Evening star., 1939-09-01

CACCGlfC.
1t is 24-hour- day job. Ever
a year, some one is on the job in
the telegraph and code rooms under
Mr.. Salmon's supervision He is
likely to be called from his bed at
any time to round up additional
help.
The gradually increasing tension
that has trebled this work during
the past two weeks came to climax
this morning when German and
Polish forces started fighting.
Triple Priority" Cables.
First there were telephone calls
from American Government repre-
sentatives abroad and then the
urgent cables started pouring in
slugged triple priority" to speed
them through the heavy load of
traffic in words from Europe.
These cables are of the utmost i'm
portance to American foreign policy
1t is on the basis of the official in
formation contained in these that
President Roosevelt must decide
whether and when to invoke the
Neutrality Act and its embargo OF
war materials, for instance.
Mr.. Salmon is used to the strain
the never-ceasing guard against
leaks" of confidential information
and the need for speedy and ac-
curate work under trying conditions
For % years he has been chief of
the State Departments Division of
Communication and Records. He
worked in the division for 10 years
before that after 8 years in a some
what similar job at the War De-
partment.
Accustomed to Tension.
Many of his staff are veterans
with Mr.. Salmon of the busy World
War days and so are well-trained in
their present strenuous, nerve-rack-
ing duties that call for hours upon
hours of overtime work.
No one on the staff has been with
the State Department for less than
three years. Before getting into this
highly confidential work they must
satisfy Mr.. Salmon of their good
habits. integrity and loyalty.
At that, though they see the most
important cablegrams to Secretary
Hull before he does, very few OF
them could tell you if they wanted
to what those messages say.
The confidential messages come in
code, by commercial cable and radio
From small room across a fourth
floor corridor from Mr.. Salmon's
oft1ce telegraph wires run directly to
the New York terminals of the
transatlantic cables. Morse and
telegraph printer operators there re-
ceive and send the Governments
state messages.
DECIDING Is Done in "Takes"
From the telegraph room, the in
coming messages go to the code room
Tor DECIDING. There isn't much said
about the secret codes, Mr.. Salmon
says various" codes and ciphers are
Before DECIDING, the messages arr
spllt up into brief takes" and sew.
eral clerks get a few lines each +,
oecode. One might work on thu
start OF a message, a line or twe
from the middle, and some morf
near the end. None sees enough n
the connected message to make any
sense out of it.
The various decoded takes" ther
are assembled by an overseer. whf
eolts the connected message. before
IL is mlmeographed for distribution
10 the Secretary and his variou,
aides who might be concerned
trusted messengers take the mes.
sages, In sealed envelopes or locked
containers, around to the of1ces
Secretary Hull's Office gets a COP,
OF everything that comes in. III.
secretaries may digest for him tn,
less important messages, but he get,
the full text of those of any inn.
portance.
Flow Tripled Since August.
The inflow of communication,
from Europe naturally has increased
tremendously in the last few weeks
Mr.. Salmon said it has at least
trebled since the middle of August
with now more than 10000 words 8
day OF coded messages being handled
by his Office.
Normally, he has a staff of 80
In times OF stress, he calls on re.
serves to increase this staff and 70,
overtime from all hands to get Out
the work. He thinks most of hi.
workers are overworked and under
paid-the average salary is around
$4,000 a year. Mr.. Salmon thinks
this is entirely too little for such
important, confidential and tedious
work.
He describes the work Of his divi.
sion as the axis around which the
xry6n1A Gto$A "a.