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had not as yet shared them with anyone else. The main focus was on Germany and he considered that he ought to have agents in the major German naval ports (such as Wilhelmshaven, Hamburg and Kiel) ‘who could be thoroughly trusted to report extraordinary activity’. He also wanted ‘at least one travelling agent’. ‘Cover’ for the Bureau and its activities was a problem from the start. Cumming argued that he should have ‘some Official nominal post - for such instance as “work in the N[aval] I[ntelligence] Dept in connection with suspected persons in the Dockyards”. Such a post (not publicly announced)’, he thought, ‘would give me some pretext for trying to get help outside.’ Meanwhile he found it difficult even to get the Bureau started. Finding himself sitting in the new Victoria Street office with nothing to do, he began to learn German to fill the time. When he went to the War Office ‘to take away the first batch of Records to copy’, Macdonogh ‘would not allow them to be taken out of the place’, and later wrote to Cumming to say that he ‘proposed to hand all the W[ar] O[ffice] work over to K[ell] and to communicate with him alone on such matters’.

Frustrated, Cumming complained to Bethell he had been told ‘that I am not to have letters addressed to the office, am not to see anyone there, nor address letters from there, so that I can not see what possible use it will be . . . Surely’, he continued, ‘we can not be expected to sit in the office month by month doing absolutely nothing.’ His ‘only object’ was ‘to make a first class success out of a new thing’. Noting that Macdonogh wanted to work through Kell alone, Cumming felt ‘that any exclusion of myself in favour of K would be fatal to my success’. He argued that it would be ‘best to keep the WO and Naval work separate’. He would be ‘quite content to have charge of the latter and leave all the former to K, but I must have an equal chance to carry out my part and I can only secure that by being put au courant with all that has been done and with the organisation at our disposal up to the present time’. Cumming also grumbled about what he regarded as the excessive degree of secrecy surrounding the new organisation. It was, he thought, ‘only necessary for us to keep our connection with those who pay us a secret’. He wanted to be able to ‘let it be known’ that he was ‘open to receive information’, while his own identity would be carefully concealed - ‘a matter easily arranged’ - and that any ‘connection at all with any authority that could be traced in any way’ should be suppressed. ‘Half the secrecy that we are maintaining’, he wrote, ‘is of no practical good.’

At last, on 21 October, at a meeting held at the War Office to sort out the working of the Bureau, the separate functions of what became the Security Service and SIS were first formally established. Macdonogh proposed that Kell ‘should undertake the whole of the Home work - both Naval and Military, “espionage and contre espionage”’, and that Cumming ‘should have charge of all the foreign - bothN&M’. As Cumming noted in his diary, the ‘S.S. Bureau’ was to have four ‘duties’: ‘1. Act as screens to Ad[miralty] & W.O. [War Office]. 2. Conduct investigations. 3. Correspond with all paid agents and persons desirous of selling secrets. 4. Act as representatives of Ad. & W.O.’ Cumming’s ‘espionage’ task was to ‘Organise an efficient system by which German progress in Armaments and Naval construction can be watched, being careful in doing so that every thing which would point to concentration should be reported’, while Kell’s ‘contre espionage’ was to ‘counteract all measures hostile to G.B. taken by foreign Governments’. Kell was to have Melville and Drew, though, in answer to a direct question, Macdonogh said he was to ‘avoid employing’ the latter if possible. The existing foreign agents were to be kept on, ‘and there would be about £2700 for them’. The first ‘object’ of the Bureau was to ‘obtain information of any movement indicating an attack upon this country’. Other tasks were to ‘watch all suspected persons - such as foreigners