midnight
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 . Lights gleamed out of darkened windows , and front doors were flung open in street after street , as the war-cry echoed down it . Any coin that came first to hand , from a penny to a sovereign , was eagerly offered for the single , hurriedly-printed sheets , but the business instincts of the newsboys rose superior to the crisis , and nothing less than a shilling was accepted . Streams of men and boys on bicycles with great bags of specials slung on their backs went tearing away , head down and pedals whirling , north , south , east and west into the suburbs .