Salt Lake Tribune | 1918-12-22 | Page 25 | Tells How Quickly War News Spread

TELLS HOW QUICKLY WAR NEWS SPREAD Only Six Minutes Required to Inform All of the British Empire, Says Lord Harcourt. LONDON, Dec. 2. (Correspondence of the Associated Press.) It required only six minutes to inform tho British em- 1 pi re that England was at war on the night of August 4, 1914, says Lord Harcourt, Har-court, who was then colonial secretary. secre-tary. "On that unforgettable night,"' he said to the Empire Parliamentary association, "T was in the cabinet room, Downing street, with a few colleagues. Our eyes were on the clock, our thoughs on one subject only; but there was a feeble effort to direct our conversation to other matters. We were waiting for a reply, which we knew full well would never come, to our ultimatum to Berlin. "When Big Ben struck 11:S0 midnight in Berlin we left the room, knowing that the British empire -was at war. "I crossed to the colonial office to send a war telegram to the whole British empire. em-pire. I asked the official in charge of tha t duty how long it would take. He said, 'About six minutes.' "I asked him to return to my room when he had done his work. In seven minutes he was back and before morn--Ing I received an acknowledgment of my telegram from every single colonial protectorate, pro-tectorate, and even an islet in tho Pacific. Pa-cific. ".So the grim machinery of war began revolving in perfect order and with perfect per-fect preparation, because, more than two years previously, an individual war hook had been prepared by the colonial committee com-mittee of defense for every single protectorate pro-tectorate and island. Tt was at that moment mo-ment locked in the safe of each governor or commissioner and they knew at once what to do."