The Seward gateway daily edition, and the Alaska weekly post., 1918-02-06
DESTRUCTION
 OF LUSITANIA
 WAS HUN PLOT

that Berlin directed the sinking of the Lusitania is made public for the first time in the Worlds Work magazine, published this month and which should now be on sale at the Seward stores carrying magazines. John k. Rathom, editor of the Providence Journal, which exposed numerous Ger man plots in this country during the last three years, in an article giving in detail the methods he used to un- earth the work of the German agents, quotes this message from his files, and explains how it was decoded. The message, in cipher reads as follows:
 From-Berlin Foreiyn Office.
 To Botschaft, Washington
 669 (44-W)-Welt ir seen-tifteen
 warne 175 29 1 stop l75 2 stop durch 622 4 stop l9 {, To stop L.A Il 3,4 D 6.
 This cipher message came through from Nauen, Germany, to Sayville, L. l., at ? o'clock on the morning of April 29, 1915, and was caught by the oper- ator at a wireless station maintained by the Providence Journal. It was eS- pecially interesting because it follow ed none of, the codes which they had previously observed. It was evident " important, because four attempts were made to put it through before the German station succeeded Tn over coming the unfavorable static condi- tions which prevailed that morning. Every attempt to decipher it failed, until somebody with line on the ln- ternal activities of the German Elm bassv remembered that during that morning Prince Hatfield, of the Em- bassy Staff, had been looking for a New York World Almanac" The first two words of the message welt tGermau for 'WorldO 1915" supplied the clue. Following the other num- bers in the message as representing page line and word in the World Al manac for 1915, the Journal men de- coded tho message as follows: Warn Lusitania passenger (s) through press not voyage across the Atlantic" Two days later the German Embassy print ed the now historic advertisement m the New York papers warning tlav- elers not to cross the Atlantic, and week later. on May 7th, the Lusitania was sunk by German submarine.
 A dramatic touch of suggestion ot death in the message lies in the fact that the word not in it is taken from the first sentence of an obituary ot the late Joseph Pulitzer, former own or of the World, which publishes the Almanac" And another grim bit ct irony in it is that the last four words were taken from an advertisement ot a well-known marine motor headed "The Seal of Safety at Sea-"
 Two words of the message are spell de out in German. They are "warne,' which in English is "warn" ana ''durch" which means through. The word "Botschaft" is German for "Em- baSsy."
 The German Ambassador, imme- diately after the sinking of the Lusi- tania. declared that the advertisement he had published in the New York pa pers was inserted on his own respon- sibility and had no particular refer ence to the Lusitania. As printed, this advertisement mentioned no ship by name. But the cipher message now reveals the fact that he deliber- ately lied, and that Berlin directed the whole tragedy.
 Incidentally, Mir. RathOm's article adds that on the evening after the Lu- sitania was sunk, when friends ot Fon Bernstorff declared that he was over whelmed with grief and secluded m his rooms in a New York hotel, he was in reality giving a dinner in the apart ments of a friend in New York and there toasted the commander of the U-boat which sunk the liner.
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