Office of the Historian

File No. 841.731/158

The Ambassador in Great Britain (Page) to the Secretary of State

American Embassy,
London, December 18, 1914.
[Received 9:10 p.m.]

[Telegram]

1291. Your telegram 369, November 20.1 I have just received the following memorandum from the British Government showing the present regulations regarding the use of codes in foreign telegrams. You will notice that Bentley’s complete phrase code is included in this list, which I presume is the code which Mr. E. P. Thomas, president of the United States Steel Products Company, wishes to have added to the list of codes:

(1)
The use of code will be permitted in telegrams passing between the United Kingdom on the one hand and countries outside the European telegraph system on the other, with the following exceptions: Abyssinia, Annam, Argentine Republic, Brazil, British Honduras, British New Guinea, Cochin China, Comoro Islands, Dutch East Indies, French Somali Coast and Italian possessions in East Africa, Falkland Islands, Flinders Islands, French India, Guinea (Dutch and French), Hedjaz, Liberia, Madagascar, New Caledonia, Paraguay, Pulo Condore, Réunion, St. Pierre and Miquelon, Tongking, Uruguay, Yemen. The following places in West Africa, namely: French possessions, Angola and Fernando Po, and the following islands in the West Indies, namely: Aruba, Bonaire, Guadeloupe, Les Saintes, Marie-Galante, Martinique, St. Croix, St. Thomas and Tobago.
(2)
The following codes selected in consultation with the board of trade are authorized: ABC, 5th edition; Bentley’s complete phrase code, not including the separate mining and oil supplements; Broomhall’s imperial combination code, not including the special rubber edition; Lieber’s code; Meyer’s Atlantic cotton code, 39th edition; Scott’s code, 10th edition; Western Union code.
(3)
Messages in private code or in any unrecognized code are stopped before reaching the censors.
(4)
Neither private supplements nor the numerical equivalents of the phrases in published codes are admissible. It should be especially remembered that groups or series of numbers and similar expressions (e. g., prices of stocks) are not necessarily admissible because they appear in code, if the decode would not have passed the censors; neither will the coded messages be passed.
(5)
All messages in code are decoded under arrangements made by the Post Office for submission to the censors. Every effort is made to avoid delay in this operation. It tends however to expedite the transmission of telegrams if persons handing in coded telegrams deposit at the same time translations of the messages.
(6)
In all cases the name of the code used must be indicated on the form.
(7)
No charge is made for the transmission of the name of the code but a fee of sixpence is charged for each outward telegram in code.

American Ambassador
  1. Not printed.↩