Press Pool on Troop Ships

MEMORANDUM FOR MR. STONE, PREPARED BY MR. ELLIOTT AFTER READING SECRETARY BAKER'S LETTER.

The Secretary of War's position is not entirely clear and I trust the President will not see fit to make it conclusive. The Secretary shows the same disinclination to recognize the organized channels of news distribution as he did in the Mexican business to which he refers.

His proposal to send special writers on the troops ships to make their stories "equally available to all newspapers in this country" is subversive, unless such men are in addition to representatives of press associations. I fear he plans to ignore entirely the news distributing machinery for which all the newspapers now pay fixed costs and require them to assume an extra expense to get what every newspaper could get without an extra penny through the accredited representatives of the press associations.

A report by special writers appointed and sponsored by the War Department, and over whom the newspapers would have no control, could not be distributed by any news gathering agency as its own report, nor could it accept the responsibility for anything contained in such dispatches. Such dispatches would have to be presented to the public with the label "prepared and censored by the War Department". They could command none of the confidence which the public has learned to place in the dispatches of the non-partisan unbiased news gathering agencies. At best such reports would not rate higher than the British eye-witness accounts of the war, and possible could be classed with German Over-seas news reports. Such reports, so far as public estimate is concerned, would rank with a DeWolf Hopper or Willie Collier account of the World's Baseball series.

Of course if press associations are represented we do not care how many special writers are employed providing their stories are not given priority on cable or wireless means of transmission. If the facilities of existing news organizations are ignored or subordinated to a departmental special corps, the secretary will require some 2,000 daily newspapers now already paying for organized news service to assume extra salaries, expenses, telegraph and cable tolls, virtually to bear the expense of creating an entirely new machine for this single purpose. And that is not the end of it. If such a plan were carried out how are these "special" dispatches to be distributed "equally". The physical organizations for distribution will add a material expense. The net result of such a plan, if I have correctly read the Secretary's letter, will not be as he expects, to make the dispatches "equally available". It will make them very unequally available.

Neither can the War Department control publication. An experience in illustration has just been the lot of the Committee on Public Information the so-called censorship board. It employed special writers to visit the Atlantic battle fleet with the understanding that all stories should be used at the same time. Press associations controlled their output and observed the release date, but many newspapers used the product of the special corps of writers who did not recognize the release date fixed by the Committee.

There are few newspapers which can now afford to add to their expenses by paying an extra and special charge to set up a special machine to perform the functions of one for which they already pay and in which they have full confidence. The Secretary speaks of there being four principal press associations "and a large number of important papers which maintain subsidiary press associations for the distribution of news to small groups of affiliated papers". He speaks as if the latter were independent of the four principal press associations for their news.

If the Secretary contemplates representatives for these subsidiaries he again compels an expensive duplication of effort. There is scarcely a newspaper in the United States, which would subscribe to such a special service, which is not already served by the four principal press associations. All the "large number of principal important papers" of which he speaks get their service from one of the four principal press associations, as do practically all the affiliated papers of which he speaks as receiving their news from the subsidiary press associations of the principal papers. This so-called subsidiary service is in no case a complete news service and never is represented as such even by the papers themselves. It merely is supplementary.

The Secretary of War has made it appear that to give representation to the press associations will be to deprive some newspaper of an account of the expedition. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is the only way he can assure all the newspapers that they will receive it. When he sets up some sort of special machinery to attempt the work of organizations already existing he limits the use of the special machine to a few rich newspapers and leaves out the many.

I read this memorandum to Mr. Noyes. He called attention to the fact that the ban against the Hearst organization is adding difficulty to the position of the United States. I cannot believe, however, that the administration will forbid us to send representatives to France merely because the Hearst organization has offended our allies and has been denied favors on that account.George Creel, Chairman of the Committee on Public Information, wants the Government to let press associations send their news men to the American front in France, but not necessarily with troop ships. Confidentially he told me about a conference at the War Department. He was shown a plan by which the War Department would name four correspondents to be sent to Pershing and control their output. Creel was told he would have nothing to do with the matter. Major MacArthur, War Department censor, argued that as the work of the four was to be made into a composite whole the quartette should be selected for their temperamental qualifications. One should be serious and portray facts accurately, another a humorist, another famed for his powers of description and the fourthe for capacity to deal with the sentimental side of our mission abroad, with due consideration for pathetic incidents.

Mr. Creel nominated the following:Roger Babson, Statistician;Irving Cobb, humorist;Upton Sinclair, picture writer;Ella Wheeler Wilcox, sob artist.

The nominations were not well received and the Army board now suspects Creel was "spoofing".