BRITISH WARSHIPS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20289, 23 December 1927, Page 9

BRITISH WARSHIPS

MOVEMENTS DURING THE WAR. KNOWN TO THE GERMANS. (Pres* Association —By Telegraph—Copyright ) BERLIN, December 21. (Received Dec. 22, at 7 p.m.) In reply to Sir Alfred Ewing, it is claimed here that the movements of British warships during the war were known in time for the German Navy to act on the information. All the British ciphers were decoded, no matter how often the key was changed. Operations were conducted with the greatest secrecy at a wireless station in the heart of a lonely moor by an authority who is not named, but is described as one the translators of picked-up messages.—A. and N.Z. Cable. “ Room 40 was by the Admiralty Department devoted in war time to intercepting and decoding enemy wireless messages. It was so called to prevent people inquiring into its activities, and thus allowing the secret to leak out. Very few officials or officers of the fleet were aware of its existence, and it was the best kept secret of the war,” said Sir Alfred Ewing, now principal of Edinburgh University, but formerly director of naval education, whom Mr Churchill, at the outbreak of the war, requested to handle enemy ciphers. The department grew until it was staffed with 50 cryptographers. Sir Alfred, addressing the Philosophical Institute at Edinburgh, apologised for eavesdropping, which, he said, was usually ignoble, but in war time became a high vocation. He established many listening posts, at which enemy signals were intercepted and telegraphed to Whitehall—often 2000 a day. They knew almost everything the German Fleet was doing, and the British Fleet was thereby enabled to give battle at Doggerbank and Jutland. Prom December, 1914, the German Fleet did not make a move without the Admiralty knowing beforehand. The alleged y ßritish stupidity was a. most valuable asset, and only since the war had Germany discovered how she had been hoodwinked. The Germans frequently changed the cipher keys, but Room 40 became so expert that the changes made no difference. Zeppelins and submarines on the way home were particularly talka tive. Other decoded messages threw much preliminary light on the Easter rebellion in Ireland. Germany’s offer of an alliance with Mexico when the United States was wavering reached Room 40, and was passed on to the American Ambassador, Mr Page, in the strictest secrecy, and its subsequent publication in the United States resolved public opinion for war.