CHAPTER XXVI

A PARENTHESIS

To what I have said of journalism I need not add much. I remained in London as the representative of _The New York Tribune_, and in charge of its European affairs from 1867 to 1895; returning then to New York and Washington for _The Times_, till 1905.

When _The Tribune_ began publishing a Sunday edition, one other innovation upon the established practice followed. I sent each week, by cable, a column containing a summary view of what seemed most important during the week. It was not a summary of news and it was not a leading article but a compromise between the two. It was, at any rate, the first of its kind, and I was allowed to put it in such shape as I thought best, since then, the American demand for what are called "Sunday cables" has grown, the despatches to all the great journals of the United States have increased in number, in length, in variety, and in daring. All I claim for mine is that it was the first. I do not know whether any work in journalism has in it the elements of permanency. Probably not. Journalism is an expression of the {252} governing forces of the day, and day by day changes as the forces change and the days change. But should a history of international journalism be written, the historian will perhaps remember that as agent of _The Tribune_ I set up in London that European news-bureau which all other great American journals after some years copied; that I was in charge of it during the Franco-German War; and that the success of _The Tribune_ during that war was due to the system already described, which I had established three years before.

The years that follow are full of miscellaneous interests. The Memories, some of which are reprinted in this volume, are not primarily historical, though I hope they are accurate. They are impressions. They cannot be presented as a sequence, and as each chapter, or group of chapters, deals with a separate subject, I republish most of them in the order in which they were written and printed, or otherwise as may seem convenient. I pass now to an incident of the Irish "War," and then to a diplomatic experiment in the history of those long contentious relations between Canada and the United States which have so often imperilled the friendship between England and the United States.

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