of General Squier himself, “it becomes a ‘detector’ and a ‘receiver’ of
electromagnetic waves, and the marvellous properties of this receiver,
through agencies at present entirely unknown to us, are such as to
vitalize the acorn and to produce in time the giant oak. In the power
of multiplying plant-cells it may, indeed, be called an incomparable
‘amplifier.’ From this angle of view we may consider that trees have
been pieces of electrical apparatus from their beginning, and with their
manifold chains of living cells are absorbers, conductors, and radiators
of the long electromagnetic waves as used in the radio art. For our
present purpose we may consider, therefore, a growing tree as a highly
organized piece of living earth, to be used in the same manner as we now
use the earth as a universal conductor for telephony and telegraphy and
other electrical purposes.”
Not only have telephone conversations, in which the voice is transmitted
just as clearly as by the ordinary metallic circuit telephone, been
carried on from tree to tree, up to a distance of three miles, in the
outskirts of Washington, but while the war was still in progress the
signal officers, using tree-tops as antennæ, read messages from ships at
sea, from aviators in the sky, and from the great radio-stations in South
America and Europe. As a result of this discovery, the lofty and costly
towers which are now used for the sending and receipt of radio messages
will no longer be a necessity. All that will be necessary is to drive a
spike in a tree, attach a wire to the spike, and run the wire to a radio
apparatus, whereupon messages can be received and sent, the distance
covered depending upon the power of the instrument. The tree telegraph
has been dubbed by General Squier a “floragraph” and the tree telephone
a “floraphone,” while the messages transmitted over this arboreal
system are to be known as “floragrams.” Though this discovery will in
all likelihood result in an amazing expansion of the world’s system of
communication, and though it will give radio-towers, thousands of them,
in fact, to every village and to every farm, it does not necessarily mean
that every man who possesses a vine and fig-tree will be able to sit on
his front porch and gossip with his neighbors.
During the war the offices of the Chief Signal Officer were literally
besieged by persons who claimed to have invented various systems of
message transmission which could not be tapped, or which, if they
were tapped, could not be understood. It was perfectly well known to
us, of course, that the German Listening-In Service, particularly in
the front-line trenches, was well organized and extremely efficient,
and that telephone and buzzer conversations held over our wires were
frequently intercepted. It was known, moreover, that Germany had spies,
both in France and the United States, whose sole duty it was to tap
the governmental telephone and telegraph systems for the purpose of
obtaining military information. Scores of devices designed to secure the
inviolability of the vitally important messages which were constantly
passing over the wires were submitted to the Signal Corps. Anxious as
they were to obtain a system of message transmission which could jeer
at the efforts of the enemy’s spies, the experts of the Signal Corps
steadily maintained that such a thing did not exist, for, as they said
with truth, if an instrument could be devised which could transmit and
decode a message, there was no reason why the Germans could not in
time manufacture one like it, put it on the line, and thus obtain the
information desired.
One of the inventors who approached the Signal Corps asserted that,
though he did not claim to have a device which would render a message
indecipherable, he had a system which made it impossible for an enemy
agent to tap the wire over which messages were being transmitted without
the sender and receiver being instantly notified that some one was
eavesdropping upon them, whereupon their conversation would, of course,
cease. “Prove it to us,” said the Signal Corps, and provided the inventor
with an opportunity to demonstrate his system over a miniature line.
Without the slightest difficulty the military experts tapped the line
and, with the aid of a stenographer, recorded every message which was
sent over it, the quantity of energy which they withdrew for the purpose
being so minute that the delicate detectors failed to record the fact
that the line had been tampered with.
Another system had as its basic principle the breaking up of the groups
of Morse dots and dashes which represented the letters of the message,
and routing these mangled fragments over widely separated wires to the
receiving-station, where they were automatically joined together again
so as to form the message as originally sent. If, for example, it was
desired to send from Hoboken to Washington the message “_Transport
Leviathan sails June twenty-fifth_,” it was proposed to make use of
two lines, one running, let us say, through Harrisburg, the other via
Wilmington. The message sent over the Harrisburg wire would be broken up
something after this fashion: “t-a-s-o-t-e-i-t-a-s-i-s-u-e-w-n-y-i-t,”
while the portion going by way of Wilmington would read:
“r-n-p-r-l-v-a-h-n-a-l-j-n-t-e-t-f-f-h.” To create still further
confusion in the mind of any one who might succeed in intercepting one of
these sets of fragments, it was proposed to superimpose a “camouflage”
message upon the disconnected letters, the characters of the camouflage
message to occupy the spaces between the characters of the real message.
By an exceedingly ingenious device, these apparently inextricably
intermixed and unrelated letters were automatically sorted out at the
receiving-station and pieced together, like a jigsaw puzzle, so that the
message appeared precisely as it was sent. Going a step further, the
inventors of this system proposed by the same means to install a system
of telephone communication whereby the spoken words would be broken
up just as the Morse characters were divided, certain sounds in each
word going over one wire and the remaining sounds over another, to be
joined together at the receiving-station into a perfectly intelligible
conversation. Here again a wholly separate and extraneous conversation
was superimposed over the sounds proceeding by each route, so that
were either of the lines tapped the listener-in would be rewarded for
his pains by hearing a torrent of sound which would convince him that
he was listening to a combination of Choctaw, Chinese, the ravings of
John McCullough, and the symptoms of a severe cold. Notwithstanding
the undeniable ingenuity of this system, the Signal Corps experts
demonstrated, to the unconcealed astonishment of the inventors, that they
could overhear and understand these crazy-quilt conversations as readily
as though they were being held across a dinner-table in plain English.
Early in 1918, however, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company,
becoming interested in the solution of this apparently insoluble problem,
produced a device whereby a message could be transmitted over a wire in
such a form that it was absolutely indecipherable to any one save the
person for whom it was intended. As originally developed, this system was
unable to do all that was claimed for it, but, thanks to the co-operation
of the Signal Corps, there was finally produced an electrical device
which will transform an ordinary message into cipher, transmit it with
absolute secrecy, and decode it at the other end—all at the rate of from
forty to seventy words a minute. This may be said to be the only cipher
in existence which is absolutely indecipherable and at the same time
practicable. As universal peace is not yet within sight, even with the
aid of a telescope, and as this invention would prove of incalculable
value to the United States in the event of our again becoming involved
in war, it is obviously out of the question to discuss the principle
on which it is based, much less the details of its construction and
operation. It is enough to say that this nation is now the possessor
of a system of code transmission which can defy all the experts in the
world, a message sent by its means being absolutely indecipherable to the
inventor himself.
Though before the signing of the Armistice this device was operating
between several points in the United States with complete satisfaction,
the apparatus could not be manufactured in time to permit of its use
overseas before the end of the war. The engineers of the Signal Corps
assert that this device will eventually be perfected to a degree of
commercial practicability which will make it possible to transmit cipher
messages over cables as well as land lines without the necessity of
manual transmission and without the use of a recorder. As the machine
codes and decodes messages automatically, the large code-room forces
which were used in Washington during the war, and which are employed by
many of the great banking and commercial institutions, would no longer be
required, thus doing away entirely with the labor at present involved in
coding and decoding messages and cutting down the time required for their
transmission by many hours.
II
“ESSAYONS”
If, the next time you meet an officer of Engineers, you will observe his
uniform closely, you will perceive that the buttons of his tunic, instead
of being embossed with the arms of the United States, like all other
branches of the service, bear a device consisting of an eagle, a castle,
a rising sun, and the motto “_Essayons_.” Like the bow of black velvet,
called a “flash,” which the Royal Welsh Fusiliers have sewn at the back
of their collars to commemorate the fact that they were the last regiment
in the British Army to wear the pigtail, so the buttons of the Engineers
serve to remind their wearers that the famous organization is as old as
the nation, tracing its history back to the Corps of Artillerists and
Engineers of the Continental Army.
“_Essayons_”—“Let us try.” One likes the quiet confidence of the motto.
“Can you make roads for my guns through the swamps of the Wilderness?”
asked Grant.
“Let us try,” replied the Engineers—and the roads were built.
“Can you build docks for disembarking ten thousand men a day and railways
to carry those men to the front?” asked Pershing.
“Let us try,” the Engineers responded—and almost overnight miles
of docks and networks of rails appeared as though at the wave of a
magician’s wand.
“Can you locate the enemy’s guns by their sound? Can you keep our troops
supplied with water? Can you print maps? Can you make dugouts? Can you
operate search-lights? Can you dredge harbors for the entrance of our
transports? Can you build highways and keep them in repair? Can you
quarry the stone for those highways? Can you cut a million feet of lumber
a day? Can you design better types of armored cars, sound-detectors,
mobile cranes, portable sawmills, listening apparatus, mapping cameras,
steel bridges, barbed-wire entanglements, than any in existence? And, if
the necessity arises, can you fight?”
“_Essayons_,” answered the Engineers—whereupon all these things were done.
Whenever the army has had work to be done which no one else knew how to
do, they have sent for the Engineers. Who designed, built, and operated
our tanks before the organization of the Tank Corps? The Engineers. Who
organized the Gas and Flame Regiment? The Engineers. The Camouflage
Corps? The Engineers, of course. Who did the mining, quarrying,
timber-cutting, well-driving, dock, bridge, road, railway, and camp
building for our armies overseas? Again, the Engineers. Indeed, I doubt
if any organization of any army in the Great War can show such a record
of varied activities and successful accomplishments as the Corps of
Engineers. One can say of the American Engineer, as Kipling said of the
British Marine:
“There isn’t a job on the top o’ the earth the beggar don’t know nor do—
You can leave ’im at night on a bald man’s ’ead to paddle ’is own canoe;
...
They think for ’emselves, an’ they steal for ’emselves, an’ they never
ask what’s to do,
But they’re camped an’ fed, an’ they’re up an’ fed, before our bugle’s
blew.”
The immense importance attached to the work of the Engineers is
strikingly illustrated by the fact that, whereas the army was increased
to 19½ times its pre-war size, the enormous problems of field
fortification, construction, and transportation, both with and behind the
fighting forces, as well as the direction of many entirely new phases of
warfare, necessitated an increase of the Corps of Engineers to 131½ times
its strength at the beginning of the war. Prior to July, 1916, the corps
consisted of only three battalions, with a total strength of not over
1,900 men, but when the Armistice was signed there had been organized, or
were in process of organization, 500 Engineer units, with a strength of
some 312,000 men, or more than 10 per cent of the entire army.
Now it must be kept in mind that in the original corps of pre-war days
the men were trained only as sappers and not in the countless specialist
branches which were developed by the great conflict. The fundamental
use of sapper troops is, theoretically, at least, the supervision of
technical work during tactical operations. One regiment of sappers is
normally assigned to each division, is under the immediate command of
the divisional commander, and operates as directed by him. To this
regiment is given the work of organizing positions for defense, which
includes the construction of trenches, gun-positions, ammunition-dumps,
and dugouts, the repair and maintenance of roads in the divisional area,
the construction of shelters where required, and the general direction of
the work necessary to keep open the lines of communication and supply.
In open warfare it is customary for the divisional commander to hold his
sapper regiment in reserve to be used for applying the decisive pressure
or resistance at the moment when it is most needed. When going forward
with the infantry, sapper troops usually have a definite technical
mission, such as the organization of captured ground, the destruction of
obstacles and the bridging of streams. During a retreat they are attached
to the rear-guard, being charged with the demolition of bridges, the
obstruction of roads, and the cutting of railway communications. Though
the ranks of the Engineers were filled, for the most part, with men who
were experts and specialists in certain trades and professions, they
were time after time thrown into the line as combat troops, fighting
shoulder to shoulder with the infantry. On more than one occasion they
showed that, destitute of combat training though many of them were, they
could handle a rifle or a machine-gun as well as an axe or a spade. At
Cambrai the 11th (railway) Engineers, caught in the German counter-push,
offered a stubborn and heroic resistance against overwhelming numbers.
At Amiens another railway regiment, the 11th Engineers, formed a part
of the little force with which General Sandeman Carey blocked the gap in
the British line and thereby prevented the Germans from breaking through
to the Channel ports. For its behavior on that occasion the regiment was
cited by the British and its commander was decorated. Perhaps you were
not aware that two companies of Engineers fought alongside the Marines in
the Bois de Belleau. And, when the gray hordes of Hindenburg were reeling
back from the Marne, a report from the Rainbow Division ended: “Our
advance troops, the 117th Engineers, are pressing the enemy closely.” But
the story that will live longest in the annals of the famous corps is
that of the sergeant of the railway regiment at Cambrai, who, surrounded
by the enemy, refused to surrender and defended himself with his only
weapon, a crowbar. When they found him, hours later, the crowbar was
still clutched in his dead hand. About him, with crushed skulls, lay
seven Germans.
The innumerable new devices produced by the Great War, however, required
for their operation great numbers of specially trained men, so that
the Corps of Engineers, from an organization consisting solely of
sapper troops, found itself called upon to do more and more work in
almost every branch of engineering. To meet these demands men were
accordingly trained as specialists and assigned to specialist regiments
and battalions, so that, when the war ended, the Corps of Engineers
consisted of camouflage, car-repair, crane-operator, dock-construction,
dredging, electrical and mechanical, forestry, general-construction,
highway, inland-waterway, light-railway construction, shop, and
operation, locomotive-repair, military-mapping, mining, pontoon park
and train, quarry, railway-transportation, road, sapper, search-light
(including antiaircraft), sound-and-flash-ranging, standard-gauge
railway-construction, operation, shop and maintenance-of-way, supply,
surveying and printing, trades and storekeepers, transportation and
water-supply troops, organized as needed into companies, battalions, or
regiments.
Now it was realized, from the very beginning, that the success of
our armies in France would depend upon transportation. And, thanks
to the threats of Pancho Villa, we had at least the framework of a
transportation organization, for when it became necessary to send
troops to the Mexican border in 1916, the War Department had organized
a transportation service of sorts and had placed Samuel M. Felton,
president of the Chicago Great Western Railway, at the head of it.
Thus it came about that upon our entrance into the Great War there
devolved upon Mr. Felton and his staff the gigantic task of obtaining
in the United States and shipping to Europe the enormous quantity of
transportation equipment and supplies required for the use of our forces
overseas. In order to ascertain just what was required in equipment
and supplies, a commission, headed by Colonel William Barclay Parsons,
president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and Colonel (then
Major) W. J. Wilgus, formerly vice-president of the New York Central
system, was sent to Europe within less than thirty days after the
declaration of war. Upon the completion of its preliminary survey of
the situation the commission dispersed, leaving Colonel Wilgus as the
sole nucleus of the American Transportation Service in France, with
Captain L. A. Jenney, formerly chief draftsman of the New York Central,
as his assistant. Sitting on soap-boxes in an office in the Boulevard
Haussman in Paris, with packing-cases for desks, these two officers
outlined the general policy with respect to military transportation for
the A. E. F. which the conditions seemed to warrant, and which General
Pershing later adopted, and drew up the first requisition for railway
and port equipment, materials, and tools. Colonel Wilgus, himself a
veteran railroad man, quickly realized the vastness of the problem
which confronted us and the gravity of the situation resulting from the
dilapidated condition of the French railways and the appalling shortage
of French rolling-stock. He accordingly informed the War Department that
the American Army must prepare to operate its own trains, made up of
its own locomotives and cars, from the seaports to the front, over the
French railways under trackage rights. I might add that the principle of
trackage rights, so familiar in America, was entirely unknown in France,
and at first the French railway officials did not know what Colonel
Wilgus was talking about, for they found it difficult to understand how
it was possible to operate two systems of transportation over the same
tracks at the same time.
The story of how the Engineers, under the direction of Brigadier-General
W. W. Atterbury, formerly vice-president of the Pennsylvania,
Director-General of Transportation, with Colonel Wilgus as his deputy and
Chief of Staff, built up in France a transportation system which was one
of the marvels of the war, is outside the province of this narrative,
while the story of the production of railway material in America and its
shipment overseas would require, for its proper telling, a chapter to
itself. It is enough to say that, when the Armistice was signed, 60,000
men were engaged on railroad work of various kinds in France; more than
a thousand miles of standard-gauge railway (equal to the distance by the
Pennsylvania from New York to Chicago) had been laid; upward of 1,300
locomotives (300 more than are owned by the Atchison system) had been
shipped overseas, and, had the war continued, we would have had in France
by July, 1919, enough American cars to make up a train the caboose of
which would have been leaving Paris when the engine was entering Berlin.
The Transportation Department had in operation between Tours, which was
the headquarters of the Services of Supply, and Chaumont, which was
the Great Headquarters, an all-American train, drawn by an American
locomotive, driven by an American engineer, and, as a final touch, with
its sleeping-cars in charge of former Pullman porters, in khaki, it
is true, but retaining their grins and their whisk-brushes. Every one
in the A. E. F. was inordinately proud of that train, which stood as
a sort of visible proof of American accomplishment in France. It had
been officially christened the “Atterbury Special” in honor of the
Director-General of Transportation, but the soldiers had disrespectfully
dubbed it the “Attaboy Special.” One morning, as a group of American
congressmen, on their way up to the front, were standing on the platform
of the Tours station, the special came roaring in.
“There’s an example of American energy and promptness for you!” exclaimed
one of the politicians proudly. “What a contrast to those wretched French
trains! Not an hour or so late, as they are, but on time to the very
minute.”
“Pardon me, sir,” said a military policeman who had overheard the
conversation, “that is _yesterday’s_ train.”
* * * * *
When it was first proposed by the Transportation Department that
locomotives should be shipped to Europe without being knocked down,
the Ship-Building Board vigorously protested. There were no ships in
existence, the board said, which could stand up under such an immense
concentrated load. But the Engineers proved that they knew more about the
strength of ships than did the ship-builders, and the locomotives—533
in all—were run out onto the wharves on their own wheels, picked up as
easily as though they were baby-carriages by the giant gantry cranes,
deposited in the hold—35 to a ship—together with their tenders, packed in
baled hay, and upon arrival at the French ports were lifted out by the
same method, lowered gently onto the rails, and a few hours later rolled
off for the front under their own steam. The success with which the
Engineers utilized business methods and revised specifications to meet
American manufacturing conditions is strikingly illustrated by the fact
that the cost of these locomotives, for which the French had been paying
$51,000 each, was brought down to $37,000, thus saving to the American
taxpayer some seven millions of dollars—a very tidy sum.