But the great war, 1914-1918, was started with almost as much hostility toward the correspondent as toward the enemy. As though by common consent, all the conflicting nations sought to crush him. Every big newspaper in all the world wanted to send a correspondent to the firing lines: some of them wanted to send two, four, six, even more, for the line of battle soon became more than a hundred miles long in France and much longer on the Russian frontier. At first not any were permitted to approach the firing front or even the division headquarters and the correspondents worked under great disadvantage. A strict censorship was made over the little information they were able to obtain. It was very unsatisfactory. At this time London was almost entirely without information about the war. The solemn silence with reference to the armies and the fighting served to dampen enthusiasm and patriotic ardor. Calls for enlistments were ignored, recruiting came to a standstill. Lists of the dead began to appear, adding to the gloom. No stirring descriptions of personal heroism or glorious achievement were printed. The newspapers made a great row about it and the people joined in.
It was not until later, when the papers were permitted to print stirring news from the front of the ebb and flow of the battle tides, that enthusiasm was aroused and England made splendid response to the call for fighting men. The government at length came to appreciate that to suppress all war news was to breed indifference; and in the same proportion as the censorship was relaxed, public spirit was aroused.
All of the London newspapers made the most elaborate preparations to report the war. Those of the _Times_ were perhaps the most comprehensive and may serve as illustration. It sent ninety correspondents to the army fronts scattering them all along the lines. They were, in the main, high priced men and the expenditure amounted to something like fifteen thousand dollars a week. But the censors shut them out entirely. They were not allowed within miles of the fighting lines and were forbidden to send a scrap of news. It was useless to keep them there and they were recalled. The only news printed in London, Paris, or Berlin, at first, were the government reports.