The group of envoys: when war is (also) a show

On the same topic:

Wars are exploding in a disastrous and merciless way all over the world and in this very special moment the epic of the very special correspondents is also back . Here they are again. They move in groups as in an exclusive international sect, they all speak the same language (the Collective Correspondent, cit.), they go in groups to the same cafes where they exchange almost identical opinions, they crowd the same hotels, they avail themselves of the help of the same local informants – often double-crossers, often liars – they wear the special uniform of the special correspondent. It is their moment, full of ambition and pomposity, proud to be on the “spot” even if the place is not a trench but a rear area, or at most to be reached “embedded”, equipped with that sign, “Press”, which makes them feel, they special correspondents, of a special kind. The myth of the special correspondent makes us all feel too much like creatures of habit, too bookish. While they are so adrenaline-filled, and face risks and bullets, so sheltered from the sense of the ridiculous. Or not?

No. In 1938 Evelyn Waugh , already fleetingly touched by the profession of correspondent in Abyssinia, and who in fact was considered very conservative if not openly reactionary, had the impudence to satirize, let's say to hilariously pillory, the exquisite group of special correspondents, and precisely with the title "The Special Correspondent" the publishing house Guanda translated those witty pages that these days are being re-proposed by the publishing house Feltrinelli with the original title "Scoop". Premise: those, like the Order of Journalists, who are not endowed with a sense of humor, in this case with a sense of humor so unmistakably British and late imperial, will get very upset by re-proposing that delicate and perfidious mockery of special correspondents and journalists in general when, as often happens and now more and more often, they feel more like the custodians of a mission than just modest functionaries of the news. It happens, in Waugh's satire, that a fierce war is breaking out in an imaginary Ismailia, where (somewhere in Africa) it is not clear who is fighting, where, why, how, who is right, who is wrong, whether there is a right, whether there is a wrong: but it happens . And Fleet Street, headquarters of London and world journalism - but London is already the world - goes into an uproar to tell every detail of the mysterious battle that is supposedly bloodying Ismailia. An African country little inclined to democratic procedures and very devoted to the dictator Jackson and his voracious family: "All the offices of state were held by Messrs. Garnett Jackson, Ander Jackson, Huxley Jackson" and so on. "Such was the love of the Republic" for the Jackson family, writes the venomous and Eurocentric Waugh, "that elections were known as 'Jackson Ngomas' if they were held at all".

The gong of the great mobilization is ringing in London with increasingly louder headlines: “Ismaili crisis and harsh warning from the League of Nations” (mother of the UN, but always full of thundering warnings). At the “Daily Beast” they are savouring the scoops: “We think it is a very promising little war. A microcosm, so to speak, of the world drama”. They decide to send the great writer John Courtney Boot to the Ismailia front, but the Beast's foreign editor, who "thought sadly of those carefree days when he was the one choosing the cartoons for one of the group's humorous weeklies", gets the address completely wrong and calls for the adventurous undertaking the almost namesake William Boot, the owner of a biweekly column dedicated to nature and inserted between "Bibì e Bibò" and "Morbidi coniglietti", with the captivating title "Luoghi luxurieggianti", a precious catalogue of exquisite editorials with incipits like this: "A slow pace in the marshy fern, the hunting microto slips". With a telegram they order him to introduce himself, he who has never heard of Ismailia. But they explain the first steps of the good special correspondent with the illustration of one of the prerequisites of the profession: spending on expense account. “Suppose you want to have dinner. Well, you go to a restaurant and gorge yourself on the best there is. Let’s say the bill is two pounds. You charge five pounds on expenses. You have a great dinner, you pocket three pounds and everyone is satisfied.” But on one condition: “We want sensational news and a bit of local color.” Boot asks timidly: “What are they fighting for?” Answer: “But that’s for you to find out.”

After a long and adventurous journey, the new special correspondent in war zones meets his colleagues in full effervescence: “Wenlock Jakes spent the afternoon working on his soon-to-be-published book entitled 'Under an Ermine'” which began with “Never shall I forget the night of King Edward's abdication”. Pappebnhacker of the “Twopence” played with an electric train which “served as a sedative for his perpetually boiling mind”, especially after having struggled to compile and send via cable (there were no emails) a “long overview of the Ismaili situation”. They ask him what he has come to do in that inhospitable land and he: “They told me to go to the front”; “That's what we all want to do. But in the first place there is no front”; “So what are you sending?”; “Pieces of color, preparations in the threatened capital, mercenaries, mysterious men, foreign influences, volunteers. There is no concrete news. The fascist headquarters is up there in the mountains, who knows where. No one can say.”

But at a certain point the big shock. At the Hotel Liberty (like all the hotels where the group of special correspondents gathers) the uncontrolled and distressing feeling spreads that the colleague "Schumble had something concrete in his hands. William learned it from Corker who had learned it from Pigge. Pigge had sensed it from something strange in Shumble's behavior at dinner, a certain distraction, as if from a strong excitement barely contained". They exchanged alarms: "If you want to know my opinion, he has a secret of his own". "We will stay awake in turns and with our ears pricked. Maybe he's talking in his sleep".

Panic. A correspondent short of news stops a native who, however, runs away as soon as he hears the word “police”. He gives up and babbles with the most worn-out formulas: “I will limit myself to communicating that the government is willing to cooperate with democracies around the world for any initiative aimed at promoting peace and justice, but that it is certain of succeeding and maintaining order without foreign intervention” . It is a false scoop, that of Shumble of the “Echo”, but from Fleet Street in turmoil swarms of anguished telegrams are sent out over that indiscretion on the albeit phantom “presence of a Russian ambassador”. Despair over the sensational “hole” in the newsrooms. In London they demand explanations from the special correspondents led by the nose by the author of the alleged scoop. The special correspondents are peremptorily invited to remedy and fill the gap: “Badly dressed Soviet ambassador follow his tracks”; “Echo great secret prominence arrival red agent transmit interview”. The tone becomes threatening: “Please investigate the authenticity of the alleged Soviet special delegation stop send deferred telegram”; “London Echo reports Russian envoy organiser arrived on Saturday disguised railway official stop Moscow denies stop deny or confirm with details”. Shumble receives the warmest compliments from his newspaper: “Worldwide scoop congratulations. Continue”. But what scoop, it is a colossal lie. An indignant government note confirms it (from which government? No one knows): “It is categorically denied that a Russian diplomat is accredited to the Republic of Ismailia. Only representatives of the foreign press and a railway employee were on the train”. The bombshell news dies before it is born. Revenge is unleashed by colleagues reprimanded by the furious Fleet Street newspapers. Boot sends an indignant text: “All nonsense about a Bolshevik, he is only a dunce ticket collector. I will telegraph again if there is any more news here, yours truly William Boot”.

The other envoys had “secretly rejoiced when Shumble’s scoop failed.” But now the battle-hardened caravan discovers that the epicenter of the hitherto invisible war is located in Laku. Everyone in Laku. But Laku, they learn with dismay, does not exist: “This location is marked as a town of about five thousand inhabitants about eighty kilometers north of Jacksonburg. Well, such a place has never existed. Laku in Ismaili means ‘I do not know.’ When the border commission was trying to reach Sudan in 1898, they camped at this spot and asked one of the boys the name of the hill to write it down in their register. The boy replied: ‘Laku’ and from that moment on the name has been reported on map after map. The French even appointed a consul in Laku.”

In the newspaper editorial offices, nervousness grows like a hurricane at the gates . The special correspondents on expense account do not even take a step forward. The imperious solicitations begin. Boot is hit by a cable storm: “Telegraphs more fully more often more promptly stop his service terribly confused missing human interest color drama personality humor information adventure vitality”. Things begin to go badly and even the expense account becomes leaner. It must be considered that the mission of the special correspondents was very onerous: boys, cooks, “cooks’ boys”, bodyguards, muleteers, caravan drivers “recruited at exorbitant prices, the food bought up, resold and bought back before reaching the journalists’ shops”. These “journalists” unanimously decided to imitate the attire of their French colleagues: sombreros, long trousers of thick canvas or riding breeches, safari jackets, bulletproof vests, holsters, cartridge belts, brand new boots, knives. The entire hall of the Liberty was filled with them. They killed time in the meeting places and with their invasion prices doubled, bloody arguments broke out: “The correspondent of the 'Methodist Monitor' had been captured and tied with a net and a photographer had lost a tooth”.

In London the princes of sedentary editorialism were busy, sinking into grandiloquent ridicule like their colleagues who had left for those dangerous places. The “first columnist” immediately gets to work: “I have to write an editorial on the Ismaili question,” because the editor had ordered him: “You must leave the government breathless.” The first columnist is shocked: “But I know nothing. What am I supposed to talk about? What are the special correspondents doing? Why don’t you wire that Boot and wake him up?”. But then he adapts and writes an editorial vibrant with indignation: “I have to denounce in the most decisive manner the government’s indecision. Those who are sitting around with their hands in their pockets while Ismailia is in flames. A spark has set fire to a cornerstone of civilization, it will shake its foundations like a storm wind.” Fleet Street’s patience is over. From the “Beast” they write to Boot: “Overtaken by all newspapers for all reports. Your telegrams not arrived we fear subversive interference communicate immediate receipt our”. And then the coup de grace: “Your contract concluded stop give receipt months notice stop Beast”.

But just before receiving his marching orders, Boot accidentally comes into contact with an adventuress who claims to be a friend of the sister of the “president’s children’s housekeeper” and who therefore claims to be very well informed and up to date on what is happening in tormented Ismailia, therefore ready to collaborate, but only on one condition: “Does your newspaper pay your expenses?” And so Boot, thanks to the expense account, has the right tip that knocks out the rest of the gang and sends the cable that will force all his rival colleagues to remain silent: “Not much has happened except the president who has been imprisoned in his own palace by a revolutionary junta led by an arrogant black man called Benito and a Russian Jew who Bannister says is scheming they say is drunk when his children try to see him but housekeeper says very unusual beautiful spring weather bubonic plague is raging”.

These lines will go around the world. His newspaper is congratulated: “Smart boy, that Boot. The right man for the job”. They want to make him a baronet while the revolutionary junta of Ismailia issues its own extravagant executive orders that anticipate by a few decades Woody Allen’s “Bananas Free State” and Donald Trump’s proclamations on tariffs: “Abolish Sunday for a ten-day, ten-hour work week”. Boot is tired, he wants to return to his countryside. He doesn’t go to the ceremony that should have awarded him the title of baronet and returns to his beloved column on “Lush Places”. The incipit of the new episode is memorable: “The wagons move heavily along the path beneath their golden glory of reaped sheaves; maternal rodents lead their hairy progeny through the stubble”. Ismaelia is far away. Any allusion to current events and people is purely coincidental.

More on these topics: