Throttled! The Detection of the German and Anarchist Bomb PlottersTunney, Thomas J. (Thomas Joseph)
History
Throttled! The Detection of the German and Anarchist Bomb Plotters
Tunney, Thomas J. (Thomas Joseph)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Secret service -- Germany
who was apparently a Hindu. (This, by the way, was the same Chatterji
who persists in cropping up in the wings of this story from time to
time). Now there is no “Hotel Des Alpas” in Montreux; the name of the
inn referred to is the “Hotel des Alpes.” Again, the name “Territel”
was apparently a misspelling of “Territet,” and “Montreau” probably
meant “Montreux.” When we captured Gupta we found in a memorandum book
not only the address cited above, but the _same misspellings_--pretty
conclusive proof that he was the author of the letter. This address was
later found with the same misspellings, in the mailing list of _Ghadr_,
the revolutionary paper published in California. Thus little errors
combined to forge important links.
The code of the Gupta letter was a popular and scholarly volume by an
American author: Price Collier’s “Germany and the Germans,” published
in New York in 1913. The letter was so written that the words which
contained the meat of each sentence were carefully enciphered. The
letter said, for example:
“... I do
not believe there
are very many men
including
98-5-2
98-1-1
98-1-9
98-4-1
98-5-8
98-3-3
------
”Who can show much
better results a-
long the line of
97-1-3
97-1-11
97-6-5
97-8-4
--------
132-1-1
--------
“Undertook”
Turning to page 98 of “Germany and the Germans,” we see that the second
letter of the fifth line is _b_; the first letter of the first line is
_h_; the ninth letter of the first line is _u_; the first letter of
the fourth line is _p_; the eighth in the fifth line is _e_; and the
third in the third line _n_. Sum total: B-h-u-p-e-n--a Hindu name. On
page 97, the first few lines read:
“am willing to concede that perhaps even an emperor
has been baptized with the blood of the martyrs,
and feels himself to be in all sincerity the instrument
of God; if we are to understand this one, we must
admit so much.
“In certain ...” etc.
Thus 97-1-3 is _w_, 97-1-11 is _o_, 97-6-5 is _r_, 97-8-4 is _K_; total
w-o-r-k. 132-1-1 is _I_. Our translation reads therefore:
“_I do not believe that there are very many men including
Bhupen, who can show much better results along the line of work
I undertook._”
Four columns to the typewritten page it ran on over seven sheets of
foolscap, and wound up with a plea in plain English which showed that
Gupta was angry:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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