Read "A Secret Agent in Port Arthur" by Wirt Gerrare online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Secret agents as practical workers in the field of journalism are little known to the public. The character and scope of my operations may be gathered from these pages, but it is not my intention to disclose here any details of the inner workings of newspaper offices. Much of the information which reaches the editorial offices of a great journal is neither published nor intended for publication. A foreign correspondent may desire the suppression of news he sends, yet require leading articles and the policy of the paper to be shaped upon a knowledge such as he possesses of events of no immediate concern to the public. Special circumstances and extraordinary conditions sometimes require services which cannot be rendered adequately by resident foreign contributors, or known special correspondents. In my case the instructions were simple and definite. I was to journey through Russia, Siberia and Manchuria; make myself acquainted with certain facts; obtain what information I could on the subjects specified; communicate same to my paper in the manner directed; and report myself at Peking for further instructions at a given date.
War between Russia and Japan was believed to be imminent; much of the information I sought related more or less closely to military affairs, but reports on these matters were neither published nor divulged. The _Times_ office wished to obtain the truth, and to be the best informed -- in that following a policy which has grown into a custom.