because no newspaper man bothers about marching to a dungeon with gyves upon his wrists and tarrying there for some hours without sustenance. It is part of the game. So the military authorities were openly flouted.