Official War Correspondent: 1915–1918

Kerby, Martin C.

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-57301-8_4

Official War Correspondent: 1915–1918

Martin C. Kerby²

Chapter
First Online: 25 February 2016

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media ((PSHM))

Abstract

Given the continued wars in the Middle East, the role of the media generally and war correspondents specifically remains a contentious issue. Against the background of the centenary of the First World War, this chapter interrogates the experience of the official war correspondents chosen by the British government. They have been criticized for the perception that they were willing participants in a propaganda war who were rewarded for their complicity with knighthoods. This chapter offers a nuanced insight into the role of the media during war and, in particular, its role during the period 1914–1918. The experience of Sir Philip Gibbs is contextualized by reference to government/press relations, journalistic ethics, war correspondence, and military history.

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Notes

1.
P Gibbs (1936) Realities of War (London: Hutchinson & Co Ltd), p. 23.
2.
Gibbs, Realities of War, p. 35.
3.
S Fahmy and T Johnson (2007) ‘Embedded Versus Unilateral Perspectives on Iraq War’, Newspaper Research Journal, vol. 28, no. 3, Summer, p. 102.
4.
Gibbs, Realities of War, p. 35.
5.
Gibbs, Realities of War, pp. 37–8.
6.
P Gibbs (1923) Adventures in Journalism (London: Harper and Brothers Publishers), p. 251.
7.
Gibbs, Realities of War, p. 26.
8.
Gibbs, Adventures in Journalism, p. 249.
9.
Letter from Edmonds to Charles Bean 16 October 1928, File of Correspondence with JE Edmonds 1927–1939, Papers of Charles Bean, Australian War Memorial, Canberra. In S Badsey (2005) ‘The Missing Western Front: British Politics, Strategy and Propaganda in 1918’. In M Connelly and D Welch (eds) War and the Media (London: IB Tauris), p. 47.
10.
Gibbs, Realities of War, p. 37.
11.
Gibbs, Adventures in Journalism, pp. 247–8.
12.
Gibbs, Adventures in Journalism, pp. 247–8.
13.
www.greatwardifferent.com/Great_War/Reporter_on_Reporters/Reporters_01.htm. Date retrieved, 1 February 2013.
14.
B Liddell Hart (1992) History of the First World War (London: Papermac), p. 193.
15.
P Simkin (1991) World War 1: The Western Front (Surrey: Bramley Books), p. 55.
16.
Liddell Hart speculated that Kitchener may have supported the French desire for an offensive in part to pave the way for his appointment as the supreme commander of the Entente forces (Liddell Hart, History of the First World War, p. 197). In fairness to Kitchener, he was also faced with the reverses at Gallipoli, in Italy and Russia. The French attacks would cost them 144,000 casualties against 85,000 German.
17.
Gibbs, Realities of War, p. 157.
18.
Daily Chronicle, 29 September 1915.
19.
Gibbs, Realities of War, p. 159.
20.
Gibbs, Adventures in Journalism, pp. 249–50.
21.
Gibbs, Realities of War, p. 190; P Gibbs (1946) The Pageant of the Years (London: Heinemann), p. 174.
22.
P Gibbs (1916) The Battles of the Somme (London: William Heinemann), p. 9.
23.
Gibbs, Realities of War, pp. 190–1.
24.
Gibbs, Realities of War, p. 193.
25.
Gibbs, The Pageant of the Years, p. 174.
26.
Harpers Monthly Magazine, September 1921, p. 424.
27.
P Gibbs (1921) More that Must be Told (London: Harper & Brothers Publishers), p. 104.
28.
Gibbs, More that Must be Told, p. 77.
29.
Gibbs, More that Must be Told, p. 104.
30.
Gibbs, More that Must be Told, p. 106.
31.
Gibbs, More that Must be Told, p.133.
32.
L MacDonald (1983) Somme (London: Michael Joseph), p. 79.
33.
Gibbs, Realities of War, p. 40.
34.
Gibbs, Realities of War, p. 41.
35.
Gibbs, Realities of War, p. 76.
36.
Times Literary Supplement, 17 June 1915.
37.
Gibbs, Realities of War, p. xi.
38.
Gibbs, Realities of War, p. 73.
39.
Gibbs, Realities of War, p. 81.
40.
Gibbs, Realities of War, p. 82.
41.
Martin Bell (1995) In Harm’s Way (London: Penguin), p. 236.
42.
Simkins, World War 1, p. 111.
43.
Simkins, World War 1, p. 105.
44.
Liddell Hart, History of the First World War, p. 231.
45.
Gibbs (1924) Ten Years After (London: Hutchinson and Co), p. 30.
46.
Gibbs, Realities of War, pp. 327–8.
47.
Daily Chronicle, 2 July 1916.
48.
Daily Chronicle, 3 July 1916.
49.
Daily Chronicle, 3 July 1916.
50.
Daily Chronicle, 3 July 1916.
51.
W Beach Thomas (1925) A Traveller in News (London: Chapman and Hall), p. 109. Although the avowed purpose of Beach Thomas’ A Traveller in News was to provide a sketch of Lord Harmsworth, it is also reasonably strong on autobiographical detail. Despite the jarring honesty evident in his admission of shame, Beach Thomas’ description of his time on the Western Front and his views on censorship are remarkably matter of fact. Whereas the war informed all of Gibbs’ subsequent work, for Beach Thomas, a far less prolific writer of wartime memoirs, his wartime experiences take a more natural place in a chronological ordering of his life.
52.
Gibbs, The Battles of the Somme, p. 114; 130.
53.
Gibbs, Realities of War, p. 339.
54.
Gibbs, The Battles of the Somme, pp. 59–60.
55.
Gibbs, The Battles of the Somme, p. 61.
56.
Gibbs, The Battles of the Somme, p. 63; 71.
57.
Daily Chronicle, 4 July 1916.
58.
Daily Chronicle, 5 July, 1916.
59.
Daily Chronicle, 5 July, 1916.
60.
Daily Chronicle, 5 July, 1916.
61.
Gibbs, Realities of War, p. 34.
62.
Daily Chronicle, 5 July 1916.
63.
Gibbs, Realities of War, p. 330.
64.
Daily Chronicle, 6 July 1916.
65.
Daily Chronicle, 7 July 1916.
66.
Gibbs, The Battles of the Somme, p. 58.
67.
Daily Chronicle, 8 July 1916; Daily Chronicle, 11 July 1916.
68.
Gibbs, The Battles of the Somme, p. 95.
69.
Gibbs, The Battles of the Somme, p. 96.
70.
Gibbs, The Battles of the Somme, p. 94; 83.
71.
Gibbs, The Battles of the Somme, p. 109.
72.
Gibbs, The Battles of the Somme, p. 125.
73.
Gibbs, The Battles of the Somme, p. 303.
74.
Liddell Hart, History of the First World War, p. 243.
75.
Gibbs, Ten Years After, p. 31.
76.
Philip Gibbs (1917) The Germans on the Somme (London: Darling and Son Ltd), pp. 3–4.
77.
Gibbs, The Germans on the Somme, p. 10.
78.
In a 1914 pamphlet titled Common Sense, he had written ‘the heroic remedy for this tragic misunderstanding is that both armies should shoot their officers and go home to gather in their harvests in the villages and make a revolution in the towns’. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/11/ed-morel-anti-war-movement, accessed 11 December 2015. Nevertheless Shaw believed that the war had to be pursued to the end.
79.
Gibbs, The Pageant of the Years, p. 196.
80.
J O’Donovan (1983) Bernard Shaw (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan), p. 126.
81.
DH Laurence (1985) Bernard Shaw Collected Letters 1911–1925 (London: Max Reinhardt), pp. 448–9.
82.
Lethbridge Daily Herald, 30 June 1923.
83.
Gibbs, The Pageant of the Years, p. 197.
84.
Gibbs, The Pageant of the Years, p. 197. Though denied access to official records, Masefield did publish The Old Front Line (1917), a description of the geography of the battlefield, and two years later The Battle of the Somme (1919).
85.
P Gibbs (1918) From Bapaume to Passchendaele (London: Heinemann), p. 3.
86.
Daily Chronicle, 18 February 1917.
87.
Daily Chronicle, 28 February 1917.
88.
Daily Chronicle, 17 March 1917.
89.
Daily Chronicle, 19 March 1917.
90.
Daily Chronicle, 20 March 1917.
91.
Daily Chronicle, 3 April 1917.
92.
Daily Chronicle, 10 April 1917.
93.
Gibbs, The Pageant of the Years, p. 198.
94.
Daily Chronicle, 10 April 1917.
95.
Gibbs, The Pageant of the Years, pp. 199–200.
96.
Gibbs, The Pageant of the Years, pp. 200–1.
97.
Daily Chronicle, 13 April 1917.
98.
Daily Chronicle, 16 April 1917.
99.
Daily Chronicle, 16 April 1917.
100.
M Farrar (1998) News from the Front: War Correspondents on the Western Front (Phoenix Mill, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing), p. 146.
101.
Gibbs, From Bapaume, p. 2.
102.
Gibbs, From Bapaume, p. 3.
103.
Gibbs, The Pageant of the Years, p. 202. The objective was Messines Ridge which afforded the Germans a clear view of the surrounding area. Its capture was seen as vital to the success of the planned offensive near Ypres.
104.
Beach Thomas, A Traveller in News, p. 120.
105.
Beach Thomas, A Traveller in News, p. 122.
106.
Beach Thomas, A Traveller in News, p. 148.
107.
Daily Chronicle, 8 June 1917.
108.
Gibbs, The Pageant of the Years, p. 202.
109.
Daily Chronicle, 8 June 1917; Daily Chronicle, 9 June 1917.
110.
Daily Chronicle, 9 June 1917.
111.
Daily Chronicle, 9 June 1917.
112.
Daily Chronicle, 14 July 1917.
113.
Daily Chronicle, 1 August 1917.
114.
Gibbs, The Pageant of the Years, p. 205.
115.
Gibbs, The Pageant of the Years, p. 207.
116.
N Lytton (1920) The Press and the General Staff (London: W Collins & Sons & Co), p. 114.
117.
Daily Chronicle, 1 August 1917. Although written on the 31 July, it was, of course, not published until the following day.
118.
Daily Chronicle, 17 August 1917.
119.
Daily Chronicle, 10 October 1917.
120.
Gibbs, The Pageant of the Years, p. 207.
121.
Gibbs, From Bapaume, p. 18.
122.
Gibbs Family Archives.
123.
Harpers Monthly Magazine, September 1921, p. 425.
124.
CP Scott (1970) The Political Diaries of CP Scott, 1911-1928 (London: Collins), p. 324.
125.
D Lloyd George (1934) War Memoirs of David Lloyd George Vol. IV. (London: Ivor Nicholson & Watson), p. 2230. In 1935 while serving on the Royal Commission into the Arms Trade, Gibbs and Lloyd George spoke light heartedly of the passage, and parted amicably in a manner the ex-Prime Minister described as ‘the peace of Passchendaele’ (Gibbs, Ordeal in England, pp. 93–4).
126.
Gibbs, The Pageant of the Years, p. 208.
127.
Taylor, English History, p. 192.
128.
P Gibbs (1938) Ordeal in England (London: William Heinemann), pp. 93–4.
129.
Harpers Monthly Magazine, September 1921, p. 425.
130.
Gibbs, From Bapaume, p. 21.
131.
P Gibbs (1949) Crowded Company (London: Allan Wingate), p. 19.
132.
Gibbs, The Pageant of the Years, p. 211.
133.
P Gibbs (1919) Open Warfare: The Way to Victory (London: Heinemann), Author’s Preface.
134.
A Gibbs (1924) Gun Fodder: The Diary of Four Years of War (Boston: Little, Brown, & Company), p. 234.
135.
Daily Chronicle, 18 February 1918.
136.
New York Times, 24 February 1918.
137.
Daily Chronicle, 22 March 1918.
138.
Daily Chronicle, 23 March 1918.
139.
Daily Chronicle, 25 March 1918.
140.
Daily Chronicle, 26 March 1918.
141.
Daily Chronicle, 28 March 1918.
142.
Daily Chronicle, 30 March 1918.
143.
Daily Chronicle, 1 April 1918.
144.
Daily Chronicle, 11 April 1918.
145.
Gibbs, The Pageant of the Years, p. 225; Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, 21 February 1921.
146.
Gibbs, The Pageant of the Years, pp. 226–8.
147.
In 1949, Gibbs recalled being on leave in England in September 1916 when the German airship SL-11 was shot down by Lieutenant W Leefe Robinson, who was subsequently awarded the Victoria Cross. He incorrectly, though understandably, described it as a Zeppelin, when in fact it was actually an Army Schutte-Lanz airship.
148.
Gibbs, The Pageant of the Years, p. 226.
149.
Gibbs, The Pageant of the Years, p. 226.
150.
A Feinstein (2006) Journalists under Fire: The Psychological Hazards of Covering War (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press), p. x.
151.
Feinstein, Journalists under Fire, p. 23.
152.
Feinstein found that half of the war journalists he studied were either single or divorced as against one-third for domestic journalists. Though these figures can in part be explained by changing attitudes to divorce, they underline the difficulty of a transition from a war zone to the comfort and safety of the Home Front, particularly for a highly strung man such as Gibbs.
153.
Feinstein, Journalists under Fire, p. 35.
154.
Gibbs, The Pageant of the Years, pp. 225–8.
155.
Gibbs, The Pageant of the Years, p. 226.
156.
Daily Chronicle, 28 August 1918.
157.
Gibbs, The Pageant of the Years, p. 229.
158.
Daily Chronicle, 18 October 1918; Gibbs, The Pageant of the Years, p. 231.
159.
Gibbs, The Pageant of the Years, p. 232.
160.
Harpers Monthly Magazine, September 1921, p. 423.
161.
Gibbs, From Bapaume, Author’s Note.
162.
Daily Chronicle, 12 November 1918.
163.
M Hoehn (ed) (1947) ‘Sir Philip Gibbs’ Catholic Authors 1930-1947 (Newark: St Mary’s Abbey), p. 265.
164.
Gibbs, Open Warfare, pp. 551–2.
165.
P Gibbs (1931) Since Then (London: William Heinemann), p. 24.
166.
Gibbs, The Pageant of the Years, pp. 243–4.
167.
Arthur Gibbs, Gun Fodder, p. vi.

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Humanities & International Studies, University of Southern Queensland, Toowooomba, Queensland, Australia
Martin C. Kerby

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Kerby, M.C. (2016). Official War Correspondent: 1915–1918. In: Sir Philip Gibbs and English Journalism in War and Peace. Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57301-8_4

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57301-8_4
Published: 25 February 2016
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