Inasmuch as a moment had arrived when there was only one possible way to do many things, I quite agreed with him.
The conversation lagged.
"Well, good-by," I shouted.
"Good-by," he replied, "and good luck."
That was the end of the telephone as an adjunct to transatlantic journalism. I have never spoken with our London office from that night.
After hanging up the receiver I had an idea.
It did not and does not now seem a particularly brilliant one; but, again, it was the only possible thing to do. I turned to Mr. Duranty and said:
"We will have a little race with the censor. We will crowd everything possible on the cable before he gets on the job."
All the late editions were on my desk. I clipped and pasted everything of interest on cable forms and sent them to the Bourse. Mr. Duranty took them himself, "just to see if there were any signs of the censor," as he expressed it. Then I began to write, interrupted continually by my dozen extra assistants. I had hired every freelance newspaper man I could find—and I had also a number of volunteers, young American visitors, too interested in events to be in a hurry to get out of the city.