GERMAN WAR CIPHERS.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16417, 10 January 1919, Page 5

GERMAN WAR CIPHERS.

A TRIUMPH OF HUN INGENUITY. • The fascinating story of German war ciphers and how they were discovered.is told for the first time By Melville Davisson Post in the October "Pearsons Magazine." Before the . present war opened the Gorman General Staff had calculated everything and they had plans to meet the conditions that would immediately arise. TJtey knew that on tho day England declared war all their usual means of communication with the world beyond the Central Powers would bo at once cut off. England would control the sea. No mailboats could go out from Hamburg. The cables would be cut. Every means of communication would be under allied surveillance. But it was not the policy of the German General Staff to abandon commanicalyon with the outsido world. Their plan was' to use the means of communication controlled by the Allies for their own purpose. England could carry the mails and control tho cables. German ingenuity would bo able to make use of them as thoroughly as though they were under her own flag. How amazingly well Wilhelmstrasse '{yas able to carry but this policy reads like the imaginative creations of romance. Adhering to the basic principle that the message should bear no evidonce of a secret meaning on its face, and that it should conform in every rospect to tho usual trade v or personal communication, the problem beforo the German experts presentod no great difficulty. The new war code was quickly elaborated. It is said that* the German ships, at the time war was declarod. were turned by personal messages. addressed to some passenger. One of tho great ships of the hamburg-Amerika Line that* raced into an American port is said to have laeen advised of the declaration of war by the following radiograph, addressed to a prominont financier on the shin and signed by an attorney: "Competitors entered suit to-day."