midnight
Anything , if it 's only a half-sheet -- get it on the streets as quick as you can -- there 'll be plenty of people about still . If anything else comes bring it up . '' In less than a quarter of an hour a crowd of newsboys were fighting in the passage for copies of the single sheet which contained the momentous news , just as it had come over the wire . The _ Daily Telegraph _ was just five minutes ahead , but within half an hour every London paper , morning and evening , and all the great provincial journals had rushed out their midnight specials , and from end to end of England and Scotland , and away to South Wales , and over the narrow seas to Dublin and Cork , the shrill screams of the newsboys , and the hoarse , raucous howls of the newsmen were spreading the terrible tidings over the land . What the beacon fires were in the days of the Armada , these humble heralds of Fate were in the twentieth century . `` War begun -- Portsmouth destroyed -- Fleet sunk . '' The six terrible words were not quite exact , of course , but they were near enough to the truth to sound like the voice of Fate in the ears of the millions whose fathers and fathers ' fathers back through six generations had never had their midnight rest so rudely broken .