Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 June 1877 — The First Napoleon’s Idea of the Value of Newspapers. [ARTICLE]

The First Napoleon’s Idea of the Value of Newspapers.

In the ninth volume of the Napoleon correspondence, recently published, there is a curious letter addressed by the Emperor to Gen. Savary, Duke of ltovigo, then Minister of Police. It is dated “ Chateau de Surville, 19 Fev., 1814,” and written in a spirit which may be supposed still to animate Oriental and military potentates. “The newspapers,” his Majesty is pleased to say, “are edited without intelligence. Is it rational, in the present stab; of affairs, to say that I had very few men, that I conquered because I surprised the enemy, and that we were one against three ? You must indeed have lost your heads iu Paris to say such things when I am saying everywhere that I have 300,000 men, when the enemy believes it, and when it must be repeated again and again. I had formed a bureau for the direction of journals; does it never sec these articles ? This is the way in which with a few strokes of the pen you destroy all the good which results from victory ! You could very well read those things yourself; you can understand that this is no question of vainglory, and that one of the first principles ol the art of war is to exaggerate and not to diminish them. But how am I to make this clear to the poets who seek to flatter me, as well as to flatter the national self-love, instead of seeking to do good ? It seems to me these matters are not beneath your notice; and that, if you were to pay some attention to them, such articles, which are not merely nonsense but pernicious nonsense, would never be printed. ”-rPall Mall Gazette.