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THE DEMEANOUK OF ENGLAND. 213 to the editors elicited from them, as may well be chap. supposed, very courteous and proper replies ;(^*^) ' but the task of determining Mdiat information fpp^uo** should be disclosed to the enemy was really tiie editors, not one that could be prudently or even fairly entrusted to men whose bias and habits of mind were perforce on the side of publicity ; for a journalist condemned to ' reserve ' is like a child in a church who suffers a kind of torture because forbidden to prattle. From one, at least, of the journals whose correspondents and editors had thus been adjured, there continued to flow out its failure, disclosures of a kind only too well suited to ad- vantage the listening enemy. So early as the 18th of December, when the assurance given by the editor of the ' Times '(i^) was hardly yet The 'Times 1 1 111 1 • /, /> -.1 ofthelSUi twelve days old, the paper laid before all men — of Decem- including, amongst others, Prince Mentschikoff — a whole treasury of that kind of knowledge for which commanders less favoured are com- monly yearning in vain. After seeing the paper, Lord Eaglan again Lord Rag- wrote in private to the Duke of !N"ewcastle.(^^) servations The remonstrance proved vain. To many No°resuitin.' perhaps it seems strange that our journalists, tiifperijoul who were after all men of warm patriotism, and disclosures, had their hearts in the war, should have wilfully taken a part in disclosing the state of our army, and thus apprising the enemy of the superb opportunity offered him ; but from the habits tiio bias in of political life contracted in a free and self- liubiicitj governing country, there had resulted a tacit assumption that, to remedy public evils, the first