Evening star., 1921-04-20
BY JOSEPHUS DANIELS,
Former Secretary of the Navy.

tic 'tIilidH dtpdt
solemnly setting down the strange
words.
| Hey, diddle de -diddle.
The cat and the fiddle
That must have been as puzzling as
! Ride "a cock horse to Banbury cross" "
| Little Jack Horner sat in his corner
Jack and Jill went up the hill" and
similar extraordinary statements picked
out of the air by listening Germans and
sent to Berlin for translation and for
study by their code specialists.
| What did the herr professors make OF
| them?
What did they make of such seem
lnsiy. meaningless combinations OF
words as "corn-mush" and 'hgh-low
Doubtless there We're profound CONSUL
| tations. | can vision the research car
ried into libraries, where all available
Amerikana' was ransacked for a clue
10 the mystery. Mother Goose. no
doubt, was discovered as the source OF
| the rhymes and her history was studied
! Tor some possible explanation of their
| use. | can imagine heated debates be
tween rotund' and rubicund literati as
TO the occult significance of these quo
United States. l can imagine erudite
ana elaborate theories advanced.
| Germans Were Dazed.
! The references to the breakfast menu
ol tne American people and to one of
| their popular indoor sports must have
been hoplessly bewildering
| Ihe Teuton mind never could under
picked baffied, dazed by our thought
! processes. and the more it tried to eX-
pam or interpret them the more mys-
titled it became.
So far as 1 know. it never guessed
| the meaning of our Mother Goose
messages, which sang over the North
sea and out on the Atlantic in wire
! less vibrations
For that matter. the British were
puzzled at first when they picked
snatches of rhyme. 1t sounded as
II the inmates of a lunatic asylum
had somehow got hold of a wireless
apparatus and were calling "Quack!
Quack! Quack," and Corn meal
muSh to a war-craZed world
"Redwhite- blue" was one of the
phrases which had a sound of pos
sible sense to British ears, but when
IL was ampllfled to "Quack! Red
white blue" even their smartest
code experts were at a loss to in
terpret it.
British naval officers at Plymouth
were much concerned about these
lnexpiicable sayings which f1oated
through the atmosphere and sounded
in their radiophones.
Fear New German Trick.
Was somebody "spoofing them"
and the war and the world in gem
eral? Or was it some new German
trick? Some scheme of the enemy
to distract attention to set the Brit
ism puzzling over meaningless mys-
terry while he pulled off some plot
against them?
They were relieved when explana-
tions were made. They smiled, and
even chuckled politely, when they
were told that these quaint contri-
buttons to the aerial communications
OF the war zone were merely the
tssuings OF orders and exchanges
little American submarine chasers
| which had lately arrived from across
the Atlantic.
A saucy.- high-spirited. devil-may-
f; care Tot they We're. and they came
! capering into the zone of danger and
death with laughter and song.
doubt If you will find in all the
annals OF the war a better picture of
american psychology-thep psychology
OF american youth in the face of peril
ana under the high obligation of
duty. Nor will you find anything
which illustrates better why Ger
many lost the war and the allies and
america won it; why our hurriedly
framed armies played the mischief
with the morale and fighting front of
the enemy's supertrained, disciplined
and experienced troops
Bad Faith and Hope.
The child-hearted attitude toward
lie which could go to war talking
tbe language of the nursery, using
homely phrases and the songs of the
cradle to conceal the serious mes
sages of life and death and tragic
action which compose the communi-
cations OF war. was the attitude of
faith and hope and cheerful comrade
ship which endured all denials and
pains without murmur. and faced all
perils without flinchrg
In those days Of hardships. in those
days when men endured long vigil
whipped by wind and spray: in those
days when sudden death lurked be
meath the wave, you can imagine how
1t helped in the grimness and serious
ness and deadly oppressiveness of the
job to have the comic relief which
came when subchasers scudded
through the seas calling "Quack;
Quack. Quack. High-low-Jack" from
nursery lore sounded in a radiophone.
| such as reference to .'Mary's little
| lamb" conveying information that
| the enemy would have given all the
| beer in Munich to get.
This new code, the words Of which
were familiar to every American
! had the great advantage of being
! easily remem bered by those for whose
! use it had been devised, and of being
! utterly undecipherable by the enemy.
| system Worked Well.
| Numbers may be confused and are
hard to keep in mind, but a line, a
verse, a combination of words closely
| associated in familiar lingo cling to
the memory. The submarine chasers
| did not have distinctive names, like
| the destroyers, but were designated
by numbers-S. C. 121, S. c. 3S, S. c.
! 252 and SO on. Wireless telegraphy
| who use the wireless telephone at
sea have the same trouble in distin-
gushing numbers and letters as do
, people using the telephone on land
SO, instead of numbers and letters,
| words were used to designate sub
| marine cilarerS when telephoning into
the ether.
The commander of one group
named his boats in jingles or phrases
Three boats constituted a submarine
hunting unit. One set was known
as "red-white blue" another as corn
meal-mush" and third as "high-low-
Jack"
"Quack! ouack! ouack" meant
, Operate at once.'
1t became an amusement with the
men to make parodies on Mother
! Goose and other well known rhymes
Most Of these parodies had to do with
the risky job on which they were
phrasing The Spider and the Fly:
Won't you come into my srea?'' said thu
chaser to the sub;
"y'Il treat you just as kindly as I would
| tiger cub:
will listen to your motors. will catch yo,
without fail,
And then promise will put some salt upor
! your tall.