I cabled the following message to Mr. Ogden Reid, editor of the _New
York Tribune_:

Tribune, New York, Private for Mr. Reid. Suggest
supreme importance event hostilities of Brussels as center
of all war news. Also that Harry Lawson, _Daily Telegraph_,
London, is open any propositions coming from you
concerning _Tribune_ sharing war news service with his
paper. According best military information be useless
expense sending special men to front with French owing
absolute rigid censorship.

BARNARD.

I based this suggestion about the supreme importance of Brussels because
it has for years been an open secret among military men that the only
hope of the famous _attaque brusquee_ of the German armies being
successful would be by violating Belgian neutrality and swarming in like
wasps near Liege and Namur, and surprising the French mobilization by
sweeping by the lines of forts constructed by the foremost military
engineer in Europe, the late Belgian general, De Brialmont.

I subsequently received a cable message from the editor of the
_Tribune_ expressing the wish to count upon my services during the
present crisis. To this I promptly agreed.