In common with many others who have been with Richard Harding Davis ascorrespondents, I find it difficult to realize that he has covered hislast story and that he will not be seen again with the men who followthe war game, rushing to distant places upon which the spotlight ofnews interest suddenly centres.
It seems a sort of bitter irony that he who had covered so many bigevents of world importance in the past twenty years should be abruptlytorn away in the midst of the greatest event of them all, while thestory is still unfinished and its outcome undetermined. If there is acompensating thought, it lies in the reflection that he had a life ofalmost unparalleled fulness, crowded to the brim, up to the lastmoment, with those experiences and achievements which he particularlyaspired to have. He left while the tide was at its flood, and while hestill held supreme his place as the best reporter in his country. Heescaped the bitterness of seeing the ebb set in, when the youth towhich he clung had slipped away, and when he would have to sitimpatient in the audience, while younger men were in the thick ofgreat, world-stirring dramas on the stage.
This would have been a real tragedy in "Dick" Davis's case, for, whilehis body would have aged, it is doubtful if his spirit ever would havelost its youthful freshness or boyish enthusiasm.
It was my privilege to see a good deal of Davis in the last two years.
He arrived in Vera Cruz among the first of the sixty or seventycorrespondents who flocked to that news centre when the situation wasso full of sensational possibilities. It was a time when the Americannewspaper-reading public was eager for thrills, and the ingenuity andresourcefulness of the correspondents in Vera Cruz were tried to theuttermost to supply the demand.
In the face of the fiercest competition it fell to Davis's lot to landthe biggest story of those days of marking time.
The story "broke" when it became known that Davis, Medill McCormick,and Frederick Palmer had gone through the Mexican lines in an effort toreach Mexico City. Davis and McCormick, with letters to the Brazilianand British ministers, got through and reached the capital on thestrength of those letters, but Palmer, having only an Americanpassport, was turned back.
After an ominous silence which furnished American newspapers with alively period of suspense, the two men returned safely with wonder