- Today an Australian boarding party seizes the German merchant ship Hobart off Melbourne, and in the process secure a codebook used by the Germans to communicate between warships and merchant ships. It is the first break that will allow the British to read German naval signals traffic.
- In South Africa, Minister of Defence Jan Christian Smuts publishes the government's intention to raise four volunteer regiments for use in any contingency that may arise. The unspoken 'contingency' Smuts refers to is the conquest of German South-West Africa, but this campaign has not yet been made public. Some Boer veterans are unnerved by Smut's declaration, seeing in the khaki uniforms and hierarchical structure of the regiment system an effort to 'Anglicize' the Boers.
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