CAUGHT IN TIME

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17236, 16 April 1930, Page 11

CAUGHT IN TIME

ASTONISHING WAR SECRET LETTER THAT ERRED , ! LONDON, April 2. An astonishing war secret is revealed in the Hon. Harold Nicolson’s biography of his father, Lord Cannock, formerly Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign. Office. When war broke out in 1914, during the exciting hours of the evening of August 4, when the Foreign Office was working at full pressure dispatching warning, telegrams to British Consuls throughout the world, one of the private secretaries dashetl in shouting, “Germany has declared war upon England.” Thereupon the covering note with passports awaiting delivery to Prince Lichnowsky, the German Ambassador, at 11 p.ni., which pointed out that a state of war existed between Germany and Britain, was hurriedly altered to read: “The German Empire having declared war upon Britain,” etc., and delivered. Rat a few minutes later the Foreign Office, learned • that the supposed declaration of war was based upon the Admiralty's misinterpretation of an intercepted message warning a German warship that war was imminent. The Foreign Office hastily drafted a new letter, which Mr. Nicolson sefit in substitution for the original one. He found the German Ambassador in bed. Au envelope half-opened, with the passports protruding, was lying on a writing table. The . Ambassador had not read the letter, and, grasping the significance of the situation.with a muttered apology about a slight error, Mr. Nicolson hastily made the hecessOr.y substitution and retreated.