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Jack London, reporting on the Russo-Japanese War for the Hearst newspapers, has moved closer to the front but still faces frustrating circumstances, and is concerned with his clandestine relationship with Charmian, and the prospects of divorce from Bessie: “Dear Woman: - I may not say the kind things to you I would like, for the censor’s eyes going over them is something I cannot quite stand. When I received your cable, ‘Do not disclose me, Mate,’ it was already and long since too late. But I believe, as I believe in you, that the disclosing of your identity to my sister was all right. We will know soon whether I was right. But I had to do something under the circumstances. Time was precious, & I found myself on the verge of plunging into the wilderness of Manchuria where communication would be difficult and very slow. Your cable traveled by a native runner over 200 miles before it got to me – the distance from the last Korean telegraph station…” He writes of his ongoing problems in covering the war amidst official restrictions, “Whatever I have done I am ashamed of. The only compensation for these months of irritation is a better comprehension of Asiatic geography and Asiatic character. Only in another war, with a white man’s army, may I hope to redeem myself. It can never be done here by any possibility…” He ends by alluding to his (hoped for) pending divorce from Bessie: “If you and Eliza have come together you must know ere this what B’s decision is regarding divorce. I still await that decision, confident, sooner or later, that it will be favorable – Jack.”