There was never time
to think out a sentence or a phrase, to touch up a clumsy paragraph,
to go back on a false start, to annihilate a vulgar adjective, to
put a touch of style into one's narrative. One wrote instinctively,
blindly, feverishly. . . And downstairs were the censors, sending up
messages by orderlies to say "half-time," or "ten minutes more," and
cutting out sometimes the things one wanted most to say, modifying a
direct statement of fact into a vague surmise, taking away the honor
due to the heroic men who had fought and died to-day. . . Who would
be a war correspondent, or a censor?
So it happened day by day, for five months at a stretch, when big
battles were in progress. It was not an easy life. There were times
when I was so physically and mentally exhausted that I could hardly
rouse myself to a new day's effort. There were times when I was faint
and sick and weak; and my colleagues were like me. But we struggled on
to tell the daily history of the war and the public cursed us because
we did not tell more, or sneered at us because they thought we were
"spoon-fed" by G.
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