American Falls press. [volume] (American Falls, Idaho) 1907-1937, 1917-11-09
UNCLE SAM, CIPHER
WIZARD.

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The detective work accomplished by
the United States government since
its entry into the wal has been worthy
of a Sherlock Holmes, and yet few
persons, reading only the results of
this remarkably developed system,
have realized that a government here
tofore finding it unnecessary to match
wits with foreign spy bureaus has sud
denly taken a high rank in this un-
. pleasant but absolutely essential
branch OF war making-as it has in
all others. The public read of the
intercepted dispatches from the Ar
zentine to Germany by way of Sweden,
and of the Bernstorff messages, but
without a realization of the problem
that a cipher dispatch presents to one
who has not the key. And probably
the average reader is unaware that, in
both the army and navy, experts have
been trained to decipher code mes
sages, with the result that both the
making and the reading of such dis
patches have been reduced to an al
most mathematical science. The Phil
adelphia Press, in outlining the in
struction given in this important
work at the army service schools,
says:
What is taught the military will
furnish an idea of the task of the code
experts in the state department, and
of the basis of the science that has I'M
masked the German plans with respect
to vessels to be spurlos versenkt and
of legislators to be influenced through
the power of German gold.
ut may as well be stated" says
Can't. Parker Hitt-that is, he was
a captain of infantry when he said it
that no practicable military CT
pher is automatically indecipherable
if intercepted; the most that can be
expected is to delay for a longer or a
shorter time the deciphering OF the
message by the interceptor."
The young officer is warned that
one doesn't have to rely in these times
upon capturing messengers as they
. speed by horse from post to post. AL
radio messages may be picked up by
every operator within the zone, and
the interesting information is giver
that if one can run a fine wire wltnlI
100 feet of a buzzer-line or within tnlr'
tv feet of a t~elegraph-line, Whatever
- 49,
tidings may be going over these me
diums may be copied by induction.
In order that the student may no
lose heart, it is pointed out in the be
ginning that mainy European power
use ciphers that vary from extrem'
simplicity to "a somplexity which l
more apparent than real" And as U
amateurs, who make up ciphers 10
some special purpose, it's dollars I
doughnuts that their messages Will D
read lust as easily as though they ma
p~rinteS-them in box-car letters.
AT every headquarters of an arm
the Intelligence Department OF IN
General Staff stands ready to pla
checkers with any formidable lookln
document that comes along in ciphe
and there is mighty little matter
code that stands a ghost of a chano
of getting by.
tn scientific dissection Of cipher
starts with the examination OF III
general system of language ommun
cation. which, with everybody 81
friend Chinaman, is an alphabet con
posed of letters that appear IN col
ventional order
II was early found by the keen-ey'
gentlemen who analysed ciphers tn
if one took ten thousand words OF al
language and counted the letters
Them then number of times that any o.
letter would recur would be foul
practically identical with their recu
renee in any other ten thousand wore
From this discovery the experts ma
frequency tables which show just ne
many times one may expect to find
letter "e' or any other letter in a g
en- number of words or letters. the
tables were made for 10000 lett'
and 200 letters so that one might
an idla how often to expect to II
given letters in both long and sh'
messages or documents.
Thus we find the following resu
Iatters Lett