NO PICTURE POSTCARDS

Southland Times, Issue 17658, 16 February 1916, Page 6

NO PICTURE POSTCARDS

WAR OFFICE PRECAUTION. The War Offic, having announced that pictorial postcards of all kinds, addressed to neutral countries, will in future be stopped by the censor, many people will wonder what harm a picture postcard can do in, say, such a place as Rotterdam, especially since postcards of the ships of the fleet, objects of interest to Zeppelins, etc., have already been prohibited altogether: The question may be best answered by referring to one of the letters found on Mr .1. F. J. Archibald, the American journalist, who was stopped at Falmouth on August 30. Among the documents which he was conveying to Europe was one from Captain Von Papen, the German Military Attache in Washington, to the Berlin' War Office. Captain Von Papon sent a letter from one of his spies, who said he heard an official of a British Consulate in Philadelphia discussing a new photographic scheme for espionage. The Englishman showed a photograph of a peasant woman with a child on her left arm and another lying on her right arm. When he had, by the aid of a chemical, removed all the colour which covered the whole picture, clearer markings and shading which were very cleverly drawn in with a pencil became visible. When the colour was thus removed the woman was wearing a dress of a check material, and the Englishman (according to the spy) explained that the squares of the material were a measure of distance, while the positions of the mother and child indicated the dispositions of the German Army. For instance, the child’s right foot was crossed over its left, which would mean, “The Germans are crossing—”

The child had taken hold of the mother’s dress, the position of its hand indicating the spot where the crossing was taking place. That is the story which the German spy told Captain Von Papen, and it is not difficult to suppose that the Germans have adopted the same scheme, and that spies are so engaged in London. To put an end to that, or to remove all danger of it, the stopping of picture postcards is a very decisive remedy.