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| sally |
Posted
on 01-Aug-01 09:17 PM
I thought maybe folks might be interested in the following newspaper clips that I just happened to run into. They're from a foreign correspondent who, with great difficulty, managed to get to the site of a certain military operation. See if you can guess what the reporter, who is not from the country he's writing about, is talking about ...
ON THE COUNTRY'S NEWSPAPERS:
“The Indian press is really respectable journalism compared to the [ ] press, and I find that no one of any note attaches the least importance to the opinions or leaders of such a paper as [ ] or [ ], though they read them for the news.”
ON THE PLACE WHERE THE REPORTER HAD BEEN STAYING:
“An execrable, tooth-cracking drive ended at last in front of a hotel where I was doomed to take up my quarters. It is a dilapidated, unclean place, with spit-stained floor, full of flies and strong odours … Behind [us] there rose tiled and shingled roofs of mean dingy houses, and we could catch glimpses of the line of poor streets, narrow, crooked, ill-paved, surmounted by … large sprawling advertisement boards [for] tobacco.”
ON A CURRENT MILITARY OPERATION:
“I look around me for a [military] staff, and look in vain. There are a few plodding [officers] … who sit in small rooms and write memoranda; and there are some ignorant and not very active young men, who loiter about the headquarters, and strut up the street [in uniform] as if they were soldiers, but I see no system, no order, no knowledge! … [Going to the place of the operation], soon I met soldiers who were coming through the corn, mostly without arms ... Their artillery is miserably deficient ...”
The journalist--an extremely well-known and respected person, by the way--goes on to write that the operation, in spite of the way the newspapers initially reported it, has been a "disgraceful failure."
SO: Can anyone guess the country he's talking about? The military operation under discussion? And the nationality of the journalist who wrote these clips? (Extra points: Guess the newspaper he filed the reports for!)
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| GUESS? |
Posted
on 01-Aug-01 10:55 PM
PAKISTAN?
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| Biswo |
Posted
on 02-Aug-01 12:26 AM
Dear Sally:
A brain teaser. Temptation to think it is about Nepal, and written by Washington
Post journalist Richard S. Ehrlich was high, unless I went to the second
paragraph.
Willium Howard Russell, considered to be the world's no 1 reporter, reported
about American Civil War in London's 'Times' newspaper. When he reaches Norfolk,
Virginia after boarding a ship, he describes the place in exactly the same
words.
" An execrable, tooth-cracking drive ended at last in front of the Atlantic
Hotel, where I was doomed to take up my quarters. It is a dilapidated,
uncleanly place, with tobacco-stained floor, full of flies and strong odours.
The waiters were all slaves; untidy, slipshod, and careless creatures. I was
shut up in a small room "
A Bohemian Brigade , published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Whoever wrote that piece must have thought he was reporting American Civil War
like situation, and that he was Russel of 21st century.
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| sally |
Posted
on 02-Aug-01 01:17 AM
Good job, Sherlock!!!
I thought I'd stump more people with that ... not a whole lot of American history buffs on this site. Ah, the wonders of Google :-)
But no, it's not someone plagiarizing a 19th century journalist. It's actually all from Russell's correspondence on the American Civil War--including the bit about the Indian press. (He also thought that American soldiers were such pathetically undisciplined, semi-nourished "scarecrows" that they'd "go over like tenpins at a charge from Punjabi regulars.")
The military operation is the Battle of Bull Run, the first real engagement of the war. Most US newspapers had declared it a great victory, so when Russell came out with the truth, he was flooded with hate mail and ended up having to go back home to London.
I actually happen to be reading that book ("The Bohemian Brigade") at the moment. I'm REALLY surprised you either knew it, or found it on the Net! The parallels jumped out at me--as they often do when I read about life in the US when it was developing. The description of his American hotel after the "tooth-cracking drive" on those bad 19th century American roads could easily refer to lots of towns in Nepal, and undoubtedly in other developing countries.
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| Biswo |
Posted
on 02-Aug-01 03:11 AM
Before congratulating myself for this, I should clarify this: it was a luck.
Somedays ago, I was thinking about the possibility of a national government
in Nepal, esp since we have a government of a party that has majority in
parliament. We used to read a speech by Winston Churchill in our ISc, in which
he proposes a national government while fighting against Nazis.So, I thought it
might be a precedent for us, if we should go to 'civil war' with Maoists.[You know,
Girija was prepared for this.]
Churchill was once a war reporter. Since he got the Nobel prize for those
reportings(?), I wondered if he was ' the best war reporter'. In a search engine,
I searched for 'the best war journalist' or something like that.Russell's name thus
popped. And a commentary about the book you are reading now.
Tooth-cracking was the word I didn't know the exact meaning of.I looked at the
dictionary for that, and that was the last time I used dictionary. Your question
was asked when I still had all these things fresh in my memory.
Like most of the foreigners, my primer for American civil war is likes of Gone with
the wind, the birth of a nation etc..However, since I live in south, I frequently
run into those people who are still proud of their war against north.Flag
controversies are common in contemporary south, you know. It is very
interesting to know that supplements of Southern newspapers still carries articles
about the civil war, undertone of which is still sympathetical to the federalists.I
don't want to be obtrusive to the affairs of this great nation, but sometimes I
think in some sections, rancor still runs high against the result of the civil war,
and the carpetbaggers who 'reportedly' pilloried southern resources.Perhaps
you know it better, and perhaps I am wrong about this.
Please write your opinion about the book.
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