On February 13, 1913, the Salem sailed from the League Island Navy Yard at the mouth of the Delaware River for the Mediterranean Sea so that the official tests of the Arlington station could be made. The letter D was used for the test signals and we sent these out from Arlington for 15 minutes each time before the messages were transmitted.
Officials from the Navy Department gave us the messages to send and we were allowed under the terms of the contract to repeat each message three times to make sure the Salem got it, but no more. The Salem then followed by sending the test signal D and after this she sent four messages which the Captain gave her operators. This exchange of signals and messages was made twice a day throughout the Salem’s voyage across.
The messages we sent from Arlington were received by the Salem up to a distance of 2,375 miles, while the messages sent by the operators on the Salem were received by Arlington up to a distance of 1,000 miles. Far greater distances were covered by both the shore and ship stations but they were not accurate enough to meet the conditions called for by the Navy Department.
At night when the ether is quiet, as is always the case, the messages from both stations were sent and received over greater distances than by day and we were able to read what the Salem sent when she was out 1,600 miles and her operators got us up to 3,200 miles. Even when the Salem reached Gibraltar she could get Arlington’s signals but they were so feeble she could not take down our messages.
The National Signaling Company having successfully completed the tests imposed by its contract with the Government now formally turned Arlington station over to the Navy Department and having added that great station to my collection I was ready to get back to the big town.
CHAPTER VIII—ABOARD A WARSHIP AT VERA CRUZ
Trouble was brewing down in Mexico. Did I say was brewing? Well, what I should have said is that it had brewed, and will keep on brewing until Uncle Sam goes down there and cleans out Villa and all the other bandits and revolutionists.
You say the Monroe Doctrine won’t permit it? Now there you’ve got the best of me; I have a very hazy idea of what the Monroe Doctrine means but I’ve had occasion to observe that whenever a country can’t govern itself or the ruler of some country wants to govern the whole world Uncle Sam just naturally drives a gun carriage through the Monroe Doctrine and settles the affair to everybody’s satisfaction once and for all. He is very like a school teacher who is so much annoyed by a couple of his pupils that are constantly arguing and fighting he finally gets mad himself and licks both of them and then things quiet down and become decent like.
Getting down to cases, though, what I mean is that trouble was brewing between Mexico and the United States. The Mexicans had been fighting a long time among themselves; Madero who had been president of the republic was shot and killed; Huerta, an Indian of Aztec stock, was president at that time and he carried things on with a high hand, while Carranza, a rebel who wanted to be president, was, with the aid of Villa and other revolutionists, doing his best to wrest the government from him.
Your Uncle Sam thought about as much of President Huerta as he thinks now of the bandit Villa and would not recognize him as the head of the Mexican Government. His attitude naturally made Huerta very sore on the United States and, as I remarked before, trouble was brewing, for Huerta had been doing small, contemptible things to aggravate the United States and now he pulled off another low down trick.