Walter and the Wireless

by Sara Ware Bassett

"Doesn't the Morse Continental bother you a bit?" inquired Mr. Crowninshield.

"Not a particle. In fact, it has come to be almost as easy reading as straight English," answered Bob. "The thing that does fuss me sometimes though is to send and receive in cipher."

"Mercy! Do they do that too?" gasped Mrs. Crowninshield.

"Certainly. Often both in time of war and times of peace confidential messages which it is not desirable all the world should know have to be transmitted. Sometimes these are government communications; sometimes business or personal ones. At any rate, their senders wish them kept private and hence they are sent in cipher. Many of them are queer enough, too, when they come in."

"Can you understand them yourself?" asked Nancy.

"Certainly not. It is not intended that any one except the person for whom they are intended shall know what they mean."

"But I should think since they make no sense you would wonder whether you had them right," commented Dick.

"I do wonder sometimes," admitted Bob honestly. "When you get a sequence of queer words or combinations of letters you cannot help wondering. However, there is not much chance for a mistake, either in the transmission or in the delivery of such messages, for the operator is always obliged to send them slower than he does ordinary stuff, spacing the letters or groups of letters with unusual care. Furthermore, code words are always repeated once. This gives the man receiving them a chance to print the letters by hand rather than write them, a precaution that does much to prevent mistakes. The address and signature must also be very carefully transmitted. With such watchfulness at each end of the line it would be only a colossally stupid person who would blunder."

"But suppose the operator who is transmitting went faster than you could?" murmured Walter.

"He doesn't as a general rule. It isn't wireless ethics. And even should he be a more skillful radio man he knows he would gain nothing by hustling the chap at the other end for he would only lose time by having to go back and repeat."