The sailors, however, get all the news. While the censor limits the rest of the world to meager and belated information, we know it all already. We can rejoice or mourn in advance of the rejoicings and grief of millions. Ireland announces a simple strategic movement of the Russians, but Norddeich—the German station—echoes everywhere the claim of a German victory, with an advance and the taking of thousands of prisoners. Norddeich relates briefly some happening at sea, but Eiffel makes her most powerful sparks crackle as she sends to Moscow, to Terra Nueva, to the Soudan and the Red Sea, the news of a naval disaster to some German ships. How soon and in what distorted form will the public read this news? At every hour of day and night we receive the messages, brutal and imperious.
We cannot be deceived. Even our enemies take no pains to prevaricate in these messages to ambassadors, consuls, and their innumerable agents who uphold German prestige throughout the world. It is of the utmost importance for Germany that these men receive honest information with which to make a case for their negotiations. There is nothing in common between the rhapsodies of the papers or the Wolff Agency, and its wireless information. At the most, in the case of defeats, it carefully renders a vague account. But this vagueness makes us prick up our ears, and in a few hours London or Paris confirms the English or French victory.
Outside of chancelleries and Government offices there are no maps kept up to date except those on ships of war. In the ward-room we argue over the flags that are placed at the precise spot where they should be; our predictions and our hopes are rarely deceived. And if secrecy did not bind us to silence, we could tell our friends much news.
But underneath these important voices of the wireless are whispers of many lesser tones, just as in the tropical forest the roaring of the lions does not silence the sounds of insects and rodents; this undertone of smaller voices is what gives the jungle its deep voice. The thin voices of the ships that speak to us give the sea air a mysterious animation. A great liner on its way from tropic seas announces its passage by some frequented cape. A torpedo-boat on patrol near Gibraltar tells Port Said of the ships it has sighted. This torpedo-boat’s apparatus is not powerful enough to call the other end of the Mediterranean; it signals Bizerta or Toulon, which answer it, take its message, and send it like a ball rebounding on the stations at Malta, on the masts of a French cruiser in the Ionian, on the wires of a Russian ship in the Ægean Sea, until it finally reaches the station at Port Said. A mail-boat gives information about its position; a squadron asks for orders; a naval attaché or ambassador sends word about espionage; the Resident General at Morocco is sending grain to Montenegro; the patrols warn of a submarine in sight; colliers ask us to tell them where they will find certain battleships: the whole Mediterranean knocks at the wireless station of the Commander-in-Chief, like a crowd of subalterns at the door of the officer who is giving out orders.
And the Commander-in-Chief on his splendid battleship—a moving office—decides, orders, directs; the sonorous rays shoot out from the mast where floats his flag that represents France, and through space, far and near, through the stations which relay them farther on, travels their echo to the ear of the recipients.
There is no disorder, no discord, in these messages. Just as with the players in a well directed orchestra, all the speakers speak on the minute, at the very instant they should; watch in hand, the telegraphers wait for their moment, and at the highest speed send their dashes, short and long; at the end of their period whether they have finished or not, they stop and wait, for immediately a distant voice begins to play its tune, and would complain violently if someone prevented its talking. The Mediterranean is divided into sectors, and the time distributed between them, so that no one is allowed to speak if the schedule requires him to be silent.
Offenders, moreover, are soon recognized. Just as the finger of a blind man acquires surprising sensibility, the telegraphers come to know the timber, sharpness of tone and musical richness of these babblers they have never seen. For the initiated the electric radiations have a personality like human talk. Two stations, two ships, have distinct voices and deliveries. This one sputters, that one speaks slowly and gravely; the sound of one resembles a match struck on sand paper, another buzzes like a fly, another sings sharply like a mosquito. It is a magic concert. In his padded cabin the receiver hears and makes out the whisperings of the grasshopper, the scrapings of violins, the rattle of beetles, the frying of boiling oil, all the sounds which the fantastic electricity reproduces hundreds of miles away. It jumps, stops, recommences; one would call it a symphony of goblins in a boundless land. And yet the least of these vibrations is a messenger of war, of life, or of death.
They are careful to use secret languages. There is not a word or phrase in this continual interchange which anyone could interpret without the keys upon which depends the safety of the ships. Nothing but cipher circulates through the air. All the combinations which the human mind could invent, all the ingenuities devised by specialists, have been prepared beforehand. We improve on the arrangements of ciphers; for fear that the enemy, after receiving pages and pages of ciphered texts, will succeed in forcing the lock, the “naval army” does not long maintain the same keys. It modifies them, turns them about, rubs them down; and the officers in charge of the translation are like travelers who change languages at every frontier.
Furthermore, everyone does not speak the same language; sometimes they address one another without anyone’s being able to understand. From Englishman to Englishman, Frenchman to Frenchman, minister to admiral, admiral to cruiser, commander-in-chief to the least of his satellites, ambassador to battleship, consulate to shore station—between these leap dialogues in unknown patois. The curious can listen, but they will learn nothing. As worthy descendants of the Gauls, whom Caesar describes as stopping travelers en route to get news from them, we are all eager to know the message of the ciphers which we read without our codes’ being able to interpret them. Labor lost! Perhaps one of us has patience, enough, or works long enough, to decipher a secret not meant for him. He is happy. He acts important. He thinks he is very superior to have known how to listen at the keyholes. But some fine day the key whose secret he has learned becomes useless in his hand; it gives him only words without order, nonsense. The two talkers have amused themselves with changing the lock, and everything has to be done again. The naval allies dread enemies with ears that are too wide open as much as indiscreet friends with too long tongues. And it is a good thing they do.