For I.D.25 itself Ewing recruited naval officers, and as the work grew heavier he was allocated Room 40 (which is still used as an office) in the Old Buildings of the Admiralty. At first the possession of the codebook made solutions fairly easy, and Ewing himself took the signals, in their bright red envelopes, to Fisher and Winston Churchill in the war room.
It may be wondered, and Ewing did wonder, why the German Navy did not suspect, even at this early stage, that their code was compromised. Ewing came to the conclusion that it was because of the English reputation for stupidity; Ewing, however, was a Scotsman.
But early success (in particular the forewarning which led to the Dogger Bank action) earned for Room 40 the fate of all departments that do well. It was taken over, in this case by the Director of Naval Intelligence, Captain Reginald Hall. Under his hypnotic blue gaze and furious energy the work was reorganized and redivided, and the modest fifty personnel, keeping two-man watches round the clock, were greatly increased. Hall foresaw the complications that were to come, and imperiously told the Treasury that he must have more money for more codebreakers. Why “Blinker” Hall made up his mind to recruit university dons for Room 40 is uncertain. Having gone to sea at the age of fourteen, he cannot have met many of them before. Dons are clever, but how did he know that they would be clever in the right way? International business would seem a more promising field, and there were in fact brilliant cryptographers in the department from the City. The French and the Germans recruited serving officers. But Hall wanted dons.
It was no easy matter to “sell” them to the Treasury and the Navy. Gilbert Waterhouse, W. H. Bruford and Leonard Willoughby were lecturers in German, and seemed admissible, but John Beazley was an expert on ancient sculpture and pottery; Frank Adcock, the Dean of King’s, was a classical historian; Frank Birch, drafted back from active service, was also a historian; and Dilly came straight from the papyri. It was much to Hall’s credit that he managed to turn this awkward squad, who muddled up six bells and six o’clock and failed to salute admirals in the street, into a more or less naval department. Once in, however, they settled down well enough. Senior Common Rooms had prepared them for this much stranger room, cut off from the ordinary world. And for accuracy, discretion and secrecy they could be absolutely relied on.
You reached I.D.25 through two arches in the Old Buildings. The basement acted as a kind of telegraph office. Intercepted messages coming in by land-line were printed out and sent up by pneumatic tube in shuttles of the kind that can still be seen in some old-fashioned shops. In the enormous Room 40 itself, the shuttles rattled into wire baskets at the rate of two thousand a day, with a sound like a Maxim gun. “Tubists” sorted them into their time-groups and put aside those beginning SD (sehr dringend, very urgent). The signals were still in the familiar code, but this was super-enciphered by rearranging the letters in vertical columns under a keyword. The key, which in 1914 had been changed once every three months, now changed every twenty-four hours. At midnight the watch on duty set to work frantically to find the new key. It was alleged that if they solved it they fell asleep again immediately; if not, they hung their heads in shame as the new watch came on.
But Room 40 was only the central cell of the hive-like organization. It was surrounded by rooms which were all marked “NO ADMITTANCE. RING BELL”; but there were no bells. In the rooms were specialized units: directional, diplomatic (Desmond MacCarthy worked in this), Baltic Traffic (set up by Frank Birch), the Card Index, on which every signal was registered, and so forth. There was also an administrative staff, though much smaller than in most departments, but no tea ladies, and no cleaners. Room 40 was never dusted until the war was won.
Dilly, once his capabilities were established, was asked to work on problems very much more difficult than the day-to-day decipherment of Room 40. He was assigned Room 53, at the end of a dark cul-de-sac, and described by Frank Birch as “no bigger than a bathing-machine”. The table in the middle was so large that you could only just squeeze between it and the wall, and Dilly himself conspicuously failed to look naval; long thin wrists stretched out from the cuffs of a uniform that hung on him like a sack. His work was presented, as it had been in his Eton days, in inky scribbles on sheets of dirty paper, frequently mislaid. It was supposed that he kept his spectacles in his tobacco pouch to remind himself that he had taken the tobacco out of the spectacle case, substituting a piece of stale bread to remind himself that he was always hungry. Room 53, however, had one great distinction, the only bath in I.D.25, in constant use by the night watch. Dilly himself, working on amid soap and steam, could not have done without it. Hot water speeded up his perception of analogies. He had solved many cruces in the text of Herodas in his bath.
He was looking for “ways in” or “cribs”, the essential clues to an unknown cipher. Even a few phrases in clear might provide these. In the 1914–18 war, the cryptographer looked for groups representing place names, which were likely to recur, and repeated messages, which he could assume were preceded by the words besser geben or bitte wiederholen (send more clearly, please repeat). Sometimes, too, the signal might be sent on by an outlying German station in a simpler code, or one that he knew already. The idiosyncrasies of radio operators came to be recognized like those of old friends, or like the copyists of the papyri. Any of these indications, however, could be confused by meaningless blinde signale or nulls, of which the Germans grew increasingly fond as time went on. Above all there was a certain art, a certain flair with which Dilly was born, for the shadow patterns of groups of letters, no matter in what language, revealing themselves, like a secret dance, only to the patient watcher.
I.D.25 had its splendeurs et misères. In 1917 it almost faced disaster. In the early days of the war, Jellicoe had been accustomed to walk in and ask with confidence, “Can I count on a quiet night, gentlemen?” But in February 1917, through a misunderstanding rather than an error, he was given a misdirection which led, he considered, to the disappointing outcome of the Battle of Jutland. A number of people at the Admiralty were not displeased. They had always distrusted Intelligence anyway. When, shortly afterwards, the Germans introduced a new codebook, Admiral Sir Thomas Jackson exclaimed, “Thank God I shan’t have any more of that damned stuff!” Room 40 began to suspect that many of their deciphered signals were being filed unread, and were deeply resentful. Hall shrewdly chose this moment to reorganize the department once again, this time under a delightful, breezy and efficient sailor, William James, who did not pretend to understand cryptography—“around me were a number of civilians and R.N.V.R. officers, all talking a strange language and doing strange things,” he wrote—but who gave everyone new courage. “It was an astonishing sight,” he added, after a tour of the cramped rooms and their scholarly inhabitants. And these were serving with the Navy!
After Frank Birch had joined the department he shared a house, No. 14 Edith Grove, in Chelsea, with Dilly and another friend. Birch gave musical parties every week, inviting Madame Suggia, the great cellist, who lived nearby. Dilly chose these occasions to work all night at Room 40, so that the guests were spared his observations on music; Birch had probably counted on this. Dilly used to have breakfast at the Ship, a public house in Whitehall, before “doddering”, “wandering” or “prancing” (all Frank Birch’s words) home to Chelsea.
He had not forgotten his family. In the summer of 1916, knowing that Ronnie had left Shrewsbury and was at a wretchedly loose end, he suggested that he might just as well come and work in the department. To Dilly, all the long-drawn-out suffering over his youngest brother was a matter of unrealities; we pray, no one answers, the Churches dispute to the death over how to go on speaking to someone who is not there. But he gladly made room for Ronnie between the end of the table and the bath, and so another unlikely figure, “in clerical garb”, as Admiral James put it, joined the already unlikely Room 40.
Ronnie mentioned once, quite mildly, that Dilly had never explained to him exactly what he was meant to be do
ing. In any event, a transfer was soon arranged for him to a small branch of the War Office which specialized in reading the newspapers of neutral countries. It was M.I.D.7—“not 70,” Ronnie wrote to Mrs K., “the poor tax-payer isn’t expected to support 70 military intelligence departments”—and the pay was six pounds a week. Among the quota of old men and bored disabled officers, the “captain person”, as Ronnie called him, could hardly believe his luck in getting such an intelligent clerk, still more so when, in the autumn of 1916, Wilfred began to come in on half-time duty. Wilfred’s motives for doing this were mixed. He, too, had lost many friends in Gallipoli and Flanders, and he wanted to be nearer to his brother before he lost him also. Distressed at the failure of the Anglo-Catholic movement to protest at the continuance of the war, he wanted to work harder himself. He had resolved to take no holidays at all until a peace was signed. He and Ronnie toiled away on different floors of the building. There was a Zeppelin scare, “and Wilfred didn’t see anything,” Ronnie wrote, “but then, he didn’t bother to go to the window and look out.”
All through 1917 his father wrote to Ronnie with increasing urgency, as if by words he could be held back from the brink of a gulf. He begged him, if he could get leave, to come up to Manchester. “I’m afraid you must look forward to seeing me with some pain, considering the direction my mind is now set in,” Ronnie answered, “but you will believe, Paw, that if I could help it—well, there isn’t any need to finish the sentence.” Winnie, for once, was powerless to help. Deep in the anxious business of rearing babies and of not giving offence to the genteel society of Edinburgh, she could not join them; they must fight it out for themselves. The Bishop, in letters that are pathetic in the truest sense, tried to enter into further controversy with this favourite son, so evidently favoured by God and man.
I could have wept almost at the thought of what might have been [he wrote, and again, reaching the central point in his argument], it is quite true that if there is a God He must have revealed Himself, but is there any reason to suppose that it is necessary that His revelations of Himself are such that there must be one and only one true interpretation of them all? …
I am amazed at my own boldness in entering into the lists in which you are a far more skilled and practised contestant. I remember so well the kind of pity with which I used to regard my dear Mother’s, and even my Father’s arguments with me. The fact that I now see I was often in the wrong in spite of my Greats, &c. is not likely to make much impression on you. But what can I do? … I can but make my poor attempt—which for its very length will bore you long before you have read it, if ever you do read it. At least say to yourself—Well, Father must love me or he would not worry so much about me. If I return to the fray you will have to forgive me—Ever your loving father, E. A. Manchester.
It was from their father, as well as their mother, that the Knoxes inherited their tender hearts.
In reply Ronnie tried to explain his need for an absolute spiritual authority, comparing the Church of Rome to a shop window in which there was no need to examine the goods, because over the door was a sign THIS IS THE TRUE DEPOT ORDAINED BY CHRIST HIMSELF. “I should not have used the metaphor,” the Bishop answered, yet he strove to understand. Among the heavy extra duties of wartime, he felt bowed down. Not for many weeks did he add to his reasoned arguments a direct personal appeal. He was suffering; Ronnie pleaded in return to be allowed “to follow what I feel is God’s will, wherever it leads me, quietly and without fuss.” Whatever happened, he promised never to preach in the Manchester diocese while his father was still there.
Ronnie not unnaturally believed that, in the third year of the war, his “going over” would be of interest only to his family. “I’ve twice been asked ‘How’s Ronnie?’ by people who mistook me for Wilfred.” He resigned from Trinity, and, at the suggestion of the Abbot, went in September to make a retreat at Farnborough. The weight of indecision—which, as he knew, can become a habit—fell from him. “I came to my conclusion yesterday,” he told Winnie, “you’ll realise what it is.” On 22 September he was received into the Catholic Church.
He did not feel any special illumination, but he was so happy that he wanted to laugh out loud all through dinner in the refectory. He had found authority. “Ultimately the Catholic Church challenges one with the question: ‘Look in my eyes. Can you trust me?’ And the rest is all quibbling.”
Ronnie was mistaken in thinking that his conversion would go unnoticed. The press commented freely; the Westminster Gazette called him an utter reactionary, who perhaps wished to restore the Stuarts, the Guardian said that Rome “had landed the biggest fish since Newman”—another metaphor which the Bishop would not have used. To his friends it was, as Harold Macmillan put it, “a parting of the ways.” From his family there were no reproaches—certainly none from Wilfred, although he was told that his brother’s conversion had lost him his own chance of the chaplaincy at Merton.
Of course it won’t make any difference; why should it? After all our views are far closer than they were when we were at Oxford, when I never believed in anything, and it never made any difference there … I can’t say how sorry I am, but it certainly won’t make any difference as far as I’m concerned.
I doubt if there was any real point now in your waiting till after the war … unless there was any chance of your finding out after all that you were sorry you’d been received, it’s so much better for you to recover your effectiveness as soon as you can, to say nothing of your happiness. If I ever felt anything else, it can only have been part of the selfishness for which I am so justly famous.
But it did make a difference. The love remained, but so did the lifelong disappointment and regret. For the Bishop the fires had died down, and he could send only his resignation to the will of God, and a little news from home.
The rest are all well. Mother is out digging in the garden, after having done the work of 10 women from morn to sunset. The other day she dug by moonlight. With overflowing love, dearest boy, and ever your most loving father, E. A. Manchester.
Surely one would think it must have been as clear then as it is now that if human love could rise above the doctrines that divide the Church, then these doctrines must have singularly little to do with the love of God. But in 1917 it still appeared to them all that Ronnie was “lost”, and that whatever merciful words were said he was divided from his family by an invisible door of iron.
Guy Lawrence was not given to overstatement, but the news brought him intense relief. “Ron, dear, I am glad you’re back with me again. It makes a lot of difference to me.” Guy had recovered, and was with a Training Reserve Battalion—the 102nd, so great had the wastage and the replacements become. Ronnie, he said, must “be quick and become a priest”. On his return from France, when the war was over, he hoped to become a postulant at the Oratory. The family understood that in the event Ronnie also would become an Oratorian.
The glimpse, in the Bishop’s letter, of Mrs K. digging the vegetable garden by moonlight gives the feeling of the darkest and hungriest of the war years. Britain very nearly starved in 1917. In the spring of that year three hundred U-boats ranged the deep seas, and one in four of our merchant ships failed to return to port. American shipping losses were also high. The two great necessities were to find a way to protect the convoys, and a way to bring the United States into the war. Room 40 made a significant contribution to both, by breaking two codes.
Breaking a code is more difficult than breaking a cipher, or at least any cipher that was in use in the First World War. A high-grade codebook transposes every word, and sometimes every syllable, into a random group of figures or letters. The codebook is in two parts, one alphabetically arranged for encoding, one numerically for reading back:
032 ab 000 England
461 Amerika 001 heute
168 an 002 angriff
211 auf 003 zurück
To get even higher security, any words which are likely to recur frequently may be encoded in,
say, five or six different ways, so that heute (today) may appear as 001, 563, 287 and so forth. Groups of letters are sometimes used instead of numbers. To relate the two lists, many hundreds of thousands of words long, is exceedingly difficult without an effective “way in”. Stops, if they can be identified, will help if the language is German, because they are likely to have a verb, with its characteristic ending, in front of them. The code-breaker writes any probable solutions into his list in pencil; it makes the long columns of blanks look somewhat more human. Ink is for certainties. But even with great skill and patience, and an adequate amount of material to work on, his task may take years. He prays for a miracle.
In February 1917 the diplomatic section of Room 40 produced the solution to the Zimmermann telegram. This was a signal from the German Foreign Minister, offering the Mexican government active support in their claims to Arizona and Texas as a price for coming into the war and launching an attack on the United States. The exposure of these German proposals was crucial, and it was said that nothing else would have reconciled Texas and the Middle West to a European war. The “way in” for the codebreakers, in this case, was the lucky purchase, or theft, by a British agent in Mexico City, of a copy of a second telegram from the post office. This Western Union telegram repeated the first one in a simpler code which had been in use since 1907, and which Room 40 could read without difficulty.
The Knox Brothers Page 16