GERMAN CIPHER SECRETS
KEVELATION AT CAILLATJX . TEIAL. ■■ | How Germany's secret ciphers were read by the French was described at length at the hearing'of the case against M. Caillaux, the ex-Premier, for treason before the Senate High Court (states the Paris correspondent of the "Daily Main). Before the Dreyfus affair arose there was no urgent needj;ha.t France should read thu countless""" telegraphed dispatches sent by the German Ambassadors from Paris to Berlin, for France had in the German Embassy itself one of their beet and most zealous agents. Curiously enough, she was a woman, and unpaid. She was governess of the Ambassador's children, and was ' allowed an almost complete run of the Embassy. When the Dreyfus case was made public she was discovered, and then the cipher department of tho Foreign Office sot. to work to find what the Embassy was saying to Berlin. It was a difficult ta.sk. The German Embassy had a whole series, which changed according to set rules. Baron Munstor, then German 1 Ambassador, betrayed tho secret of the code by sending copious extracts of newspaper reports, and experts were able to establish tho whole of the secret code. Thusj from 1901 to 1911 every secret telegram sent by successive German Ambassadors was read and recorded. In 1911 M Caillaux'B secret negotiations witli Berlin were also discovered, but from that date the German Embassy,' who had suddenly been informed of what was; taking placo, changed their codes Everything had \to bo bejun again. The cipher department wert> sure that tho now system was bound to be some kinl of regularly recurring ciphers, but, though patient observation was un-; dcrtaken, it was' not until 1914, a few weeks liefore tho war, that tliey solved tho problem. ■■
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Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 203, 22 May 1920, Page 7
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288GERMAN CIPHER SECRETS Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 203, 22 May 1920, Page 7
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