Nevertheless, in a district where it is known that disorder may break
out the police are usually reinforced beforehand.

The department is responsible for the communications of Scotland Yard.
The telegraphs and telephones are continually at work night and day.
With a few exceptions, every station is linked by wire to headquarters.
Tape machines record every outgoing and incoming message so that a
message is clear and unmistakable. One operator at work at Scotland Yard
can send a message simultaneously to every main station. There is a
private telephone system by which stations can talk with stations and
headquarters without delay, and without fear of secrets being "tapped,"
and the public system is also used.

It is not so very long ago that the only wire communication was by an
antiquated A.B.C. instrument which worked laboriously and slowly, and
such a thing as a telephone was undreamed of.

Then it was a matter of much formality and sometimes intolerable
slowness for a provincial force to get in touch on a matter of urgency.
Now it is merely a question of a trunk call.

This naturally brings me to a consideration of Scotland Yard in a new
and little-known light--as a newspaper office. For daily, weekly, and
evening papers are issued from the big, red-brick building. Some of them
are issued by the Criminal Record Office, some by the Executive
Department. It will be convenient, however, to deal with them in a mass.

They are papers sometimes much more interesting and informative than
those to be procured on the bookstalls, but much gold could not buy one
for a private person.

Best known of all, perhaps, is the _Police Gazette_, a four-page sheet
published on Tuesdays and Fridays, and issued broadcast over the
kingdom. Its correspondents are police officials everywhere. It
publishes photographs occasionally, usually official ones taken in
profile and side-face. It deals with what the newspapers call
"sensations" unsensationally, and its editor is free from that bugbear
of most editors--the fear of a libel action.

The Tuesday edition deals almost entirely with deserters from the Navy
and Army, while Friday's issue is concerned with bigger fry--criminals
and crime. It is an interesting paper with an extensive circulation, and
is, perhaps, more carefully read by those into whose hands it falls than
any other publication, however fascinating.

The official title of what may be called the evening paper is _Printed