The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [16]
The War Office, having conceded responsibility for foreign work, handed over their ‘whole German Intelligence system’, including B (who had been ‘found valuable in Russia and might be required to work there again’), along with ‘the names and addresses of the 5 assistants’. By the end of 1909 Cumming had himself begun to run other sources. On 9 December he met ‘WK’ who had been an Admiralty agent, apparently reporting on German guns. Just before Christmas he briefed ‘FRS’, who was going to Fiume in Austria-Hungary ‘to find out what progress has been made in laying down slips for D[readnought]s’. On New Year’s Eve at the Royal Automobile Club in Piccadilly he met ‘D’, who was based in Hamburg and was one of three agents engaged to warn of likely war. Cumming ‘promised him £500 [an astonishing 25 per cent of his then entire budget] if he could send me accurate news of the imminence of war before any other agent, and at least 24 hours before any declaration or overt act’. Although ‘the best of the three “passive” agents’, D was ‘evidently timid and accepts as a foregone conclusion that at the outbreak of war he will fly (and bring his message with him)’. Cumming felt sure ‘that he has little resource, and would not risk anything at all to get his warning to us’.
Targeting Germany and running agents
In an exchange of notes with Bethell during January 1910 Cumming formally established his responsibilities vis-à-vis the Admiralty. Bethell laid down that Cumming was to hold himself ‘directly responsible to me for all matters connected with your duties’ and was ‘to assume charge of the entire S.S. Intelligence system outside the United Kingdom, the Military Officer who has been appointed as your colleague being responsible for the work at home’. His ‘principal duty’ was ‘to obtain early and reliable information of all important movements of Naval and Military forces’ in order to provide ‘timely warning of impending hostilities against this country on the part of any foreign state within the range of your information’. Cumming was also to meet requests for ‘special items of information required by the Naval and Military authorities’. For his part, Cumming confirmed that providing advance warning of war was ‘by far the most important part of the work’, but he also suggested ‘that a plan of action should be devised which will ensure the sending of information after hostilities have commenced and whilst the war is actually going on’. He recognised that this was a much more difficult task. Any agent (working, say, in Germany), ‘especially if of foreign birth, or if suspected in the smallest degree’, would inevitably be closely shadowed, and it would be ‘extremely difficult for him to get any information through. If caught, he will certainly be shot.’ Cumming also maintained that, while Germany was the principal target, he would like to have agents in neighbouring countries, arguing perceptively that it would ‘often be possible to get information about Germany through another country, and secrets that may be carefully guarded from us [in Germany] may be more readily accessible elsewhere’. Wisely, he also observed that political conditions in different European countries could rapidly change and that he needed back-up systems for the supply of information.
At this very early stage Cumming was already thinking sensibly about the problems of foreign intelligence work, but much of this was ambitiously optimistic, and would remain so for years. Even thirty years on in the Second World War, after dramatic advances