LIEUTENANT IN THE FRENCH ARMY, CHEVALIER OF THE LEGION OF HONOR
EDITOR IN CHIEF OF THE "MATIN,"
MEMBER OF THE FRENCH MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES
LATE ASSISTANT ATTORNEY-GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES
SOMETIME FELLOW OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Copyright, 1918, by
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America
WHO ARE FIGHTING FOR THE GREAT CAUSE
OF LIBERTY AND CIVILIZATION
To be Editor-in-Chief of one of the greatestnewspapers in the world at twenty-seven years ofage is a distinction, which has been enjoyed byfew other men, if any, in the whole history ofjournalism. There may have been exceptionalinstances, where young men by virtue of proprietaryand inherited rights, have nominally, or evenactually, succeeded to the editorial control of agreat metropolitan newspaper. But in the caseof M. Stéphane Lauzanne, his assumption of dutyin 1901 as Editor-in-Chief of the Paris Matinwas wholly the result of exceptional achievementin journalism. Merit and ability, and not merelyfriendly influences, gave him this position ofunique power, for the Matin has a circulationin France of nearly two million copies a day, andits Editor-in-Chief thereby exerts a power whichit would be difficult to over-estimate.
M. Lauzanne was born in 1874 and is a graduateof the Faculty of Law of Paris. Believingthat journalism opened to him a wider avenue ofusefulness than the legal profession, he preferred—asthe event showed most wisely—to follow ajournalistic career. In this choice he may havebeen guided by the fact that he was the nephewof the most famous foreign correspondent in thehistory of journalism. I refer to M. de Blowitz,who was for many years the Paris correspondentof the London Times, and as such a very notablerepresentative of the Fourth Estate. No one evermore fully illustrated the truth of the wordswhich Thackeray, in Pendennis, puts into themouth of his George Warrington, when he andArthur Pendennis stand in Fleet Street and hearthe rumble of the engines in the press-room. Helikened the foreign correspondents of these newspapersto the ambassadors of a great State; andno one more fully justifies the analogy than M.de Blowitz, for it is profitable to recall that whenin 1875 the military party of Germany secretlyplanned to strike down France, when the strickengladiator was slowly but courageously strugglingto its feet, it was de Blowitz, who in an article inthe London Times let the light of day into thebrutal and iniquitous scheme, and by mere publicitydefeated for the time being this conspiracyagainst the honor of France and the peace ofthe world. Unfortunately the coup of the Prussianmilitary clique was only postponed. Ourgeneration was destined to sustain the unprecedentedhorrors of a base attempt to destroyFrance, that very glorious asset of all civilization.
De Blowitz took great interest in his brilliantnephew and at his suggestion Lauzanne became theLondon correspondent of the Matin in 1898, whenhe was only twenty-four years of age. Thisbrought him into direct communication with theLondon Times whi