The "North-China Daily' News" was told yesterday that wien the S.V.C. mobilized on August 12 the Liaison Section of the S.V.C. Signals Company in collaboration with the Telephone Company immediately arranged for the installation of telephones at all the vital points occupied by S.V.C, units and numerous telephones were installed for the various military and naval forces concerned in the defence of the Settlement and French Concession.
There was an enormous load of telephone calls handled during the first few days of the trouble and officials of the Telephone Company state that whereas, under normal conditions, the number of telephone calls handled per day is of the order of 320000, the number handled per day during the first week of hostilities was 150 per cent, higher than the normal figure, The pressure of work on the staff was so enormous during the early days, say these officials, that all the efforts of the staff had to be devoted to supplying essential military, naval and consular lines and installations for ordinary members of the public were temporarily held up. This condition was of short duration, however, and, except for the North and Wayside areas, all requests for installations have been promptly attended to. It was explained that the delayed dialling tone experienced by many subscribe ers during the initial period of the emergency was entirely due to the overloaded condition previously mentioned.
At one period the North and Wayside exchanges of the Telephone Company were in the midst of heavy shellfire, and shrapnel and bullets entered the latter building and did minor damage to the switching equipment. Fires in close proximity to North Exchange several times threatened to spread to the building, nevertheless this Exchange was manned continuously and when the power supply failed due to the fire raging opposite the Exchange burning the overhead wires, prompt measures were taken by those on the spot to restore service.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.