AN EXPLODED THEORY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8106, 29 March 1906, Page 3

AN EXPLODED THEORY.

i,The suggestion, published in the cable messages, lasi; mbnt b, that the Germans were intercepting confidential messages from the Admiralty at a wireless telegraphic station at Corona, is disposed of in a very effective manner by a London paper. Indeed, it is unkind enough to describe it as suspiciously like a tale of a dock and a bull. The circumstances, no doubt, had just a suspicion of suspiciousness, in that the station was ostensibly conducted by an .obscure Spanish newspaper. Germans had charge of tbe apparatus, and po great is the, reputation of Germany for cunning that the correspondent of Le Temps put? two and two together, and advanced the the ory that England's enemy was interoenting naval messages. Bat the London critic of this sensational suggestion,can gee neither intelligence nor craft in snob method of intercepting despatches. "Everyone knows that the Marconi messages sent forth from Poldhu are-trans-mitted in such a form that every instrument, whether stationed on shore or on shipboard, within effective range of the Poldhu" vibrations, can and will take tbem in, unless it is specially and intentionally attuned to some other system." When the British squadron was at JJresfc last year every ship in the squadron took in the Poldhu messages as a matter of course, but the French ships, being otherwise attuned, did not received them. If the Admiralty is imbecile enough to send confidential messages in ordinary code and tune through Poldhu, the station at Ooruna will almost certainly record them, but the Admiralty has really more sense. Is it to be believed that the German Government is stupid enough to erect a station at Coruna when any German vessel cruising within ran ge ot Poldhu conid reoord the messages? "Besides it is not perhaps generally known, though we believe it to be nevertheless the fact, thi t the Admiralty is in possession of more than one system of tuning by which messages can be transmitted in secrecy between instruments properly attuned to the particular system, while all instruments otherwise attuned remain unsusceptible to them." The correspondent of Le Temps does not seen? to have credited the Admiralty even with enough sense to send 'messages in cipher. As an example of the effect on the imagination of the German reputation for craftiness, the incident is decidedly interesting.