Show ci Thred h e messages foil enemy E I 1 rut B t sometimes mes they 11 hoy backfire Bael dire V P I 1 vl N AI glistening LISTENING operators in recording room of the british broadcasting corporation london listening to stations throughout the world when they the strike an interesting or mysterious broadcast its switch switched e d to the ze recorder ONDON two british secret ENDON service agents were arrested in germany recently after the Naz ishad intercepted their coded radio communications thus was completed a thrilling if unsuccessful chapter in wartime use of ciphered messages a procedure developed during the world aarand war and being used by all participants in the present war in london berlin paris and other key cities code specialists are constantly scanning the ether for secret messages phonograph nan itan down clever tricks are often used to toil foll the enemy during the world war the allies puzzled for months over fast gibberish signals broadcast from the great german radio station at nauen records were mada and studied in the allied decoding rooms but the mystery remained cd unsolved until one hot day on the mediterranean when british naval officers were mixing cool drinks and listening to musical selections on their portable phonograph finally one officer said well all the records except for some of the nauen lightning gibberish the record was started but the first officer forgot to wind the phonograph and none of his companions bothered to stir in the heat suddenly an officer jumped to his feet the gibberish on the slowly turning record took form in recognizable code groups being a message from the german high command to an outpost in east africa blunder blander cost a war A code blunder was responsible for or dussias Rus sias defeat in the tha world war discarding its old cipher in favor of a previously planned new one the russians invaded east prussia with two armies through error only ons one of the commanding generals had been given the new code go 60 the field feld radio proved a boomerang neither army could read the others code consequently they resorted to clear or plain code which the germans had no trouble intercepting with Us this unexpected information general von hindenburg headenburg Hta denburg surprised the tha russians at dannenburg Tann enburg on august 26 1914 and massacred the enemy A few weeks later the russian navy made up for the ardys loss laving having sunk a german battleship in the baltic a russian commander ordered that the german dead be picked out of the water and taken to land for a decent burial one of the first things they found on the person of a dead officer was the lead binding of a code book dredging frantically they soon discovered the book itself and thus acquired not only the code then in use but the key to the whole system on which german naval codes were built aided prison escape codes have been used for centuries according to secret and urgent a new dobbs bobbs merrill book written by fletcher pratt from ancient greece until today codes and ciphers have helped win and lose wars have caused heads to roll and crowns to topple one of the best such stories comes from the civil war between charles I 1 of england and his bis commons str sir john trevanion locked in jail awaiting execution for participation in the quarrel received a long letter of condolence from a friend a few hours before his scheduled death that evening he asked to be taken to the chapel for solitary devotions when the flie guards returned sir john was gone had cryptographers cryptograph ers examined the letter carefully they would have discovered that by reading every third letter after earh each comma the following message was found panel at east cast end of chapel glides |