Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 243, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 October 1914 — YANKEE IMPERILED BY SLANG [ARTICLE]

YANKEE IMPERILED BY SLANG

Dictionary Discloses “Beans” Is Not Code, So Germans Revoke Firing Squad Decree. New York. —American- slang does not appeal to German military officers. It sounds too much like a secret code. This was learned by Dr. Alexander Becker and Dr. Eduardo San Giovanni, both instructors In the manual training high school, who arrived here from Naples. Doctor Becker was In Marklrch, Germany, when the war started. Doctor San Giovanni, who was in Vienna, went "broke” when the banks there suspended payments, and he could not cash his letter of credit. He did not want his Vienna hosts to know of his condition, so he telegraphed Doctor Becker in Markirch as follows: “Kale all gone. Wire 30 beans.” “A secret code,” said the German military telegraph operator. “This man is a spy." / Thereupon the German army fell on Doctor Becker and took him to headquarters, where he was questioned all night. He tried to tell bis captors that this was merely a message of distress. “Kale,” he explained, signified money. “Thirty “beans” meant S3O. “Not so,” Baid the German military men. Kale means the pity of Kiel. You have designs on it. We know not what ‘beans’ is for, but this is some kind of a'vegetarian code. Call a firing squad.” It was looking- serious when Doctor Becker managed to get hold of a dictionary of American slang. He showed the German officers the! dictionary and explained to them that slang was a language most used by college men on this side of the Atlantic. They looked grave and studied the dictionary from cover to cover. They asked him questions for hours and studied the dictionary more. Then they announced: “We also American slang use. We give you 12 hoqra to beat it."'