He could not, therefore, get much closer than ten weeks to the date when his readers received the magazine.

And he knew that events, in war time, had a way of moving rapidly.
Late in January he went to Washington, consulted those authorities who could indicate possibilities to him better than any one else, and found, as he had suspected, that the entry of the United States into the war was a practical certainty; it was only a question of time.
Bok went South for a month's holiday to get ready for the fray, and in the saddle and on the golf links he formulated a policy.

The newspapers and weeklies would send innumerable correspondents to the front, and obviously, with the necessity for going to press so far in advance, _The Journal_ could not compete with them.

They would depict every activity in the field.

There was but one logical thing for him to do: ignore the "front" entirely, refuse all the offers of correspondents, men and women, who wanted to go with the armies for his magazine, and cover fully and practically the results of the war as they would affect the women left behind.