This Would Enable One Paper To Say
That It Had The News "On The Street" Five Minutes Earlier Than Its
Hated Rivals.
We found that the rivalry of our respective papers
bored us.
We condemned it as being childish and weak. London, New
York, Chicago were names, they were spots thousands of leagues away:
Ladysmith was just across that mountain. If our horses held out at
the pace, we would be - after Dundonald - the first men in. We
imagined that we would see hysterical women and starving men. They
would wring our hands, and say, "God bless you," and we would halt
our steaming horses in the market-place, and distribute the news of
the outside world, and tobacco. There would be shattered houses,
roofless homes, deep pits in the roadways where the shells had burst
and buried themselves. We would see the entombed miner at the moment
of his deliverance, we would be among the first from the outer world
to break the spell of his silence; the first to receive the brunt of
the imprisoned people's gratitude and rejoicings.
Indeed, it was clearly our duty to the papers that employed us that
we should not send them news, but that we should be the first to
enter Ladysmith. We were surely the best judges of what was best to
do. How like them to try to dictate to us from London and New York,
when we were on the spot! It was absurd. We shouted this to each
other as we raced in and out of the long confused column, lashing
viciously with our whips.
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