ON THE WIRES.

Hokitika Guardian, 19 July 1919, Page 1

ON THE WIRES.

HOW THE WAR CAME

THROUGH,

FOUR YEARS OF CABLES. (By F.M. in “Sydney Daily Telegraph.”)

“Vienna Francis Ferdinand Duchess Hohenburg assassinated Serajevo."

That little message transmitted from London at the end of June in 1914, flashed across the continents urgent cable rate—arrived in the office by telegram boy—unurgent foot rate —and a new world was born. And nobody seemed to know. But in 1914 people were easygoing, and a Serajevo assassination more or less was not considered much of a disturbance. They have been educated since. Four years of dingdong cable news have left them so suspicious that were it reported that the Grand Lama of Tibet had decided to open a harem they would fear the worst.

With a month all that little cable meaut was realised —the world went to war. Everyone wanted news, news, and more news, and the cables rose to the need of the hour. From an average of two columns they went to two pages, and the cable man became the hub of the office. The people in he streets rushed the newsboys; the people in the newspaper offices waylaid the cable messengers. A big murder in Surry Hills ? Who cared F Fall of the Cook Ministry ? Let it fall ! Wounded Germans being brought to Brussels ? Here, boy ! Paper ! Here, yonugster ! That cable! The cables did their work well. There was quantity—and versatility. Some even found time to predict the end of the war. But the wise readers, of course, know better ; the war would last at least three mouths. In about three months the war had got into its stride. Then the hard work of cables officially started. They juggled valiantly with names no one had ever heard of before ; they wandered vaguely through the Pripet Marshes; but when they came to Przemysl the cable men refused to believe it. They tackled the Mesopotamia campaign with no sign of fear, and showed a turn for originality that must have shamed the ardent theological students when they came to Palestine. Italy's entry brought many changes, and villages, in the shade of the Alps were rechristened under the disturbed Pacific, and turned up in Sydney in a guise that might have meant anything front it new disease to a gas attack at Passckendale. Alongside all this the Gallipoli campaign was simple. The Russian front cables, as a. rule, were easily identified. As soon as a word appeared that would be an outrage in any language Russian front! That fact established, it was easy work to get from there to nowhere. The word, obviously, was either a town, a general, or a mutilationIf the maps preserved a discreet silence on the point, that left you with a general or a mutilation on your hands. There was no cause lor optimism in that. Ho one, let alone a cableman with a wife and family, would risk calling an impossible jumple of 15 letters of the alphabet a. | general. So that left you with a mutilation, and a thing like that in a Russian cable was final and fatal. When things were at their worst the Russians Iheuselves saved the situation —one of their grandest deeds in the war from the point of view of the cables. They went out of the war. True, there was an anxious week when Korniloff, spurred on by Kerensky, rattled his sword at the enemy; but this campaign soon subsided, and when Lenin and Trotsky took tilings over the cable man knew he was sate. Getting the Russian front well out of the way wasa victory for the Blue Pencil ; undisturbed attention could then be given to the war.

In the meantime matters on the West front had got out of control. Those responsible for the battle tactics—and the Germans were not the only ones to offend in this respect — would, so it seemed, study the map, pick on a place that wans not marked, and start something. Philip Gibbs would make matters woise, Percival Phillips would further complicate the businoss, and G. H. Perris would do a lot to make the confusion worse confounded. All this would arrive about the same time, and the cable room would become a mass of maps, cables, and fierce endeavours to separate a pigheaded Italian movement on the Asiago- Pfaleau f rom a riot in Limerick. Towards sunrise the position would straighten itself out, and the late paper subscriber would read of the tragedy in Prance, knowing nothing of the tragedy of the night before when the cable man found f.uir pages of Philip Gibbs unblushingly mixed up with two pages from G. 11. Perris.

America coming in did not improve matters. Thu American slogan is presumably ‘•advertise,” and when she decided to take a hand in the general disagreeableness in Burope the cables from America fairly hummed with what the Americans had done and what they were going to domost of the cables, naturally, being devoted to the latter aspect of tbe subject. In tho matter of publicity, America lmd the field to herself, and from the time Mr Wilson' announced his Fourteen Points her Cranked services to the newspapers of the nonenemy world just “licked creation” with apoligius to every American who

talks). The last official message received from America was the amended text of the League of Nations, and that ran into a cable of 98 pages ! And that does not seem to be the end either. There have been threats that the American Government intends to cable the full text of the Peace Treaty all over the world—and the Treaty is a matter of 150,000 words. There have been times when the cable man wished that America had made its Monroe Doctrine cut both ways. Naval matters were despatched with comparatively little exertion. Now and then the cables foolishly tried to grapple with latitude and longitude, but only got hopelessly out of depth. But probably the finest sight of the lot was the career of a cable that had been pushed off from London with a bit of original French or perhaps a pure Latin quotation in it to give it tone. After it had crossed the American continent and reached Bamfield that bit of Latin had acquired a slight nasal twang. Crossing the Pacific it turned into several dialects, and by the time it faced the censor in his Sydney office it was an object of suspicion. In the newspaper office tbe proper deed would be done. A blunt blue pencil would put an end to tbe thing’s miseries. The cables quickly developed a Jaugnage all their own. When the air was charged with rumours of big things the cables —just died out. Everyone waited ; everyone expected. The cables stopped away accumulating somewhere on the other side of the world. Then they all rushed in together, and the last was first and the first was nowhere, and the cable man went home on a stretcher. A bird’s-c-ye view of the wreck, taken over the space or a week, would untangle the situation, and you could clearly see that the enemy had again got it bad in his moral.

At the beginning of 1918 the wires were hushed, but their very silence was disturbing. It foreshadowed the big German offensive. It came, and the cables were let loose again; dreary cables they were; had news in every line. On to Paris fought the Huns; shells fell in the city on the Seine, and the cables faced the truth. Harder pressed the Germans; faster flowed the cables, but never a word about Foch. They told how the line held, and showed how the French kept Rheims ; but gloomier they grew, for the3 r did not dispel the fears for Paris. But came a brighter day when they made good reading; Foch’s attack between Chateau-Thierry and Soissons; and the long line of the British offensive to the coast; triumphant cables of victory on victory; cables to be set only in the boldest type; they gave stories of Hun disaster on disaster, until one night they brought their climax to an expectant world in a message that came from America: - “Washington State Department atmounced Germany signed armistice.’' A few months . . . then the Peace Treaty and a new era is ushered in. The cables have done their work.