WAR CORRESPONDENT

Dashing.

When World War I erupted in 1914, Richard Harding Davis was America's preeminent war correspondent. The son of an editor of the Philadelphia Public Ledger and the well-known writer Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis, Richard went to Lehigh University where he became a star half-back but neglected his studies. Asked to leave, he became a journalist. He had covered Cuban attempts to gain independence from Spain for two years before the United States intervened in 1898. His articles for the Hearst press, including the graphic "The Death of Rodriguez"—describing the execution by firing squad of a captured rebel—strengthened American opinion to come to the aid of the Cubans. Davis's good looks and personal flamboyance contributed in large measure to the romantic image of the war correspondent. H. L. Mencken called him the "hero of our dreams." In addition to the Spanish-American War, he covered...