TRICKING THE ENEMY.

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 639, 7 June 1921, Page 11

TRICKING THE ENEMY.

WAR SECRETS REVEALED. Details of a ruse adopted by cable layers with the object of tricking the enemy Tnteligence Department during the war were given in a paper read at recent meeting of the London Telegraph and Telephone Society by Mr A. Avery, who described how the “All Red" cable route came into being. A cable was laid, he said, between Peterhead, on the Aberdeenshire coast, and Alexandrovs!:, a small town on the shore of an inlet of the White Sea. on the Kola Peninsula. The utmost secrecy had to he observed, and the cable ship Colonic, to throw dust in the eyes of the enemy, sailed out for the cruise in quite a different direction. In spite, however, iof all the precautions taken, the fact that the cable had been laid wns mentioned in the Cologne Gazette on the morning after its completion. This cable gave direct communication between the Central Telegraph Office, London, and Petiograd, and it formed a most valuable link for the Allies. Many telegrams from countries south of Russia, such as Greece, passed over the cable by making their circuitous journey Prom the Levant to North Russia, The staff in Russia was supplied from the Central Telegraph Office, London, and the Eastern Cable Company co-operated. Russians were brought to Alexandrovs!; to be taught cable working, and the English tlegraphists bear tribute to the rapidity with which they learned the higher forms of modern telegraphy. The route taken by the ‘All Red" cable, said Fr Avery, was London to Halifax, direct working, through automatic repeaters at Penzance and Fayal, in mid-Atlantic, Halifax to Ei.mfield in Vancouver, by Wheatstone Duplex through eight automatic repeaters, direct working across Canada, thence to Fanning Island, a small coral island in the middle of the Pacific. This island was one of the first, of the cable points to be attacked by the German fleet. One day near the commencement of the war a German cruiser, accompanied by a collier, hove in sight; a couple of boats landed, and the crews made at once for the cable station, smashing everything. They overhauled the office and discovered tire place of concealment of duplicate plant, which they took up and destroyed. The next morning, the officer in charge, by means of a pick-axe, which he used as a grapnel, picked up the ends of the cable which the Germans had severed. He then improvised a wooden raft, which he anchored and then fastened to it the s broken cable ends and made a through connection with a piece of covered copper. He then constructed a primitive telegraph set, and got into communication with Suva, and made known his plight.