The Colorado statesman., 1924-03-29

OF the codes and ciphers were ridicu
lousy simple, while others were in
tricnte, of n kind in fact TO require
the services OF the best declphercrs
to wrest from them their meaning.
Attempts to communicate lnforna
tion by the written signs ranged all
the way from ordinary English, Ger
man, French or some other language,
written in invisible ink, to the most
elaborate cryptogram that the mind
of man could conceive. When letter
from suspect was intercepted and
the envelope opened, the presence of
blank sheet of paper inside meart al
most invariably that the reading of
the hidden message was to be an eusy
matter. The dipping of the sheet into
chemical solutions or It's exposure to
heat usually made the writing visible
Isolated Language Discovered.
In the service of the government
during the war there was a professor
of one of the great American univer-
stiles. He was given a commission as
n captain and his work was that of
deciphering, and, generally speaking
putting into plain English the stuff
which was supposed to be SO written
as to be beyond the range of expllca
tiOn by the experts.
This university professor. who Is
well known In the West, although per.
haps his particular gift in the matter
of ciphers is not as well known as
are his gifts In other lines, once was
puzzled an unusual length of time by
n letter which was handed to him to
be put into English.
One glance at the writing showed
him that the letter was not" a cipher
nor code, but was some kind of an
actual language. He found traces of
this language and that language in the
letter, and after about forty-eIght
hours of work he had translated the
whole thing perfectly. This lettet
turned out to be an innocuous one,
but from 1t men learned that in one
part of the Balkan area language
is spoken by few thousand people
which Is n mixture of the languages
of three or four countries, and in con-
siderable part is a combination of
peasant words, and of slang words
which would not pass muster IN an
academy of letters.
The letter In question was written
by man who came from that part Of
the Balkans, and he wrote it just as
ne would have spoken 1t. There prob
ably We're not more than five or six
thousand people in the world, and
these remotely removed from America,
who could have read the epistle ut
sight
Americans Bold In Treason.
The British became experts at quick
solution of cipher puzzles, and they
passed some of their knowledge on to
the American officials. 1t was not al
ways necessary to employ an expert
to read what one American suspect
would write to another. There are
some Americans today who are known
to the authorities to have sent writ
ten communications which, If they
have been "a letter or two" more ad.
vanced toward the field of treason
would have landed them behind the
bars, or If this country had been like
other countries, put them before a fir
1t was amazing how some American
citizens who were more kindly in.
clined to the enemy than to their own
country would put down their thoughts
in plain English, and sometimes out
line actual schemes to hurt America
and help the enemy.
In these cases where there was not
sufficient evidence from the letters to
arrest man, but plenty of evidence
to show that the writer was an enemy
sympathizer, no direct action was
taken, but there are a good many cti-
zens of this country today who pre-
sumably are respected by their neigh
bors, but who are not Mt all respected
by men who saw service in the in
telligence department OF the govern
ment during the war.
1t would be mighty interesting read
ing, spectacular, sensational reading
If the letters which the government at
one time had in It's possession were
to be made public in this day Uncle
Sam was very easy on men and women
who showed n willingness ta be "Ar
ppldS" I'm rho World war