Career
In January 1938 Mayer — cryptologist Marian Rejewski was to recall — "directed that statistics be compiled for a two-week period, comparing the material solved, with the Enigma-enciphered material intercepted by the radiotelegraphers. The ratio came to 75 percent. Mayer would recall in 1974 that, before World World War II, Colonel Tadeusz Pełczyński, chief of the Polish General Staff"s Section II, suggested to the chief of the General Staff, General Wacław Stachiewicz, that in case of impending war the secret of Enigma decryption "be used as our Polish contribution to the common.. defence and divulged to our future allies." In early January 1939, when Pełczyński was replaced as chief of Section II by Colonel Józef Smoleński, Pełczyński repeated the suggestion to Smoleński.
That, writes Mayer, was the basis of Lieutenant
Colonel Gwido Langer"s instructions when he represented the Polish side at the trilateral Polish-French-British cryptological conferences at Paris in January 1939 and at Warsaw in July 1939. During the ensuing war, Mayer in 1941-1945 headed the Polish Government-in-Exile"s Military Intelligence Officers School, at Bayswater, in London, which in early 1942 was moved to Glasgow, Scotland.
