Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 26).djvu/103

Rh Appended to this was the following note:—

During those trying times many painful scenes were witnessed outside the offices of the Gazette, where the despatches were first published, and on the publication of the casualty lists the office was frequently invaded by the public, impatient for the news. Mr. Harrison was fetched out of bed two or three times a week, to sit waiting with the Duke at his house in Portland Square, and for weeks the offices were open on Sundays. The Duke was a generous man, and on one of these Sundays he sent word to the office that all the employés were to be given a good dinner at his expense. The Gazette appears twice a week—on Tuesdays and Fridays—and runs from one to four hundred and fifty pages, according to the pressure of news. Nothing goes into the paper unless it is bound to do so, and much of what appears in it has the force of law. Notices of Bills to be introduced into Parliament, Orders in Council, notices to creditors, bankruptcy and sale of property announcements, legal judgments, military and naval official news, and Royal and legal announcements fill most of its space. It is the dullest newspaper in England, yet it is all-important. Until the Gazette has declared that certain things must be, certain things cannot be. Parliament cannot open until the opening has been announced in the Gazette, and without such announcements certain cases in the Courts could not be heard.

Dull though it is, the Gazette is often anxiously awaited by certain persons. Army officers expecting to be "gazetted" have been known to wait for its appearance with feverish impatience, and more than once attempts have been made to obtain information before the paper is actually published. But absolute secrecy prevails at St. Martin's Lane, and, though there are a thousand workers in Messrs. Harrison's offices, no item of news has ever leaked out before its time. Every sheet of "copy" is private and confidential until it appears for all the world to see. It must be so. There are promotions which are abandoned, declarations which are withdrawn; many things arc set up in type which are never seen again.

The "copy" for the Gazette is written in the Government offices, often by Cabinet Ministers themselves, and is invariably returned with the proofs. Each Secretary initials his copy—Lord Salisbury signing his with the letter "S" in red ink—and in cases of promotion in the services no paragraph is accepted even in proof without being initialled a second time. Now and then—on very rare occasions—a piece of "copy" is received autographed by the Sovereign, and many a page of the Gazette has been set up from illuminated addresses presented to Queen Victoria or to King Edward. They have formed the only printers' "copy" received for the purpose, and in the old days, before the "copy" was returned, heaps of such documents lay about in the store-room with the rest of the Gazette MSS.

Now and again supplements and editions extraordinary appear, as at the time of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, when the Lord Chamberlain's report of the procession filled a whole Gazette. At times the Gazette appears in a single page; at others it may be four hundred and fifty pages. It has