The Appeal. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. ;) 1889-19??, 1920-01-24

lrom I1ODOkeu 10 washington the mes
sage, Transport Leviathan sails June
%, it was proposed to make use of
two lines, one running, let us say,
through Harrisburg, the other via Will
mington. The message sent over the
Harrisburg wire would be broken up
something after this fachion: "t-a-s-o-
t-e-i-t-a-s-i-s-u-e-w-n-y-i-t." While the
portion going by way Of Wilmington
would read: ''r-n-p-r-l-v-a-h-n-a-l-
e-t-f-f-h." -, -s'-> = - -; -
ITO create still further confusion in
the mind of anyone who might succeed
IN intercepting one Of these sets Of
fragments it Was proposed to superim-
pose 'camOuf1age' message upon the
disconnected letters, the characters Of
the camoufage message to occupy the
spaces between the characters of the
real message. BY an exceedingly in
genious device these apparently mex.
tricably intermixed and unrelated let
tiers were automatically sorted out at
the receiving station and pieced to-
gether. like jigsaW puzzle, so that
the message appeared precisely as It
was sent
Utilizing the Telephone.
: "Going step further, the inventors
OF this system proposed by the same
means to install system Of telephone
communication whereby the spoken
words would be broken up just as the
Morse characters were divided, certain
sounds In each word going over one.
wire and the remaining sounds over
another, to be joined together at the
receiving station into a perfectly in
telligible conversation.
Here again wholly separate and
extraneOus conversation was superfm-
posed over the sounds proceeding By
each route, so that were either Of the
lines tapped the listener-in would be
rewarded for his pains by hearing
torrent Of sound which would convince
him that he was listening to a combi-
nation Of Choctaw, Chinese the raw
ings of John Mccullough, and the
symptoms Of severe cold. Notwith-
standing the undeniable ingenuity Of
this system, the signal corps experts
demonstrated, to the unconcealed as
tonishment Of the inventors, that they
could overhear and understand these
crazy-built conversations as readily as
though they We're being held across
dinner table in plain English"
Products of American. Ingenuity.
The successful device (Which may,
Of course, use none of the principles
involved in the system just outlined)
is one Of three evolved by Yankee in
genuity from the war which Major
Powell regards as 'the most important
discoveries, so far as their effect on
the peaceful interests of the nation
are concerned, which have been pro-
duced since Morse invented the tele-
phone and Marconi amazed us, with
the wireless" One of them is the
radiotelephone, by means of which per-
sons on the ground can converse with
aviators; and the other is the discov-
cry of Chief Signal officer Squire that
growing trees can be used as sending
and receiving posts for radio mes
sages. 7st .-:... =
Major Powell's: book is devoted in
the main to the man with the silver
chevrons. He wrote it at the request
Of Secretary Baker and was retained
in the service to complete it. Readers
may. be sure, therefore, that he had
access to- all necessary records; but
there are moments when the heavy
hand Of department head becomes ap-
parent =: ~-.;.. ~ ...-
"Tke Ears Of the Army"
In spite of that, he writes as one
ION the inside" He tells Of the IS
telephone and telegraph battalions re-
cruited In large measure from the
ranks Of the two great telephone COM
panfes In this country (Which may ex-
plain why It has been so hard to get
centrally These he calls ''the ears
Of the army" but at times they also
were it's spies. He tells Of the engi-
neers, the gasmakers, the quartermas-
ter and ordnance departments, the avi.
ators, the tank corps, the motor trans.
port corps, the medical department
and, Of course. military intelligence:
He says, incidentally, that not one spy
was shot here during the war.
It is Major Powell's contention that
the motor transport had it's beginning
when Pershing went into Mexico after
villa; and at one place he throws this
interesting side1ight on the submarine
raids along the Atlantic coast: =
Americas Moving Fortresses.
"And, apropos of rolling stock, here
is bit Of secret history hitherto un-
published When Villas raiders were
threatening to destroy the railway
lines paralleling the Mexican border
the engineering corps designed and
built number of self propelling
armored railway cars armed with
three-inch- rifles, machine: guns and
searchlights. When the German sub
marines began their piratical opera
lions along the Atlantic seaboard in
the spring of 1918 these moving for
tresses were secretly rushed up from
the Rio Grande in order to afford pro-
lection to the undefended Jersey coast
towns. 1t was well for the U-boat
commanders that they did not. attempt
to shell Long Branch and Atlantic City
as they shelled Scarborough and
Broadstairs. IF they had the engineers
and their armored cars would have
| riuon thoro Tho SJ1rpriSn nf fbo;c 1;1r,e, ),