George Warrington Steevens
George Warrington Steevens, usually credited as G.W. Steevens, was a British journalist and writer.
As a journalist, he distinguished himself by his clearness of vision and vivid style, and was connected successively with the 'Pall Mall Gazette', which he joined under
the editorship of Mr Henry Custhe in 1893, where he remained for three years whilst also contributing to such as the National Observer and other periodicals. In 1896 he joined the Daily Mail. where he was to become the most famous war correspondent of his time.
He was educated at the City of London School and Balliol College, Oxford. He was elected a fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1892 and also spent some time at Cambridge where he had his first taste of journalism when he edited a weekly periodical.
His first important contribution to literature
was his 'Monologues of the Dead' (1896) and this was followed by a series of important books over the following four years. 'Naval Policy' (1896), 'The Land of the Dollar' (1897), 'With Kitchener to Khartoum' (1898), 'Egypt' (1898), 'In India' (1899) and 'Dreyfus' (1899). He also had a couple of books published posthumously.
He died during the Boer War in South Africa of enteric fever (now more commonly known as typhoid) on 15 January 1900, just six weeks before the Natal Field Army of Redvers Buller relieved Ladysmith. He was representing the London Daily Mail with Sir George White's force at Ladysmith.
“Every American is at heart an Anarchist. He hates constraint, he hates regulation, he hates law. The most elementary arrangements of an ordered community, as we should think, are to him irksome and intolerable encroachments on his liberty. But there is one point on which the conservatism of America would put the very Czar to shame. The American will tolerate much, but he will have no tampering with the rights of property. He may have nothing himself, but he will guard the havings of others with all the jealousy a man usually gives only to his own.In a land where you may be a pauper to-day and a millionaire to-morrow ; where it is the commonest experience to meet a man who has made, and lost, half-a- dozen fortunes in half-a-dozen different professions in as many years — here a man looks upon the wealth of others as held in trust for himself, and will suffer no diminution of its sanctity. Socialism, anarchism, any "ism" that smacks of confiscation or nationalisation, is a far more heinous horror in this land of democracy than anywhere in the king- ridden East”