Tea at Trianon: The Code Talkers

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, May 10, 2020

The Code Talkers

From Cryptologic Bytes:

Chester Nez was one of the original 29 Navajo code talkers and he lied about his age in order to enlist in the U.S. Marines Corp. Then he and the 28 other Navajo men went on to develop a code based upon their native language. That code became invaluable -- saving lives and enabling the success of many operations. This unbreakable communications system helped ensure the American defeat of the Japanese in the South Pacific.

While the U.S. had adequate cryptographic systems for written communications, the only effective scrambler for voice communications was unsuited for tactical use. The code talkers provided absolute security and speed of encryption and decryption when seconds counted on the battlefield. Their frontline service, keeping U.S. tactical communications invulnerable to enemy eavesdroppers, saved thousands of American and Allied lives. (Read more.)