American news was spread throughout the world by Navy radio. Every night the "Navy Press" was broadcasted, and received by ships far out at sea. Our boys in the army were quite as eager to hear the news from home, and a complete service, compiled by the Committee on Public Information, was sent to Europe each night, and distributed through the Allied countries, including Russia. Regular reports were sent to South America and the Orient, the latter being distributed throughout China, Japan and Siberia.
Germany had a big Cryptographic Bureau in Berlin, with experts in deciphering languages and codes, which often secured valuable information from intercepted radio messages. With the assistance of able civilians, we built up a corps of code and cipher experts who compared well with those of any country. Frequent changes in codes kept Germany guessing, and afforded a high degree of secrecy to our official communications.
"Listening in" on Nauen, the largest of German stations, Navy operators in America took down nightly the latest news from Berlin. And the "news" the Germans sent out for home consumption and foreign effect was weird and startling. One night in July, 1918, the Germans announced:
Vaterland sunk! Largest German vessel used by Americans as troop transport, named by them "Leviathan," was torpedoed and sent down today by German submarines!
By wireless, telegraph, bulletins and newspapers, the report was spread all over Germany, and there was general rejoicing throughout the empire.
I did not believe the report and felt it could hardly be true, but I must confess that the dispatch gave me a start. Our latest reports showed that the big transport had sailed from Brest three days previous and was nearly half way home. My anxiety was not relieved until we got positive assurance of her safety. The British radio next day broadcasted the following statement:
The German wireless and German newspapers have asserted that the former German liner the Vaterland, now in use as an American transport, had been torpedoed and sunk. The statement is false. The Vaterland has not been sunk. The Vossische-Zeitung says that the Americans had intended to bring over a dozen divisions in the course of a year in this ship. If so the intention may be carried out, for the Vaterland is afloat and is in the finest possible condition.
There was bitter disappointment in the "Fatherland" when the German Government gradually broke the news that it was not the Vaterland, but another steamer, "almost as big," which had been sunk. It was, in fact, the Justicia, a British vessel which had been carrying troops, but was returning empty—and she was nothing like so large as the Leviathan, not by 20,000 tons.
That report was only one of the thousand queer things we heard from Germany.
There was laid on my desk every morning a daily newspaper—I suppose it was the only "secret" daily ever gotten out in America—which, compiled and mimeographed by the Naval Communication Service and marked "confidential," was sent in sealed envelopes to officers and officials whose duties compelled them to keep in touch with all that was going on abroad. This contained not only all that Germany was sending out, but a digest of all that was sent out by the British, French and Italians.