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spent some time at the Deuxième Bureau (the intelligence branch of the French War Ministry), where the French shared information with him about German agents they believed were run from the Netherlands to work in France. Stevens confirmed to London that the French were most anxious to establish closer liaison with the Netherlands SIS station for both secret intelligence and counter-intelligence matters. He reported that he had been received by the French with the ‘utmost kindness and frankness’ and that their ‘offer of reciprocal co-operation’ was ‘an absolutely genuine one and without arrière pensée of any sort’. Thanking Rivet personally for the ‘extraordinarily kind reception which you gave to Stevens during his few days in Paris’, Sinclair asserted that he had ‘come back more French than British, and you certainly have a good Representative in my Service! I trust’, he added, ‘that the collaboration which will be arranged in Holland will prove of value to both our services.’

Over the next few months there were further reciprocal visits between the French and British services. In December 1938 David Footman (of the Head Office Political Section) went to Paris to build collaboration on political intelligence matters especially relating to the Soviet Union, the Far East and the Mediterranean. On his return to London he reported that a meeting with a French Colonial Intelligence officer had passed off ‘very happily’, largely due ‘to the excellent personal relations which 45000 [Dunderdale] has already established with his French friends’. In January 1939 Dunderdale was involved in a visit to Paris by Captain John Godfrey, the Director of Naval Intelligence-designate. On 12 January Godfrey came to Dunderdale’s office to be shown SIS’s methods of work, security, production of maps, reports and plans, including aerial photographs. Dunderdale afterwards learned from a mutual friend that Godfrey was satisfied with the visit, as were the French. ‘Their impression of Capt. Godfrey was a very good one,’ he reported, ‘and I am sure that they will do everything for us after his visit.’ At the end of January a French intelligence mission came to London for talks involving Menzies and Stevens of SIS, along with Kell and other MI5 officers. Menzies told the French he believed the Germans were not seriously preparing for military action against the West. Further afield, he noted that the British were extremely concerned about Japanese activities in the Far East. The Middle East was also a problem, and he hoped that there could be improved liaison between SIS and French intelligence in Syria and Egypt. Stevens, who worried that some of his predecessor’s agents might have been turned by the Germans (how right he was), reported that he had established very good links with the security authorities in the Netherlands and was developing a twenty-strong network to work against the Germans. This, added Menzies, would be entirely at the service of the French and he proposed that while SIS focused on developing anti-German work in the Netherlands, the French should concentrate on doing so in Belgium and Luxembourg.8 About this time, too, on SIS initiative, the Dame Blanche organisation was being reactivated.

Among the topics raised during the French visit to London in January 1939 was that of the two services collaborating with anti-German double agents based in the Low Countries. One such was a Belgian, ‘Li 270’, who had been recruited by both French intelligence and the German Abwehr in 1934. He provided his French case-officer with German questionnaires on the French aircraft industry (together with his replies), and in January 1939 supplied another document indicating intelligence requirements on Britain. This also focused on air power and revealed German suspicions that the British wanted to establish airbases in the Netherlands. Menzies was sufficiently interested to press his French counterparts in March 1939 for any further information from the agent. There was nothing more from the German side, but in June 1939 Li 270 was approached by