Part 6

Col. 1. Col. 2. Col. 3. Col. 4. Col. 5. A 2 A 9 A 1 A 1 A 2 B— B 3 B 3 B— B 7 C 7 C 1 C 3 C 4 C— D 2 D 2 D 1 D— D 3 E 4 E— E 2 E 7 E— F 3 F— F 9 F 3 F 5 G 9 G— G 3 G 2 G 2 H 3 H 5 H 3 H 3 H 2 I 2 I 2 I 7 I 17 I 2 J 5 J 1 J 6 J— J 9 K 6 K 5 K— K 1 K 1 L— L 19 L 2 L 5 L 1 M— M— M 7 M 4 M 3 N 7 N 3 N 4 N— N 5 O 5 O— O 9 O 1 O— P 7 P 7 P 8 P 4 P— Q 5 Q— Q— Q 2 Q 6 R— R 1 R 1 R 6 R 1 S— S 8 S 6 S 12 S 7 T 7 T 3 T 5 T 1 T 14 U 7 U 3 U 6 U— U 1 V 5 V— V 2 V 5 V— W 3 W 4 W— W 5 W 7 X 2 X— X 4 X 8 X 6 Y 4 Y 5 Y— Y 3 Y 7 Z— Z 5 Z 3 Z— Z 3

Now, having erected these five enigmatical columns, Captain Hitt juggles them until he uncovers the hidden message, thus:

“In the table for column 1 the letter G occurs 9 times,” he says with an air of a man having found something that is perfectly plain. “Let us consider it tentatively as E.

“Then, if the cipher alphabet runs regularly and in the direction of the regular alphabet, C (7 times) is equal to A, and the cipher alphabet bears a close resemblance to the regular frequency table. Note that TUV (equal to RST) occurring respectively 7, 7, and 5 times and the non-occurrence of B, L, M, R, S, Z (equal to Z, J, K, P, Q, and X, respectively).

“In the next table L occurs 19 times, and taking it for E with the alphabet running the same way, A is equal to H. The first word of our message, CT, thus becomes AM when deciphered with these two alphabets, and the first two letters of the key are CH.

“Similarly in the third table we may take either F or O for E, but a casual examination shows that the former is correct and A is equal to B.

“In the fourth table I is clearly E and A is equal to E.

“The fifth table shows that T is equal to 14 and J is equal to 9. If we take J as equal to E then T is equal to O, and in view of the many Es already accounted for in the other columns this may be all right. It checks as correct if we apply the last three alphabets to the second word of our message, OSB, which deciphers NOW. Using these alphabets to decipher the whole message we find it to read:

“‘M. B. Am now safe on board a barge moored below Tower Bridge, where no one will think of looking for me. Have good friends but little money owing to action of police. Trust, little girl, you still believe in my innocence although things seem against me. There are reasons why I should not be questioned. Shall try to embark before the mast in some outward-bound vessel. Crews will not be scrutinized as sharply as passengers. There are those who will let you know my movements. Fear the police may tamper with your correspondence, but later on, when hue and cry have died down, will let you know all.’”

It all seems simple to the man who follows the idea closely, but Captain Hitt proceeds to make further revelations of the art. He adds:

“The key to this message is CHBEF, which is not intelligible as a word, but if put into figures, indicating that the 2d, 7th, 1st, 4th, and 5th letter beyond the corresponding letter of the message has been used as a key it becomes 27145, and we connect it with the personal which appeared in the same paper the day before reading:

“‘M. B. Will deposit £27 14_s._ 5_d._ tomorrow.’”

This is only one of the many methods for getting under the hide of a coded message that our bright men of the Army and their cousins of the State and Navy departments have worked out through years of study and application.

DRIVING IS TOO GOOD FOR THEM

He—“And that night we drove the Germans back two miles.”

She—“Drove them, indeed. I’d have made them walk every step of it.”

NOW THEY DON’T SPEAK

The Host—“I thought of sending some of these cigars out to the Front.”

The Victim—“Good idea! But how can you make certain that the Germans will get them?”

DIDN’T RAISE HIS BOY TO BE A “SLACKER”

THEY don’t raise their boys to be gun-shy down in the mountains of Kentucky, so when John Calhoun Allen, of Clay County, heard that his son had been arrested in New York as a “slacker” he was “plumb mad.”

The young man was rounded up with a bunch of other “conscientious objectors” and taken before Judge Mayer in the Federal Court. John C. junior told the judge that during his boyhood in the Kentucky mountains he had witnessed so much bloodshed that he was now opposed to fighting and had a horror of killing a man or, in fact, of being killed himself. The judge was puzzled. He had never heard before of a Kentuckian with any such complaint, so he packed the young man off to Bellevue for the “once-over” while he communicated the facts to his father down in Clay County, and, says the New York _Times_:

The answer arrived in the form of the 6 feet 2 inches of John Allen himself. The mountaineer came into court just before the noon hour. He wore the boots and the corduroy trousers of the Kentucky hills. His shirt was blue, collarless, and home-made. His coat was old-fashioned, and in his hand he carried his big black sombrero.

“May it please your honor,” said United States District Attorney Knox, “we have with us the father of John Calhoun Allen.”

The mountaineer looked the Judge squarely in the eye and bowed. Tall and erect, he towered above every other man in the court room and he was not in the least embarrassed.

“Judge,” he said, “I got your letter and I thank you for it, and I started to answer it in writin’, but decided that maybe it was better that I come here myself and see what’s the matter with that boy of mine. It ain’t like our folks to act as that youngster has acted, and I assure you that I am plumb mad about it. I have five boys, and this one who is in trouble here is the oldest. Two of my lads are already in the Army and the two youngest will be there soon as they are old enough.

“And so I have come all the way from Kentucky to get this one who I hear is a backslider. All I ask is for you to let me take my boy back to Kentucky with me, and I will see to it that he comes to time when his country calls. There ain’t going to be no quitters in the Allen family. My boys that are already in the Army ain’t twenty-one yet. This one is my oldest and he’s the first to miss the trail, but he’ll find the trail again or I’ll know the reason why.”

“I have the utmost confidence in you,” said Judge Mayer after the old man finished, “and I shall release your son in your custody, confident that you will see to it that he obeys the law and registers.”

“He’ll register all right, Judge,” replied the old man, “and I tell you that if he don’t, something will happen in the public square back home, and all the folks will have a chance to see with their own eyes that the Allens don’t stand for no quitters at a time when the country needs all the men it can get.”

In the meantime Marshal McCarthy had sent to the Tombs for young Allen, and the young man was waiting in the Marshal’s office when his father arrived. They are self-contained people down in the Kentucky mountains. Their feelings are deep, but well controlled, so that when father and son met there was no show of emotion on the part of either. But the sight of his son softened the father’s anger. He placed his hand gently on the younger man’s shoulder, and this is the way _The Times_ describes the scene that followed:

“Son,” said the father, “don’t you know what it means to do what you tried to do? Don’t you know that you don’t come from no such stock as these slackers and quitters, or whatever else you call such cattle? Don’t you know that, boy? Well, if you don’t, it’s time you started learnin’. Now you ain’t crazy, for our folks don’t go crazy, and you are goin’ to register, and you are goin’ to fight, and fight your darnedest, too, if your country calls you. Now just put that in your head and let it stay there. I don’t want to hurt you, and I ain’t if you do right; but I just want to say that if you don’t do right, when I get you back home I will take you into the public square and shoot you myself in the presence of all the folks.”

The boy, with tears in his eyes, said he would register just as quickly as he could.

“And I’ll fight, too, if they want me,” the boy added.

“Of course you will, for if you didn’t you wouldn’t be my son,” the old man replied.

And that was the end of the Allen incident.

“That old fellow is one of the kind that makes the country great. He is a real American,” said Judge Mayer afterward.

Just before he left the Federal Building, John Allen asked one of the deputy marshals what case was being tried before Judge Mayer. (It was the case of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman.)

“I noticed a man and a woman and I wondered who they were. What did they do?” he asked.

“They are anarchists and they are on trial for urging men not to register for the war,” the Marshal replied.

“Those are the kind’er folks who are responsible for boys like this one of mine gettin’ in trouble,” John Allen observed. “We don’t have folks like that down our way.”

CONSOLING INFORMATION

Mrs. S. Kensington—“We have such good news from the front! Dear Charles is safely wounded, at last!”

HE WAS ALL RIGHT

Doctor—“Why were you rejected?”

Applicant (smiling)—“For imbecility.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“Nothing; I have an income of six thousand dollars.”

“Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“What does you wife do?”

“Nothing; she is richer than I.”

“You are no imbecile. Passed for general service.”

THE 100-POUND TERROR OF THE AIR

WHEN he registered at a New York hotel the clerk looked him over with a supercilious eye. He was a trifle undersized, to be sure, and youngish—twenty-two and weighing only one hundred pounds. And the name, W. A. Bishop, hastily scrawled on the register, meant nothing to the clerk—probably some college stripling in town to give Broadway the once-over. But a little later the same clerk looked at that name on the hotel roster with a sensation as nearly approaching awe as a New York hotel clerk is capable of feeling; for he had learned that the diminutive guest was the world-famous Maj. William Avery Bishop, of the British Royal Flying Corps, who in three months won every decoration Great Britain has created to pin upon the breasts of her gallant fighters.

Mars is a grim god and an exacting master, but he sometimes “smoothes his wrinkled front” at the blandishments of the little god of Love. And it was so in the case of Major Bishop when the gallant knight of the air checked the war-god in the hotel coat room and slipped away with Dan Cupid to Toronto, where his sweetheart was waiting to welcome him. They are to be married before he returns to the front.

The St. Louis _Post-Dispatch_ reckons Bishop as the greatest air fighter since Guynemer. It says of his exploits:

So far as is known, Major Bishop is the only living man who has a right to wear not only the Military Medal but the Order of Distinguished Service, and not only that, but the Victoria Cross. Yet he is only twenty-two years old, and he blushed and stammered like a schoolboy when he tried to explain something about air fighting at a Canadian club dinner in New York. However, here is his record as piled up in five months at the front:

One hundred and ten single combats with German fliers.

Forty-seven Hun airplanes sent crashing to the earth.

Twenty-three other planes sent down, but under conditions which made it impossible to know certainly that they and their pilots had been destroyed.

Thrilling escapes without number, including one fall of 4,000 feet with his machine in flames.

The most daredevil feat of the war—an attack single-handed on a _Boche_ airdrome, in which he destroyed three enemy machines.

These feats not only won medals for the hero, but rapid promotion. With his appointment as Major, he was also named chief instructor of aerial gunnery—which is his chief hobby—and commander of an airplane squadron.

Bishop went to Europe from his home in Owen Sound, a little Ontario town, where his father is County Registrar, in the spring of 1915 as a cavalry private. Cavalrymen have an easy time these days waiting for the trench warfare to end and the coming of the open fighting, when they can get at the Hun. Bishop didn’t want to wait, so he was transferred to the flying corps. He made no particular impression on these officers, but finally got a place as observer in the spring of 1916. His machine was shot down presently, and when he came out of hospital he was given three months’ leave, most of which he spent at home.

When he went back last fall he tried again, and this time succeeded in qualifying as a pilot. He spent the early winter training in England, and finally reached the front in February. Then things began to happen.

His first enemy plane was brought down within a few days, under circumstances which have not been told, but which were enough to win the Military Medal. By Easter his record was such that he was made flight commander and captain. He celebrated by attacking three German planes single-handed. Four others came to their rescue. He got two; then out of ammunition, he went home. This brought him the D. S. O.

Bishop won the Victoria Cross in a sensational air battle. Here is the official account as given in _The Post-Dispatch_:

“Captain Bishop flew first to an enemy airdrome. Finding no enemy machine about, he flew to another about three miles distant and about twelve miles within enemy lines. Seven machines, some with their engines running, were on the ground. He attacked these from a height of fifty feet, killing one of the mechanics.

“One of the machines got off the ground, but Captain Bishop, at a height of sixty feet, fired fifteen rounds into it at close range. A second machine got off the ground, into which he fired thirty rounds at 150 yards. It fell into a tree. Two more machines rose from the airdrome, one of which he engaged at a height of 1,000 feet, sending it crashing to the ground. He then emptied a whole drum of cartridges into the fourth hostile machine and flew back to the station.

“Four hostile scouts were 1,000 feet above him for a mile during his return journey, but they would not attack. His machine gun was badly shot about by machine gun fire from the ground.”

Apparently the official reporter was not interested in the Captain’s condition. The damaged machine gun accounts for his strategic retreat, which satisfies officialdom. On Bishop’s behalf, it should be remembered that an aviator lives very close to his machine gun during a fracas—if he lives.

Anyhow, Bishop got the V. C. for this before-breakfast excursion. When he was given a furlough, a few weeks ago, it was suggested that he stop at Buckingham Palace on his way home. There a rather small man with a light beard and a crown pinned the three medals on the breast of the Canadian.

Major Bishop himself is inclined to complain a little at the tools with which he has to work. His faith in incendiary bullets has been shattered, for instance.

“You want to bring the Hun down in flames if you can,” he explained. “That is the nicest way. But you can’t be sure of doing that. I shot six incendiary bullets into one fellow’s petrol tank one day, and the thing wouldn’t blow up.”

Good shooting is what does the trick, he says, and plenty of it.

“Don’t trust to one bullet to kill a Hun. Get him in the head if you can, or at least in the upper part of the body. But get him several times—one bullet is never sure to kill one. Get hunks of them into him; into his head. That does it. The greatest thing to teach the new man is how to shoot.”

Sounds rather bloodthirsty, but this 100-pound fighter knows his enemy and of what he is capable. While Bishop finds bombing quite interesting, he prefers dueling, which he says is still seeking higher altitudes; in fact, when one is flying above 22,000 feet he is never sure that he will not be attacked from above. The unexpected appeals to Bishop, who cites the following as an enjoyable occasion:

“I was about 10,000 feet up, going through a cloud bank, without a thing in my mind but to get back six or seven miles behind the Hun lines and see what was going on, when I heard the rattle of machine guns. I looked back and there were three Huns coming straight for me. We all started firing at about 300 yards. I gave all I had to one fellow and he came to within about ten yards of me before swerving. He went by in flames. I turned on the second and he fell, landing only about 100 yards from the first one, which shows how fast we were going.

“I was excited, and the third machine escaped,” he added apologetically.

An attack, two duels, and two victories while the planes were traveling less than a quarter of a mile, at over 100 miles an hour! Time, perhaps ten seconds.

It was Bishop, according to reports, who invented the plan of diving down and shooting the Germans from behind during an attack. He did not discuss the origin of the idea, but denied that it did much damage. Oh, yes, an occasional machine gun nest, but, then, there are only a few men in these. The real effect was moral. It distracts the Hun to be shot in the back. Also it greatly encourages the infantry who are charging.

“They cheer like mad,” he grinned. “They think we are killing thousands of Huns.”

Traditions gather thick around such a man. Tommy has no demigods in his religion, but he does the best he can with his heroes. So Tommy says that Bishop brought down nine machines in a two-hour fight one day. But Tommy’s best story of him is given to illustrate the nerve which enjoys being called on to fight for life on a split second’s notice.

A Hun flier had used an incendiary bullet on Bishop’s petrol tank that did work, Tommy reports. The battle had been at a low altitude, about two miles up. Bishop’s plane flamed up, and he fell. He was on the point of jumping and had loosed the straps that held him into the fuselage. Airmen dislike being burned to death. But he decided to make a try for life at the risk of this, and after he had fallen 4,000 feet or so took the levers again and pulled up the nose of the plane, straightening her out. Of course, his engine was out, so he began to tail dive, and went a few more thousand feet that way. Then he succeeded in straightening her out once more, but side-slipped, and finally banked just as he struck. One wing of his flaming machine hit first and broke the fall. The loosened straps let him jump clear. He was just behind the British lines, and Tommy rushed up and gathered him in and extinguished the fire in his blazing clothing.

He was not hurt.

THE WATCH-DOGS OF THE TRENCHES

THERE are stories a-plenty of the dash and fire of youth in the trenches. But by no means are all the men young who are battling on the front in France. There are the territorials, the line defenders, the men of the provinces, with wives and children at home.

“They are wonderful, these older fellows,” said an officer enthusiastically, after a visit to the trenches. “They ought to be decorated—every one of them!”

It is of these watch-dogs of the trenches that René Bazin has written in _Lisez-Moi_, and the article, translated by Mary L. Stevenson, is printed in the Chicago _Tribune_. Mr. Bazin says:

I am proud of the young fighters, but those I am proudest of are the older ones. These have passed the age when the hot blood coursing through their veins drives them to adventure; they are leaving behind wife, children, present responsibilities, and future plans—those things hardest to cast off. Leaving all this, as they have done, without a moment’s hesitation, is proof enough of their courage. And from the beginning of the war to the present time I have never talked to a solitary commanding officer that he has not eulogized his territorials.

They are essentially trench defenders, lookout men. The young ones do the coursing. These attack, the others guard. But how they do guard, how they hold the ground, once won! Nearing the front, if you meet them on the march as they are about to be relieved, you can recognize them even from afar by two signs: they march without any military coquetry, even dragging their feet a little, and they have everything with them that they can possibly carry—sacks, blankets, cans, bagpipes, cartridge-boxes, with the neck of a bottle sticking out of their trousers pocket. Even when you get near enough to see their faces many of these men do not look at you; they are intent upon their own thoughts. They know the hard week ahead of them. But the wind and rain are already old friends; the mud of the trenches does not frighten them; patience has long been their lot; they accept death’s lottery, knowing well that they are protecting those they have left behind, and they go at it as to a great task whose harvest may not be reaped or even known until months later.

In truth, these men from the provinces—vine-growers, teamsters, little peasant farmers, the most numerous of all among today’s combatants—will have played a magnificent rôle in the Great War. History will have to proclaim this, in justice to the French villages, and may the Government see fit to honor and aid these silent heroes who will have done so much to save the country.

They disappear quickly, lost in the defiles or swallowed up by the mist, which night has thickened. Once in the trenches, they find the work begun the previous week and which has been carried on by their comrades’ hands, and when it comes their turn to guard the battlements they hide themselves in the same holes in the clay wall. No unnecessary movements, no flurry, no bravados, no setting off of flashes or grenade and bomb-throwing, by which the younger troops immediately show their presence in the trenches, and which only provokes a reply from the enemy.

They are holding fast, but they keep still about it. Suddenly the _Boches_ are coming. There are some splendid sharpshooters in this regiment, and in the attack of the Seventh and in the surprise attempt of the Fourteenth at daybreak it was seen what these men could do. An officer said to me: “They suffer the least loss; they excel in shelters of earthwork, they merge right into the turf.”

Many of the sectors of the front are held by this guard of older men. When the German reserves were hurled in pursuit of the Belgian Army in 1914, threatening the shores of Pas de Calais, a territorial division checked the onslaught of the best troops of the German Empire. Of their work in the trenches, Mr. Bazin writes:

But do not let anyone think theirs is a life of inaction; work is not lacking; even night is a time of reports, of revictualing, of reconnoitering, or repairing barbed-wire entanglements.

When the sector is quiet, however, the territorial enjoys some free hours. He writes a great deal; makes up for all the time past when he wrote almost no letters at all and for all the time to come when he promises himself to leave the pen hidden on the groove of the ink-well, idle on the mantel. One of them said to me: “They have put up a letter-box in my village. What will it be good for after the war—a swallow’s nest?”