Secret and Urgent - The Story of Codes and Ciphers. Anon
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hundred years later Queen Elizabeth’s ambassador to Ivan the Terrible sends home a dispatch couched in strange terms.
There is also the record of a complete jargon-code from 1622, just before Cardinal Richelieu came into power in France. Louis XIII’s ambassador to Rome takes with him a code-book written on two large sheets of paper. The Pope is to be referred to as “the rose,” and Rome is “the garden”; Cardinal de Savoye is “the laurel,” Cardinal Aldobrandini “the jasmine,” Germany “the stable,” Spain “the manger.”
The use of such a code was apparently the product of dissatisfaction with the ciphers that had just preceded it as the common vehicle of diplomatic use, and it was left to the ambassador’s ingenuity to combine these various botanical references into sentences that would slip through the mind of an interceptor without making an impression. The Louis XIII code, however, suffers to an exaggerated degree from the common defect of all codes—that of limiting the writer’s power of expression. It is difficult to conceive, for instance, by what verbal trickery such a statement as “the jasmine is now acting in the interest of the manger” could be so altered that it would not appear to have a secret meaning; and once the fact of such a code’s existence was discovered, its secret was as good as gone. The context of even a single message would be enough to give the whole thing away.
Yet the basic idea was too good to be abandoned without thorough trial—a code that would convey secret information right under the nose of an interceptor by means of a perfectly harmless text. All through the eighteenth century the jargon-code is tried again and again, by governments and private individuals and at times it becomes a perfect mania. Frederick the Great invited Voltaire to leave France and come to his court in such an allegorical code, and after he got there sent him the famous “code invitation” which is still a puzzle for schoolboy students of French:
To which the reply was:
Ja*
Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Scotch Jacobites sent one another information in an allegorical code, and when the latter toasted the King at dinner they passed their wineglasses over the water carafe to signify “The King over the water.” The great Duke of Marlborough and his hatchet-faced wife used such a code.
About the middle of the century the French state papers furnish another example of such a code in diplomatic use, an ambassador to Russia taking with him a small code dictionary much more elaborate than the one of a hundred years before. In it individuals are referred to under the names of furs; nations, intrigues and movements of armies are described in terms of the trade. The code lists the English ambassador as “fox,” the Austrian as “wolf,” and refers to English troops as “moleskins.”
The system was possible because the French ambassador carried a perfectly genuine fur merchant in his suite. When he wished to send a secret dispatch, he would first write an ordinary dispatch in ordinary language, deliberately getting as much wrong as possible, and send it through the regular channels, being quite sure it would be intercepted and read. Meanwhile the fur-merchant secretary would send to another fur merchant in Paris something like the following:
“Wolf is all the fashion at St. Petersburg now. I hear that Herr Emmerich of Berlin has sent through an order for thirty thousand moleskins, although his financial condition is not good and one wonders where he will find the money to pay for them.”
The Paris fur merchant would take this innocent commercial message around to the French chancellery, where it would be interpreted to mean that Russia and Austria were drawing toward an alliance, and that there was a rumor the King of Prussia had asked for the services of 30,000 British soldiers, but was having some difficulty in obtaining them, not having much to offer in return.
In spite of the fact that it was difficult to convey precise and specific information in a code of this type, it was a useful instrument, concealing the fact that there was any secret to be unraveled. The allegorical code was still very much in use at the time of the World War, especially in espionage work, and none of the nations could find a much more effective answer to it than by censoring telegrams. One day, when a British squadron steamed out to sea, a telegraph censor in Edinburgh found among the messages going over the commercial cables an order for several thousand safety-razor blades, addressed to a firm in Stockholm. He happened to have been in the safety-razor business and was slightly surprised by the size of the order, which did not seem justified by what he knew of current commercial conditions.
A check-back was instituted, and he discovered that in the past six months the same agent had ordered from Sweden more safety-razor blades than all England had used in the last three years! Within an hour the safety-razor agent was facing a military court which wanted explanations and wanted them in a hurry.
On another occasion a censor in the south of England found in his hands a telegram from a man suspected of being a spy, but against whom there was no proof, and addressed to somewhere in Holland. “Father is dead,” the message said simply. The censor considered it briefly, changed the text to “Father is deceased” and let it go through. Next morning the reply was placed on his desk:
“Is father dead or deceased?”
There is really no method of breaking such codes but that of common sense; and the main difficulty lies in detecting their existence. As early as 1916 the Allies became certain that information was leaking through to Germany by this method and a check-up, performed by sending out bits of false information in suspected quarters and watching for the result, showed this was perfectly true. To counter the work of the spies the practice was adopted of holding up all private telegrams of whatever nature for forty-eight hours on the eve of important military movements.
There was also a good deal of talk about using the Personal columns of the daily newspapers for code communications, but it is highly doubtful whether this was ever done. Obviously only the most generalized information could be sent through the limited wordage of a newspaper classified ad; and it is equally obvious that to use the method consistently would be an invitation to the counter-espionage workers, not to mention the fact that papers published in London or Paris could not possibly reach Germany through neutral countries in less than three or four days.
The general public remained convinced that most Personal ads were in code, however, and bombarded the government departments in both France and England with warnings—which gave rise to some ludicrous incidents, such as the occasion when an amateur cryptographer came rushing into the headquarters of the British deciphering department and demanded to see the chief.
“I’ve got it!” he cried, when he finally secured admission, and brandished a copy of a morning paper, pointing to a Personal:
ETHEL—Sorry I cannot meet you under the limes at five o’clock.—Sally.
“There have been three of these Ethel-Sally messages in a week, and they make up a system of code,” declared the amateur. “I’ve finally solved it. Here’s the answer.”
He held out a slip of paper on which was written:
To all Channel U-boats. Transports will leave Southampton tonight at eight o’clock.
The officer read through the decipherment without displaying any signs of perturbation.
“That’s very interesting,” he said.
“I know it is. That’s just what I’ve been writing letters to your department about—letters to which they have paid not the slightest attention. These messages were put in by German spies!”
The cipher expert permitted himself to smile. “Oh, I think not,” he replied. “It just happens that I inserted those Ethel-Sally messages in the paper myself to see what you amateurs would make of them.”
IX
On the other hand there is a story, several times repeated by Italian sources, unverified and