Stanley Washburn - The Cable Game

THE DISPATCH BOAT FRANCE LYING AT ANCHOR IN ODESSA HARBOR

THE ADVENTURES OF AN AMERICAN
PRESS-BOAT IN TURKISH WATERS
DURING THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

BY
STANLEY WASHBURN

BOSTON
SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY
1912

Copyright, 1911
Sherman, French & Company

TO
ALICE

It has seemed worth while to set down the account of the experiences reported in the following pages, not because they represent any important achievement, nor yet because they are conspicuous for any unusual enterprise, for none realizes better than the writer that they comprise nothing more than the days work, for the dozens of newspaper men that wander the earth.

As a lover of the Profession these few little adventures are narrated in the hope that they may serve as an interpretation to the lay reader of the motives of the men that go forth to gather the news of the world. Fame, money and reputation are all secondary considerations to the real journalist and what he does he does for his Paper and for the pure joy of the game that he plays.

What the writer has tried to portray is the atmosphere and fascination of THE CABLE GAMEthe game that takes a man far from home midst alien races and into strange lands and makes him stake his all in his effort to win that goal of the journalists ambitionA World Beat.

S. W.

From War to Peace in ManchuriaPekingA New Assignment, Russia DirectShanghai.

For three days we had been congratulating ourselves that we were on the eve of the greatest battle in history. Around us in silent might, two armies slept on their arms. From the border of far Mongolia for a hundred and eighty miles eastward lay the line of the , to which we had been attached since May. All our talk was of the coming of the great battle and of the preparations which we must make for a three weeks campaign in the saddle, and more important still, how we should arrange an open line of communications from the ever-changing front of the prospective struggle to the cable office in the rear.

Covered with dust an eighth of an inch deep, we rode into Fakumen, our headquarters, late on the afternoon of September 4th. At the door of a Chinese bean mill, where for four weary months we had been awaiting the call to action, stood a Japanese orderly. As we dismounted, he saluted and respectfully handed me one of the Japanese charactered envelopes of the Military field telegraph. Turning my horse over to my Japanese boy I opened it, and read the word Return.

The Russo-Japanese War was over, and even before the armies themselves knew that the end had come, my chief in his office in far away Chicago had sent the word over the cable which meant as much as reams of explanation. The same night the London Times reached half around the world and ordered home its special correspondent with the Japanese armies in the field.

That night I handed in at the Chinese mudhouse, where the telegraph ticked cheerfully over the hundreds of miles of Manchurian plains and Korean mountains to Fusan, and thence by cable to Nagasaki and the civilized world, a short dispatch to my office in Chicago, Leaving the front immediately. Wire instructions Peking. Two days later at sunrise we took our leave. I shall not soon forget our leave-taking from the army whose fortunes we had followed off and on for nearly eighteen months. So many of the correspondents left the front with such bitter feelings toward their erstwhile hosts that, in justice to the Japanese, it is but fair to chronicle that in one Army of the Mikado at least the relations between the staff and the soldiers of the press were anything but unpleasant, and that we, who left the Third Army that September morning, left with only the tenderest affection toward the commander under whose shadow we had lived, slept and thought these many monthsthat is than whom no finer gentleman, ardent patriot and gentle friend ever drew the breath of life. The night before our departure the general entertained us at a farewell banquet and in a kindly little toast bade us god-speed on our journey. That night we shook the hands of all the staff whom we had known so well, and went to our quarters thinking that we had seen them for the last time, for we were to leave at daybreak for the long ride to the railroad. The next morning as we were mounting our horses to begin our journey an orderly from headquarters rode up and said that Major General Ichinohe (Nogis Chief of Staff and right-hand man during the siege of Port Arthur) had requested that we stop at headquarters on our way out of town. So it was that accompanied by the small cavalry escort that had been detailed to see us to the railroad, we rode into the compound where Nogi and his staff had lived that last long summer of the war.