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Show LA PRENSA'S GREAT BEAT. How It Got the Czar's Dispatch to Wltte. This is tho story of a newspaper story showing how, during tho Portsmouth Ports-mouth peace conference, a comparatively compara-tively humble newspaper corrcspondo tively humble correspondent (or a faraway far-away nowspaper boat the world and how tho world never know it. La Prensa Is published In Buenos Ayroa. It Is a newspaper, of consequence conse-quence In Its homo diggings. It owns a tremendous building; It makes a buslnesa of entertaining all distinguished distin-guished persons who visit Argentina; it does a groat many other things which tho newspapers of tho great capitals do not pretend to do. When tho peace conferenco proceeded to Portsmouth, it cabled to Its news bureau bu-reau in tho United Statea, and Camil-Io Camil-Io Clnnfarra, a young man who works as city editor of a local Italian nowspaper nows-paper here, was sent up to follow tho envoy. Tho other correspondents noted it as a matter of marvel that a nowspaper nows-paper away down in Buenos Ayres should send a correspondent all that distance. Otherwise Mr. Clanfarra attracted at-tracted attention mainly by his pleasant pleas-ant ways and his eccentric manner of working his telegramB. Ho Is the master of five tongues, nnd tho editors of La Prensa are also multilingual. Ii cost 47 cents a word to send press matter to South America and Clanfarra Clan-farra had to bo careful about words. Ho wroto his dispatches first In Italian. Ital-ian. Then ho reduced them to "skeleton," "skel-eton," which means cutting out nil articles, ar-ticles, most prepositions and all other unnecessary words. As overy one knows, overy language haa certain terse words expressing an idea which takes four or Ave words to express in overy other language When he had his dispatch in the vry thinnest skeleton, skel-eton, Clanfarra would go over it and turn it into a jumblo of French, German, Ger-man, English, Spanish and Italian, with the end of getting the greatest number of ideas into tho fewest possible possi-ble words. They wero tho queerest dispatches tho operators at Portsmouth Ports-mouth had to handle. In tho second week of tho conferenco confer-enco thero appeared at Portsmouth a certain Botha Pavlovski, a Russian agent for tho North German Lloyd That company had five steamers waiting wait-ing in tho Baltic to bring back tho Russian prisonera in case peace was declared. Pavlovski was thero to shoot tho latept news acroas to the company, aa ei ery day tho steamers wero hold meant monoy to them. He was a man close "in." Ho knew the Russian suit and ho was in nn excellent excel-lent postion to know just what was doing on tho Insido of a very tight shut proposition. Clanfarra managed to get tho confidence of Pavlovski. It will bo remembered that the peace agreement was reached Tuesday, Tues-day, August 29. Tho last prevloua meeting had been on Wednesday. August 23, when tho Japanese had mado n modified offer. On Thursday thero wns a feololng about the conference confer-ence that peace might bo brought about. On Friday thero camo a sudden sud-den wave of pessimism. Tho Rus-8lana Rus-8lana cancelled provlalonally nil social so-cial engagementa. Some of their servants ser-vants began to pack up. Witto said openly, somo of tho Japanese guardedly, guard-edly, that thero seemed to bo no hope. Betting ngalnst peace would have been about 10 to with no takers. No ono could quite explain tho feeling, although al-though overy ono know that something some-thing had come either from St. Petersburg Peters-burg or Toklo. What had happened was tho arrlva' of n cablegram to Wltto from the Czar. Freolv condensed, the text was nbout as follows: "Sinco Japan stands on a question of monoy and territory, break off all negotiations at tho next meeting and preparo to return at once. It la not neceasary to obsorvo diplomatic etiquette eti-quette in this matter. Ru8Bla oxtends no courtesy to an enemy." Sixty correspondents wero breaking their necks to get at tho inwardness of tho situation. Clanfarra got tho text of that telegram from Pavlovski. Tho Russian mado him swear a double barreled oatli that ho would give it to no other newspaper than La Prensa. It was cabled, in tho queer multilingual multilin-gual system, to Buenos Ayres, where T.n Prfinan nrlntnrl it tinvt tnnrn Ii tr Had this paper been printed in Parla, Berlin, St. Petersburg or tho United States, tho news agencies would have taken this dispatch and, quoting La Prcnaa, would have telegraphed tele-graphed It all over tho world, with "La Pren8a says" before it, but in this caso Buenos Ayres and Rio and all other cities where La Prensa clrcu-latea clrcu-latea know for threo daya what tho rest of tho world wanted to know just why the conferenco of Portsmouth Ports-mouth stood on the verge of failure. As It happened, this new expectation expecta-tion was overthrown by tho event. It is easy to seo what happened in tho conference room. Tho Russians came in expecting to break their negotiations negotia-tions and laid down their flat refusal. Tho Japanese paralyzed them by agreeing Immediately to tho minimum of tho Russian terms a proposition which possibly astonished M. Wltte as much as It did tho group of correspondents corres-pondents who stood about the tele-phono tele-phono when the news was flashed over from tho navy yard. That was Witto's victory. La Prensa hasn't got over patting itself spasmodically on the back. Mr. Clanfarra Is just back from a two weeks' vacation with full pay. New York Sun. |
