Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 October 1899 — GETTING THE HEWS. [ARTICLE]

GETTING THE HEWS.

How the Account of tie Goad Hew* final Santiago Came. The first intelligence of the destruction of Cervera’a fleet, says Grant Squires in the Atlantic, was received at the cable office six hours before il was given either to the pressor to the public. At half-past seven on tha evening of that day, a message from Col. Allen, the signal officer in chaise of the cable communications in the vicinity of Santiago, was read from the recording tape of the Hayti cable. It gave the first news of the flight of the Spanish fleet out of the harbor, and told how the vessels, one by one, were either burned or beached. . . , The president and his cabinet received it within five minutes after it* receipt in New York, and it was sot them to determine the use to be made of it. Swiftly the wires ticked the wish back of the president that the news be guarded until it could be verified, and at eight o’clock began the effort to confirm, in the shortest possible time, this most startling and gratifying news. . . . Then followed anxious hours of waiting by the administration for the detail* which we were striving to get for them. The time passed slowly, as when one watches by the bedside of a sick person; we bent over the tiny tape, slowly unwinding its coil as it passed beneath the needle-like point of the recorder, making no sign for for hour© of the news sc eagerly desired. Ten o’clock, eleven o’clock, midnight, and still no answer; but in the meantime the line between New York and Washington had no 4 been silent, for the officials at tho capitol were as impatient as we were. When we were about to give up hope of more news, slowly, at nine minutes past midnight, the glass needle of the recorder began to trace in the wavy, thread-like line of deep blue message characters which told us that the good news was true. This was from Col. Allen, and it confirmed hi' earlier dispatch, and gave the additional information that the whole Spanish fleet had been overtaken and destroyed, and that Admiral Cervera and the survivors of his crew were oui prisoners. In one minute this m«gage was in the president’s hands at Washington. Then the doors of the cable office, which had been locked during the evening, were opened, and a sigh of grateful relief and congratulation went up from all present.